Berkley Center

NETWORK executive director Sister Simone Campbell discusses how the pursuit of social justice often inspires women to pursue leadership, the Vatican's investigation of women religious in the United States, and the need for greater dialogue on the role of women in the Church. She also reflects on the ways women religious have lived out the process of renewal inspired by Vatican II.

In your memoir, you paint this picture of yourself as a girl at your Catholic school organizing kids for various causes, lobbying for a playground, and learning that you liked public speaking. Did you grow up thinking that you could be both a woman in the church and a leader? Is that something that you aspired to?   

I never thought I couldn't be a leader. But you have to know that my sister and I, we played Mass when we were kids, and I got to be the priest because I could reach the top of the dresser. It never dawned on me that girls couldn't be priests. With the sisters and women we had teaching us, everyone got a chance to be a leader. It wasn't like I said, ‘ooh I want to be a leader in the church.’ For me, it was more, ‘I want to take care of problems.’   

There's a pretty prominent theme in your book, that the embrace of social justice by many religious women, particularly those within the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), is at odds with a politically conservative movement inside the Catholic Church. Do you believe that the papacy of Pope Francis is changing that dynamic at all?

Oh my God, yes. Did you see the report that came out [about the Vatican’s investigation into the ‘quality of life’ of America’s sisters and nuns]?  

What was your take on the findings of the Vatican's investigation?  

It was hugely different from the censure that came out in 2012. Actually that's directly related to Pope Francis, that the findings or the recommendations were all about deepening our journey and spirituality and continuing to be Gospel-centered and affirming our work in social justice over and over.  

I think it's the first Vatican document that says that socially-responsible investing as part of our ministry is a good thing, that our work for social justice is really good, and that religious women in the United State understand well the call of Pope Francis. That was huge.  

It's juxtaposed to a hierarchy that had been so focused on the hot button culture wars. I really think the culture wars are about two things. One is that there are frightened leaders who don’t know what spiritual leadership is, so they think, ‘If we just enforce the rules really hard then that's spiritual leadership’—and do not have a clue about listening hard. The second piece is about being strategically seduced by the Republican Party to value the trappings of association with power, to get woven into their web and not see anything else.  

What's your take on Pope Francis’ call for a greater role of women inside the Catholic church; he even explicitly has talked about decision-making positions. What do you hope that that means?  

It's like the Vatican’s report on religious women said: they're inviting greater dialogue. My question is: Do they know what dialogue is? Because we have worked for 50 years in our religious communities developing the capacity to dialogue. It is hard, challenging work. It requires being peers at the table, shared power, shared responsibility, and shared authority. It requires deep, prayerful listening to the Spirit and to each other. It requires curiosity about what another's view is, which then a corollary of that is setting aside your certitude to be able to entertain something new. Those are practices of dialogue that we've worked on in religious communities for a very long period of time. Women coming to the table bring that capacity.  

When I started practicing law, it was when there were few women in the practice, and some of the early women were “more like the guys than the guys.” They were the most litigious people you could imagine, the most obnoxious, because they felt like they had to act according to a “male model” in order to be successful. But what I learned quickly was that I was best if I used my gifts and talents. That changed the shape of the practice of the law.

In dialogue, we need the variety of gifts and talents to come together to seek a shared truth. I think that probably would be the most important thing that could happen within the church, so I wonder, do they use dialogue as a euphemism to listen to us, or do they really mean to have dialogue?  

It seems like we're finally talking about what Vatican II really meant as a global church, and yet in your book you write that the women religious seemed to be on the cutting edge of Vatican II during your formation. Why do you think it is that women have been on the cutting edge of the ideas that Vatican II brought forth, and what do you think the church—which seems receptive in a new way, particularly to Pope Francis—can learn from these ideas?  

One is: As Catholic sisters, at least in the United States, we take our responsibilities seriously. And we were told by the church to renew, return to our roots, so we took it extremely seriously and have worked for 50 years at doing that. My whole religious life has been about renewal. We thought it was for us, for our communities, but I think what we're discovering is we [women religious] were like a laboratory for learning that stuff, and now we have a responsibility to share it with the broader church. We were like this opportunity for the spirit to have—I don't know if I can call us a petri dish, but you know, a place to grow the basics, figure out what works, what doesn't work, how do we move forward and how do we respect diversity, how do we come to consensus, how do we engage in prayerful dialogue, what's the contemplative life in the twenty-first century? All of those things have been at the heart of who we are, and now it turns out that our world is hungry for that. So the renewal that we thought was about us, I really think is about now trying to share our learnings, share the journey with the broader church.  

What do you say to women who don't feel that the Catholic Church is welcoming to them?  

They're probably right. I mean really, seriously. But the thing is, who is the church? Is it our leadership, or is it us? I think for me faith is so much deeper than institutional politics, and I need community to be nourished in this journey. Wherever that community is, there's church. It's a freedom to know that the Spirit works in all of us. So find community, find where you're nourished, and there is your church. But stay faithful to it. It requires all of us to be invested and to work at it.  

How would you describe your leadership style?  

I don't necessarily think of myself as a leader. I mean clearly I am, it's pretty amazing. It's pretty humbling actually. But I think for me it's grounded in listening, and then being willing to speak of what I hear. It's listening in the contemplative sense of listening quietly in meditation, being open to the deeper story. It's listening to people, opening my heart to receive folks. I talk often about letting your heart be broken open. I think for me when my heart is broken open that I cannot stay passive. Letting myself be touched by others. Then being willing to touch others in the process.