A kyriarchal church unmasked - Faith & Spirituality

Catholic New Times, Dec 15, 2002 by Mary E. Hunt

Editor's note: Mary Hunt continues her analysis of the roots of the current crisis in the American Catholic Church with the following address which she gave at Regis College in Boston, Mass. in October 2002.

Let me begin this article with the church, the "kyriarchal" church (a stunning term from Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza), since we, who are Catholic, have primary responsibility for its actions in the world. Some of the insights will carry over to our understanding of civil power.

There is no doubt that the American Roman Catholic Church is in free fall. Its credibility has been dropping more rapidly than the Dow Jones & Company and the NASDAQ Stock Market in recent weeks.

But I believe that such a way of framing the problem is not only inaccurate and misleading, but it serves to reinforce the very problems that it purports to solve. It presumes that the institution is the whole church, a presupposition I do not agree with. It ignores the far larger picture of a diverse community in which change is already well under way: hundreds of base communities that meet regularly; women-church and other progressive groups that have long since ceased supporting their own oppression; the women's religious orders that handle their own business quietly, including the Eucharist without the benefit of clergy.

These are signals of the church's future. While the pedophilia cases may be the straw that broke the camel's back, they are by no means the only factors to create deep disillusionment among many Catholics, a number of whom have long since taken their spirituality into their own hands.

I believe that we need to understand the Catholic Church as a kyriarchal institution that must be transformed, in order to create a safe and just context in which to be church together.

The word "kyriarchy" literally means "structures of lordship" with the interlocking modes of oppression that include sexism, racism, clericalism, heterosexism and imperialism, which give shape to the institutional Roman Catholic Church as we know it. In this sense, the Roman Catholic Church fits nicely into the increasingly globalized, unjust society for which it was originally intended to be a counterpoint.

Sexism, or the relentless dishonouring of women, not only with regard to sexual and reproductive health issues, but also in the intellectually embarrassing recalcitrance on the matter of ordination is but one symptom of Catholic kyriarchy.

Kyriarchy has become a pernicious structure of privilege that is collapsing under its own dead weight, as well it ought. It has an economic and a racist side. Neither women nor people of colour in more than a few exceptional cases have access to the financial resources that belong to the whole church. Contrast the endowments of Regis College and Boston College in Massachusetts, for example, or your average rectory and your average convent, or an African-American or a Hispanic parish and a white, suburban one, and you will see what I mean. Likewise, clericalism, the privileging of those who belong to the clericus or collegium of the ordained, is a signal dimension of kyriarchy.

Clericalism is raised to another level when bishops manage their dioceses like fiefdoms without checks and balances, except, now, for the occasional deposition under oath.

The hypocritical hetero-sexism of kyriarchal Catholicism is finally coming to light. Unfortunately, it has taken the current sex scandals--the majority of which involve adult men in power taking sexual advantage of boys or young men--to force Catholics to come to grips with the fact that a large percentage (I agree with those who claim it is the maj6rity) of its priests are gay, whether sexually active or not. Church historian Mark Jordan describes what he calls the "honeycomb of closets" (The Silence of Sodom) to convey the complexity of hidden homosexuality which has so traumatized the kyriarchal church.

In my view, the sexual orientation of priests is largely irrelevant, except as it intersects with the homo-hating Catholic culture. Indeed, most of pedophilia is engaged in by heterosexual men who use their power to sexually take advantage of girls. The crime of pedophilia is the crime of pedophilia. Yet, this largely male-on-male pedophilia seems to be a function of easier access to boys in a patriarchal church bent on attracting them to the priesthood. These are not functions of homosexuality as such, but of sexism and homo-hatred. The sexual abuse of nuns and other women continues to be all but passed over.

Kyriarchal Catholicism labels the grace of same-sex love as "intrinsically morally disordered" and the grace of same-sex expression as "objectively evil." Advances in biology and sexology indicate that same-sex love is as healthy, good and natural as its heterosexual counterpart, leaving the Catholic kyriarchy to play theological catch-up.

The issue is not homosexuality but duplicity. Lies and coverups remain bad form. Moreover, lying becomes a bad habit. It will fall like a house of cards when the trump of truth is pulled out. I think this is what we are experiencing and it is the broken heart of the matter.