Searching for that
“different God”

I grew up in an extended family, and nurtured from childhood by a fervent enthusiasm for Pope John’s Church and the hopes of the Second Vatican Council. This was a context characterized by a political passion inspired by the Gospel, by the daily search for knowledge of the Scriptures, by the desire for communal Eucharistic celebrations, and by a love for the poor. I was surrounded by many women, and I have walked throughout my life in these small, large, light, or deep footsteps that have marked my journey inside and outside the Catholic Church. At times, the wave of rejection has partially erased them, and the weight of fatigue has made them sink, while more often a strong gust of wind, lifting me on tiptoes, has pushed me towards another shore, to the border, without leaving a trace, on the threshold of new lands.

In the seasons of my troubled and passionate marriage to “Holy Mother Church”, I have continuously moved from the center of ecclesial life to its peripheries, in health and illness, in wealth and poverty, between faithfulness and adultery, rebellions and boundaries, harsh protests and difficult rules!

There was the beautiful summer of active participation in Catholic or Christian-inspired organizations and groups (from Scouts to Catholic Action, from Fuci to the White Rose), where I took on roles of responsibility, despite my critical belonging, and also served in parishes and local communities. This was a warm, rich summer that was full of meetings, precious friendships that have endured the passing of years.

There was the fiery autumn of my uncomfortable political choices, public stances, shared or solitary existential options, as an “adult lay Christian”, which pushed me to the margins of ecclesial life: I was not aligned, I was not a Christian Democrat, and I did not want to be complicit in the collateralism of Catholic hierarchies with a corrupt political system.

There was the Cold winter of the awareness of the decline of the Italian Church in the Ratzingerian era. The increasingly strong return of preconciliar winds. The power of a hierarchical and pyramidical Church, and the emptying of the liturgies’ meaning. The reduction to “the Church of the sacraments”, and the return of the celebrant priest’s centrality. The cultural impoverishment of the laity, the prevailing misogyny, and the terrible discovery of the dark side of abuses, simony, and corruption, which have led to the serious contributing factors of today’s crisis.

Then there have been the many happy springs that have sprouted from encounters with women and men in perpetual search. These have been women in love with the Gospel, the ones who scrutinize the Word, the untamed seekers of the precious pearl of the divine light. men immersed in the preferential option for the poor, women and men enveloped in the Ruah, together with the courage of parrhesia, in an obstinate and contrary direction.

In truth, none of these seasons has ever fully ended; rather, they have merged into the one that followed.

However, there is a scarlet thread that yesterday as today indelibly marks my presence inside and outside the “official” Church. That emblem on my forehead that has shaped me as a “lay Christian feminist”. The relationship between women, political practice among women, feminist political mysticism.

It all started with that genealogy of my matriarchal family’s childhood, and found a name in the fundamental encounter, during my university years, with a prominent Italian Catholic, Maria Dutto, and the Group Promotion Woman in Milan. These women of all ages who, by recognizing us young women, opened free spaces to listen, for knowledge beyond secular feminism, and the living history of other women who, while remaining faithful to the Catholic Church, made choices, promoted actions, and founded heterodox groups regarding the presence of women in the Church of their time. With female authority, they gave birth to another mode of being Ecclesia.

If in this season my being a Christian feminist still placed me within the circle of ecclesial life, the turning point then occurred in 2003 with my participation in the Women’s Synod in Barcelona.

From here came my involvement with women’s groups in grassroots communities and many others. This included the birth of the Interreligious Observatory on Violence Against Women; participation in the Synodal Network with the group We Are the Change; and, the fruitful relationship with Women for the Church.

From here came my position on the threshold, my continuous crossing between center and periphery, my association with the efforts to reform the Catholic Church “from within” and my continued engagement with the broader humanity. I shared with many others the search for a “different god”, that “god of women”, the Divine Presence that, freed from the prison of a patriarchal God, could fly freely over the shores of history, and leave new footprints, while walking with us, even in the mud of humanity’s dramas, from which we know new life can always arise.

By Grazia Villa
Human Rights Lawyer