Actor and director Ethan Hawke joined Fordham’s Angela O’Donnell and David Gibson at a May 3 private screening of Wildcat, a movie about Catholic writer Flannery O’Connor directed by Hawke and starring his daughter, Maya Hawke. 

In a Q&A after the screening, attended by 300 people at a Manhattan movie theater, Ethan Hawke said it was an “absolute honor” to be with O’Donnell and thanked her for writing her book Radical Ambivalence: Race in Flannery O’Connor (Fordham University Press, 2020), which deepened his understanding of the writer.

The film follows the life of O’Connor, who is celebrated for short stories such as those in Everything That Rises Must Converge (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1965) but also criticized for her views on race.

Fordham has been a center of research and events related to O’Connor’s work since 2018, when the writer’s estate granted $450,000 for an endowment at Fordham’s Curran Center for American Catholic Studies, where O’Donnell is the associate director.

A Writer’s Complexities

Although his mother had introduced him to O’Connor when he was a child, Hawke said, reading Radical Ambivalence helped him better understand how complex a person O’Connor was. He mentioned the book in an essay he wrote for Variety explaining why he and Maya ultimately decided to go forward with the film.

“I’m just so grateful for your time and for your enthusiasm and open-mindedness,” he said of O’Donnell’s writings on O’Connor. “I can’t imagine knowing as much as you know about Flannery. I have to bottle it into an hour and a half.”

O’Donnell said the Variety article was the first time she learned that Hawke had read her book, and said she was deeply moved by the film. 

“When I wrote the book, I was hoping that it was going to be useful to people in some way and not just something that academics would read,” she said. 

Hawke credited Maya with pushing the film to completion and suggested that O’Connor’s faith, coupled with her unflinching exploration of the way religion and morality sometimes collide in horrific ways, makes her appealing to a generation that is otherwise turning away from organized religion.

“A lot of people are scared to talk about faith. If we were all at Thanksgiving dinner together and I said, ‘Hey, can we talk about God?’ about half of you would go to the bathroom because you’re worried people are going to have an agenda,” he said.

“What I try to do with the movie is model Ms. O’Connor, which is that she’s not trying to convince you to believe anything. She’s trying to be a good artist and present something for you.”

That was one of the lessons of “A Theology of Voice: VOCAL and the Catholic Clergy Abuse Survivor Movement,” an article by Brian Clites, Ph.D., chosen by Fordham’s Curran Center for American Catholic Studies in May as the winner of its third annual New Scholars essay contest.

Clites, an associate director at the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities and an assistant professor of religious studies at Case Western Reserve University, first published the paper in the journal U.S. Catholic Historian. In addition to receiving a $1,500 cash prize from the Curran Center, he was also invited to speak at Fordham. He’ll give his talk virtually on Sept. 29 at 1 p.m.

The article traces the origins of VOCAL (Victims of Clergy Abuse Linkup), which was among the first and most prominent advocacy organizations for American survivors of childhood clergy sexual abuse. It was a predecessor of the currently active SNAP, (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests), and was notable, Clites said, because its leaders explicitly recognized the spiritual dimensions of the abuse they suffered, which they called “soul murder.”

VOCAL and the Divine Powers of the Voice

VOCAL was founded in 1992 and was one of the world’s largest and most prominent communities of clergy sexual abuse survivors until the untimely 2002 death of its leader, Father Thomas H. “Tom” Economus. It sought to promote healing and justice through a systemic and distinctively Catholic discourse about “voice.”

Clites said that when he first began working on the paper, which is part of a larger book project, in 2011, he was struck by how little academic research had been devoted to the sexual abuse crisis, and how often the concept of the voice was referenced in contemporary Catholic survivor groups, such as “Voice of the Faithful” and “Speak Truth to Power.”

“I was thinking, ‘Why are Catholic survivors so invested in this term voice?’ It seems to mean so much more to them than I’ve read about or understood. I also really didn’t understand why they also put so much emphasis on the term “survivor.” That term is ubiquitous now for cancer survivors and Holocaust survivors, but they used it in such a personalized and spiritual way,” he said.

“In a way, this article is me reflecting after 10 years of being among survivors, reading their literature, and learning why those terms mean so much to them.” Clites was able to learn about VOCAL/Linkup through interviews with surviving members, as well as copies of the group’s triennial newsletter, The Missing Link.

Transforming from Victim to Survivor

What all those survivor groups shared was an understanding that a person’s voice is the foundation of the transformation from victim to survivor.

“Until you found your voice, you couldn’t be a survivor and were still stuck in victimhood. So voice was a way of reclaiming agency,” Clites said.

“[The VOCAL members] really weren’t thinking about it in terms of legal agency. They were much more focused on thinking about it in spiritual terms because they’d been abused by men who were God’s ambassadors on Earth.”

Many of the VOCAL members who Clites spoke with told him they’d lost the ability to pray and talk to God.

“It was, ‘I need to speak about my abuse so that I’m comfortable enough with it so that even if I can’t forgive my abuser, or pray the way I used to, I can still be open to that relationship with God and Jesus and the Blessed Mother,’” he said.

Inspiring and Being Inspired by Other Movements

One of his major findings was that when VOCAL/Linkup members formulated the “Theology of Voice,” they were informed a great deal by feminism, the LGBTQ movement, and to a lesser extent, the AIDS movement.

“Their understanding of voice has precedent, but they take it to a whole other level and make it spiritual and moral in a way that it was not in American popular culture before Catholic survivors started thinking about it,” said Clites.

“Look at the MeToo movement and the public outrage over non-disclosure agreements. The fact that there’s a debate about the wisdom of them anymore owes a lot to Catholic survivors. They were probably the most influential group in amplifying people’s sensitivity to the injustice of NDAs.”

Remaining Catholic

What surprised Clites the most was learning that in the very beginning of the sexual abuse crisis, survivors went to the church first to seek spiritual healing. The stereotype of them as people who are hurt and out for revenge is not accurate.

“What I learned is, survivors are still in the church. Survivors are Catholics sitting next to us in the pews, or forming and leading their own Eucharistic communities, or continuing to be ordained as nuns and priests.”

“This was a problem they sought redress from within the church, and they chose to stay in the church. There are survivors who are too angry at God to pray right now or abandoned their faith or moved to another, but the majority of Catholic survivors have remained Catholic. That was shocking because I didn’t see that in movie and book accounts of it,” he said.

John Seitz, Ph.D., an associate professor of theology and associate director of the Curran Center, said Clites’ elevation of survivors’ voices was a big part of the reason why the center chose to honor his work.

“It’s possible to get tangled up in lots of other ins and outs of the crisis, the functioning of the church, the intricacies of the coverups, and the policies that get implemented or not,” he said.

“But Brian has done a lot of on-the-ground research getting to know these survivors and their communities.”

Confronting a Culture of Secrecy

The Curran Center is a co-sponsor of the multiyear, multi-institution Taking Responsibility Project, making Clites’ paper exactly the kind of scholarship it wants to promote, he said

“When we take sex abuse on fully and realize its breadth and depth, we realize that the stories we told before about Catholicism need to be revised in light of a pretty widespread culture of secrecy in the church among leaders that’s trickled down into the community more broadly,” he said.

“Our narratives about subjects that don’t even have anything on the surface to do with sex abuse may have to be revised. It’s really a watershed moment in Catholic studies.”

“Holiday’s Catholic training really went to her artistry, to her sound, to her sense of self,” said Tracy Fessenden, Ph.D., author of Religion Around Billie Holiday (Penn State University Press, 2018) and a religious studies professor at Arizona State University. “For all of the ink that has been spilled about Holiday and all of the movies that we have yet to see, we just don’t see much attention paid to her Catholicism.” 

In a lecture at the Rose Hill campus on March 29, Fessenden discussed how the singer’s Catholic childhood impacted her life and music. Fessenden’s speech was paired with performances from students in the Fordham Jazz Quintet, who sang and played songs by Holiday. Their dual presentation was co-sponsored by the Francis and Ann Curran Center for American Catholic Studies and the Department of Music. 

Fessenden said that Holiday grew up in Baltimore, a port city with a strong Catholic presence dating back to the 18th century. She received her only formal vocal instruction at the Baltimore House of the Good Shepherd for Colored Girls, the Catholic convent where she was sent to live as a child. 

Holiday attended Mass and sang to liturgical music every day. There are hints of her Catholic upbringing in her songs, particularly in her diction, idiosyncratic stresses, and phrasing, said Fessenden She noted that Holiday’s song “God Bless The Child,” is a swing spiritual with Catholic roots that has been performed by gospel choirs across the world. Holiday also received the sacraments, prayed the rosary, and maintained a lifelong friendship with well-known priest and jazz musician Norman O’Connor, she said. 

During her presentation, Fessenden paused periodically for student performances of six Billie Holiday songs: “I Cover the Waterfront,” “Lady Sings The Blues,” “God Bless The Child,” “My Man,” “Strange Fruit,” and “Fine and Mellow.” 

Music has the power to bring people together, especially during the pandemic and the ongoing war in Ukraine, said Fessenden. 

“It serves as a testament to life’s ongoingness, even in ravaged places,” she said. “That use of music is very much in the spirit of Holiday.” 

Q: What is the most exciting thing about taking over the leadership of the Curran Center?

A: As I think about the Curran Center’s mission—advancing knowledge, understanding, and appreciation of American Catholicism within the academy, the church, the broader religious community, and the general public—I think what’s exciting is that’s really at the heart of Fordham’s own mission as a Jesuit university in New York City.
Our world, the church itself, is going through so much right now. The voices of fear and despair are loud. Yet, I believe Catholicism is a deep well that has resources to speak to our times and to be a small part of the faithful-critical retrieval of that tradition is such an exciting prospect.

Q: What sort of things are you hoping to expand upon and grow?

A: I’m really fortunate to succeed two amazing directors, so in part, I just want to keep their momentum going. One of the ways that we can grow is by thinking about “American” in a hemispheric way. My parents are from Puerto Rico and so I grew up in an intercultural household, and my Catholicism was intercultural too—going to Mass in English in Florida and in Spanish in Puerto Rico.

We can rethink “Catholic” too. Catholicism has this capacious, inclusive vision, and a sacramental imagination. For me, it’s the motto of Ignatius of Loyola, “to see God in all things.” So our conversations at the center are ecumenical, interreligious, and with those who have no faith tradition. There are so many members of the Fordham family who are not Catholic and yet they’re a crucial part of who we are and that search for truth and goodness.

Q: What kind of programming would you like to see in the future?

A: The first area is American Catholic thought and Catholic history. Catholicism has an extraordinary history and some remarkable figures in it, and we have a duty to explore that legacy and hold dear that tradition, even as we do so critically. We also must retrieve marginal figures who weren’t appreciated in their time or were erased in some way.

I would like to see us continue doing work on Catholic social teaching as well. Catholicism has a strong tradition of speaking to the most important social, ethical, economic issues of our time. Issues of racism, the ecological crisis, public policy, the economy, our global interconnection—these are part and parcel of what Catholicism addresses today.

Another thing that comes to mind is this notion of a Catholic imagination. That sacramental imagination of Catholicism comes through in its art, music, and literature. For my own Curran Center class, the first reading is from Bruce Springsteen’s autobiography. Here’s a guy who has a profoundly Catholic vision of his Irish and Italian ancestry, his neighborhood, the people he grew up with, the church. [Exploring artists is] a way to expand that imagination. I think of Rosario Ferré, from my own Puerto Rico, or Isabel Allende or Carlos Santana.

There’s also the bread and butter ecclesial issues in Roman Catholicism today. What’s going on in the pews, in church leadership? Should there be women deacons or married priests? That has to be a part of what we do at the center.

Q: Your expertise is in liberation theology, which has a particular emphasis on justice and care for the poor. How will that factor into your new role at the Curran Center?

A: Father Gustavo Gutiérrez, whom many call the father of liberation theology, always says that the heart of liberation theology is the preferential option for the poor. It’s now at the bedrock of Catholic teaching, but it’s often misunderstood. It’s not condescending or simply paternalistic charity. It’s recognizing that those people at the margins are actually at the very center of the story. I would have the Curran Center really put its focus, as Pope Francis would say, on the peripheries, not as a gesture of nobility but because that’s where the real world is and that’s where we find truth.

I wrote my first book on Ignacio Ellacuría, S.J., the president of the Jesuit university in San Salvador and one of the martyrs assassinated in 1989. His vision of the university is really powerful, and three things, in particular, have influenced my thinking. The first is imagining the university focused outside of itself. The second is that he used to call the university the “critical conscience” of the nation. Con-sciencia means “with science.” That is, research and knowledge is a power that we must use for good. Finally, there was a little saying he used with impatient seminarians who were very eager to be active. He understood that activist impulse, but he would say to them, “We do our work en un escritorio, pero no desde un escritorio.” We do our work in a desk, but not from a desk.

You don’t want to turn your back on the very important power that comes from study and research, but there’s always that temptation to be in the ivory tower. We want to do our work in a way that is intellectual but grounded and engaged.

Q: What would you say are some of the most pressing issues in Catholicism that you’d like to tackle?

A: The Catholic Church faces a profound crisis, and if I needed a word to sum it up, I think I’d use authenticity. Can it be meaningful by example? There’s no avoiding the clerical sex abuse scandal. The church really needs to act, and it needs to act with humility, with openness, and mercy. The center is part of a very large grant to carry out a project we’re calling Taking Responsibility, about Jesuit educational institutions and confronting the causes and the legacy of the clerical sexual abuse crisis.

The second thing is the lingering vestiges of clericalism. Many Catholics still live in a two-tiered society where priests and bishops occupy this higher place. What we need to do in is tap into the great ability, talent, and desire that is present among laypeople, and especially women, whose gifts for so long have been on the margins if not refused altogether.

Finally, our political culture wars here in the United States have infected some sectors of Catholicism. I’ve seen students who have a profoundly Catholic imagination, this amazing perception of grace, of beauty, of truth in the world around them. But they hear talk in the church that is really hateful towards LGBTQ brothers and sisters or racist, and they say to themselves, “Well, if that’s Catholicism, then I’m no Catholic.” I want the center to be part of clarifying that to be Catholic is not necessarily to participate in the culture wars in that way. Faith calls one to take important stands in terms of justice, defending human rights, of building international solidarity, but it’s a tragedy for many young people to self-disqualify because they have a distorted image of what Catholicism can and should be.

In April, Fordham’s Curran Center for Catholic Studies chose Hoang—an assistant professor of Great Books in the Humanities/Teacher Education Division at Pepperdine University—as the winner of its inaugural New Scholars essay contest. For his paper Ultramontanism, Nationalism, and the Fall of Saigon: Historicizing the Vietnamese American Catholic Experience, (American Catholic Studies, Spring 2019), the Vietnamese native was awarded a $1,500 cash prize.

“It means a lot,” said Hoang, who noted that religious studies was something he became interested in only recently. “I came into this field a little bit later, so I was delighted to be recognized for filling in this important gap for Vietnamese Catholics in the U.S.”

John Seitz, Ph.D., an associate professor of theology at Fordham, said Hoang’s paper stood out because of its sensitive portrayal of an underrepresented group of Catholics in a historical period that has also been underrepresented, in terms of scholarly attention. Of particular note, he said, is how Hoang showed how Vietnamese refugees’ experiences parallel with those of 19th-century Irish immigrants.

“We were impressed with the contribution this makes to broadening the story of American Catholicism in the U.S. by including the voices and perspectives of people who usually aren’t in the story,” Seitz said.

“At the same time, there’s a kind of sensitivity to the way he treats their sorrow and loss as exiles. It’s a painful history that gives a new angle on the fabric of U.S. Catholics, and a new way of attending to the perspectives, agonies, and hopes of American Catholics—in this case, refugees from Vietnam.”

The contest, which is open to scholars who have received their doctorates in 2013 or later and have published in a journal in the last year, is limited to scholarship about Catholicism in the Americas. It also serves to create a network of like-minded experts that the Curran Center can tap into for future events and collaboration, said Seitz. The papers submitted covered topics such as women religious and the struggles they face with male authorities, objects of devotion, and Black Catholics.

“We’re always on the lookout for ways to support innovative scholarship, and this idea of running a competition for essays was just one way to encourage people to submit things they’d written on Catholic studies in the Americas, and show us the breadth of their scholarship,” he said, noting that the cash prize was a nice incentive since they are uncommon in the humanities.

“It’s an opportunity to celebrate young scholars and their work with a prize that doesn’t really have any real parallel in the world.”

For Hoang, his interest in highlighting Vietnamese Catholics living in the United States stemmed from both the fact that little has been written about them—despite copious source material existing in magazines, books, and devotional material—and the fact that even though Catholics comprise only roughly 10% of the population of Vietnam, about a third of the Vietnamese refugees who fled to the United States were Catholic.

“I was just curious about how the refugees who came to the United States in the ’70s dealt with the loss of South Vietnam on the one hand, and the adaptation to American society on the other hand,” said Hoang, who came to the U.S. when he was thirteen after spending over a year in refugee camps in Indonesia.

“The article makes the argument that these Catholic refugees adapted what I call an exilic identity. It means, essentially, they identify themselves primarily as a people who are Catholics but who also happen to have lost their nation, the Republic of Vietnam.”

He is planning to do continue doing historical research into many of the themes in the paper, such as national loss and family separation, and publish a book in the future. The prize money will probably go to a bottle of champagne and, when it is safe, to travel funds for further research.

Seitz said it was really tough to choose from the 12 submissions for the contest, which came from the United States and the United Kingdom.

“It really bodes well for the future of American Catholic studies to have received such strong essays for this competition,” he said.

Father O’Keefe’s appointment, which was announced by Father General Arturo Sosa, S.J., on Oct. 24, came a week after the Father General issued an official decree that will unite the Society’s Maryland and Northeast Provinces into one province, which will become the largest in the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States. In 2014, the Society of Jesus underwent a similar reorganization when the New England and New York Provinces unified to establish what is currently the USA Northeast Province.

Father O’Keefe’s appointment will be effective July 31, 2020, the feast day of the Jesuits’ founder, St. Ignatius Loyola.

“The geographic reach and number of institutions within the new province will require superior leadership and organizational skills,” said Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham.

“Father O’Keefe’s wide experience and his deep Ignatian spirit uniquely qualify him to become the inaugural provincial superior of our new province.”

In his appointment announcement, the Father General wrote that that Father O’Keefe’s “noteworthy personal gifts equip him well to unite the members of the new province in a single apostolic body at the service of the universal mission of the Society of Jesus.”

Father O’Keefe entered the Society of Jesus in 1976, graduated from the College of the Holy Cross, and went on to receive advanced degrees from Fordham and the Weston School of Theology in Massachusetts. He was ordained a priest in 1986. After completing an Ed.D. in education from Harvard University, he joined the faculty at Boston College, where he also served as a dean. He subsequently joined the faculty at GSE.

At Fordham, in addition to his role at GSE, he currently serves as superior of the Ciszek Hall house of First Studies and the Spellman Hall Jesuit Community at Fordham.  In 2016, he was a delegate to the Jesuits’ 36th General Congregation in Rome.

In an interview, Father O’Keefe said he was excited to take on responsibility for a province that will encompass 11 universities, 19 secondary schools, nine middle schools, 17 parishes, and seven retreat houses. More than ever, he said, the Society of Jesus is needed to help people find God in an increasingly secular society, walk with people on the margins, reach out to youth, and promote stewardship of the earth, priorities that the pope has highlighted.

“How do we bring the message of Pope Francis to the contemporary world? I think Jesuits are well-poised to do that, and the provincial is the person who creates the conditions where Jesuits can thrive,” he said.

At the same time, Father O’Keefe said he planned to use his experience working in academia to form deeper partnerships with lay people.

“We’ve discovered the wonderful gift that that lay people bring to our work,” he said. “It’s about brokering relationships, getting people to see the greater good, and seeing how we can work together.”

Although he won’t be able to stay on to fulfill his Fordham roles or his term on Fordham’s Board of Trustees, he noted that he might be available again in 2026, when his term as provincial ends.

“This is my second spin at Fordham, and I’m really sad in many ways that I won’t be able to stay at Fordham in the way I have. Maybe in six years, I’ll come back,” he said.

In the United States, subscribers to Life magazine opened up their issues that year and were greeted by a jarring image.

Francis Spellman, New York’s Roman Catholic Archbishop and the Vicar General of the Army and Navy, was pictured presiding over Mass not in the splendor of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, but at a crude, makeshift altar built of large bricks, created for troops stationed in Egypt. It contained a “portable altar stone,” the caption noted, and allowed the cardinal “to consecrate any convenient table where Mass was called for.”

To John Seitz, Ph.D, images like these are perfect examples of the way Americans were telling the world that God was on their side in the war, and that their troops were not depraved or bloodthirsty fighters.

“Americans were increasingly becoming aware of war’s damage on psyches, and they were very nervous about what would happen when all these potentially “damaged” men would come home from the war, said Seitz, an associate professor of theology.

“Religious images were really useful for communicating that they’re not that untethered from tradition, from God, from deep questions, and the things that we practice at home,” he said.

A Tradition Well-Suited to the Task

Seitz, who earlier this year published “Altars of Ammo: Catholic Materiality and the Visual Culture of World War II” in Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art and Belief, said that Catholicism was particularly effective at communicating this message, thanks to its overt embrace of materiality.

“When it comes to photography, Catholic ritual forms like elevated arms, long ornate robes, and specific moments of ritual posture among both the leaders and the congregation were really vivid ways of saying, ‘American troops are in tune with tradition,’” he said.

Celebrating religious diversity was a major goal of government censors, he said, and images of Catholics, Protestants, and Jews working together to fight injustice were meant to distinguish the United States from both Nazi Germany and what was seen as an atheistic Japan.

What was surprising about the popularity of these 1940s Catholic images was the fact that the materiality and elaborate rituals that made them so effective were also the reasons mainstream Protestants had been suspicious of the faith for nearly all of American history.   

From Idolatrous to Iconic

“A dominant Protestant theory about Catholic rituals is that it’s a crutch, only for weak people. It’s kind of like superstition to have all these kinds of hocus pocus ritual transformations,” he said.

“In theory, at least, Protestants can rely solely on faith. You don’t need any of these ritual elements, you don’t need a priest mediating your contact with God. So, with these wartime images, Catholic images and materiality went from being idolatrous in the Protestant American imagination to being iconic in the environment of wartime propaganda.”

While Protestant America was coming around to Catholicism, thanks in part to these images, the editors of mainstream Catholic magazines that were writing captions for these images were wrestling with the cognitive dissonance of pairing a religion based in love with efforts to promote the war. Seitz noted that in one particularly vivid image of a priest on the battleship that appeared in The Priest Goes to War, (The Society for the Propagation of the Faith, 1945) writers suggested that the ship added to the splendor of the Mass.

“They want to have the guns adding to the grandeur of the Masses, which is a really surprising thing to think about. At that the same time, they want to say the Mass is kind of in conflict with that, and the priest is only there to serve, and not to perpetuate violence,” he said.

“From my vantage point, it’s pretty hard to extricate those things from one another in this context. They can’t quite pull it off, because there they are, reprinting this image and celebrating how beautiful it is.”

Seitz said images like these complicate people’s understanding about what religion is about. He said he hopes his students appreciate the multiple ways that religious ideas and images and objects work in the world.

“There’s a risk that we approach religion as a static, rigid set of ideas you have to agree with or not, when in fact religion and religious objects are malleable, dynamic, and interact with culture,” he said.

Cardinal Ortega, the Archbishop of Havana from 1981 to 2016, died on July 26. In 2015, Fordham conferred upon him an honorary degree in a ceremony held at the Rose Hill Gym. The University lauded the Cardinal’s strong leadership, which sustained the Church in Cuba during years of government repression. He is credited today with playing a key role in the Church’s resurgence there.

“Cardinal Ortega was a truly courageous leader whose tireless efforts to promote religious freedom in the face of relentless opposition were an inspiration for all of us,” said Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham.

“In a time marked by division, his ministry was a bridge that brought together members of the human family. It was an honor to host him at Fordham in 2015, and we will miss greatly.”

Born in 1936 in the province of Matanzas, Cardinal Ortega studied at the Advanced Institute for Secondary Studies of Matanzas, the seminary of San Alberto Magno, and the seminary of the Foreign Mission in Quebec, Canada, before coming home for ordination, in 1964.

As a parish priest of the Cathedral of Matanzas, he founded a youth movement that spread the Church’s message through theatrical performances. He was named Archbishop of Havana in 1981, and in that role, he created parishes, rebuilt more than 40 parish houses and churches, and established the Diocesan Council for Pastoral Initiatives. He ordained 22 Cuban priests, which was no small feat, given the Cuban government’s hostility toward the Church at the time.

Working with the Cuban Bishops’ Conference, Cardinal Ortega helped organize in 1986 the Cuban National Ecclesial Encounter, an event that proved to be a milestone in the Church’s revival. It sparked a new era of dialogue and awareness among Cuban Catholics, and ultimately brought about the 1998 visit of Pope John Paul II, who four years earlier had named Ortega a Cardinal.

Under Cardinal Ortega’s leadership, the Church in Cuba became an effective mediator between the government and dissidents. In 2010, the Cardinal worked with the government of Raul Castro to secure the release of 126 political prisoners. In recent years, his role as a mediator expanded beyond the island’s shores. In 2014, when secret negotiations between the governments of Cuba and the United States were underway to re-establish diplomatic relations, he visited Washington D.C. on a trip that was ostensibly for a lecture at Georgetown University.

Instead, he hand-delivered a letter from Pope Francis, whom he helped select as a Cardinal elector, to President Obama at the White House. The Pope sent a similar letter to the President of Cuba; the outreach was key to the Pope’s efforts to bring about dialogue between the governments of the two nations.

That was the assertion of a panel of scholars who came together on Tuesday, Jan. 15 at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus.

The issue of whether women can become deacons is one that the Vatican had studied twice since the early 1990s. In 2016, Pope Francis announced a third commission, made up of six women and six men, to study its feasibility.

A New Look at an Old Idea

Phyllis Zagano, Ph.D., and Bernard Pottier, S.J., two members of that commission, spoke Tuesday at a Fordham panel event, The Future of Women Deacons: Views from the Papal Commission and the American Pews.

Zagano, a senior research associate-in-residence at Hofstra University and author of Women Deacons? Essays with Easy Answers (Michael Glazier, 2016), said evidence of the existence of women deacons, who share many responsibilities with priests, in the churches’ earliest days is indisputable.

Documents available in Vatican libraries from the fourth and fifth centuries make clear the existence of a position that was separate and distinct from the priesthood, and was therefore open to all, she said, and specifically referenced women.

“The earliest ordination for deacons is in the apostolic constitution, which directs the bishop to lay hands on [a woman being ordained]in the presence of the presbyterate, the male deacons, and the woman deacons, and to pray a prayer that parallels the ordination of the deacon, including the Epiclesis, which is the calling down of the Holy Spirit,” she said.

“God is asked to bless her in regard to her ministry. The ordaining bishop places a stole around her neck. As I’ve said to many people, ‘If she wasn’t a deacon, they would call her something else.’” she said, but the responsibilities would have been the same.

An Upheaval Leads to Shifting Attitudes

In the middle of the 18th century, she said, scholars began rejecting the idea of a female deacon, and quibbled over whether these women had been “ordained” or “blessed.” Zagano said the words were used interchangeably at the time.

“For me, if a bishop was laying hands on a woman, invoking the Holy Spirit, putting a stole on her, giving the chalice, and calling her a deacon, I don’t know what else to say,” she said.

So why did women deacons disappear? Father Pottier, a faculty member at the Institute D’Etudes Théologiques in Brussels, said the Great Schism of 1054, when what is now the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox churches split, was key to the change.

“The Western church began to think by its own, without the mystical spirituality of the East, that rationality and legalistic thought was more important,” he said.

The upside of this was the rise of immensely influential philosophers such as St. Thomas Aquinas, he said.

“On the other side, we lost a little bit of what the sacrament is. What is the spirituality and the grace of the sacrament? The West wanted to do everything clear, and everything simple. So the sacrament of ordination became very simple. You have cursus honorum, a sort of scale you have to pass by all the steps, and not miss one. A deacon became only a step to priesthood,” he said, and therefore, something reserved for men.  But he cautioned that this needn’t be the end of the story.

“Our faith has roots in the Bible, in the New Testament, in the person of Jesus Christ, and in what the church has done. We do not have to be afraid of history. In history, we do not have a source of rigidity and immobility,” he said, but rather an example that change is possible.

A View From the Pews

Panelist Donna Ciangio, O.P., said conversations she’s had with lay members of the Archdiocese of Newark, where she is chancellor, have convinced her that parishes need women deacon now.

“I asked a few parishioners about the possibility of women deacons, and the first answer I got was, “Aren’t you and Sister Sandy deacons already?” she said.

Where the issue really rears its head is when she works with couples who want to have their child baptized in the church.

“We ask them, is there anything that keeps you from embracing the church wholly? One woman said to me, ‘My children ask me, ‘Why can’t women be priests or deacons?’ I have no answer that satisfies them,’” she said.

Sister Ciangio also recently oversaw the creation of a study guide to help Catholics better understand this issue, titled Women Deacons: Past, Present, Future, (Paulist Press, 2012), which Zagano co-wrote. She invited 12 parishioners from the diocese to come together to read it.

“As we discussed each chapter, they became more and more interested, but they became more and more agitated,” she said, noting that none were aware of the existence of women deacons in the past.

“The group became convinced that it’s no longer acceptable not to have women deacons in parishes or significant leadership positions in the church.”

What Next?

What if Pope Francis decides this is not the right time to let women become deacons again?

The panel has presented its report to the pontiff and is waiting for a response. Zagano said that given the church’s dire need for those who can minister to the faithful, even a delayed answer will be a negative answer.

“I think it’s up to the church to make noise. The pope has said in other cases, make noise. Well, make noise,” she said.

“I have a sense that he will know the time to say something. We have from May 6 to 10 a triennial meeting of the international union of superiors general, the women who originally asked him to examine this issue. If I were the pope, I wouldn’t want to walk into a meeting with 900 nuns without an answer.”

The panel event was sponsored by Fordham’s Center on Religion and Culture. David Gibson, the center’s director, said the topic is a timely one given the upheaval the church has faced recently.

“Elevating and broadening the role of the women in the church, as Pope Francis has said we must do, is especially critical today if we’re to answer the call of the spirit in this time of epochal change and challenge for the Catholic church,” said Gibson.

“It is a call that our nation and our world must respond to.”

The panel was moderated by Thomas Rosica, C.S.B., president of Salt & Light Media, and was streamed live on Salt & Light.

After the exhibit closed in February, the reproduction was carefully taken down and packed away. In November, it was given a new home in Fordham’s Butler Commons on the Rose Hill campus.

Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, called the gift a welcome addition to the University’s collection, one that will “touch our hearts, engage our minds, and lift our spirits.”

“It is an honor to once again partner with the Met, one of New York City’s preeminent cultural institutions, and to provide a permanent home to a reproduction of Michelangelo’s most ambitious and stirring masterpiece,” he said.

“Such a work embodies the divine grace of God. Its presence will remind us of our own Catholic heritage.”

The fresco, which Michelangelo painted between 1508 and 1512 at the behest of Pope Julius II, is one of the most famous pieces of art in the world. Among its features are narrative scenes from the Book of Genesis, the Book of Maccabees, and the Gospel of Matthew. One of its most iconic images is the artist’s rendition of The Creation of Adam.

The gift is emblematic of both the Met’s and Fordham’s extensive roots in New York City. Father McShane first saw the fresco during an early morning tour of the exhibit arranged by Fordham Trustee Fellow Edward M. Stroz, GABELLI ’79, and his wife Sally Spooner. They were joined by Erin Pick, then a senior administrator at the Met, and Maria Ruvoldt, Ph.D., chair of the department of art history at Fordham.

He said he knew from the moment he entered the room that it would be a magnificent addition to Fordham’s campus. As chance would have it, the group crossed paths with Carmen Bambach, Ph.D., a curator at the Met who specializes in Italian Renaissance art. From 1989 to 1995, Bambach was also an assistant professor of art and music history at Fordham when Father McShane was dean of Fordham College at Rose Hill.

 “She looked at me and said, ‘You hired me at Fordham.’ I smiled and said that I had indeed hired her,” Father McShane said.

“After the tour was over, Erin, Carmen, and Maria worked on a proposal that we could place before the Met leadership to see if we could secure the piece for Fordham. Much to my surprise, we were informed a few weeks later that the Met approved our proposal.”

Quincy Houghton, deputy director for exhibitions at the Met, echoed the bond between the museum and Fordham.

“We are pleased that this painting will have a future life at Fordham, as another manifestation of the many scholarly connections between our two institutions, and that it will be widely used as a teaching tool,” he said.

“We look forward to seeing it in its new home.”

Ruvoldt said that although the fresco is among the most famous paintings in the world, it’s often seen in piecemeal fashion, such as the well-known section featuring the nearly touching hands in The Creation of Adam.

“Typically, when students learn about this in an art history classroom, they’re seeing a projection on the wall. They don’t have the experience of the entirety of the composition, and the experience, frankly, of just looking up at it, which sounds a little simple, but was key to the way the painting was meant to be understood,” she said.

“Michelangelo really got that the people who would be looking at it would be looking at it from below. So, it’s a unique experience for students to see it.”

Among the details one can observe in the full reproduction is evidence that Michelangelo actually realized, halfway through the production, that he’d have to rethink his approach. Ruvoldt said the latter sections feature visible changes in the scale of the figures, and compositions become simpler, so they’re more discernible from below.

Watch Ruvoldt give a guided explanation of the fresco reproduction.

Butler Commons, which is named for the founder of Marymount College and is just one floor above the University’s theology department, is an ideal location for it, she said, because it’s open to all. The University will open it to members of the campus community in January, and members of the public can arrange visits in the same manner they currently use to visit the University’s Museum of Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Art.

“I picture it as something that not only art history professors can bring students in to look at it, but the theology department as well. The subject matter is the entire story of Genesis, the prophets, and the ancestors of Christ—it could be interesting as well for interdisciplinary investigation.”

The gift is only the latest collaboration between the two institutions. Last year, Fordham lent the Met Cristóbal de Villalpando’s Adoration of the Magi; the museum restored it and included its July exhibition Cristóbal de Villalpando: Mexican Painter of the Baroque.

Update: While Butler Commons will remain secured, any member of the Fordham community who wishes to view the reproduction can contact the reception desk at Tognino Hall during business hours to have them open the room. During the weekends and after business hours, Public Safety will respond and open the room for any requested viewing. Members of the public can also make arrangements to view the artwork during business hours. No food or beverages are permitted in Butler Commons.

“What Happened? Why? What Now? Clergy Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church” brought together experts in law, psychology, and theology to talk about new developments in the ongoing crisis, such the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s August report detailing how more than 300 Catholic priests there sexually abused children over seven decades and were protected by a hierarchy of church leaders.

It was the first in what organizers said will be a series of events dedicated to the crisis, and was preceded by a full minute of silence in honor of the victims.

The End of Piecemeal Reforms

Bryan N. Massingale, S.T.D., professor of theological and social ethics and the James and Nancy Buckman Chair in Applied Christian Ethics at Fordham, called the Pennsylvania revelations, as well as those relating to the abuse and cover up involving former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, “sexual abuse crisis 3.0.”

The first highly publicized incident of abuse, involving a Louisiana priest who was convicted of pedophilia in 1985, was dismissed as an aberration, Massingale said. Then in 2002, the Boston Globe published a report showing the abuse was more widespread, but it was still seen as an American phenomenon confined to wayward priests.

Now, he said, victims are coming forward from around the globe, which is proof that the whole church hierarchy is to blame. The entire process of priest formation needs to be reformed, he said, with less emphasis on the virtue of obedience.

“What we’re seeing is an interrogation of a monarchical system of power, where the people who have power in the church are not accountable to anyone except the person above them, and there are no women in the chain of command, and no lay people in the chain of command,” he said, noting that few outside the church believe church leaders are capable of policing themselves.

“We have reached the end of piecemeal reforms.”

M. Cathleen Kaveny, Ph.D., the Darald and Juliet Libby Professor of Law and Theology at Boston College, concurred, and said it’s important that the church submit itself to appropriate legal procedures and use secular best practices to make sure the abuse never happens again.

“At the same time, its extremely essential that we use and develop our own theological and ethical language to understand why this is a problem, not just for citizens in the secular society who are harming one other, but also for fellow members of the body of Christ, to see how that is harming us as church,” she said.

Time to Rethink Priest Formation

The relationship between priests and bishops was a major point of discussion. Father Massingale noted that at its best, the relationship takes on a benevolent father-son dynamic. At its worst, a priest can become psychologically dependent on the bishop, thus becoming vulnerable to being used to cover up for him or for others.

Celia B. Fisher, Ph.D., the Marie Ward Doty University Chair in Ethics, professor of psychology, and director of Fordham’s Center for Ethics Education, echoed Father Massingale’s strenuous assertion that homosexuality is not in any way connected to the abuse perpetrated by priests.

Men who molest young boys are immature heterosexuals who find themselves identifying more as a child than as an adult, she said. She noted that national studies have found that priests who have abused children do not display evidence of mental illness or urges associated with pedophilia.

And covering up the abuse, Fisher said, has only compounded and spread the pain further.

“People who are deeply religious are more likely to believe in the power of forgiveness, however the severity of harm perpetuated on children, the violation of the clerics’ position of trust and moral authority, repetition of abuse by individual clerics, and the past unwillingness of the church to recognize these problems is making forgiveness difficult for many Catholics,” she said.

Why Now?

To the question of why, David Gibson, director of Fordham’s Center of Religion and Culture, added, “Why now?” For starters, he noted that in 2002, American bishops went after the “low-lying fruit,” by focusing on priests and exempting themselves from scrutiny.

“I remember talking to a bishop I’ve known pretty for a pretty long time. I said, ‘What about you guys?’ And he said to me, ‘I don’t even know how you fire a bishop,’” he said.

Gibson said that the Pennsylvania grand jury report added narratives to what had previously been dry statistics, and their impact was heightened by the revelations of Cardinal McCarrick’s conduct that had come out just a month before. Just as important, Gibson noted, is that conservative Catholics have come out in favor of investigations they’d previously resisted, and law enforcement officials are no longer turning a blind eye.

Finally, he said, it’s become apparent that the problem is not confined to Anglophile countries such as the United States, Ireland and Australia.

“It turns out we were the leading edge of a wave of that’s now breaking around the world, in places like Chili, Guam, Mexico, Poland, and Italy,” he said.

“This is all emboldening victims, empowering them, and more of them are speaking out. And when victims speak out, that’s more effective than any media investigation or grand jury report.”

The panel was co-sponsored by Fordham’s Department of Theology, Francis and Ann Curran Center for American Catholic Studies, and Institute on Religion, Law, and Lawyer’s Work.