_____Last Word___________________________________________________________________
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 You’re Not Included
If our goal is to avoid alienating the members of our parish congregations,
“gender-specific” language is the least of our problems.

By Diogenes

Last Sunday my pastor, Father Zeitgeist, decided that he could improve upon the Gospel once again. The reading (it was the Second Sunday of Advent) was from Matthew 3: 1-12: the introduction of St. John the Baptist.

“This was the person the prophet Isaiah spoke of when he said, ‘A voice cries out in the wilderness,’” Father Zeitgeist read. The actual text, from which the pastor was supposedly reading, speaks of “the man the prophet Isaiah spoke of.” And unless Biblical scholars have come up with a radical new discovery which has not yet been communicated to me, I think that I am safe in saying that St. John the Baptist was, in fact, a man, so it should be safe to identify him as such. But Father Zeitgeist is a very careful man, and he wants to be sure that he never offends anyone.

After the reading of the Gospel, of course, it was time for the homily. So our pastor left the lectern, strode out into the middle of the congregation (so that I, sitting in the front, had to crane my neck to see him), shot his cuffs, adjusted his lapel microphone, and began:

When all of us were learning about the Catholic faith, back in the days before Vatican II, when the nuns in all our parish schools made us memorize the Baltimore Catechism . . . .

Now would you mind if we froze the action right there, in mid-sentence, and analyzed the message that my pastor was sending to his flock?

Out of the loop
Father Zeitgeist is a stickler for “inclusive language.” He tells me that we should always avoid the use of male pronouns—even when they appear in liturgical translations approved by the universal Church—because some women might feel that such language “excludes” them, and take offense. I think I know what he means. If there is a woman in my parish who thinks that she is St. John the Baptist, I definitely don’t want to offend her—especially if she is armed.

But aside from that one rather intense young woman who probably does eat locusts and honey, and most assuredly does consider herself a prophet, was there anyone else in the congregation—on that particular day, in my particular parish—who might have taken offense if St. John the Baptist had been identified as a man? I wonder.

Now look again at the first words of Father Zeitgeist’s sermon, and ask how many members of the congregation might have felt that they were being “excluded” by his remarks:

• The Second Vatican Council opened in October 1962 and ended in December 1965. Even if we take the latter date to define the limit of “the days before Vatican II,” and work on the generous assumption that a child can begin learning about his (or her?) faith at the age of 4, the first sentence of my pastor’s homily had immediately “excluded” everyone under the age of 40. But there is more.
• Even among those cradle Catholics who do remember “the days before Vatican II,” not everyone attended a Catholic school. Some devout Catholics could not afford to send their children to parochial schools. Were those public-school Catholics treated like second-class citizens? I don’t know, but I do know that they were “excluded” from my pastor’s remarks.
• Imagine—just imagine—that there were some converts in the congregation at my parish church last Sunday. Suppose there were some members of the parish who were above the age of 40, but had not studied the Catholic faith before Vatican II. They, too, were “excluded.”
• Finally, and perhaps most importantly, suppose that there were some people in the congregation who were not yet Catholics: some visitors on a spiritual quest, some people who, guided by the Holy Spirit, had dropped into my parish church to see what Catholicism had to offer them. With the very first sentence of his homily, Father Zeitgeist had subtly let them know that he would have nothing to say to them.

Keeping score
If Father Zeitgeist had identified St. John the Baptist as a male, and made it clear that the prophet Isaiah had predicted the coming of this man, how many members of my parish would have felt themselves excluded by his use of masculine pronouns: one? two? But after the first sentence of his sermon, how many listeners felt themselves excluded from his subsequent remarks?

Behind the introductory words of my pastor’s sermon, there is an implicit model of the Catholic Church. It is a model of a community that is both aged and aging, with little interest in young people. It is a model that excludes non-Catholics, rather than beckoning them to join us. It is a model that emphasizes the past rather than the future, and identifies the Church as a formal structure rather than a sacramental union. Dare I say it? It is a “pre-conciliar” model.

Most of the world’s people are under the age of 40, and most are not Catholics. Do we have anything to say to them?

Back to Catholic World Report January 2002 Table of Contents