Thanks to Jim Noonan, who prepared this summary of Joanna Manning's talk at the Corpus  National Capital Region tenth anniversary celebration. 

There has been great leadership in the Church at and since Vatican ll by the Canadian Bishops. As early as the Synod of 1971, Canadian bishops, led by Cardinal Flahiff of Winnepeg, were the first to call for the removal of all barriers to discrimination against women in the Church, and they called for an end to the harassment of priests who exercised their right to marry. "Justice must begin at home," they said. 

In 1989, Bishop Lebel called the feminist movement  he actually used the "F" word   "an advance in civilization," and he urged the Church to be AHEAD of society in removing discrimination against women. The Quebec Bishops' statement on violence against women in 1989 was groundbreaking in its analysis of the systemic causes of violence against women in society which included, in their opinion, the exclusion of women from the priesthood and the general culture of male dominance within the Church. They acknowledged that the sexism modelled in the sanctuary fosters attitudes that lead to women being slapped around at home. 

At the same time, the Archdiocese of St. John's, Newfoundland, issued The Winter Commission Report  by far the most comprehensive analysis before or since  of the terrible phenomenon of clerical sexual abuse, which called for a long hard look at the effects of compulsory priestly celibacy as a factor in this horribly aberrant behaviour. 

Well, we all know what has happened in the dreary and dreadful history of the past ten years. The voice of the once courageous Canadian Bishops has been muted. Today, they meekly accept declarations from Rome: the barring of women from ordination in 1995; the Winter Commission Report has been set aside; Remi De Roo, one of the few Canadian bishops to have been present at Vatican ll, pathetically and humiliatingly chastised like a disobedient schoolboy with not a squeak from the CCCB. Thank God Corpus Canada redeemed the Canadian Church by speaking up about it. 

There is also the execrable, scandalous treatment of the native victims of the residential schools. The Government of Canada apologized for its role  somewhat lamely. The Canadian Church has yet to accept any responsibility. In this too, the Canadian Bishops have not been AHEAD of secular society. 

The past ten years have witnessed a tightening, almost to breaking point, of harshness and arrogance in the Church. This increasing grip of absolutism and rigidity is very foreign to the Canadian soul and deeply offensive to our values, to say nothing of Gospel values. Thank God for the voices of those such as Corpus Canada, CNWE, and Catholics of Vision, who have had the courage to resist and to call for a return to a vision of hope. 

There is a kind of death watch setting in  JPll can't last forever. Even as I speak, I feel the ground shifting. There is a feeling of change in the air as we wait the close of this pontificate. We are in a period of interregnum which is hazy, misty, and less defined. People at the top are jockeying for position. Cardinal Martini spoke in front of the Pope's face at the European Synod about problems facing the Church, and he called for another Council. 

This is a time when boundaries are more fluid, when it is possible to push them out, or even down. But it is risky. Those on the other side are less sure and more hesitant. They are losing their centre, because it is outside of themselves, and has been vested in one man and his authority, which is now on the wane. Such people may lash out even more because they are disconcerted by the fact that despite the most vehement threats of anathemas and excommunications, we are still here. Reform is still very much alive and gaining confidence. 

The Alternative European Synod of reform group held in Rome under the nose of the Vatican declared: We are not here merely with a list of demands; we are seeking a new vision of Church. Yes! A renewed Church beyond even the vision of Vatican ll is in the making. The past few years have been a period of purification  to use a mystical term  for those of us who have remained faithful to this renewed vision of Church. We have lived through the dark night of the soul; we have remained faithful to the light and hope burning within. With Marguerite d'Youville, we have been called names, and it has taken enormous and persistent courage simply to hold on to that vision. We have hung on with our teeth at times to the call for fairness and justice within the Church. And above all, we have been willing to live with the risk of the seemingly impossible experiment to live the deepest values of the Gospel in dialogue with contemporary culture. We have muddled along in a kind of unspectacular fidelity. 

For myself, I can say that there have been times when I felt like walking away from it all. I have been sustained by the fidelity of many individuals, many of whom are here today, of groups such as Corpus, and by prayer which has challenged and sustained me to live with the "not yet," to sit at the edge of the night and wait patiently for the dawn. We can predict neither the precise timing nor the nature of the dawning. But by being faithful and by staying awake enough to read and discern the signs of the times  I think of Jack Shea's analysis in the recent Corpus magazine and the Declaration of Human Rights in the Church from The Atlanta Conference in this regard  we will recognize and be ready for it when it comes, as come it surely will. Let us continue, as Governor General Adrienn Clarkson put it, faithful to this path of "stumbling through darkness and racing through light." In mysticism, the darkness is also the light. The dawn is coming.