To my dear Catholic and politically Evangelical friends,
I'm getting frustrated, and a little depressed, at the nature of our current dialogue on women's rights and freedom of religion. I suppose I didn't expect my vagina to be a main focus for the republican presidential nomination process, US election 2012, or the current news. Here are some examples of what I've heard lately: Komen pulling non-abortion funding of breast exams and mammograms from Planned Parenthood, Santorum claiming that women shouldn't be in combat because of their "emotions", and now the possibility that your churches are what stand between poor women and their access to birth control (which Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, among others, consider an important step out of poverty in their book, Half the Sky). I honestly keep my vagina and all discussion about it under wraps, so to have it brought out in the open in the news so blatantly is disconcerting. However, this is not the first time my specific vagina has been the topic of your discussion.
First, you weren't very pleased about my candidacy for ordination in the Presbyterian Church (USA). I understand where you are coming from, even if I completely disagree with you. I hope that you understand that I have only tried to be faithful to God's call in my life. And what did God do? God sent me to the PCUSA and told me to walk with people through a difficult world where even good institutions make mistakes. God called me to love people, in a special and particular way, and this came out as a calling to ordained ministry, one that my denomination has supported. I respect that you have different ideas, even though some of you thought I deserve eternal damnation for this. I hope you one day can allow the possibility that maybe God really did call me to this ministry, and moreso that God cannot be held captive by your pope, your catechism, or your politics. Just like me, you might be wrong about some things.
Secondly, you tried to tell me that I wasn't living up to my calling because I am a married woman on birth control. That's right. I impede procreation. I figured that if virginity wasn't an issue for Mary's procreation, I wasn't stopping God from nothin'! Birth control helped me finish my Master of Divinity degree, and it is helping my husband and me prepare the best situation for a child to be nurtured. I care deeply about how children are raised, the situation to which they are born (the foundation of why I care so much about the poor, just like you do), and I consider myself pro-life (for the life of mother and child alike, acknowledging a broken and complicated world with less-than-ideal options). However, you've made it clear that this is yet another deadly sin of mine, maybe even worse than the whole ordination thing. Any woman listening to the news right now would think that God hates her if she's on birth control- you say so. She's not living up to her calling to be a mother (with too many children). I know you're taking issue with "freedom of religion" and "freedom from Big Government," but listen to what you are saying in the process. You claim that you will close every charity to the poor you operate in this country over this issue. That sounds like a threat to me; it is not very loving.
Lastly, I haven't done this one yet, but be assured that I might in the future. I will help re-elect President Obama, and this is why: between the two of you, Catholic/Evangelicalish (and the candidates you have rallied behind) and Obama, he's the only one who doesn't sound absolutely insane. Seriously, read one chapter of Half the Sky about how women are treated throughout the world, and you realize that there's a reason our maternal mortality rate in this country is not the lowest in the world. Maternal care (pre-natal, post-natal) is still considered an inferior recipient of money. We maintain massive holes in our medical care for the poor, holes you have always been faithful to help fill, yet you maintain one of the biggest holes in medical care for the poor: birth control. If you want people to stay poor, please go ahead and prevent their access to birth control/sterilization. Since it came out that 98% of Catholic women have used some sort of birth control over their lives, I bet it's pretty embarrassing for you. Maybe you even want to use the US government as a arm of control over your own women. But in the way you have been so faithful in calling out governments to care for the poorest of the poor among you when they failed at doing so, I call you out now to care for those same people before they continue the cycle of poverty for the next generation. Forgive the rebelliousness of this Protestant, but you blindly follow your church's teaching to the detriment of the people for which you claim have preferential treatment by God. How do you possibly live in this tension?
So I know you all are really fired up about this, and I'm sure my musings here will garner even more of your negativity, and I can wrap my brain around why. I still cannot support your efforts though. I will work side by side with you for the eradication of crippling involuntary poverty, here and around the world, but I will not stop when you get sheepish about the birth control/women's autonomy issue. I am from a tradition that supports women in this way, and it is deeply theological for us. You do not have the only voice which speaks on behalf of God, and I'm gonna start with love.
With all love and commitment to you as well,
CK
PS- for something a little more upbeat...
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