Jubilee resonates global justice for 3,500 in Milwaukee

From the opening water ritual and the song, "Healing River," 3,500 Call To Action faithful in Milwaukee Nov. 5 - 7 caught the spirit of the weekend. Representatives from all over the U.S., and international guests from six continents, brought vials of water from their locales and mingled them in a crystal bowl to form a river "for healing the wounds of injustice which have left us divided from one another." Feminist theologian Sr. Mary John Mananzan from the Philippines, Muslim theologian Farid Esack from South Africa, journalist Hubert Feichtlbauer who heads We Are Church in Austria - they brought waters from across the world, and then, through the weekend, they told their stories. As the conference theme announced, Jubilee is about global justice and reconciliation. The sense of global solidarity climaxed Sunday morning, when Bishop Samuel Ruiz of Chiapas, Mexico celebrated his 75th birthday by telling CTA the central story of his 40 years as pastor: how he discovered the presence of God in the cultures of the Mayan Indian people.

Gramick, Kane bring blessing
Before being sprinkled on all participants, the healing waters were blessed Friday evening by two icons of faithfulness and reconciliation in our Church: Sisters Jeannine Gramick and Theresa Kane. Each spoke briefly - Gramick about the recent Vatican ban of her ministry among gays and lesbians after a tortuous 12 year investigation, and Kane after receiving CTA's leadership award on the 20th anniversary of her historic plea to Pope John Paul II in Washington, D.C. to open all the Church's ministries to women. But both spoke in other sessions through the weekend, and had visible roles at Sunday Eucharist, where Gramick preached the homily. Their presence flavored the entire conference.

Both Gramick and Kane epitomize church women who steadfastly continue to speak the truth in love, and refuse to demonize the hierarchy even in the face of mistreatment. Gramick is forthrightly contesting the injustice of the Vatican ban on her ministry and actively arguing for its reversal (see page 2), but she chose Friday evening to recount the story of a chance meeting with the Vatican's Cardinal Ratzinger last year on an airplane. Vatican rules for years had denied her a chance to meet with the prelate or his doctrinal commission face to face. She told how he kept saying it was "providential" that they had run into each other. She described their long conversation as warm and friendly, deliberately putting a human face on her opponent even though his later verdict was extraordinarily harsh.

CTA's next generation
Theresa Kane is part of CTA's gray-haired "wisdom generation," also represented at the conference by Bishop Ray Lucker of New Ulm, Minn., and most of all by Patty Crowley, the inspiration at age 86 for CTA's Crowley Legacy Fund. But CTA's Next Generation was more in evidence this year than ever: over 400 conferees were 42 and under - including many college students, and parents with small children. Kane was part of a "Wisdom Exchange" with this generation (page 5).

Harris touches hearts
Before fanning out to a smorgasbord of focus sessions on many issues of jubilee justice, from women's Eucharist in the Church to global debt, prison reform and the death penalty in society, conferees were treated to a moving meditation on jubilee spirituality by keynote speaker Maria Harris. In a soft-spoken but arresting style, she said justice begins with appreciating the gifts of creation (she led the assembly in a Navajo song about finding beauty all around), then recognizing their limits - since so much in the status quo is unfair, and finally uttering a loud "no" and entering what Matthew Fox calls "a structured struggle to restore the gifts of the earth." Quoting Abraham Joshua Heschel, she said justice arises "from the pathos of God grieving over the human condition."

What does it mean to do justice? Harris used Walter Brueggemann's phrase, "You find out what belongs to whom, and give it back! " Ecological devastation demands that we give back to the earth what was despoiled. Economic inequities require redistributing capital: "not only money, but the capital of education, literacy, health care, - the capital of privilege." She reminded CTAers of the worldwide movement of Jubilee 2000, currently making some headway in getting the debts of impoverished nations forgiven for the new millennium.

Harris closed, as she began, with a quiet but disquieting benediction:

May you never be at peace. May you never be reconciled to life or to death. May your path be unending.