A systemic failure.

THE UNHEALED WOUND: THE CHURCH AND HUMAN SEXUALITY.

Eugene Kennedy (St. Martin's Press, 2002 (pbk.), 224pp.)

Eugene Kennedy speaks truth to power. The institutional Roman Catholic church is in deep trouble. The cancer eating away at its heart is the official church's unhealthy understanding of human sexuality--the unhealed wound.

This book is a wake-up call--a "must read" for Catholics who are trying to grapple with the worst clergy sex abuse scandal in the church's history. Bishops, criticized for their failures in leadership, could gain valuable insights from Kennedy's brilliant analysis of the unhealed wound that has plagued the church for generations: it could stir them to change the way the clerical system functions.

Using poignant examples of people's struggles with their sexuality, Kennedy describes the unhealed wound that threatens to tear the contemporary church apart. He lays the blame for this crisis squarely on the leaders of the institutional church: "Wise in the world's ways and friendly with the Mammon of Iniquity, the Institution knows that if it can control sexuality, it can maintain its mastery over human beings." (p.10)

The official church's understanding of sexuality, according to Kennedy, is flawed. He argues that the split between nature and spirit is the source of an unhealthy attitude toward sexuality. One does not have to look far for evidence of the unhealed wounds of sexuality within the church: the opposition to birth control; a male, celibate priesthood; the ban on women priests; the labeling of homosexuality as an "objective disorder" and the current clergy sex abuse scandal including the cover-ups engaged in by bishops to shield offenders in order to avoid scandal for the "good of the church."

Kennedy defines sexuality as an integral part of our humanity. He sees it as the creativity at the heart of our personhood as females and males. "Whenever we author something from within ourselves, whenever we draw on our capacity for generativity, whenever we respond in a human relationship," Kennedy observes, "we act as sexual persons." The institutional church misunderstands sexuality. It places heavy burdens of guilt on people who are doing their best to live a moral life. "The unforgivable sin, the true sin against the Spirit," Kennedy notes, "may well be to make people feel guilty about what is healthy in them--guilty, as charged, of being human.... They mask what is sexually unhealthy in themselves, denying it while indulging and gratifying it in the actions they carry out complacently in the name of the Church." (p.39)

A growing chorus of voices continues to raise questions about the official church's position on excluding women from the priesthood. The institutional church still does not view women as equals with men. Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas taught that women were defective males and therefore incapable of exercising power in the church. Papal statements insist that Jesus set up an exclusively male priesthood and that the church has no authority to ordain women. The truth, Kennedy believes, is that Jesus did not ordain men or women to the priesthood. He cites the argument of scripture scholar, Raymond Brown, that "there is no biblical evidence that he [Jesus] thought about any of his followers, male or female, as priests, since there were already priests in Israel.... From the New Testament it appears that the clear conceptualization of the Christian priesthood came only after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in A. D. 70." (p.115)

Kennedy clearly demonstrates the deficiencies in the present power structure that uses the all male celibate priesthood to dominate the lives of people of faith. One of many examples he cites is the Commission on Birth Control. Even though the majority of theologians and bishops voted to lift the ban on artificial birth control, the minority opinion prevailed. Pope Paul VI believed that lifting the ban would threaten the church's authority and thus, admit that the church had been in error. He therefore backed the ban for the "good of the church." Kennedy concludes that the official church's position turned out to be a watershed moment for Catholics in which the triumph of conscience prevailed over blind obedience to church authority, "so that, as the millennium turned, the consciences of Catholics prevail over the pronouncements of the official Church in making decisions about their sexual lives." (p.93)

It has been recognized for centuries that the believing community acts with authority when it accepts or rejects a teaching or doctrine of the faith. Pope Paul VI's encyclical Humanae Vitae, reaffirming the church's ban on artificial birth control, is one example of non-reception by the community of faith. The rejection of this teaching raises serious questions about its authenticity. "This sense of the believing community," avows Kennedy, "is therefore the common sense of believers and has always been regarded, both in faith and morals, as a reliable guide to belief, decision, and action." (p.105) It would seem that the believing community is quite healthy today in its ability to discern the Spirit at work in the church and to separate the wheat from the weeds. Catholics are no longer afraid of confronting church authority. Witness, for example, the calls for resignations of church leaders and for new structures of accountability in response to clergy sexual abuse crisis.

The chapter on ecclesiastical controls accurately portrays John Paul II's exalted, abstract view of sexuality that is rooted in a divided understanding of the human person and results in cataclysmic clash between matter and spirit. The pope's ascetic, mystical understanding of human sexuality reveals a man who is out of touch with the experience of most ordinary people. In his encyclical, Familiaris Consortio, the pope equates contraception as a failure of spouses to give themselves to each other in total reciprocal love. The pope is consistent, according to Kennedy's analysis, in reasoning that, "If sexuality is exalted, forgoing sexuality is exalted even more as he advocates abstinence as a good that equals and perhaps surpasses sexual union itself.... His elevation of the virginal undergirds his attitudes about marriage, celibacy for priests, his rejection of birth regulation except through the rhythm method, and his condemnation of any sexual expression, such as homosexual relations, that falls short of the conditions for `self-donation'." (pp. 95-97)

John Paul's vision of sexual purity and the struggle to maintain this ideal shapes his understanding of sexuality and is reflected in his theology and spirituality. This certainly sheds light on the reasons the institutional church has failed to develop a theology of sexual intimacy based on the lived experience of a loving sexual union. How can we get on this path? Kennedy suggests that the institutional church could take a first step towards this goal by inviting ordinary people to share their struggles to heal and integrate their sexuality in their daily lives. Second, church officials should declare a moratorium on issuing statements on sexual matters--this latter would certainly be welcomed by many in the community of faith. Personally, I recommend that in response to the present sexual abuse crisis, the bishops humbly take responsibility for their failures in leadership and incorporate the people of God in decision-making roles at all levels of church governance. It is also necessary to expand candidates for ordination to the married and women. The present crisis is merely a symptom of the need for systemic change on all levels of the church's life. We should face these issues now. Later may be too late to save the church from the destruction it faces if serious reform and renewal do not take place soon.

In his chapter on defending and pursuing celibacy, Kennedy notes that in spite of the clergy sexual abuse scandal, the celibate priest is protected at all costs and celibacy is defended with arguments that equate ordination to the priesthood with marriage. In a talk, Eucharistic Foundation of Sacerdotal Celibacy, to a conference at the Gregorian University in Rome, Cardinal Francis Stafford asserts that, "It is because of the priest's own nuptial integration into the sacrifice he offers that only a man is capable of acting in the person of the head and can be priest.... He cannot marry without betrayal of his own nuptiality, which is analogously adulterous; his exclusive dedication to the bride of Christ bars any secondary self-donation." (p.141) Here the priest is the husband and the church is the bride. Kennedy comments that this argument is not convincing to most ordinary people. This is certainly an understatement! It is an example of over-spiritualizing an out-of-body celibacy that elevates the male priest to a special relationship with the church that no one else can share. Obviously, the married and women would be excluded from such a "special, holy, relationship." This understanding of celibacy only serves to reinforce the patriarchal stance that asserts male power. If Jesus were on earth today, how do you think he would respond to such an esoteric understanding of priesthood?

How can the church transform the unhealed wound? First, Kennedy advises, abandon monarchical, outdated structures and listen to the experience of ordinary people by asking them "What is it that ails you?" Second, return to a sacramental view of the world as the revelation of the divine, rather than the source of evil and temptation.

Who will be our mentors on such a journey? Kennedy suggests that we look to the pastoral and sacramental vision of Pope John XXIII. This popular pope reached out across historic divisions to Christians from other denominations and engaged in a conversation between equals. In an address to Christians from other denominations, John spoke from the heart as a beloved brother about his experiences of dialogue with other religious leaders, "We did not negotiate, we talked; we did not debate but loved one another." (p.203)

"John embraced all creation as a unity," Kennedy observes, "without the exceptions and distinctions of those who continued to score deep divisions across the universe and human personality." (p.201) His mission, like the church's, was to bring healing to the world's wounds. This is certainly a place the community of faith can begin the journey as disciples and equals.

The image that I want to take with me from The Unhealed Wound is Kennedy's description of the Last Judgment. He sets the scene with a description of people confessing their struggle to live with integrity. They come to confession "longing to be cleansed of feelings more often human than sinful; the couples trying to hold love and family together, flailing on the limping carousel of life to keep in touch and keep away from each other during her fertile times.... These are not the damned but the saved, gathered at the Last Judgment, surprised that God finds them worthier than they find themselves; these masses overlapping St. Peter's Square and the city and the world beyond are amazed to find that they are garmented in white and that their wounds of being human and sexual are healed at last." (p.8)

When all is said and done, this is the faith of the church that has come down to us through the ages and is now present in blessed and broken people--like you and me and many companions, too numerous to count, who one day, will shine like the stars in the heavens forever in the presence of our God.

Sr. Bridget Mary Meehan is president of the Federation of Christian Ministries and producer of GodTalk TV--a series of interfaith television programs on social, moral and spiritual issues.