July 2022 OCCA Synod

From the Perspective of a Non-priest Member of the Community

I was pleased to make the epic pilgrimage from the UK to Stella Niagra, in the States, for the OCCA Synod in July, having previously met other members of the community only on zoom services on Sundays. I attended with my son, 16 years old, who is also a keen member of the community. We have been warmly received into the community, online, and were warmly received face to face, too.

As we all tend to experience now, we know people pretty well over video conferencing, but meeting in the flesh gives a whole new perspective, we see the wider picture and get to know people in a new way. Faces I’d met online came to life. I could hear and join in the different conversations which happened off camera, and it was lovely to be “present” with everyone.

The numbers attending surprised me, I would have thought people would be clamouring at the doors — this church answers so many deep calls I have discovered inside myself for a church which starts from a place of inclusion: inclusion as the foundation stone. This is a church built on the stone that was rejected by the other churches. It welcomes, truly, completely. It wants to listen, and builds church life around relationship. I get the impression that this is a place where I can speak. The people in this church have found themselves removed from mainstream churches, the doors have closed on them, because of a belief in inclusivity.

I knew I wanted inclusivity, that inclusivity was called for, but it was only at this conference that I really understood why, and what it meant to me, on a deep, unknown level. I realised how deeply engrained and normalised the lack of inclusion was. It went unquestioned, layer upon layer of it. Hearing the shared stories of the priests talking about the inclusively of their sacred practices broke my heart. My heart felt for all the times “normal” Christian practices have excluded people, and thus excluded Christ.

The theme of the Synod seemed educational. Practices were shared, and so was theology. It was good to learn about the Theology of Blessing (Matthew Fox), and Theology of Accompaniment (Elizabeth Johnson) from several of the speakers, because these were concepts that seemed to fit the direction I had been going in in my own mind, having been on a journey into Christianity over the past 10 years or so, and having struggled to “find love in the church.” I put that phrase in quotes, because it is an expression that I have heard many, many times, from many, many people, and it feels true. However, it is a difficult phrase to use, because the churches will tell us, “we do love you, can’t you see?” Love is present, but inclusivity isn’t. For the excluded person, it can feel like being gaslighted at the same time as feeling desperately sorry for the inability we have to feel the love… which is clearly so painful for the person who feels they are doing the loving. It’s a painful situation.

The Beatles song, “She’s Leaving Home” seems to sum up the scenario well. The parents of the girl who leaves home say, “We gave her most of our lives… Sacrificed most of our lives… We never thought of ourselves… Never a thought for ourselves… We struggled hard all our lives to get by… We gave her everything money could buy… Why would she treat us so thoughtlessly…? How could she do this to me?” This attitude which is completely at odds with love as we know it, and which steps in the path of and prevents relationship, is, even then, loving in its own way.

The pain of being inside a family like this, inside a church like this, is tremendous: for everyone. And yet, the tragedy of this disfunction can be laid aside in a moment, when we (the adults, the leaders) chose to follow a path of inclusion; when we chose to privilege relationship. Love emerges — true love. Suddenly, we’re in heaven. There are arguments, there are disagreements, there are painful revelations that are hard to live with, that we have to wrap our heads around, things we learn that entail us to take time and space to process, there is pain… But what else can we do? It is relationship, it is truth, it is where we called to be by our Lord Jesus Christ. It is heaven, in spite of all the difficulties. There is no heaven outside of relationship. Duty is a huge factor in this. It is for our hearts, in prayerful communion with God, to discern which relationships we work on, and how, and which duties we will need to perform, to enable the relationships in our life to continue in a healthy manner, to whom we will surrender our hearts, where is the life?

I studied Christian Spiritual Direction for four years before finding this Church, a two year course from a Protestant perspective, and a two year course from a Roman Catholic perspective. I worked really hard to find a place in the conventional church, of whatever denomination. I followed my heart, I followed where I felt I was called to by God. I saw the “love” in the conventional churches, and I tried to honour it, to feel it, to make the best of it, to find my place in it even with the poverty of relationship I found there, the failure to actually “include” me. and I did this by observing and listening, really hard, and feeling into what I heard and saw with my whole heart, open and vulnerable. It was a journey back into my past, into my own family with its seemingly hard and cruel Roman Catholic influences, hoping to be received this time… if I tried harder, if I practiced self-overcoming, if I approached the situation with emotional maturity, if I took what was offered, stopped judging, and laid aside my own needs…. I ended up asking the question, on Google, “why are Catholics such horrible people?” I couldn’t fathom it. Why was I getting so hurt again and again by these Christians? And I thought, it’s no wonder that most people are sensible enough to steer well clear. I found out, in the end, that there was never anything wrong with me in the first place; there was nothing wrong with me or my approach to other people. I was rejected again, and again… and I shouldn’t ever have been rejected. There was something wrong with the way that I was received — half-heartedly, and with no real interest in me, the person, “loved” though I was. And that is the problem we all face in this world, we are all badly received, and there is nothing wrong with any one of us.

We need to love, receive, and accept each other on a deep level, and churches need to teach this, not add to the weight of the problem.

Now, I’m ready to let it go and move on. The release happened at the conference. I came away angry at everything we have had put up with in the church over so many years, privileged and not-privileged alike.

At one session, the priests in the OCCA Synod shared stories of their practices of welcoming the community into the holy places to watch when the Eucharist was prepared for Mass. A story was shared about a little girl who always came forward, and was transfixed by the ceremony. I started crying, because I was feeling indistinct thoughts like “how many times might I have been that girl, and, knowing it ‘wasn’t allowed’, not even think of coming forward?” My heart resonated with that little girl, who was made welcome and not turned away. It struck me how normal the words “Unwelcome. Not allowed. No.” were to me. They were in my bones. The lack of welcome is pervasive in the church, it is a church controlled by officious rules and regulations which trammel human beings, trammel love, trammel emergent freedom, creativity, and Christ. When that little girl is welcomed, Christ himself is welcomed. When she is turned away, Christ is turned away (Matthew 25:31-45).

Another story I came away with was of a woman who had, after many years of being uncertain if her vocation was to priesthood, finally decided, in her hospice bed, when she was in the final stages of terminal cancer, that she wanted to be a priest. Her church ordained her that very day. The next day, she died of cancer.

The tears that come each and every time when I think of these stories, a month later, are for the welcome these women received, and how very unwelcome we have been — Ihave been — until now, and how readily I have put up with it, and so have many like me — the normality of it, so that “no” goes unquestioned, unnoticed, unspoken. Until I saw a better way, I didn’t even have a conception of it.

These are stories of women and girls, but exclusion is poison that spreads widely, and impacts us all. We must all live within this officiousness, if we are to exclude people, and behaviours.

I came out of the Synod resolute in my knowledge that inclusion was where we had to be, honouring every victim, honouring every child, holding sacred the cherished feelings of others, being awake to the desires and life of others: listening, accompanying, learning from, hearing from God through our companions and community, walking past no-one, leaving no-one behind. I want to hear and speak the word “Yes!” Creating a space and community where no parts of ourselves have to be crushed down in order for us to be welcomed in. No lies necessary. No sacrifices necessary. Living together, teaching each other how to love, and seeing where that goes, creating space for God to work in, noticing movements of the Holy Spirit, trusting in God that we can manage together, in Reality, and that Jesus shows us the way, and we know it in our hearts, as Jesus told us that we did. The way to heaven is within us, loving one another, following our love for Jesus.

God made us that way, and it’s going to be ok. We don’t need a huge officious rule book that excludes and controls people. Yes, we struggle to include, but it widens and softens our hearts to include, and it is a move in the right direction, taking us directly into heaven. That is testimony from my own experience.

I’m currently struggling with how I tell my Roman Catholic priest that I am going to leave (have left) the RC church. I thought it would be ok to carry on with my duties, and that I was doing some good there — I am the Safeguarding Rep, and a Synod Facilitatory for the RC church global synod (meeting in 2023), and a school governor for the local Catholic primary school. These are responsibilities that mean a lot to me, and I don’t want to leave. I love the community. But I have realised I have no choice.

At the Synod, I felt how the conventional churches have their pride, and how this pride excludes those they think are laughable and pitiable. I’ve seen Robert Barron laughing at a female priest and bishop, in one of his videos. He, basically, ridicules her (“Bishop Barron on The Limits of Tolerance”, June 6th 2013). These big men of the church can afford to laugh at pretenders attempting to have a voice. As I sat in the Synod, I felt that, for the conventional church, the OCCA is ridiculous, at best. Deluded people dressing up in priest costumes and moving about mimicking the “real” priests. Well, good. Let it flourish and pull down their pride, what room did Jesus have for pride that excludes others?

Bishop Barron’s video specifically calls out the following of tolerance and inclusion and says it is not always loving. In theory, maybe, but what about in practice? I think the opposite to Bishop Barron, that God only works in us, and in our relationships with others, when we create a space which is inclusive and tolerant. Otherwise, we head into dangerous territory where we, and those others in our bubble, become the arbiters for truth. It fires up our pride, and there is no room for God.

I saw a taste of this pride in the OCCA, too. We have all come from conventional traditions, after all. There will be residual practices… A pride in priesthood could still create hierarchies. For instance, the group photos that were taken only included the priests and seminarians in attendance. I sat waiting for the whole group to be called up, including me and my son, but there wasn’t a call for this photo! (There were perhaps 5 “lay people” present at the Synod, out of about 25.) So I think this could indicate a need to be more inclusive of non-priests. For myself, I’m not keen on hierarchies. Hierarchies build pride and false divisions. The word “laity” feels like it is describing something “other” to me. We are all priests, through our baptism. We all are blessed with callings and vocations. We can all hear equally from God, baptised or not.

At the same time, I can see a need for a robust body of ordained priests in these early days of the church. It’s pragmatic to give leaders the support and rootedness they need to hold together communities, outside of the fixed boundaries of the conventional churches.

From the perspective of a women, maybe we are less inclined towards leadership roles and status, or are tending that way after generations upon generations of spiritual (etc!) subjugation. We are less likely to step forward and be authoritative, more likely to take the caring and quiet role. I think this needs to be taken into account, and we need to look at more feminine ways of leadership, to allow these to emerge and grow, with equal validity and respect as any other role. How do women become priests, given the freedom and opportunity to do so, in their own way? How would we do things, if we hadn’t been living in this patriarchal system? How would Christ have us do things? What is a priest, to Christ? I’m happy to throw out everything of the last two thousand years, because we will still have Christ if we do so. The attitude and philosophy of inclusion necessitates this clearing of the decks as new perspectives emerge, perspectives that challenge us or delight us. Who are we human beings when we start from the heart and truly become the good neighbour?

Of course, we can’t throw everything out and start over afresh! That is a joy, in some ways, because we get to transform what was, and, painful though it is and has been, it feels so good to find a way to somewhere better!

Written by: Ruthie Baigent 22 Aug 2022.
This article was originally published in the Synergy Journal 33 Oct 2022