surviving

RAPE AND RELIGION
The Vatican and Violence Against Women
47th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women
Faith-based Perspectives on Domestic Violence: Challenging religious sanctioning of violence against women and reclaiming liberating spiritualities

Wednesday, March 12, 2003 Church Center, New York, New York
The Vatican and Violence Against Women Serra Sippel, Senior Associate, International Program, Catholics for a Free Choice

On behalf of Catholics for a Free Choice, I want to thank Dr. Pauline Muchina for her invitation to co-sponsor a panel with the Anglican UN Office. This is a theme that touches all of us deeply, and it is important that religious NGOs work together in partnership to address the impact of religion-or extreme interpretations of religion and tradition-on violence against women's oppression.

Our world has become increasingly violent, and at this very moment, we anxiously await word as to whether or not the US will invade Iraq. The leader of the Vatican, of my faith tradition and spiritual home, the Roman Catholic church, has been an outspoken critic of war. Pope John Paul II has correctly used his religious authority to persuade political leaders and global citizens to oppose the war and pray for peace.

The Catholic church's criticism of the violence perpetuated in armed conflict is a result of the church's evolving teachings and tradition on human rights. The church once was not a leading voice against war, and the Catholic church today is not a leading advocate against gender violence. However, to its credit, recently the church has denounced violent acts against women and girls, marking a positive development in the church's attempt to close one of many concentric circles of violence. Let me offer a few examples:

In 1968, Pope Paul VI denounced forced sex within marriage in the encyclical Humanae Vitae.

Pope John Paul II condemned violence against women in his 1995 Letter to Women. In 2000, the Southern African Bishops' Conference published a commentary on violence against women, entitled, "Silent No Longer: The Church Responds to Sexual Violence." And most recently, the US bishops' conference, in November 2002, issued a statement on domestic violence. In the letter, the bishops state, "Violence against women, inside and outside the home, is never justified." They "condemn the use of the Bible to support abusive behavior in any form," and explain "religion can be either a resource or a roadblock for battered women."

While these teachings of the ecclesiastical hierarchy are welcomed by victims of domestic violence, and by those of us who work to eliminate such violence, it is important to note that the underlying theology and anthropology of the Roman Catholic tradition make it almost impossible to enact any church teaching or policy that would effectively eliminate gender-based violence. That would hold true not only in the domestic and public spheres, but also within the institutional church.

Allow me to illustrate the first part:
At the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, the Holy See delegation announced that it "firmly condemns all forms of violence against and exploitation of women and girls." However, the delegation states that sexuality should exist only within marriage. This hardly closes a circle of violence. The assumption that sexuality can only be discussed within marriage excludes any analysis of sexuality for women before and beyond marriage, thus leaving out single women. Further, to confine legitimacy of sexual expression to marriage may lead to the misperception that any form of sexual expression-including exploitative and destructive sexuality-is permissible so long as it happens within marriage.
Unfortunately, when the pope condemns violence against women, his condemnation is made vacuous by the patriarchal anthropology that he advocates. For after condemning violence in his Letter to Women, he then praises women who carry themselves in a submissive, obedient manner-a disposition that enables domination and thus makes women vulnerable to the exploitation the pope condemns.
The Vatican has even gone as far as to beatify two women who made extraordinary sacrifices for their children. The first, Gianna Beretta, an Italian pediatrician pregnant with her fourth child and suffering from a lethal uterine cancer, insisted that her life be sacrificed for that of her unborn child. While this sacrifice was heroic, by raising this woman to a level just below sainthood, John Paul II could be suggesting to some that a good woman will give her life for an unborn child, while a bad mother might think that preserving her life would better serve her family and child. In a second, less ambiguous act, the pope beatified, Elisabetta Canori Mora, a woman who remained in a marriage where her husband abused her and finally abandoned her alone to care for their children.[1] This could be to honor single mothers of which there are so many, but these beatifications also send a message that submissiveness is honorific, to which I would say, nonsense.

To serve and care for others is an admirable trait. However, when it is not reciprocated, it becomes self-sacrificial and can become almost suicidal when the dominant partner takes submissiveness as natural.
In a significant breakthrough, in their 1989 pastoral reflection on conjugal violence, "A Heritage of Violence," the Social Affairs Committee of the Assembly of Bishops of Quebec acknowledged how such stereotypes as used by the pope are harmful to women. The bishops identified "patriarchal, structural and institutional violence" stemming from the perpetuation of stereotypes that subject women to male domination, like that found in the pope's letter, as a key form of oppression against women.

I will now explain the problem of violence against Catholic nuns within the institutional church:

Among the women of the world who are the least protected victims of sexual violence are Catholic nuns. Until March 2001, when the National Catholic Reporter released a story on the sexual abuse of nuns by Catholic clergy and religious in 23 countries, the church had been silent. Efforts by the church to eliminate sexual abuse were shown to be grossly inadequate.
After NCR's report, the media reported on the abuses, and a movement was formed-the Call to Accountability Campaign. That Campaign seeks to maintain an awareness of the abuse of nuns and other women by Catholic clergy and to pressure the Vatican to take necessary corrective action.
So far, it has been too little too late. Last month I was in South Africa where I spoke with African nuns. Those I spoke with are discouraged that nothing has been done within the church to end sexual abuse of nuns. One organizer of women's human rights for sisters in a West Africa country stated that a nun from her training group was transferred after she began asking questions of her leadership about cases of nuns being raped and impregnated by priests. Another Catholic woman raised concern about the nuns who have been expelled from their orders when they become pregnant, while the priests are merely sent away, some to return a few years later. Nuns sent back home live as outcasts while raising their children alone; the priest who is the "father" studies in Rome. An Irish missionary nun was very supportive of the desire and need for African sisters to come together to speak about these issues and emphasized that missionary nuns cannot be the ones to organize such a gathering-it must be the African sisters who speak out. But this is very difficult to do since it can only happen if there is a safe forum for nuns to speak out and condemn the abuse, without fear of being demoted, transferred or expelled. In fact, it is practically impossible.
In January of this year, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported on a 1996 national survey of nuns undertaken by researchers at St. Louis University. The research revealed that a "minimum" of 40 percent of all nuns in the US have "suffered some form of sexual trauma," and that some of "that sexual abuse, exploitation or harassment has come at the hands of priests and other nuns in the church."[2] Although the findings of the research were published in two journals in 1998, the researchers agreed to not prepare a press release at the request of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious.[3] Yet again, the conspiracy of silence keeps these issues out of the public eye, while the violence continues.

Great Catholic leaders throughout our church history have been those who speak out against harmful church teachings and practices until change happens. Let me briefly note my champions before I leave you: Fray Bartolomé de las Casas who challenged the church's abuse of the indigenous in the Americas during the sixteenth century; Felicité de Lamennais who spoke out against the church and called for freedom of religion and opinion during the nineteenth century; Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement, who called upon the church to teach peace, and advocated for the rights of workers in the twentieth century; the martyred Archbishop Romero of El Salvador who challenged the church hierarchy to defend the poor and oppressed. Today we have Bishop Kevin Dowling of South Africa, a Catholic bishop who publicly recognizes that condoms are potential life-saving devices, having a morally just purpose; and those nuns who do speak out against abuse of nuns by Catholic clergy and religious, regardless of the consequences.

In conclusion, I want to emphasize that I am asking that the Vatican, the pope, the Catholic laity, clergy and religious, take public measures to end violence against women, including violence practiced by priests against Catholic nuns. This is an essential missing element to the church's human rights stance, and without such justice for women, this circle of violence will never close.

Endnotes
[1] Frances Kissling, "For Catholics, It's 'Happy Martyrs' Day," Los Angeles Times, May 8, 1994.
[2] Bill Smith, "Nuns as sexual victims get little notice," St. Louis Post-Dispatch," January 4, 2003.
[3] Ibid.

Serra Sippel, Senior Associate, International Program, Catholics for a Free Choice
E-mail: ssippel@catholicsforchoice.org