Prospects for Change? Structural,Cultural and Action Dimensions of the Careers of Pioneer Women Priests in the Church of England

Like other organizations the Church of England has adapted to the greater and increasing involvement of women in paid work and other parts of the public domain. However, this has been a gradual, strongly contested and painful process for the Church. In 1986, it allowed women to enter the lowest rank of the clerical profession as deacons, and after many years of hard and bitter struggle the vote was won in the General Synod to ordain women to the priesthood. ¹ The first women priests were ordained in 1994. This article reports a study of 31 of the most senior and experienced Church of England women priests from dioceses across the whole of England. Women entering previously male‐dominated, or male exclusive occupations as in the case of the priesthood, are necessarily engaged in a process of change. The women priests in this study were active agents for change, they wanted to change the organization, both structurally and culturally. This article examines the question of whether these women ‘pioneers’ in the Church of England stand any chance of changing the organization and the occupation, or whether and to what extent they are changed themselves by needing to ‘fit in’. It will look at the structural and cultural factors, which may inhibit their agency or support it.     

Psychosocial Anatomy of the Catholic Sexual Abuse Scandal

As the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church captured headlines throughout 2002 and into 2003, many within the Church and outside of it tried to understand how it all had happened. Perhaps understandably, there was a temptation to keep it simple, to find one or two identifiable, easily grasped causes for the crisis. Despite the allure of simple answers, however, it must be recognized that the root causes of the crisis are embedded in an intricate matrix of power relationships, traditions, and teachings that, in combination, rendered the abuse scandal almost inevitable. Further, every constituency within the Church–bishops, abusing priests, rank-and-file priests, and the laity, as well as the Vatican and Pope John Paul II–share varying degrees of accountability for tolerating decades, if not centuries, of sexual abuse of the Church's young. This article introduces a comprehensive view of the underpinnings of the scandal.     

Men of the Flesh: The Evaluation and Treatment of Sexually Abusing Priests

The Roman Catholic Church in the United States is experiencing a financial, psychological, public relations, theological, and spiritual crisis over priests who sexually abused minors or acted out sexually in a variety of ways and members of the church hierarchy who covered up their crimes in order to prevent scandal. In this chapter I discuss the problems of sexuality among errant clergy through my work at The Institute of Living, Hartford Hospital's Mental Health Network.

I argue that if change is to take place in the Roman Catholic Church, it must be systemic and Catholic moral theology needs to develop a more developmentally and scientifically sound narrative of human sexuality for parishioners and clergy.     

Hiding behind the cloth:child sexual abuse and the Catholic Church

The existence of child sexual abuse within the Catholic Church has shocked many. In this article, the authors review the history of child sexual abuse in the church, the recent events that brought this tragedy into societal consciousness, and the efforts by the church to conceal the abuse. Two sources of empirical literature, the general psychological writing on priest sex abuse and the psychoanalytic literature, on child sexual abuse are compared. Both sources of literature seek explanation for priests' child sexual abuse within the structure and culture of the church rather than viewing the priest as a "typical" sex predator. The authors argue that, in fact, the guilty priests are child predators who differ little from other child predators.     

Introduction

Between 2005 and 2010, discussion of child abuse in the Republic of Ireland focused on abuse perpetrated by priests and members of religious orders. This attention is largely a consequence of three different and complex reports: (a) a 2005 report examining abuse in the Roman Catholic diocese of Ferns in County Wexford, (b) the Ryan Commission's mammoth report which, published in 2009, received coverage throughout the world, and (c) a report that was produced the same year and examined the handling of complaints of child sexual abuse by a “representative sample” of priests in the Dublin diocese during 1975 to 2004. This article seeks to furnish a brief, critical introduction to an international social work readership and concludes by focusing on two themes: the figure of the pedophile priest and the power of the Church in Irish society, and the centrality of poverty and social vulnerability in the lives of the victims of abuse.     

The History and Consequences of the Sexual-Abuse Crisis in the Catholic Church

The sexual-abuse crisis in the Catholic Church was first publicized in 1985 in Louisiana and continues to capture headlines and the imagination of the public across the country. This article reviews the history of the contemporary scandal and delineates a paradigm of abuse and cover-up common in cases of sexual abuse by a priest. While the sexual victimization of minors by priests and vowed religious men has been wrenching for the many decent clerics and for Catholics everywhere, the victims of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy live daily with its aftermath. In this article, the experiences of one young man sexually abused by a priest when he was a boy are presented and the sequelae of such abuse are discussed.     

Les « intermittents » de l'Église. Modalités d'emploi des personnels laïcs dans le catholicisme français

Given the shortage of priests, bishops have assigned permanent religious duties to several thousand laypersons, a majority of them women. Many of these persons have employment contracts. The employment conditions of this new type of permanent personnel tend to be unfavorable: assignments for a few years despite contracts of unlimited duration, part-time work and a nearly minimum wage. Various factors account for this fragility: the dire financial straits of French dioceses; ecclesiastical authorities, determination to present the clergy as the only fully legitimate, permanent personnel in the Church; and the attitude of laypersons who seem to be satisfied with their lot. The efforts to institutionalize this work have encountered difficulties with respect to both the labor code and the unexpected effects produced internally by the advocacy of a “culture of limited duration commitment”.     

Men,women, and clergymen: opinion and authority in a sacred organization

The Church of England faces a potential crisis over the ordination of women to the priesthood. This article presents survey and interview evidence of patterns of clerical opinion on the problem, showing that the trend of clerical opinion is in favour. However, the organizational context of clerical life means that whereas a clergyman's opinion is fateful for women it may have little consequence for the man himself. Clergymen have an assured status conferred by their priest's orders; they are integrated into professional structures and social networks; they exercise an authority which is seldom openly challenged, and they enjoy a high degree of autonomy and freedom from accountability. Since they are able, if they wish, to insulate themselves from women's ministry, they are often indifferent to its future course. It is not, therefore, a matter of material concern in the working lives of most parish clergymen. Yet women's admission to the priesthood is symbolically momentous. Clerical ambivalence about women priests reflects conflict within the sacred organization between the forces of tradition, charisma and rational-legality.     

"This Irreligious Art of Liing": Strategies of Disguise in Post-Reformation English Catholicism

Abstract  In the long Tridentine phase of Catholic history, the conduct of the Church, faith and praxis was nothing if not demonstrative in its execution, devising, for example, a triumphalist architectural and artistic form, the baroque, that shouted out its advertisements for an apparently ultra-confident creed. The great Council that created the tone of Catholicism over the four centuries that followed it defined the priest in particular as a public exemplar of the faith, a man of unambiguous integrity, stable residence and assured income.
In England, as in the Netherlands, in contrast, the practice of the faith was covert, not overt, and priests were men on the run, sacerdotal vagrants, adopting a culture of deceit and disguise that aligned their lifestyles were those of any criminal underground: they used disguises, false papers, encoded language, aliases and fictive personae, employed chains of people-handlers and safe-houses, setting up patterns of behaviour that distanced them (a) from the clerical requirements of the Tridentine Church itself and (b) from assumptions about truth that were becoming firmly embedded in English Protestant culture: Catholicism itself could be presented as an "irreligious art of liing".     

A Catholic Perspective on Gay Priestly Ministry from the Closet

Abstract

Overview of Catholic doctrine and interpretation of Catholic teachings pertaining to homosexuals and homosexual practice are reviewed by two “closeted” homosexual priests. The paper considers the role of the clergy and expectations of the Church regarding pastoral ministry to homosexuals. Case studies highlighting unique contributions by ‘closetedr’ and ‘open’ homosexual clergy to pastoral care of homosexual parishioners are presented. The authors discuss personal and professional dilemmas facing homosexual clergy including ‘coming out’, homosexual bonding within religious communities, and the wide range of attitudes among Catholics, lay and religious, concerning homosexual Catholics.     

The Scrutinized Priest: Women in the Church of England Negotiating Professional and Sacred Clothing Regimes

This article examines the integration of women priests in the Church of England through the lens of dress. Clothing is a salient dynamic in occupational cultures, particularly in relation to the regulation of gendered bodies. Women's ordination to the priesthood was only sanctioned in 1992. Complex clothing regimes are negotiated, for ordination bestows upon the priest certain clothing rights and responsibilities. However, such attire has traditionally been associated only with the male body, creating tension in relation to women's appropriation of this sacred and professional dress. Based on in‐depth interviews with 17 Anglican clergy women, this article will focus both on the scrutiny the women experienced in relation to their clothing choices, as well as the relationship the women themselves negotiated with their clothes. It will be argued that as representatives of both a sacred and professional domain, clothing had to be carefully managed by clergy. Dress functioned as a key test in women's integration into the organization, often operating as a constraining and exclusionary mechanism.     

Homonegativity in the Religious Dress History of the Marist Brothers, 1817–1840

This article presents a historical sociological case study of sexual oppression within the early nineteenth-century foundation period of a French Roman Catholic male religious order, the Marist Brothers, founded in 1817. The different sexualities of two rival founder figures, the priests Jean-Claude Courveille and Marcellin Champagnat, the former homosexual, the latter heterosexual, found expression in radically divergent conceptions of the religious habit. For Courveille, the costume design for the Brothers was ostentatious and stylish; for Champagnat, it was sober and clericalised. This archive-based investigation shows how Courveille's sexual orientation led to his fall from grace within the Church and the suppression of his sartorial self-expression. Champagnat, whose conventional dress rules prevailed, became a canonized saint. In the victory of the orthodox sacred dress code, the ideology of ‘clerical masculinism’ weaves its hegemonic power over the bodies of ‘men of the cloth’.     

Spiritual Gatekeepers: Time and the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults

This article addresses the process of initiation into the Catholic Church by analyzing in‐depth interviews with parish‐based professional initiation coordinators. The formal title given to this process of initiation by the Church since Vatican II is the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA). Since the RCIA's promulgation, the Church has hired a host of lay and religious professionals to coordinate its implementation at the parish level. Our analysis focuses on the temporal sequencing and the problem of duration of initiation. The data show that both city and suburban coordinators adapted the Church's mandated length of time for initiation in different ways as they negotiated covenantal and contractual social relations among RCIA participants.     

The Priestly Phallus: A Study in Iconography

This article explores the symbolism that attaches to priests, discusses the particular kind of maleness that priests embody, and suggests similarities between the priest and the analyst.     

Slaves to no sect: the Anglican clergy and liturgical change

Many writers have argued that the Church of England, in common with other Christian denomination, is undergoing a profound crisis of identity. One crucial aspect of this is the clergy's rapid abandonment of the traditional services of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer in favour of the radically different, modern language services of the Alternative Service Book, published in 1980. Liturgical change on this scale is said to be both cause and effect of a gradual transformation of the Church of England into a sect. In this article, evidence from a survey of the parochial clergy of one English diocese is presented, showing that the great majority of respondents approve of the Alternative Service Book and use it frequently for the conduct of worship. However, then outlook on the role of the Church of England in national life does not display any of the essential characteristics of sectarianism, the fact that the Church of England is the established Church is an important obstacle to sectarian tendencies, and the argument that the Church is being transformed into a sect is not warranted.     

Defending the Family,Defending the Faith: An Analysis of The Family: A Proclamation to the World,Religious Identity,and the Politics of Same-Sex Marriage in a Mormon Community

In this article, we apply Peter Berger's theory of religion as a social construct to learn how The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormon Church) advances a heteronormative view of family relationships in the United States using a document titled The Family: A Proclamation to the World. Furthermore, applying cultural studies theory, we examine how believing Mormons negotiate the tension that arises when their secular values compete with those expressed by Church leaders. We argue that, although the Proclamation addresses a number of issues, the Church offers a closed text that emphasizes war narratives in which same-sex marriage is portrayed as a threat to LDS identity and the heteronormative family. This closed text is further legitimized by emphasis on the authority of Church leaders as oracles of God. The study participants largely accept the dominant narrative, and those who reject it, do so with some trepidation.     

The Orthodox Church in revolutionary Cheliabinsk: reform,counter-reform,and popular revolution in 1917

In 1917 the Cheliabinsk Vicariate, like the Church in most areas in the Russian empire, declined to support the autocracy, welcomed the February Revolution, endorsed the Provisional Government, and envisioned a broad set of reforms that even included a greater role for the laity in Church governance. The key agent for reform in Cheliabinsk – as in other dioceses – was the Assembly of Clergy and Laity, the focus of this study. Although the Assembly did adopt a radical and ostensibly popular social and administrative program, the vicariate encountered growing lay disenchantment – because of its support for an unpopular war, because of a caveat deferring social reform, but also because of the Church’s reluctance to give parishioners full power over the parish. The intensifying crises of 1917 heightened expectations for reform, and the disintegration of authority in Cheliabinsk and within the Church itself widened the chasm between the Church and parishioners. In response, diocesan authorities supported conservative measures, which deferred reform, in an attempt to re-establish order, while parishioners – frustrated by the pace of reform and the Church’s wavering support of it – led a revolution against diocesan authority aimed at making the Church subservient to their own agendas.     

Spatial Variations in Church Burnings: The Social Ecology of Victimized Communities in the South*

Abstract In recent years, church burnings in the South have attracted a great deal of attention. Many commentators have charged that they are a product of strained race relations throughout the South, and particularly of severe racial tensions in Southern rural areas. In this study we evaluate these claims. We begin by mapping the spatial coordinates of recorded church burnings from 1990 to 1997, and find that church arsons indeed are concentrated in the South. Church burnings, however, are a more urban phenomenon than popular media accounts would suggest. Our analysis then explores the influence of contextual factors (population and locale, racial composition and inequality, so‐cioeconomic conditions, local religious ecology, and patterns of reported crime) on church burnings in counties located in the study region. Logistic regression models confirm that church arsons are most likely to occur in small metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) and non‐MSA counties containing a city of at least 10,000 residents. Church burnings also are especially likely in counties with a higher percentage of black residents, a larger number of churches relative to the rest of the state, and a higher arson rate. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for future research and public policy.     

Religious Identity as an Historical Narrative: Coptic Orthodox Immigrant Churches and the Representation of History

Abstract  The Coptic Church has a very unique historical trajectory that includes an early separation from the Greco-Roman Byzantine Christian world in the fifth century followed by a legacy of subordination in Egypt after the Arab Conquest. This paper looks at how the Coptic Church narrates this history particularly as it transcends the national boundaries of Egypt to serve migrant Copts in Western societies. The historical narrative of the Coptic Church celebrates its contributions to early Christianity; defends its stance in the Chalcedon Council in 451 CE; and celebrates a legacy of triumph and survival after the Arab conquest. Building on theories on collective memory, this paper shows how the present and the past shape one another in a very complex way. The paper is based on interviews with both lay and clerical members of Coptic immigrant communities in Canada and the United States and on textual analysis of books, bulletins and websites launched on and by the Church.