80: Do you want to change the Church or do you want to change the world?

Episode 80 Carol shares how she grew up in a home where concern for social justice was part of being a Catholic. As a young woman she continued learning to view the world ‘through the lens of the Gospel.’ Working for small organisations, listening to the voices of vulnerable women – and through her own difficult experiences - Carol explains how she became alert to how women had been treated in the Church: ‘It's both an emotional thing of exclusion, but it's also a justice issue.’ Find out how Carol answers the question in the episode title.

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Dorothy Day

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Transcript

You're listening to All Kinds of Catholic with me, Theresa Alessandro. My conversations with different Catholics will give you glimpses into some of ways we're living our faith today. Pope Francis used the image of a caravan for our travelling together on a sometimes chaotic journey.  And Pope Leo, quoting St Augustine, reminds us, Let us live well and the times will be good. We are the times. I hope you'll feel encouraged and affirmed and maybe challenged now and then.  I am too in these conversations. And if you're enjoying them, it helps if you rate and review on the platform where you're listening.  Thank you.  

Again, thank you to everyone who's subscribed to receive our newsletter on the Substack site. If you'd like to subscribe for free, please go to allkindsofcatholic.substack.com Subscribe there and you'll get a newsletter from me from time to time.  The podcast episodes will come straight into your inbox and we'll be a bit more connected. Remember that our in-person event is coming up on the 21st of March and I'll be giving more information about that in the newsletter on Substack. So do go there and take a moment to subscribe if you'd like to be in touch. The web address is in the episode notes too.  So some listeners might be glad to know in advance that we are briefly talking about baby loss in today's conversation. Let's get on with that conversation now. Thanks for joining today listeners. I'm talking to Carol today, who's up in the Leeds Diocese and let's see where this conversation takes us. Hello Carol.

Hi, Theresa. 

So I wonder if we might start at the beginning, Carol. I think I know that you were a cradle Catholic or that you are a cradle Catholic. Would that be right?

Yes, I was brought up very much in a Catholic  ghetto, really. Both my parents were Catholics, very committed. And my father was also a Catholic teacher. So that meant that he was very involved in Catholic life in the city. I was born in Newcastle. Went to a Catholic grammar school, Sacred Heart, in Fenham, great education. Didn't really meet anyone who wasn't a Catholic in a kind of real social setting or any other kind of setting until I went to university. I didn't know any difference really. My parents, they were very much embracing Vatican II. It wasn't a particularly devotional experience at home. And also it was really important to my father. He was quite political. He was a trade unionist.  So that idea of Catholic upbringing which also goes along with social justice, it was very much in my upbringing really. 

That's interesting because I know that social justice is something that has, well, it looks to me like it has been really important for your whole life to you. And I do find some guests, it is a really big motivator of their faith. Whereas other guests, like you say, something has been more devotional in their childhood and that's been something they've taken forward. But for you, you've taken that social justice motivation. I don't know quite how to say it, that social justice is part of your faith and that's something that you've taken forward in your life. Would that be right? 

Yes, I think so. Fairness and equality. I remember being not very old, asking my father why we had to pay tax. I might have been about nine or 10. And him very clearly saying, well, we pay tax so that we can look after everybody in society, including those who are more vulnerable who can't look after themselves. And so that was really from being very small. It was there. I just took it for granted really. You cared about people. He was very committed in terms of education to children who hadn't succeeded academically. That became part of my DNA. So he really championed those children who perhaps missed out on grammar school.  So when I look back, that formed me from a very early age. The next big influence for me, which I think set the ground for everything that followed, was being involved in Young Christian Students, both at the Sacred Heart Grammar School and at St Cuthbert's Grammar School, which was the boys' grammar school. Obviously an incentive to get involved, because as a teenager, it was a way to meet boys. But also we had a very influential chaplain. The ethos of the Young Christian Students, I'm sure many people know very similar to the Young Christian Worker, YCW, was that you very much looked at your own situation through the lens of the Gospel and then took your responsibilities. What was the Gospel telling you to do about what you were seeing in your own situation? So the old See Judge Act. That experience was massively influential. And I suppose the other good thing about Young Christian Students, they developed young people's leadership. So you were given a lot of responsibility. So it was really very important in developing who I was. And because it was rooted in the gospel, all around who was Jesus. Jesus was this amazing man who put the poor and the disadvantaged first. Where would you find Jesus? Well, you would find Jesus with the sinners. You would find Jesus with the poor. He wasn't with religious institutions. He wasn't with the Pharisees and the scribes and the Levites. He was with the fishermen. He was with the villagers. So at 16, 17 years old, I had already a very strong idea of what putting my faith into practice meant. 

That's amazing to hear about, Carol. I can really hear experiences, skills, tools that you were given at such a young age, as you say, rooted in the gospel that have been able to serve you through your life. That's fantastic, isn't it? Was there a moment where suddenly all of this fantastic stuff seemed not to quite be connecting with the way life was working out or what you saw in the world outside the Catholic school and the parish and your family? 

I think I was very fortunate really that I just had lots of positive experiences even moving on to university. I went to Manchester University and remember that time in the church in the 60s and the 70s and even going on into the 80s. It was a time of change, of asking lay people to take responsibility. It felt very exciting and motivating, especially comparing it with perhaps what had gone in the past. I remember when Humana Vitae came out, which was the Pope's encyclical about artificial contraception. And I do remember the curate where we went to church, who was a friend of my parents, telling us how disappointed he was about the results. I might have been 13 or it might have been 12. Now looking back, I appreciate what that was all about. That was probably my first awakening of perhaps the Church not necessarily listening to those who have the knowledge and experience because what we know now is that it was a big shock. There'd been a lot of consultation. In fact, the Vatican had listened to a lot of married people, a lot of experts, and then basically said, Oh yeah, but we know best. So I suppose that was probably my first experience of understanding that the institutional Church maybe wasn't very good at listening. Even in those halcyon days of the Vatican II, still my experiences were very positive. There was a Catholic chaplaincy which I got very involved in.  The chaplains were Jesuits. So again, there was an inquiring, a curiosity, but also there was a very strong political strand. And that's when I got involved with other Christians and also other people who were working on social justice. So that's when my world expanded, I think, a little bit. Younger people tell us that the 70s were a terrible time, but of course we didn't know any better. There were probably lots of things we could have done better and been more inclusive and so on. We were very focused on campaigning around South Africa. That was the big social justice issue for us.

Just listening to you, Carol, that's made me think actually, I just realised that - maybe I knew this already in a different way - but it just became very clear to me that of course, when social justice is a big motivator for you and campaigning on particular social justice issues is something that you get involved in as a Catholic, as a Christian. Of course, it brings you into a kind of partnership with other people who are interested in those issues, whether they're Christians or not. It's very unifying, isn't It helps us to work together with people from all kinds of backgrounds in a way that if what's driving your faith is very devotional, it doesn't connect you with people outside of the church in the same way. I think that's quite interesting, actually, hearing you talk.

I think that's really interesting and I think that's been as I've grown and developed. Although I started my working life as a teacher, I started initially in Catholic schools, although I went on to work in other schools as well. I didn't stay in teaching. I think that's a real - what's the word? -  I think it's a humbling experience because I think there's a danger when your motivation is faith-based that you  can get a little bit arrogant and then you meet other people who have a different motivation - their motivation is more to do with human dignity and equality, and they're just as committed and just as concerned as you are. There's a danger, isn't there? I think, not always, that's not fair to say. For Catholics, we talk about, you know, the one true church and this is the path.  And even for Christians, in St John, the way to salvation is through Jesus. And we can become very excluding. You meet all sorts of amazing people with an incredible commitment. Some of the people I met when I was at university, a commitment to simple life, to community life. People, again, in the 70s, people think eco stuff... In the 70s, there was a real concern for the environment. There were some very seminal reports produced, the Brandt Report, the Blueprint for Survival. A lot of discussion about living sustainably. And I met some people who were really trying to do that from a social justice point of view. And that's continued throughout my life. Working now, you know, with some amazing people. I think it also makes you think, you make alliances with people, even though you might not agree with their politics and you might have some differences with them, but you try and find the common point where you can work for something. So, for example, because it's such a current situation, the situation in Gaza for the Palestinians, now it's a very, very broad coalition of people who are working on that.  And I might not agree with all the things that they believe in, but we have enough of a core commitment to getting justice for Palestinians. And I think that just gives you a really broader outlook about life, really. Apart from when I was a Catholic teacher, I've never worked for the Church either. I've always worked in secular organisations, small voluntary organisations, usually with people whose values and vision are around the excluded, the vulnerable, the disadvantaged, and are as equally committed. I suppose you could say that's the Holy Spirit. They may not name it, and they may not want to name it, but to me it really seems like a sign of the Spirit.

I'm with you on that, Carol. Absolutely. And I also think there's something about when you're talking about finding common ground with people and making alliances and finding ways to work together, I think there's a great potential for growth there in our faith as individual Catholics. Where if you surround yourselves with people who think the same as you and who are kind of easy to be around because you're all on the same page, actually you don't get that growth in the same way, do you? I think those challenges and having to think about better ways to say things, getting right down to the root of why you want to do this and what you really think about this so that you can share that with others. I think that really helps us to grow in our faith. 

I think that's right. I think that's really interesting because I think we have to find a language that we can share and that language, you know, you don't want to put people off by appearing to be overly pious. Also respect the fact that if people can't see a way to believing in a creator of some kind, let's respect that. They will have thought about it. They're not expressing that view lightly. And so that respect for diversity, because as time goes on, you're then working with other faiths as well. In one of my jobs, I worked a lot with Muslim women and Hindu women, you know, understanding their perspective and also finding the common values. I haven't worked so much with Jewish communities recently, but obviously the three Abrahamic faiths, we have so much in common. 

Okay, so we've skirted around wobbles then. It sounds like you've had this amazing faith journey, Carol, where you have found people to work together with and grown and it's all been great, but I'm guessing there must have been a wobble somewhere along the way, right? What are the things that are trickier? 

Well, there are a couple of wobbles or I would say I'm very lucky, I think, on one level in that I've never doubted, so I've never felt that I didn't believe in God. So I've never had that experience. But what I've had, I think, is very arid periods, times when God felt very far away, and that you just had to sort of somehow cling in there and hope that somehow some light would break through. That's one kind of wobble. It's a long time ago now and so I don't really mind talking about it. My second pregnancy was a stillbirth and then my fourth pregnancy was a late miscarriage. I've got two grown-up children. That was very, very difficult. I was in my twenties and nothing really hard had happened to me in my life, really. And I can remember that being a really difficult time for faith. It wasn't really about feeling angry with God. But it did feel, I don't think at that time I could pray or - I went to church, but it just went over my head really. And I think that's, you know, for many people that's how they experience grief and bereavement and loss, you know.  And I always say to people, anything like that, obviously I wouldn't wish that on anybody in the world. You don't want people to have those kinds of experiences. But obviously you're not the same person after it happens because you carry those things with you. But obviously I think it helped me in so many ways, just to mature and grow. As I say, I'd never had anything difficult happen to me. It just helped me to develop and mature. I was 26 when I had the stillbirth. Now, psychologically, there's lots of discussion about you're not really emotionally mature, even in your 20s, which I would have been shocked to think then. But now, they're part of who I am and they were really important. So that's one kind of wobble. The other kind of wobble, and it's not really a wobble but it's more a developing understanding of my faith, is how I view women's issues. I just took it for granted. I went to a really good girls grammar school where they just assumed that girls would do well. You would do well, you would go on to work, you would have choices.  I was very traditional in my views about women's right to choose, very traditional in Catholic teaching. And I've developed very much over the years around that, take much more of a position, again, through the eyes of vulnerable women, women's experience. And I think that's what's really important to me and any of the social justice things that I'm involved in. And it's about listening and it's about understanding what people's experience is and not judging. A kind of really strong experience that I remember was a big conference to celebrate 100 years of the publication of Rerum Novarum. Finding myself so angry with the panel when they were talking about access to abortion and terminations. And as far as I could remember, it was a male panel. David Alton was on it, a great opposition to the UK Abortion Act. I just felt, How dare you? How dare you? You know nothing. About which time I was working for a women's organisation. You know nothing about the really difficult choices that women have to make. You know nothing about their vulnerability. Making assumptions about, using things like women ‘killing babies’, you know, it just - It wasn’t about my faith in one sense, because I feel very able to read about it and to read women feminist theologians who would talk about how we can look at that through a different experience. But it began a journey, I think, for me, where I became more alert. It's quite interesting, isn't it? You start to just see things in a different way, to see how the Church had treated women, I think there's been some movement forward. And to see how that was translated into so many different expressions. My commitment was still to social justice, so it was about the Global South, women's experience there, and I had the opportunity to hear so many activists from the Global South through CAFOD when they brought partners over to hear a different experience. I'm not against women priests, not at all. If that were to happen, that would be great. But that wouldn't be the place where I would put my energies because my worry is that I would want the Church to be less clerical. And so I would worry that if we went too fast down that route - . So it's much more about how we can have collaborative ministry and have everyone working together in the Church. Obviously it's a cliche, isn't it? But our faith is a journey and I think at different times different things are more important. I feel really privileged because of that experience of listening to people from the Global South, along with all people we were working together, was an experience of spirituality which was very much focused around expressions of working for justice. Winding back a bit, the National Pastoral Congress was quite a significant event for people of my generation, 1980. I went as a parish delegate, but then I got involved in the Justice and Peace strand and then the Peace strand. An amazing, Passionist priest called Austin Smith was an advisor to us. He was in that strand of religious who felt they would like to live more alongside those who were the most vulnerable and he lived in a community in Toxteth in Liverpool. So great opportunities and I often feel that is a privilege because lots of people in ordinary parishes don't get that chance to hear all those different experiences and speakers. And that's one of things that keeps me involved in local parish life, that if people want to that I should work to give people opportunities. For example, most recently the impact of Laudato Si, that Pope Francis encyclical about the environment. And when you organise things and offer people the opportunity to learn more, they're interested. So that's one the things that drives me. 

Thank you so much, Carol. That's such an iconic kind of faith journey story there. think there's a real connection between what you shared at the beginning of that about losing your children. And thank you for sharing that. It's not easy to talk about, I'm sure even after all these years, but there may be people listening who that's just the right time for them to hear about it from you. But I think there's a connection there between that awful, visceral kind of experience  as a woman of losing a child that, you didn't necessarily link it directly to thinking about women's issues, except that I think there can't help but be some link, can there? For us as women, when we experience these things, I think you mentioned something, you used the words becoming alert to how women are treated in the Church. Lots of women that I've spoken to as guests on the podcast, we've had that experience where we start off thinking that the Church is fantastic and that we're part of the Church just like everybody else. And then suddenly we become alert to the fact that actually, hang on a minute, our experiences aren't necessarily regarded in the same way or noticed in the same way because we aren't given the same opportunities to have our voices heard, I suppose. It's more complicated than that. Yeah. So I think there's lots there that will resonate with people listening. I think it's so hard. I was thinking while you were talking, you know, I understand what you're saying. I think women in the church understand what you're saying about not being listened to. But I think it's really difficult for men to really recognise because that's not their experience. I don't think they become alert to how women's voices aren't out there because there isn't something that triggers that for them in the same way. Sometimes I think the hierarchy of the Church and other parishioners, other laypeople who are men, don't really realise how different it is for us. However much we say it, it doesn't connect for them. The more we can talk about it, I think that's helpful. I don't know quite how to cross over into getting men to really realise what we're saying. 

It's alliances, isn't it as well? And you do find some men who will ally. Yeah, I think that's really interesting as well. I've got this phrase, you know, seeing things through a different lens as well. And I think what's really difficult about this conversation, and it is the thing that now makes me feel very distant from the institutional Church -. I still am involved in my local parish and I'm involved in some projects where I need to engage with the diocese and one of the projects is with older people and the diocese has been very supportive, the bishop has been very supportive of that and I have to acknowledge that, it's really important. Because women read and women are Eucharistic ministers and often there are more women than men involved in running parishes. So therefore, if you say to some men in positions of authority or power, they do find it hard to understand, even down to listening to the gospel and when the language isn't inclusive. Sometimes it's like a stab in the heart. I would say it as strongly as that. You listen to something and you think, well, is this for me? Is this about me? I don't know how you'd explain because it's both an emotional thing of exclusion, but it's also a justice issue. It depends how you see change happening. So little bits. Pope Francis has introduced different people into the Vatican Curia. So inevitably women now are having more influence and that's really important. And there are some really strong-minded women theologians. You can't say there isn't progress, but maybe sometimes it just seems incredibly slow.  I think people are respectful. When I've had to go into meetings where I'm talking with more senior people and so on, people are respectful. It's almost just that they, I don't think they know what they don't know.  And you know, not to generalise, and there are obviously some particularly, you know, ordained people who do understand. And I think one of the difficulties is I would find it easier to have these conversations with some of the older priests than some of the younger ones or some of those who've been recently trained. So it's not always age-related. So yeah, when I think of some of the friends I have who I met when they were in their twenties, you know, newly ordained, it's much easier to have those conversations. A very, very good friend who now sadly has died, he trained some of us around group facilitation and about how to run meetings. All those skills that you also need to make a difference in parishes. One of his questions to us was, You have to decide where to put your energies. Do you want to change the Church or do you want to change the world? And I've always decided I wanted to change the world. For me, putting my energy into trying to change the church, it's almost like trying to change your family. You know, I have a Baptist friend, he used to say, Why do you stay a Catholic? You know, you're so critical of the institutional Church. But somehow the Church is my home, the Eucharist is really important to me, that is really very much part of spirituality. The people, the fellowship, the community is really important. So it's not that I want to walk away.  I just feel that what Jesus was asking us to do was to tell the good news and our mission is out there. And if we spend too much time within our walls, then I don't think that we're following what Jesus wanted us to do. What were we left with after the resurrection? Go out and tell the good news. And what's the good news? The good news is I have come to free prisoners, I've come to make the sick well.  All the things that are in Luke's Gospel. If the synod improves our mission and the synodal approach to things improves our mission to the world, great. But if it's all about how we organise inside, it's not for me. That's to give great respect to the people who put their time into that and also probably do social justice as well. One of my heroes is Dorothy Day and I'm always inspired by Dorothy Day because she actually was a very loyal Catholic. She had quite a traditional spirituality, but she put her focus, if the church told her to stop doing something, she just didn't take any notice actually.  She just carried on fighting for peace, fighting for justice, she's definitely one of my heroes. 

That's fabulous, Carol. You've kind of moved there into what I was hoping to talk about next, which is something about your spirituality. I think as we work to the end of the conversation, I wonder if, you've given us quite a few pointers there as to the things that inform your spirituality, but just thinking about the things that support your faith, are there particular prayers or practices that support your faith these days?

I belong to a couple of groups where we pray together. Outside parish life. It's really important to me to pray and to explore with people with the same vision and values. I'm not really sure that I can articulate it really about the Eucharist, but I suppose as the place where, as a community, we celebrate and remember and express our life so that we can then go out during the rest of the week and live out what we've memorialised through the Eucharist is very important to me. More and more I find creation spirituality is nurturing. By reflecting on our role, identifying prayers that reflect our concern for our world really. How we should be looking after it. I suppose one of the things I do is access different things. So, for example, I'm not very good at doing things regularly, so I find it really helpful - For example, CAFOD will send you an email every day in Advent. Sabeel Kairos, who work in Palestine, put together weekly prayers, which really reflect what's happening in the West Bank and in Gaza based on the contacts that they have. Now I try all sorts of things, Oh yes, I'm definitely going to use this every day and then I’m not very good at doing that and it's the curse of activists, isn't it? You're so busy doing things that you don't leave enough time for that prayer and meditation. And one of the things, it's interesting, this is a little bit new for me because it wouldn't have been my style. I'm involved in a solidarity vigil once a week called Women in Black, for Palestine and to protest against the occupation originally and now for the ceasefire for Gaza. So that's an hour and we stand in silence. And I found myself saying the Rosary and using the Rosary as a kind of mantra to kind of focus, you know, easy to be distracted. I never would have thought of that because it wasn't my particular thing that helped me. But I do find that hour is... I've got a small rosary that I got from Bethlehem and so I just use that. So lots of things really that are helpful. 

Well, thanks ever so much, Carol. I think you've showcased many of the riches of the church there in our conversation today and the things that help you in your spirituality. All the different elements there that have been important to you and are important to you now and also the whole arc of your faith journey has been really interesting to hear about. There's lots there that will resonate with people, that will encourage and affirm people where they are on their journey. So thanks ever so much for giving us some time today.  

It was a pleasure and I always enjoy these conversations because it helps me to reflect and I always learn something new about myself. So thank you for inviting me.

Thanks so much for joining me on All Kinds of Catholic this time.  I hope today's conversation has resonated with you. A new episode is released each Wednesday.  Follow AllKindsOfCatholic on the usual podcast platforms. Rate and review to help others find it. And follow our X/Twitter and Facebook accounts  @kindsofCatholic.  You can comment on episodes and be part of the dialogue there.  You can also text me if you're listening to the podcast on your phone, although I won't be able to reply to those texts. Until the next time.