Woke Catholicism

by Joseph Stoutzenberger

For a few years now, I have been working on writing an overview of Catholicism. While reading and researching Catholic perspectives on the bible, church, sacraments, and morality, I was also reading news reports about priests’ sexual abuse of minors and bishops who covered up abuses without reporting them to proper authorities. In a report about priest abuse in Pennsylvania, I discovered that the principal and chaplain at the high school I attended were on the list of committing “credible offenses.” Three priests who taught at one time at the university where I taught had also been dismissed from active ministry because of abuse accusations. I felt as though the book I was writing was about Catholicism as an ideal, while there existed a separate and different Catholicism that was real. It is hard to reconcile the church as the unsullied bride of Christ with the reality that the church was being represented at times by very flawed and, indeed, sinful people. With each damning headline, the church looks more and more like the prophet Hosea’s unfaithful wife, Gomer. Like Hosea’s, our faith is being tested every time church leaders misrepresent the severity of the problem.

The response to clergy sex abuse that was commonplace for years reminded me of the conversation going on in the United States about “woke” and “anti-woke” movements. In the 1990s, some African-American commentators talked about the need to be informed, educated, and conscious of societal injustices—being “woke.” An essential element of wokeness was to look for injustices that may be ingrained in society and its institutions. The movement advocating wokeness led to a backlash. Some politicians proposed that seeing systemic injustices in society was anti-American, a denunciation of the wonderful structures that exist in American society that should not be questioned. Talking about injustices, even such clear-cut examples as the enslavement of Africans before the Civil War, was upsetting to white children who would feel bad about it but were not responsible for it. Wokeness also came to be seen as advocating for some groups on the fringes of American society whose identity and lifestyle ran counter to what many believed were traditional Christian values. School children should be shielded from learning about non-heterosexual persons; it could lead to third graders, for instance, questioning their own sexual identity. Should students in the lower grades be asked whether they wanted to be called he, she, or they?

Anyone familiar with how psychological therapy works knows that not addressing a problem is never a path to healing. There has been sickness in the church when it comes to priestly sexuality and abuse, just as there have been injustices in American society. Even children can’t help but wonder why so many black people live in poorer sections of our cities and not so many in wealthy suburbs. When all of a sudden, Father Jim no longer shows up for Mass anymore, parishioners naturally begin to imagine the worst. Saying “Let’s not talk about it” isn’t helpful to anyone’s psychological health, children or adults. In the same way, bishops seeking to avoid scandal by not addressing the real scandal of men abusing children while hiding behind the mask of their priestly garb was not healthy or helpful for anyone.

Catholicism needs a “woke” campaign, calling for everyone in the church to be educated, informed, and conscious of problems such as abuse. Part of that campaign is to look for possible systemic causes for problems and systemic solutions. Perhaps it’s time to consider not restricting priesthood to celibate men, for instance. Surely, given the extent of the problem of abuse by church workers, we are well beyond blaming “a few bad apples.” And the coverup approach has only led to more people getting hurt. Church leaders have taken some steps to employ a woke approach to matters of sexuality, clerical identity, and healthy interaction among the diversity of people who populate our world. Unfortunately, the non-wokeness about these matters for so long has muted their voice when speaking out against societal problems that sorely need to be addressed, such as racism, sexism, and heterosexism. God knows we need a church and a country that is “woke.”