Sister Christine Schenk, CSJ is a highly regarded person for her activism in working for women's equality in the institutional Church. In fact, she is an author and the co-founder of Future Church; she served several years as its founding Executive Director. Her words and actions rightfully carry much weight within the circle of justice-seeking persons.
In a piece published by the National Catholic Reporter on March 24th, Sister Christine wrote of her post-surgery experience and subsequent reflections upon living with her "Senior Sisters" in the Motherhouse.
As is all too common an occurrence, this feminist, finely attuned to and responding to the inequalities of sexism in our Church, fell prey to the unacknowledged, socially acceptable construct of ageism.
She writes: "For the past three weeks, I have been gimping around with our senior sisters, each of whom is dealing with diminishment and the frailty of aging."
It is all too common to equate aging with diminishment, even though it is such a false, totally ungrounded reality. Additionally, the concept of personhood "diminishing" with the experience of longevity is a dangerous and harmful concept to each and every living person.
To diminish means to become less than. Because I have less physical stamina, am I "less than" I was when I did not experience this physical decline? Because I can't so easily use the stairs to reach third floor at the convent complex, because I choose to use the elevator instead am I diminished as a person? Absolutely not.
What we often read, hear, think of and speak of as "aging" is usually only the biological aspect of aging: the physical, bodily changes over a lifetime. This biological aging is called senescence.
Aging is more holistic and complex and "is the universal lifelong biological, psychological, social and spiritual process of developing over time according to Tracey Gendron, Ph.D., author of "Ageism Unmasked."
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