took and mixed in with three measures of flour until
all of it was leavened." Matthew 13:33
From the October/November 2006 Issue
Luke’s Hope for the Church
Cecily Jones, SL
EDITORS’ NOTE: Mary Luke Tobin, SL, a founding board member of Leaven, died August 24th at her community’s motherhouse in Nerinx, Kentucky, where she had retired in 1999. In this article Cecily Jones, SL, a long-time friend of Luke, reflects on Luke’s hopes for the church. Cecily, who moved to Kentucky nearly three years ago in order to accompany Luke on her final journey, is a former peace and justice columnist for Leaven.
When Call to Action presented Luke its 1992 Leadership Award, the citation included this sentence: “When we see U.S. women religious modeling a new style of church—open, collaborative, inclusive, passionate about justice and peace—credit the leadership of Mary Luke Tobin.” Indeed those adjectives earmarked Luke’s hope, not just for sisters, but for the church. While her declining health deprived us of her current ideas about church, especially at this somewhat dismal period, perhaps recalling her earlier vision will serve both to honor her and to inspire Leaven readers.
Foundational to Luke’s thought always was her conviction that all domination must be set aside. Her most frequently quoted Gospel passage recalled the statement of Jesus: “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over their subjects and that their princes tyrannize over them. That must not be your way!” (Matthew 20:25-26) In a 1990 interview (“Cool Hand Luke,” National Catholic Reporter, 11/9/90) Luke reflected on this passage: “Jesus told his disciples that the form of government they were to initiate would not be pyramidal, but circular.”
This circular model, she maintained, could apply to the whole church. “Just imagine a circle of representatives from many nations with the bishops speaking to the consensus reached in their countries and the pope as an elected president. Ready to participate in the ensuing dialog would be a diversity of elected delegates, including women and representatives of other racial and religious minorities.”
When Luke gave a major address at a “Future of the Church” conference in 1990, she offered several practical ideas. She called on U.S. bishops to initiate more hearings and dialog with the people who are the church. The bishops, she urged, need the courage to become a self-conscious U.S. episcopal conference which can find its own voice and teaching potential. Luke believed that the U.S. church must trust its own insights and take a much firmer stand in carrying them through. Bishops, she added, should not feel that they must refer everything to Rome.
To bolster this last hope, Luke invoked Karl Rahner, probably her most admired theologian, who said that the church is not meant to be a centralized homogeneous holy state. “If the social situation and mentality in various regions, say North America, are different from other regions, why not take the questions seriously?” Rahner is quoted as saying. “If, for example, there is a readiness in the U.S. for women’s ordination, the matter should be left up to the U.S.”
Luke, widely credited with leading the renewal in U.S. women’s religious
orders, suggested that the processes used by communities of sisters could
well serve as case studies for creating a more participatory church. She
underlined the principles of subsidiarity, collegiality, and consensus
followed by her own Loretto community and many others in developing new
guidelines, new ways of governance, and an almost revolutionary renewal
and restructuring of religious life.
Another of Luke’s suggestions centered on the desirability of bishops
being chosen through election by the people of the dioceses.
As for ordination, Luke had no aspiration to priesthood for herself, but from the first Women’s Ordination Conference onward strongly supported those who felt called to this ministry. About the conditions for this step, she said, “Bishops and the Vatican must be prepared to share everything with us, to share decision-making, planning together as women and men to bring justice to the world.” In January, 1990, Luke received a Prophetic Figure award from the Women’s Ordination Conference.
The Vatican II declaration which Luke must often cited, holding it up as the basis for equality at every level in the church, was this statement from Gaudium et Spes, the Constitution on the Church in the Modern World: “Every type of discrimination, whether social or cultural, whether based on sex, race, color, social condition, language, or religion, is to be overcome and eradicated as contrary to God’s intent.” In an interview with the political editor of the Grand Rapids (MI) Press, in 1999, Luke, referring to this foundational statement, wryly observed, “Not bad. That puts it down very clearly!”
Luke pointed out that since Vatican II, women had indeed been invited into some new roles in the church. “But the advances have just inched forward,” she said in an interview in the book, Midwives of the Future. “No amount of admitting women to certain roles in the church will substitute for the correction of the refusal to admit women to full ministry.” While reiterating her conviction that this full ministry will eventually be reality, Luke expressed regret that many gifted women, disheartened and disillusioned, have left and will continue to leave the institutional church.
In the area of ecumenism, Luke hoped for greater endeavors by the church. Active in ecumenical and interfaith efforts herself—because of friendships with some Protestant observers at the Council; through her work on the national staff of Church Women United; through teaching at the Iliff School of Theology; through collaboration on interfaith peace missions and efforts for justice; because of co-founding a women’s interfaith group and a Buddhist-Christian dialog/meditation group in Denver—Luke found all these involvements an integral part of her life as a Catholic. Often in Denver she was called on to be “the Catholic voice” in inter-denominational or interfaith efforts.
Asked once whether the Catholic Church is foot-dragging in ecumenism, she replied, “We should be doing a lot more. I’m especially perplexed that the Catholic Church does not have membership in the National Council of Churches. What heresy are we committing by joining with them! The council is addressing, among other issues, justice, peace, and the integrity of creation. Catholics could at least join that group.”
To validate the place of healthy dissent in the church, Luke was delighted at her discovery that Pope John Paul II himself had once endorsed it. She frequently quoted from his philosophy dissertation, “The Acting Person,” in which, treating community and its solidarity, he stated that opposition and dissent are necessary to any living community as it confronts the events, differences, and developments of ongoing time. Dissent calls forth dialog, conversation, and finally clarification.
Despite Luke’s disappointment at the slow pace of movement toward inclusivity in the church and at lagging ecumenical efforts, she was quick to commend the bishops for some effective efforts. She congratulated them for their pastorals on the challenge of peace and on the economy. And when Denver’s Archbishop Stafford sent a letter to the first President Bush questioning U.S. policy in the Persian Gulf crisis, Luke applauded.
According to Carmel McEnroy in her book, Guests in Their Own House, Luke was singled out among Vatican II auditors as a leader who was “friendly, outspoken, and a prime mover for change.” Her friendliness there and in other venues enabled her to suggest church reforms in an affable, non-confrontational style, a style which she also maintained with the media.
Luke expressed her enduring hope in the church in these words (from the “Cool Hand Luke” interview cited above): “I realize that the struggle with power is uphill all the way. But people believe in the truth that we can achieve equal participation and mutuality in the church. That truth enables us to invest our strength in the struggle. We cling to the hope that a future church as people of God can—and must—happen.”
In the counseling office of Trish Dunn, Leaven board member, co-member of the Loretto community, and a long-time friend of Luke, hangs a calligraphy of this quote from Luke: “I love and have faith in the dangerous vision of Jesus. That’s what gives me and others hope in the church. It’s because of this love we Catholics have for the church that we struggle to make it the best.”