At the New York Times blog Happy Days, Michele Madigan Somerville recounts the unlikely tale of how she “embarked on a search for a church and wound up a born-again Catholic”:
You might wonder how someone like me—a feminist-progressive living in 21st-century Brooklyn—can abide the Vatican’s positions. Well, I don’t. I am Catholic under protest and I’m in good company. The long tradition of radical thinking is alive and well in my Church.
I recently attended an interfaith Gay Pride Celebration in held in a Roman Catholic Church. One of the speakers was a former Catholic nun who left her order many years ago and is currently an Interfaith minister. She spoke of her work as a person of the cloth, her life as a lesbian, her 25 years with her beloved. The honorific “Reverend” precedes her name. She wears a Roman collar. That night, her address was filled with surprises, but only one aspect of her speech shocked me: her fervent recommendation that progressive Catholics remain in the Church – so as to be in a position to create change. She still worships in a Roman Catholic Church.
I love the radical Catholic Church. I love that there are Roman Catholic bishops sticking their necks out to ordain women. That Catholic doctrine places mighty emphasis on the role of conscience in worship and creates fertile ground for conscientious dissent. I support dramatic change as energetically as I can. I withhold my cash from the bishops and hand my diocesan appeal tender to the Woman’s Ordination Conference and to SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests). I devote much time and talent to working in the Gay Ministry at my church. I recognize it is my obligation as a conscious, conscientious Catholic to discern—to know that the church no more belongs to the Vatican than it does to me. The power of the Church may rest with the College of Cardinals, but its glory rests with people like me.
Read the full piece here.