ARTICLES

Green God/ess

Religious Sisters Embrace "Global Spirituality"

BY CHRISTOPHER ZEHNDER

"It is now unthinkable that any women's congregation should not be committed as a primary concern and purpose to the saving of the natural world. If the life systems are not saved then everything else is irrelevant." So wrote the eco-theologian, Father Thomas Berry in his book, Apostolic Women as a Voice of the Earth. The passage appears on the website of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, which has a regional community in Auburn, California (in the diocese of Sacramento), where it runs a well-known retreat center. The Sisters of Mercy and other orders throughout California, it appears, have taken Berry's "unthinkable" to heart -- so much so, that, if not "everything else," than at least Catholic tradition and teaching have become irrelevant.

Concern for the integrity of the natural world is, of course, not opposed to the Catholic faith or to the religious vocation. Thus, when one should not be disconcerted to discover that many religious congregations have incorporated good stewardship for all of creation into their charisms. The Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet in Los Angeles, for instance, say on their website that they "have focused" their "collective energy" among other things on the issue of "environment and global, national, and personal abuse of the earth." The Sisters of St. Joseph Federation, to which the Carondelet sisters belong, notes on its website that "many congregational properties include organic gardens. Some congregations are committed to using automobiles that operate on natural gas." The Sister of Mercy, for their part, "strive to live simply and resist consumerism" and "eliminate products that are only good for one-time use, whenever possible," among other unobjectionable and, even, praiseworthy things.

When one comes to the more general policies religious orders support, one also finds praiseworthy goals. For instance at their February 2003 symposium, "Building Global Solidarity," held in Los Angeles, the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary recommended actions that include "studying the use/abuse of water and its effects on the peoples of the earth," since "water is a universal right; it is not a commodity." The sisters also recommend being "aware of where our food, clothing, etc., come from and who profits and who loses, and changing, if necessary, your lifestyle." If recommendations were limited to such as these, all would be well.

But they are not.

One, for instance, finds language among eco-sisters that suggests religious indifferentism. In April 2004, Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary sister Susan DeGuide, who serves in the San Bernardino diocese, summar ized the Religious Orders Partner ship annual meeting held in New York, April 21-24, 2004. The meeting, "Exploring Global Spirituality," included 110 participants from "different congregations of religious women who actively support and work with the United Nations to," among other things, "participate in a movement from separation to communion by facilitating communion among the world's faith traditions and developing and fostering a global spirituality."

What is global spirituality? According to Sister DeGuide, it not only calls us to side with the poor and work for woman's advancement, but to "align ourselves with the non-Christians of our world ... to attend to what God has been about outside of the Church, and to "stretch our care beyond human beings" and "to take the planet itself seriously." DeGuide also recommends the talk given by eco-feminist, Sister of St. Joseph Elizabeth Johnson (whose views I discuss in the accompanying article, page 9.)

Central to global spirituality is the idea that science has given us a new "story" of creation -- a story that allows us to reinterpret not only man's place in the cosmos but even the nature of God. The new story, according to its apostles, demands an understanding of radical equality in nature; not only man and woman are absolutely equal, but so are man and beast, man and vegetable, and, even, man and inanimate matter. Gone are all dualisms, according to this view -- not only the dualisms of male and female, dominion and subjection, matter and spirit, but even the "dualism" of God and creation. Though not identified with the universe, God nevertheless does not transcend it. The universe, as one proponent of global spirituality has said, is God's body.

A center of this global theology/spirituality is the Sophia Center at Holy Names University in Oakland -- a school under the auspices of the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary. (Holy Names was formerly the home for the Institute for Culture and Creation Spirituality, founded by the former Dominican, Father Matthew Fox. Fox was silenced by the Holy See and expelled from the Dominican order in 1993. In 1994, Fox became an Episcopal priest and in 1996 separated his institute from Holy Names.)

In its 2004/2005 course listings, Sophia Center offered as a core course, "Spirituality of Earth, Art, Spirit." "The foundation of the Sophia Center experience is a new cosmology (the emerging narratives of universe, evolution, and geo-justice) that are reshaping human experience on earth," the course description says. "This course introduces the perceptual shift from a world view of Newton and Descartes to the expanding cosmos of Albert Einstein, Teilhard de Chardin and Thomas Berry." Another core course is "Geo-Wisdom, Cosmology and the Human Spirit," which, says the course description, "will evoke an inclusive integral human presence that is open to the divine through reflection on the new cosmology from the perspective of earth literacy, dream, education, global economy, community building, strategic action and spiritual practice. Participants will focus on the integration of mind and body, science and spirituality, the cognitive and the intuitive, ecology and social justice, as we strive to become companions in the Great Work of our time, the transformation of the dominant cultural paradigm to make possible the ecozoic era, a new and mutually enhancing era of peace and well being for the entire earth community."

Among the faculty listed for both courses is Rosemary Radford Ruether, who is described as "a theologian and historian" with publications that include "Gaia and God, Women and Redemption, Sexism and God-Talk, and Women Healing Earth." Ruether, an advocate of "eco-feminism," coined the term "God/ess" in reference to the divinity; she also holds that the key to solving the ecological crisis is a new understanding that removes all notions of hierarchy, patriarchy, and dualism from our concept of the cosmos. At a symposium, "Ecological Spirituality," held April 23 at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, Ruether said that "we must look at how the terms 'man' and 'nature' are part of hierarchy" and have insprired such phrases as "man's unlimited mastery over nature" and "let us create man in our own image ... and have dominion over all the Earth." Ruether said, "I find these phrases humorous -- how do you do that?"

With such ideas in vogue among religious proponents of global spirituality, it is perhaps not surprising that several religious congregations, in their environmental zeal, have endorsed the Earth Charter. "The Sisters and Associates of Notre Dame de Namur of California," says a statement released by the congregation, "endorse the Earth Charter and pledge commitment to its spirit and action on behalf of its aims." The Sisters of Mercy of the Americas also support the charter, as do the School Sisters of Notre Dame, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange (California), the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, and the 2003 Dominican Sisters' Call to Action meeting. All these congregations operate in dioceses throughout California.

What is the Earth Charter? In 1987, the United Nations World Commission on the Environment and Development called for the drawing up of a charter that would lay out the principles of sustainable development. Though part of the business of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, the charter was still only a hoped for reality until 1994, when Maurice Strong, secretary general of the Earth Summit, and Mikhail Gorbachev, former Soviet premier and president of Earth Cross International, called for its completion. The Earth Charter Secretariat, formed by the Earth Council in Costa Rica in 1997, drew up the charter, which the Earth Charter Commission approved in March 2000.

"We are one human family and one Earth community with a common destiny," says the charter preamble. "We must join together to bring forth a sustainable global society founded on respect for nature, universal human rights, economic justice, and a culture of peace." Noting that the "protection of Earth's vitality, diversity, and beauty is a sacred trust," the charter lists among threats to the earth "patterns of production and consumption, injustice, poverty, ignorance, and violence." It also declares that "an unprecedented rise in human population has overburdened ecological and social systems." The solution to the crisis the earth faces, says the charter, is to "form a global partnership to care for Earth and one another or risk the destruction of ourselves and the diversity of life. Fundamental changes are needed in our values, institutions, and ways of living. We must realize that when basic needs have been met, human development is primarily about being more, not having more." The charter also calls on humans to have "gratitude for the gift of life, and humility regarding the human place in nature."

Catholics can hardly object to a "change in our values, institutions, and ways of living," rightly understood. But what is meant by "humility regarding the human place in nature"? From some of its suggestions, the Earth Charter appears to call for a diminution of respect for human life. For while it "affirm[s] faith in the inherent dignity of all human beings," it also "recognize[s] that ... every form of life has value regardless of its worth to human beings," suggesting, perhaps, that creation is not specifically created for man. The charter's call for alterations in patterns of human reproduction and "universal access to health care that fosters reproductive health and responsible reproduction" -- really, contraception and, maybe, abortion -- reduces human procreation to the level of bestial breeding -- something that must be controlled for the greater good of the herd.

The Earth Charter also calls for an end to all discrimination based on "race, color, sex, sexual orientation, religion, language, and national, ethnic or social origin." But does discrimination on account of sex include the discrimination of sexual roles within marriage? Women, says the charter, are to actively participate "in all aspects" of social, as well as "economic, political, and civil life." Does "social" include "religious" or "ecclesial"? Would the Catholic Church's all-male priesthood be considered by Earth Charter proponents as a violation of "gender equality"?

Catholic religious sisters who support the Earth Charter very likely think it is. Elizabeth Johnson wrote in a 1996 Commonweal article that Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, Pope John Paul II's declaration that only men can be ordained to the priesthood, is open to dispute. Johnson went on to argue the fitting ness of ordaining women. And Johnson is far from unique among eco- feminists and proponents of eco- or global spirituality in calling for women's ordination or, even, the dismantling of the Catholic hierarchy. Such equality may have been what the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary called for at their 2003 Los Angeles Symposium when they pledged themselves to helping enable women "to assume their rights as citizens of their respective countries in all areas, i.e., economic, legal, ecclesial, health care, education."

Similarly, the Sisters of Mercy in 2002 called on the U.S. Congress to ratify the United Nations' Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, better known as CEDAW. Like the Earth Charter, the convention calls for full equality for women and men, but goes even further, saying that "a change in the traditional role of men as well as the role of women in society and in the family is needed to achieve full equality between men and women." Such a change, of course, includes full access of women to family planning, i.e., contraception, as the Convention's sixteenth article demands. But it also establishes the state as the agent of revolutionary change. According to the general recommendations on the convention drawn up by the UN's Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, is this one: "states parties should resolutely discourage any notions of inequality of women and men which are affirmed by laws, or by religious or private law or by custom, and progress to the stage where reservations, particularly to article 16, will be withdrawn."

So, where does the grand egalitarian vision of global spirituality lead? Away from hierarchy, patriarchy, and all discriminatory dualisms and, seemingly, into authoritarian statism that masquerades as an earnest crusade for the good of the earth and all creation. In tearing down the patriarch, our Catholic religious sisters are setting up the social engineer and the bureaucrat.

TOP