Lent 18: Gestation, 1987

The summer of 1987 was marked by preparation for a number of changes. We'd decided the fourth floor walk-up was not the ideal set-up as the second trimester of pregnancy progressed. The "forgetting to make sure the building is heated in the middle of winter" had sufficiently spooked us that we were determined to become homeowners. We began house-hunting. 

I was also singing the part of Dorabella in an opera workshop production of the first act (and only the first act) of "Cosi Fan Tutte." This would be pretty much the last act in my attempt at a singing career.

And I started to wonder whether I could, in good conscience, bring my child up in the Catholic church.

This concern had been growing for a while. I suppose you could say we were "cafeteria Catholics," putting on our plates those practices and beliefs with which we agreed, and leaving the rest in their warming trays. But the more I dwelt in the church... even in the Boston-progressive-change-is-just-around-the-corner version of the church... the less this felt like haphazard "picking and choosing," and the more it felt like a concern-- no, a conflict, a disagreement-- with a fundamental operating assumption of the institution. That assumption had to do with the full humanity of women. Were women human beings or not? 

The crisis was coming, and that crisis was baptism. Would I be able to baptize my baby in a church that did not fulfill its baptismal promises to half of the faithful? In Paul's letter to the Galatians he makes the distinction between life under the law and the life of faith.

But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise. ~ Galatians 3:25-29

The promise of baptism is that there is no longer "male and female," but, rather, all are one. The promises of baptism are one. And by baptism, we enter into the ministry of Christ's church. This ancient understanding is the source of those buttons some women (and men) started wearing to church in the 1970's, "Ordain Women or Stop Baptizing Them." 

But I had known since my confirmation in seventh grade that there were seven sacraments for boys and only six for girls, Holy Orders being off the menu. It was believed that women, because they lacked a penis, would insufficiently "image" Christ in the sacrifice of the mass. This view, of course, takes us down a road in which the strong implication is that the  point of the incarnation is not that God became human, but that God became male. And, as the wonderful Mary Daly points out, when God is male, the male becomes God. (See the documentary "The Keepers" for just one example of the evil that is made possible when the male as God is embraced by clergy and all who keep their secrets.) It was also taught that Christ's choice of only male apostles was the definitive criterion for who might be ordained (rather than being a necessity of the cultural context of Jesus' mission). The fact of women being named as ministers (and, on at least one occasion, an apostle) in the New Testament was waved aside: meaningless. (Though... if that's the case, why did Saint Jerome "correct" the female name Junia into Junius, a previously unknown male name?)

The irony is, the Catholic church had also held open windows through which women could see images of the divine in female form: see, Mary, the Mother of God. But see also the communion of saints, filled with women who lived and died for Christ, and whom the church saw fit to elevate for veneration (not worship, as some Protestants mistakenly hold). It had long been home to communities of women who served God's people through education, nursing, and solidarity and service to those whom Jesus calls "the least of these" (in popular parlance, "losers"). The Protestant Reformation, in its fervor to obliterate all things "popish," abolished all such practices, and spiritually and vocationally impoverished women of faith in the process. And the Reformers, sadly, did all this in the name of sola scriptura, scripture alone as the guide to faith. But scripture tells the story of two individuals who could with complete authority and truth, say the words, "This is my body, this is my blood," and one of them is a woman.

In the summer of 1987, while packing for the move, going to ever more frequent pre-natal visits, and rehearsing for the opera, I went on a kind of strike where church was concerned. I stopped attending mass, and started exploring other faith communities. The two that stand out in my memory were a lovely, historic Episcopal church in Wellesley and a Quaker meeting in Cambridge. The Quaker meeting was particularly appealing, because the service was not a service at all, but instead a time of communal silence in expectation of the appearance of the Holy Spirit. But no satisfactory answer came to my question: Could I, in good conscience, baptize my baby in the Catholic church?

Ned arrived in November 1987 during a snowstorm,
with no opinion on the matter of his baptism.

(The pastor in me asks, now, why didn't I go to talk to a priest? I certainly knew and had relationships with at least a half dozen who would have been happy to have that conversation with me, supporters of women's ordination. every last one of them. For some reason I didn't. And I suspect that reason was that I doubted they could help me, having made whatever accommodation they needed to make in order to stay in a system they acknowledged was flawed.)

In the end, Ned was baptized by a priest I love, in the beautiful church of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, surrounded by a loving community of friends and family. Had I come to the same accommodation as my Catholic clergy friends? What had tipped the scales? A package had arrived, after Ned was born. It contained an exquisite custom made Christening gown, sent by his grandmother. In the end, no decision was the decision, and we were carried along on the tide of events by that Christening gown. I had let it go. For now.