Mary van Balen

On today's Universalis site, after a two saints listed for remembrance, Blessed John Henry Newman shows up. (I mentioned him in my May 2 blogpost The Vatican, Nuns, and John Henry Newmanas a champion of lay persons' call and ability to be bearers of truth and prophetic speakers of truth to power.)



Today, I remember his poetry and writings. One has long been a favorite:
"Dear Jesus, help me to spread your fragrance everywhere I go.
Flood my soul with your spirit and life.
Penetrate my being so that all my life
may only be a radiance of you.

Shine through me, and so be in me
that every person I come in contact with
may feel your presence in my soul.
Let them look and see no longer me,
but only Jesus.

Stay with me, and then I shall begin to shine as you shine,
so to be a light to others.The light, O Jesus, will be all from you;
none of it will be mine.
It will be you shining on others through me.

Let me thus praise you in the way you love best,
by shining on those around me."

The other speaks to my frustration today with where I am, making a living, and striving to remain faithful to the call to write and share what small light entrusted to me:
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When I first heard of the Vatican’s recent “crackdown” on the Leadership Council of Women Religious I was angry but not particularly surprised. Brought to us by the same men who brought us the sexual abuse scandal and who still are unable to accept their culpability in it or deal with it responsibly, this document takes the women religious to task for daring to publicly disagree with some Catholic Church teachings and encouraging dialogue. The sisters spend too much time working with the marginalized and being involved in work for social justice. They spend too little time speaking out against abortion, same sex marriage, and other issues of human sexuality.

As if that were not enough, according to the Doctrinal Assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, some of the sisters have the audacity to suggest that their dissent from some RCC teaching is prophetic. Impossible, the document says. True prophecy “…is a grace which accompanies the exercise of the responsibilities of the Christian life and ministries within the Church, regulated and verified by the Church’s faith and teaching office.”

Might that have been a surprise to prophets of old? To Jesus himself? It seems to me that many utterances of biblical prophets were not in accord with the thought of existing religious officials. Read More