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Published: August 21, 2008

“A good way to scare and control people”

Nun who says Church’s teachings on sexual morality result of “patriarchal dominance in the hierarchy” leads retreat in Danville

San Damiano Retreat center in Danville -- 42 miles east of San Francisco -- hosted a retreat this month with a Franciscan sister who, with her priest team-teacher, has addressed numerous Catholic audiences on the subject of sex. Sr. Fran Ferder led a women’s retreat, “Awaken to the Sacred,” at the center Aug. 8-10, according to the “Administrative Weekly,” an official communication of the Oakland diocese.

Ferder is a frequent presenter at conferences held by Call to Action, a group that dissents from Church teachings on women’s ordination, contraception, homosexuality, and other matters. With Fr. John Heagle, a priest for the Diocese of La Crosse, Wisconsin, she co-directs Therapy and Renewal Associates in Seattle.

In an interview on The Social Edge.com, Heagle said that his and Sister Fran's hope "is that the institutional Church will only come to this deeper and richer understanding of human sexuality if it listens to the love stories of all the people... to people for whom loving is their life." The Church, he said, should hear the “voices of married persons, single people, or the gay and lesbian community as well. We not only need to expand our vision of sexuality, but we also need to expand the inclusivity with which we listen to their stories."

Ferder deplores the “dualism” of Catholic sexual teaching. Dualism, that has been present in Christianity for centuries, Ferder said in a 2003 interview with U.S. Catholic, and which, she said, “divides body from soul.” Though Christianity itself is “incarnational, embodied, fleshed,” many Christians, she said, “labor under messages that sexual mistakes, even small ones, are about the most offensive thing that one can engage in relationship to God.”

Church leaders, she said, reinforce this message. “My personal belief is that these negative messages have to do with control and maintaining power,” she said. “The patriarchal dominance in the hierarchy is incredibly strong, and sexual mandates are a good way to scare and control people.”

Ferder said that the book she authored with Heagle, Tender Fires: The Spiritual Promise of Sexuality, was written in part “for the many people who have moved beyond the belief that the hierarchy has the last word on what's right and wrong in sexuality.” Among the messages the book conveys, she said, is that “sexuality and spirituality really belong together… Sexuality is energy for relationships.”

Sex is “bigger” than genital behavior, Ferder said, who noted that “children need to learn age-appropriate sexual anatomy and physiology and prevention, but I'd like to see it more in the context of relationships.” The Church, she said, has to give more positive messages of sexuality. “We need to redesign, rearticulate the whole theology of body touch, body exploration,” she said. “Ordinary genital self-touch can be very important and can help children come to reverence their bodies, to know them.”

Speaking of chastity, Ferder said, it is “loving reverence in relationships -- how we stand before people, and ourselves.

“The Catechism has a great definition of chastity: a school of the gift of the self. It says chastity means the successful integration of sexuality within the person. And that's the inner unity of people in their bodily and spiritual being. It says some good things,” said Ferder.

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