The Lieutenant Nun

For today's entry I'd like to offer an example from history of how notions of what it means to be male and female have not always been as clear cut as the current Pope seems to believe.

The story, from the colonial period of Latin American History, relates the life and adventures of Catalina de Erauso, a Basque woman and member of the nobility from San Sebastian in the north of Spain. Although received as a nun in a Spanish convent, Catalina eventually broke away and lived for nearly twenty years as a man, fighting in the Spanish army and even killing her own brother in a duel. As the following scholarly article also shows, for a number of reasons she even received permission from the Pope to continue living as a man: The Lieutenant Nun.

Although there is much that could be said about the case of Catalina de Erauso, I'll just offer one primary thought for now. In essence, I think Catalina's story as well as those of the women and men I've blogged about recently call into serious question the position of the current Pope and others who think that the exact nature of masculinity and femininity is somehow self-evident in nature.

This position is problematic precisely because it is not borne out in human experience, either in our own generation or in history. Rather, it is far clearer that nature is something more of a spectrum - a rainbow, even. Many people feel primarily attracted to persons of the opposite sex and conform to expectations about those attractions. However, a significant minority - roughly between 5 and 10% of the population of the human community - simply do not experience the world in this way. They're not wrong, evil, sick, twisted, disordered, or deceived. They're simply different - neither better nor worse - just different.

Now, one of the concerns the Pope and others have is that the institution of the family is currently threatened in Western societies and cultures. This I can understand in many ways. The Pope is also concerned that letting everyone construct their own morality is dangerous. This also I can sympathize with. What I do find sad and tragic is that by attempting to pretend that there's absolutely no ambiguity whatsoever in nature and the human person, the Pope actually harms his own position. In wanting to shore up traditional values of love, solidarity and compassion, the Pope actually decreases his chances of success by refusing to enter into dialogue with his contemporaries - those who are doing their best to wrap their minds around what we all know is a messy, often ambiguous world. As a result, these same contemporaries are scandalized by what looks like an anti-intellectual retreat from reality and therefore feel that much more strongly reinforced in their belief that absolutely everything in life is constructed and relative and that there are no universal values to speak of. In other words, the Pope's hard line position only feeds secular philosophies that deny the relevance of religion and faith and thereby makes it that much harder for those of us who try to find common ground between faith and reason to retain any credibility or viability in our positions.

I've written too much here but the basic problem comes down to this: People acknowledging who they are and coming to peace with that is not the cause of our problems. We face challenging problems of ethics, human rights and global solidarity and action needs to be taken. However, what is not helpful is removing ourselves from the dialogue, burying our heads in the sand and pretending that life, nature and creation can be fit into neat and tidy categories. Instead, we need a spirit of compassion and courage that will help us all to enter into respectful dialogue with each other and work together to make our world a place more worthy of our dignity as God's beloved children.

With prayers of peace,
P. Chuck