Let the Conversation Begin

Blogger's Note: I've pasted in my column from Saturday Feb. 7 on a proposed seminary in the Catholic Diocese of Spokane. Have received more than 50 phone calls and e-mails on this and may post some of the responses in this blog, especially from folks who disagreed with me. All were so eloquently written and argued and my hope is that the column will generate some good dialogue.
So here it is.

Rebecca Nappi
The Spokesman-Review

Catholics throughout the Spokane Diocese are being asked to donate money to build and maintain a new Bishop White Seminary. The present one, on Gonzaga University's campus, is in disrepair. Catholics are also being asked to fund an endowment for the education of seminarians. Total price tag: $10 million.

In church bulletins, Catholics have been urged to "consider prayerfully how you will respond."

Here is my response: I cannot donate a dime to this cause. Not a dime.

As a woman who loves the church and respects and likes many priests, this response saddens me. But I have two reasons for it.

Reason One: The timing is terrible. As Catholics we are trying to move forward from the past few years of relentless revelations about sex abuse by priests. Much healing has happened. Much remains.

Last month, the diocese announced it had spent nearly $1 million in settlements, legal fees and counseling for sex-abuse victims. More lawsuits and counseling expenses are likely as victims continue to come forward.

The Rev. J. Bryan Hehir, former head of Catholic Charities USA, said in a recent talk in Spokane that the healing from the sex-abuse crisis will take generations. To rebuild public credibility, the church cannot just acknowledge its mistakes and forge ahead, he said. Instead, all church members must bear "modest witness" to the crisis and "convey that you carry the sense of the burden" for healing that crisis.

The diocese hired a national professional fund-raising outfit to raise $10 million in a diocese that could ultimately spend that much paying for past sins. This is forging ahead too fast. It is not a modest response.

Reason Two: The seminary will not be a place for women. The 16-page booklet outlining the "Here I am Lord, send me" campaign shows women in only three photos. In one, women are seen in the background in a kitchen.

The kitchen is no longer where Catholic women do all their work in the church. Women now fill many key positions in parishes here. An ex-priest I know wishes that one day all women working in parishes would go on strike to provide a wake-up call.

To be fair, a video about the project includes an interview with an articulate Catholic woman explaining her support. And the seminary will include space for parish meetings. So women will be in the building at times.

But asking me to donate money to build something that excludes my entire gender is like asking me to pay dues to a country club where women aren't allowed on the golf course.

I am not anti-priest. I grew up with Monsignor Oakley O'Connor. He called us St. Charles kids "little philosophers," and we learned how to live up to that name. My father brought to dinner intelligent priests who discussed war and politics with me when I was 10. They treated me like a peer and even pointed out my errors in logic.

In college and graduate school at GU, brilliant Jesuits taught me theology and philosophy. I'm currently on a Catholic speaker-series committee with a Jesuit so forward-thinking I've nicknamed him The Prophet. And I'm also collaborating on two books with the priest who presided at my wedding. Finally, I have much respect for Bishop William Skylstad, especially for his leadership through the sex-abuse crisis.

But this seminary campaign seems like an old answer to modern problems in the Catholic Church. We have a critical priest shortage. The solution is not building a new edifice hoping the seminarians will follow. The solution is allowing married priests and women clergy.

That's not likely to happen in my lifetime, if ever. So it's probably an error in logic to withhold support for the only system we currently have to educate priests.

But that's what I'm doing because of words spoken by priest, theologian and psychologist Donald Cozzens last April at GU. Cozzens believes that for true reform to take place, Catholics must find the courage to "speak the truth in love" to themselves, fellow church members, pastors and bishops. He calls this redemptive honesty.

"Telling the truth is difficult," Cozzens said. "We are prone to denial, to not seeing the elephants in the room."

This $10 million campaign looks like the elephant in the room. I cannot ignore it. I cannot support it. This is the truth as I see it now, a truth prayerfully considered.

To see this story on our Web site. Here's the link.