I left Catholicism in fits and starts, the way a smoker keeps reaching for one last cigarette. But I did leave for good three years ago. And though I don’t identify as Catholic anymore, Sudy reminds me of teachings that resonate.
Love one another. Whatever you do to the least of my brothers. Ministering to the poor–the prisoners, the blind, the oppressed. Striving to be compassionate.
Unfortunately, as my feminist shero Sr. Mary John Mananzan points out, the Philippine Catholic malestream emphasizes aspects such as the contraception and divorce bans and the “sins of the flesh.” This is still the dominant Catholicism in the Philippines, the strand that eventually led to my departure.
It’s also a strand that obscures how Catholic tenets on love, service, and compassion could form powerful basis for transnational feminist coalitions.
In her essay “Globalization and the Perennial Question of Justice,”* Mananzan applies a faith-based approach to highlight globalization’s injustices on indigenous populations, the urban poor, displaced farmers. She critiques the new “religion” of consumerism, globalization, and capital that gives rise to this suffering. In its place, she advocates a spirituality that is responsive to the suffering wrought by globalization.
Mananzan writes
Just as we proclaim an integral salvation, we also have to develop an integral spirituality that transcends dichotomies such as body-soul, sacred-profane, contemplation-action, heaven-earth, and so on. We need to integrate our relationships with God, with ourselves, with others, and with the planet. It is inclusive and resists exclusion of peoples for any reason, be it class, race, gender, or any other.
She adds that a responsive spirituality is characterized by a simplicity of lifestyle and a strong commitment to economic justice, gender and racial equality, and ecological activism.
The concept of spirituality is easy to distort, promising parokyanos heavenly rewards for their willingness to accept suffering in the here and now. But Mananzan’s integral spirituality does not take that easy way out. She recognizes that dichotomies such as body/soul and heaven/earth are false constructs used for distraction.
Hers is an active spirituality, one that ministers to people’s needs by addressing the sources of oppression and exclusion.
I’ve heard criticisms that the Church should minister to a person’ soul, that tackling issues is overstepping its bounds. But in this essay, Mananzan clearly shows how globalization destroys communities, how it tears people from their loved ones, how it further impoverishes people who are already marginalized.
Mananzan’s spirituality challenges the mythology of suffering as a blessing. Integral spirituality means that the roots of corporeal suffering should also be addressed.
In Feminism Without Borders, Chandra Mohanty advocates a “Feminist Solidarity/Comparative Feminist Studies” pedagogy, one that seeks new ways of linking global and local. Specifically, Mohanty envisions a feminism that illuminates “points of connection and distance among and between communities of women marginalized and privileged along numerous local and global dimensions.” (243) These points of connection could form the foundations for a transnational feminism, for acting in solidarity.
It’s Christmas Eve as I write this post. I’m amazed at how culturally Catholic I remain, at how I still struggle to remember “the reason for the season” and to connect this with a commitment to transnational feminism. Via Mananzan, I’m happy to see that an empowering spirituality and feminism are not necessarily incompatible as I once thought.
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from Roger S. Gottlieb, ed. Liberating Faith: Religious Voices for Justice, Peace, and Ecological Wisdom (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003)
I appreciate this post, and Sudy’s, too: your blog title relates to me, too. Faith I deeply respect; the institution is unforgivable and does not deserve the faithful. If only Sr. Mary John Mananzan could head her own church, I think I would be more at ease with my religious heritage.
Hi kiita,
I recently read a paper about Filipina nuns as transnational feminists, and thought of Sr. Mary John. Women like her have done a lot to restore my faith in people of faith. I had to go back and re-read her essay, because the Pope’s Christmas message made me want to bang my head on the wall. I’d totally be a regular in Sr. Mary John’s church. But then, maybe we already are.
Greetings! Saw your post in Google Blogsearch and came to read. I would like to emcourage you to take a second look at the Catholic Church and what it truely teaches and believes regarding women.
You find some resources here:
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God bless… +Timothy
Hey Timothy,
Thanks for reading and commenting. I hope you’ll understand why I redacted the link to your organization. (I don’t allow advertising, especially for organizations whose views I do not support) But I did want to respond to the sentiment of your comment.
It’s really not just the gender aspect that prompted my decision to leave the Catholic Church. And to be clear, I did leave. I didn’t lapse or just stop attending mass. I told my priest and my family why I was leaving.
I left because of profound disagreements with actions of the Church leadership, and many of those actions and positions are clearly upheld by your organization. For example, your “About Us” page carries the pope’s problematic views about the “authentic dictatorship of relativism.” And searches for “poverty” and “globalization” yields a grand total of zero results.
Your organization does not take into account the voices, concerns, and spirituality of members like Sr. Mary John Mananzan. Please read her essay if you can get your hands on it, or just google her. If you want people to come back, there needs to be dialogue and listening, not just more reiteration of the same stances that led to our departure in the first place.
Your comment made me think, though. Perhaps I didn’t leave Catholicism as much as I left the Catholic Church. I think a lot of us forget that those are not the same thing. Salamat for that as well.
Being raised a Catholic and now an atheist and PhD student in women’s studies and technology, I can’t help but feel these exact same pangs. It’s been hard just yesterday, going to my large extended family christmas, looking at the indoctrinating children’s books being given to my tiny cousins on pro-life issues, on how angels are with the little zygotes and how they are complete persons in the mother’s wombs.
I do think that some of the teachings have led me to my current work and lifestyle of embracing social justice and the under served. I see the same compassion in my mother who is a family physician in a small rural community. I also learned from my uncle, who was a Franciscan brother who serves the homeless in Detroit, but who came out as gay. And yet dealing with half of the family who rejects him and his partner because of Catholicism.
Thank you for pointing out Catholic teachings that don’t conflict with feminism. Because inevitably, I may be an atheist, but Catholicism is my culture and roots. Hard to escape that guilt!
Hi Jill,
Thank you for reading and sharing your experiences. They’re convincing me more that my disconnect is not in the teachings themselves, but in how they’re interpreted and set in practice. It’s unconscionable that Church authorities would tolerate the exclusion and marginalization of members like your uncle. There are a lot of social justice principles in Catholic teaching, and I do think they can be powerful basis for collective action, both domestically and transnationally. But the church needs to see that too. Salamat!
Ahhh, Tanglad, we shall struggle together for a world of spirit and goodness, and commitment to generous action and decency among nations.
The only thing I am certain is that I will forever struggle and love the Catholic Church, but it always helps to know others are as well.