Vatican Excommunication of Ordained Women

We all have questions about where we belong, but sometimes it gets easy. Yesterday's Vatican edict of excommunication of any bishop ordaining a woman, or of any woman being ordained makes it clear that they don't want women to share sacred leadership. Of course we have known that forever, but it is always fascinating to watch the dynamics between Rome and its people. Such edicts makes the Roman church's identity clear, and helps its leadership, both men and women, to discern where they really belong.

The question I was faced with in the late 1960's was whether I would stay with the church and try to reform it, or leave. I am so grateful that I was able to cut loose of that church in my early 20's.

How good it is that my current faith tradition, Unitarian Universalism (UU), put that matter of ordination of women to rest in the mid 1800's. We have so many needs in this world, to assure the world's very survival, that it is refreshing to belong to a faith that I don't have to apologize for--it is so great to have as our first UU principle the worth and dignity of all people. We can concentrate on deepening our understanding of what that means in our daily life, discovering our current blinders, rather than putting up barriers to the dignity of woman. Below, the press release about the Vatican:

Vatican, May. 30, 2008 (CWNews.com) - The Vatican has announced that
any Catholic bishop who attempts the ordination of a woman to the
priesthood, and any woman who participates in such a ceremony, is
subject to automatic excommunication.
The decree from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith,
published in the May 30 issue of L'Osservatore Romano, takes effect
immediately and applies throughout the universal Church. The document
was signed by Cardinal William Levada and Archbishop Angelo Amato,
the prefect and secretary, respectively, of the Congregation.
"Both the one who attempts to confer a sacred order on a woman, and
the woman who attempts to receive a sacred order, incurs
excommunication latae sententiae."

Rev. Wright, Obama, and Freedom of the Pew

This is a message I delivered on Easter Sunday after a week of hullabulu regarding pastors and presidential candidates--

Before I preach today, I was wondering…do any of you plan to run for President? (chuckles and laughter)

Without in any way implying who is the best candidate for President,

I’d like to shed some light on the controversy about Rev. Jeremiah Wright and his parishioner Barak Obama…because it has implications for us and we need to understand our covenant together….

You see, some religious people believe that what the pastor says confines the minds of those in the pews…a belief that could be because they have not known anything different…

Clergy do attempt to define the beliefs and values of the pew in certain orthodox/hierarchical faiths where edicts are read to the faithful on a Sunday morning, even to the extent of implying how to vote on certain political initiatives…

but that is not true of those faith communities whose authority structure is congregational…each congregation being independent of any higher authority…Rev. Wright is a United Church of Christ Congregational minister…Obama doesn’t have to agree with his minister—which is called freedom of the pew! and his pastor has freedom of the pulpit…that is the way with their denomination, and it is the way with ours, and some Baptist congregations—in fact Mike Huckabee, who is a Baptist minister did explain this because he understands it and has lived it.

The secular world does not understand the relationship of the free pulpit and free pew, formed by a sacred agreement, a covenant, that creates a spiritual entity, a congregation, out of a simple grouping of individuals. It is an issue deeper and wider than political free speech.

The controversy that arose this week is a result of several factors: 1) ignorance of this covenant or that it even exists, 2) a lack of knowledge about the cultural depth and meaning of African American prophetic preaching style 3) an assumption that dogmatic preaching is the only way, 4) a conscious attack upon our liberal religious protestant way, 5) not to mention the obvious political motivations.

I never in my right mind thought that all of you would ever all agree with any one of my sermon points! That’s just not very Unitarian Universalist.

Any minister who takes some risks with their sermons would be vulnerable to quotes taken out of context. I would not expect you to ever have to defend me or renounce me or leave the congregation if you didn’t agree with me!

What I do hope is that I give you something to think and feel about that is relevant in your life…that helps you to continue to know yourself more deeply whether because you agree or you disagree, and that you will hear something that motivates you to share our commonly held values of working for more understanding, love and justice in our world.

That said, let me know if you are planning to run for office!

Warmly, Peg

Empty Cathedrals and Mitt Romney

I have gazed up into the beautiful, massive cathedrals in Europe, touched by their history and their amazing gothic and Romanesque architecture. I have felt stirred by the centuries of people who have come to offer their allegiance to the only image of God that they knew--having not thought to question the religious stories and dogma. And I have been struck by the fact that hardly anyone actually worships in these cathedrals anymore, a fact that Mitt Romney despairs about.

Today in his Texas based speech the Presidential candidate said: "I have visited many of the magnificent cathedrals in Europe. They are so inspired ... so grand ... so empty," he said. "So many of the cathedrals now stand as the postcard backdrop to societies just too busy or too 'enlightened' to venture inside and kneel in prayer."

It has not occurred to Mr. Romney that in the spiritual evolution of human beings, many in modern day generations have moved beyond the mythic religions of old. It has not occurred to Mr. Romney that we can be very spiritual without buying the Christology mythos. That we can pray, expressing our deepest human longings, gratitudes, and wonder, without praying to a decider God. Today many thoughtful people ponder different conceptions of the power in this universe, the power and forces that support life and at times strike life dead. Many people have put aside the anthropomorphic, ego filled controlling bitchy God, for a more complex and mysterious wonder about it all.

No Mr. Romney, it is not about being too busy...it's about having a different life experience and perception than you. And that's ok, we don't have to agree, as long as you don't become President and make this country a theocracy--taking us back to the middle ages.

Washington State Pharmacy ruling

The Washington State Pharmacy Board made a ruling a few months ago, that a pharmacist could refuse to fill a prescription if it offended his/her religious convicitions, providing another pharmacist on site could fill it. This most often involves prescriptions for birth control, emergency contraception, and AIDS medicines.

Last month a federal district judge issued a temporary injunction against the ruling following litigation brought by a small number of pharmacists who objected to the rule based on the right of religious refusal. Many of us in the faith communities of our state believe that to be a bad decision, and will be speaking out against the injunction. If you become a pharmacist, your profession is all about following carefully doctors' orders. You have no right to usurp those orders with your need to control other people's values and behaviors. Not in my mind, anyway. We'll see how this goes...the hearings that led up the Pharmacy Board's ruling clearly showed that the majority of citizens expected pharmacists to do their job and not try to play God, or M.D.iety, or whatever they are trying to play--autocrat, dictator...this is exactly why we must support a spiritually liberal religion so that the institutions of spiritually liberal religion can be strong and vital, and have a voice to counter those who would make this country a theocracy.

But I don't have any strong feelings about this....watch for my name on a newspaper ad full of names of interfaith clergy speaking out for the rights of people to get their prescriptions filled, for God's sake!

Chimps Are Champs!

Today Japanese researchers reported that the commonly held belief that humans are smarter than other animals may not be true. Actually, I haven't thought it was true for a long time. There are many kinds of "smart" and humans are lower on many of them. Most animals and other life forms take only what they need to survive. Most animals do not kill except to breed and eat and keep enough territory to live. What do we do? We kill because others don't agree with our mythic stories, and the rules we have created from them. We kill and invade other countries for our selfish economic needs, or I should say, the economic needs of the people who benefit from the military industrial complex...people like our Vice President and his Haliburton buddies. But I digress....

Tesuro Matsuzawa of Kyoto University has been studying the mental abilites of chimps. Five year old chimps competed with college students in a task of seeing and memorizing numbers flashed on a screen. The conclusion, as the time of the flashing of the numbers decreased to four-tenths or two-tenths of a second, the chimp was the champ. The chimp was better at taking in the whole pattern of numbers at a glance.

Humans may be better at language, but we are also arrogant. So many animals are high in intelligence--emotional intelligence, community building intelligence, cross species intelligence. It is time for us to leave our tribal consciousness and consider the needs of the other species, to consider how our dumbness is affecting their survival, and to consider what we can learn from them. How about it?

"How to be Idle and Blessed"

Here is the reflection I did for the Unitarian Universalist Association's Pacific Northwest District's web site:

"How to be Idle and Blessed"Rev. Peg Boyle Morgan, Minister, West Seattle Unitarian Universalist Fellowship

"I don’t know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed." Mary Oliver from "Summer Day"

Mary Oliver’s poem is always a challenge to me. She says she knows how to be idle. I don't do idle very well. But my little poodle Angie is teaching me. Angie has balance. She loves to go out in our backyard and tear around as if she were a race car in the hottest competition of her life. Her motor revs audibly as she repeats laps around the yard, dashing through the tall yellow Siberian irises, darting around the proud white calla lilies, threading herself through the yellow daisies, leaping over the deep green ferns and onto the deck, touching her nose to my hand and then relaying off again for another lap, and another, and another until, finally spent, she brakes for a pit stop at a little bubbling fountain, and a rest on the Irish moss in front of a statue of Qwan Yin.
Many of us involved in the life of our congregations may be feeling a similar experience, since we have just sped through another year of heightened energy dedicated to flowering of new service projects, growing our organizational processes, blossoming of celebratory worship, exploring in our RE classes, and experiencing precious caring ministries. Summer is the time that congregational life takes on a slower pace, primarily because so many of us take vacations during July or August. It's harder to get people to meetings and into classes. And that is a really good thing, for like Angie, it is important to know that we need to give ourselves a little respite—we need to turn aside from all the exciting work we love, and take a rest… and be idle.
Being idle is a spiritual and sacred experience, for it allows us to notice life within and to delight in the beauty of life around us. Being amidst the movement and cycles of other life somehow stirs our souls in a way that reminds us that we are a part of something so much bigger than our human lives alone.
So I’m going to try to learn balance from Angie. I’m going to take some rest breaks this summer, outside, with other living parts of this amazing blue green earth. And I encourage all of our dedicated lay leaders and ministers to take similar time over these next few weeks ….to be idle …and blessed. May it be so!

SICKO

I was ambivalent about seeing SICKO, Michael Moore's documentary, full length film on the health care system in the United States. Maybe I thought there wouldn't be anything I didn't know, or maybe I just didn't want to be depressed. But friends chose the movie, and I tagged along. I'm glad I did. It was not boring. It moved right along. It was touching, tear provoking, anger stimulating, disgust generating...especially when a woman talked about having three jobs (to pay all her bills) and President Bush looked at her with his signature grin and said "Oh, three jobs, why that's so American!" not having a clue about what it means to work for a living, and get small compensation for it.

The bottom line is that our system is set up to fuel the bank accounts of the rich and the medical and pharmaceutical companies, not to serve the medical needs of our citizens. That's the immorality of it all. The woman who Kaiser put in a cab and sent 16 miles to be pushed out onto the sidewalk in front of a shelter, a woman who needed medical care. The man who only had one finger tip put back on because he couldn't afford both decapitated fingers to be fixed (the middle finger would cost $60,000). The woman whose cab ride to the hospital after a car accident in which she was unconscious, was not reimbursed because she did not call ahead to get it approved first....the little baby who died because their insurance was only good at another hospital...

What was striking was how the cultures of France, Britain, Canada and Cuba have set up their system to adequately compensate their medical personnel, and provide excellent care to all for free.

The bottom line was that our system in America keeps us in fear and demoralized so that we don't rise up to change it. It is a democracy, don't you know, but demoralization keeps each individual depressed and lacking in any hope. All we need to do (a big ALL) is realize our power as individuals to vote, and select a candidate that understands moral priorities of basic life needs for our people, not the siphoning of the corporations now given personhood by the courts.

I did not come out of the movie depressed. I came out grateful that here is a man (Michael Moore) who risks his life to state the truth. He is powerful, and his values are all in the right direction. I came out knowing that there is hope, if we can get enough people to feel their power. Go see the movie. You'll be glad you did.

Be well (don't get sick!)
Peg