Did you know that the Catholic Church is having a Synod on Synodality? The Church holds sway over 1.6 billion souls, more or less. This makes it a significant organisation that should not be left out of the public gaze, due to its reach and influence. Bad things happen when powerful institutions are free from oversight. Like the Spanish Inquisition.
The Synod is basically a big old conference on how Catholics can be together as a church in the 21st Century. Preparations for this meeting started years ago, and there was some consultation at the grassroots level about various issues that the Church wants to tackle. That’s right: the primo patriarchy is secretly kind of democratic.
I like to think of the Church as a slow-moving and heavily documented example of how power is negotiated for a lasting relationship between leaders and those who are led. Catholics have a few articles of faith that hold them together, and within this framework the institution has to work across all the continents and thousands of cultures. How, then, have women fared in this church? Convention holds that religion and feminism do not mix.
Africans try to dismiss feminism as an import and an imposition. It can be, if one insists. But it is also a natural emergence in individuals who are oppressed by patriarchy and who identify it as the enemy.
The gender disparity in the Church is unapologetic and historical. Although the Church, like America, likes to promote a strong and stable public image, the reality is far messier. Occasionally, good things happen. Like when Africans were finally considered humans and slavery was deemed “immoral,” something that I like to bring up to clergy from time to time. The Church in Africa is complicated, in the cold, hard gaze of full human rights.
In this Synod, the ordination of women has been raised and the conservatives are winning so far. High clergy, including the Pope, are chewing through half-answers about the topic remaining “open to discussion.” A beautiful and effective political tool: Remove the controversy by killing the topic with “discussion” that never comes to fruition. Ergo, my humanity in the eyes of the Church remains “open to discussion,” due to my gender. I am barred from the leadership class by an accident of birth.
No amount of Mariology thrown my way can appease this fundamental rejection. While it may appear a matter of religion only, my life as a civilian in Tanzania is affected. My body will continue to be subject to patriarchy that uses religion as a moral basis to deny me rights and freedoms.
At the pulpit, as at the voting station, I will be told there are reasons I cannot have full bodily autonomy. Family and inheritance laws remain skewed. So, you see, this Synod on Synodality is as important to keep track of as Bunge sessions, regardless of one’s beliefs. The good news is that it is, like Mass, going to a long and formal process with some hope for joy. The bad news is that, like Mass, it is going to be difficult to change.
Let me end with a greeting to all the faithful and scholars I may have triggered with this article: By all means channel your inner Paul and write me a letter. The more pompous, the better. Peace be upon you.
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