Friday 13 June 2008

Being Catholic and being a feminist

I was a kid in the eighties, and I grew up in Southland. I've got all the usual eighties memories – Wham! and shoulder pads – but I also remember, very vividly, the activities of a pro-life organisation called The Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child. SPUC, as it was known, was a strange mix of Catholics and fundamentalist Christians united by their opposition to abortion. I am from a Catholic family, and when my mother became involved with SPUC I inadvertently tagged along.

Often, I'd come home from school to find missives from SPUC amongst the mail. Being a bookish sort of kid, I'd look at them – and they'd make for terrifying reading. SPUC's newsletters featured graphic images of aborted foetuses, testimonies of women whose lives had been ruined by the choice to terminate, and, on one occasion, the story of a doctor who had heard a foetus scream as it was aborted. My family was friendly with another Catholic family of eleven children. When we visited them, I'd note the 'ornaments' on the mantelpiece in the lounge: SPUC pictures of desecrated foetuses, children who would have been born but for the selfishness of their mothers. (The mother of eleven recently had her life turned upside down by the reappearance of her oldest child, born out of wedlock and adopted out. She had concealed the existence of this child from her husband and other children for fifty long, lonely years. I have to respect the sincerity of her pro-life beliefs while feeling desperately sorry for her.) Kids specialise in black and white thinking, so SPUC's message had a potent effect on me, even though the imagery and information they used were quite simply false.

Despite the Church's stances on abortion, homosexuality, the role of women and the myriad other things I disagree with – despite the Church's woeful record of child abuse and even more immoral attempts to cover it up – I remain in my own odd way a committed Catholic. Amidst the bad stuff, there is still so much good to be retrieved. There are Catholic clergy and lay people all about the world doing what they believe their faith calls them to do, from leading embattled pro-democracy movements to handing out parcels in their local foodbanks. I take my hat off to the hard core left wing South American nuns tortured by CIA-sponsored military juntas, and to the ladies who run the local St Vincent de Paul shops: they're both doing what is within their powers to help other people. And so I don’t like to slag off the Church completely – it gave me my concern for social justice.

The Church's respect for human life is something which is very important to me. But whereas I interpret this message as 'Get off your arse and do something about poverty, injustice and suffering', others hear it as 'Stand outside an abortion clinic and shake your rosary beads at a woman undergoing what may be one of the most difficult experiences of her life'. As I grew up and shades of grey began to encroach on my black and white thinking, I couldn't any longer look at women who terminate as callous monsters, and couldn't understand why anyone would portray them as such. Until you've had that moment where the line on the pregnancy test turns blue, your heart catches in your throat and you feel as lonely and as scared as a person can feel, you just don't understand. That is surely one of the moments in which a woman most deserves compassion and understanding.

As science and ethics burgeon around us, it is perverse to think of an embryo as human in the way that an unhappy pregnant woman is human. It is even more perverse to create disingenuous imagery and pseudo-science to influence women's choices. Humanae vitae is the 1968 encyclical in which Pope Paul VI declared a prohibition on abortion. What the Pope failed to mention is that shit happens, and as often as not, it happens to women. In the real world, relationships fail, unwise sexual choices are made, condoms burst, circumstances change – and you can't just hide in the Vatican and hope it will go away. Whether you're Catholic, secular or whatever, the real live people in your community have a greater claim on your respect, compassion and solidarity than a bunch of cells.

8 comments:

Julie said...

Thanks Anna, this reflects a great deal of my own experience, of growing up pro-life but growing up to be pro-choice.

Like you I know many Catholics who have a strong sene of social juatice who don't let the Church get in the way. Good for you all!

Anonymous said...

Anna,

Just a couple of points.

1. Humanae vitae is the 1968 encyclical in which Pope Paul VI declared a prohibition on abortion.

The Church has always prohibited abortion — and always will. It's not as if one pope sitting in the Vatican woke up and decided "let's ban it".

2. As I grew up and shades of grey began to encroach on my black and white thinking, I couldn't any longer look at women who terminate as callous monsters, and couldn't understand why anyone would portray them as such.

I know the leading voices in the pro-life movement today, and none of them have that outlook towards women who have made that difficult choice. (I'm not disputing your experience growing up, though.)

And Julie,

Like you I know many Catholics who have a strong sense of social justice who don't let the Church get in the way. Good for you all!

The Catholic Church is the single biggest dispenser of social justice in the history of the world. End of story.

Anonymous said...

Hey Anna- I'm definitely with you on not forgetting the good things that religion can bring to morality and life in general. Even though I don't hold with any of the churches that have made their way accross the oceans to New Zealand, my morality and beliefs were heavily influenced by liberation theology and other forms of christian socialism through my father. :)

SPUC sounds like it's just another one of the typical organisations using the same typical tactics.

Julie said...

scribe that's a pretty huge claim to make, in regard to the Catholic Church and social justice. Do we get to take points off them for the Inquisition? (to name but one example)

Ari you are lucky to have escaped encounters with SPUC. They can be remarkably unpleasant. I'm sure many of them are lovely individuals, but some of them have not exhibited that side of their nature to me.

Anonymous said...

Lovely post Anna, resonates with my own upbringing (which predates yours by decades!). You're absolutely right: Christ's essential message of inclusion and compassion is as beautiful as it is empowering - as evidenced by its persistence against the overwhelming odds of a corrupt and bizzare Catholic structure spanning two millennia.

But heaven advances with a quickening step: Marx unlocked the intellectual stranglehold of the cloth and accurately phrophesied the educational gains and awareness which you personify.

You go girl: honour your gritty forebears and fight with your sisters at the foodbanks and barricades.
Ignore the archaic wailings of the latter-day "scribes" and Farrarsees - and let the few remaining reactionary clerics frock amongst themselves in the empty buildings and limited time they have left.

Anonymous said...

Julie- yeah, fortunately we don't have toooo many really extreme political groups in Ohariu, although perhaps that's more just a statement of how introverted I am ;)


All the same, it's very much a white middle/upper class electorate so we have our fair share of... 'amusing'... attitudes to women here.

Anonymous said...

A couple of questions, for those of you who say you're Catholic but also favour the woman's right to abortion on request.

1. Do we all have a "soul"? If so, when is that soul created?

2. Do you believe in Jesus' statement that "what you do to the least of my brethren, you do to me"? Who is more "least" that an unborn child (who you may or may not think has a soul)?

ak,

Christ's essential message of inclusion and compassion is as beautiful as it is empowering - as evidenced by its persistence against the overwhelming odds of a corrupt and bizzare Catholic structure spanning two millennia.

Not sure how having an abortion is inclusive, but feel free to try that on. And the Catholic structure isn't corrupt, though some human parts of that structure have — at times — been corrupt.

That Catholic structure supported Mother Teresa, the St Vincent de Paul Society, the Compassion Sisters in Wellington and their soup kitchens, education systems. I could go on for days.

Anna said...

I'm not known for my doctrinal purity. I figure that God gave me a brain and a conscience for a reason, and I try to use both. Using bits of doctrine to disqualify or silence people who aren't 'real' Catholics doesn't sit too well with me.

You can question whether or not having an abortion is an inclusive activity, but until you understand the exclusion and loneliness of going through an unwanted pregnancy, or raising a child alone with morally righteous people looking down their noses at you for being a solo mum, you won't fully grasp what it is you're debating.

None of this answers your questions, of course, but I simply don't think the questions are important. We could argue about transubstantiation and full bodily resurrection and all the rest of it at length, but I'm inclined to think that the end is more important than the means. If doctrinal stuff helps you be a better person, that's great. My way works for me, and it's my church too.

If I'm wrong and I end up on the dud side of the pearly gates, I'll let you say 'I told you so'!