Women, Gender, and Liturgy I
St. Louis Breakfast Dialogue Facilitator: Carla Mae Streeter, OP
January 15, 2008 Aquinas Institute of Theology
Gender and Religion
I would like to open these discussions with a blessing…
As we begin the discussion of these very sensitive topics, I would like to call everyone here to enter into the space of dialogue. This is not an easy space to be in. We need to put our minds in gear to enter it and then stay the course. Dialogue is not debate. Dialogue seeks understand not to confront. It begins with respect of the person I may not understand or with whom I do not agree. In dialogue that respect is never abandoned. In dialogue one’s truth is not compromised. I remain firm in my convictions, while I seek to understand you, my brother or sister.
So as facilitator I ask that as a participant you enter that space with me. We are the oldest breakfast dialogue group in the country. We have been attempting to listen to one another for over forty years. That’s a long time. If I sense that our discussion is moving into the default mode of debate, I will interrupt the discussion and ask the persons speaking to pause and form a question that would help them to move to further understanding on the issue. I reserve the prerogative to do this as facilitator.
I also want to make clear from the outset that I speak only for myself here as facilitator. I do not speak for Aquinas Institute, for the Archdiocese, nor for the universal Catholic Church. I speak as a faithful member of the Church, and from my own understanding of the issues I will be addressing. I am a theologian. My ministry is in service to the Catholic community. A theologian’s task is to reflect on and articulate as clearly as possible the meaning of the faith convictions that the Church holds as its treasure. My task is also to challenge the Church to address questions that pertain to that precious inheritance as new questions arise.
John XXIII captured the theological task well. When announcing that the Church was to convene an ecumenical council, John said that to possess the truth revealed by God is one thing; to articulate it adequately is another. I will try my best to articulate it as best I can and draw meaning from it that we might understand. That does not mean we will agree. But perhaps we will understand better.
1. Women in Religious Leadership in our Faith Traditions
The question of woman’s role in leadership in our faith traditions is not just a religious question. It is a cultural question. Media and communications are making it clear that cultures that continue to regard women as commodities to be bought and sold are going to be challenged. The emergence of women in leadership positions in government, business, sports, and education grows daily.
Statistics show that women entering into managerial positions in business usually do so by imitating their male counterparts for as long as ten years. Only after they have secured tenure and have been accepted do their distinctly feminine styles of leadership emerge.
The Church is a part of this same culture. It is news to some that nuns and sisters are not part of the clergy, but are laity. The male model for leadership in the Church is the clergy, and so it is taken for granted that the one who leads is the priest. The bishop is also first of all a priest.
The Church is that group of believers that has gone public in proclaiming that a distinct revelation has been received in the person of Christ Jesus. As the Word of God is revealed first in nature, then in ancient holy ones and prophets, and finally in the parchment of Torah and Qu’ran, the Christian believes the Word of God has taken a distinct new step. The Word of God fuses itself to human DNA in the person of the Jew, Jesus of Nazareth. The humanness of Jesus becomes the new text. For Christians the sacred humanity of Jesus is the new text for understanding God.
This means the humanness of Jesus, taken from Mary, is the “delivery system” for the mystery of God revealing the Divine to us. That humanness is of the male gender. Explanations for this vary. Some suggest that the Word assumed the male gender because Jesus is the new Adam and Mary the new Eve, reversing the damage Adam and Eve brought upon us by their disobedience. Some say that the male gender manifests the peak of human sinfulness in the violence males have perpetrated through the centuries. The passion of the Christ thus becomes the revelation of our sin to us, like the bursting of a pustule, so the world can be healed. The resurrection of Jesus from the dead is the verification of this new Word-in-our-flesh by God. God’s Word cannot be silenced, and with his rising all humanity rises, for he is indissolubly joined to it. Thus, the Church itself is a part of his body, his humanness in the world. We are joined to him by the humanness he assumed, never to be separated.
It is this self-giving, this dying and rising that we “remember” in the liturgy of the Mass or the Eucharist. Now remembrance, as our Jewish brothers and sisters know, is not just a cognitive exercise. It is an entering into the mystery we celebrate. When the Jewish community celebrates Passover, the community again enters into that freeing from Egypt’s bondage. The Catholic Christian in the Eucharist enters into the event of Jesus’ own dying and rising.
We believe that the way he has found to nourish us into this new life is by taking yet one more step – down – to be in union with us. As he assumed our humanness, so in the Eucharist he becomes bread and wine to feed us with this new risen life of his. It is to be our new life too, here and now, carrying us beyond bodily death just as it did him.
Whatever the reason that the Word assumed the male gender in this mystery, and whatever the history of women’s role in the past in the ritualizing of this mystery (I am referring here to the recent publication of Gary Macy’s The Hidden History of Women’s Ordination), the Church teaches that males are to be priests, and that it has no authority to change this by admitting women to the priesthood, because the pattern has been set by Christ himself. This teaching cannot be understood unless one understands the context above, at least a little.
2. Case Study:
The ordination issue
Understanding of ordained ministry in the Catholic Church
Understanding of the structure of the Jewish community
Now we can begin to consider the ordination issue that has had such a painful impact on our St. Louis community. Unless one understands this context, that the Church in its ritual is entering into Jesus own self-giving as one with his own humanness, the question of who is to officiate can degenerate into a gender war.
If one makes the judgment that the Church is biased in its teaching that men alone are to hold the office of priest, the issue becomes one of justice. The Church is viewed as simply caught up in the bias of patriarchy, and needs help to get over it. For Catholics the humanity assumed by the Word, according to St. Paul, means male and female is no longer the issue, so for those who hold this perspective there is no reason why women should not preside as well as men when the Mass is offered. The solution is simple: women should be allowed to be ordained to preside at the Eucharist. It is a matter of justice from this point of view.
I have spoken with Susan and with one of the women who was ordained at Central Reform. From what I heard these people are not evil. They are not out to insult the Church. But they are, as I understood them, coming out of this point of view. This is a justice issue for them. Susan is here today, and can speak to this in our later discussion.
Susan is known for the hospitality her congregation offers to those who may not be welcomed elsewhere. Opening Central Reform to these women was a part of the mission of her congregation. It was what she and her board felt was the hospitable thing to do. The woman I spoke to who was ordained there is convinced she is calling the Church to face up to its patriarchal bias. She is trying to act out of her convictions at great cost. She is aware of this.
But as a theologian I can’t be satisfied with simple answers, especially if they contradict what the Church teaches. I need to look for the truth, trusting that the Church is being guided in that truth. What if there is a deeper faith intuition here that the Church has not yet articulated well? What if there really is something truthful to its conviction that ritualizing belongs to males?
Now I’m going to ask you to follow me into some distinctions we Catholics make. I know this might be unfamiliar territory to many of us, but let’s give it a try. In the sacramental signing that is the risen Christ giving himself to be food for his people, there are two things to consider: the first is the ritual, and the second is the res or the very thing signed itself. The ritual is the “delivery system,” as it were, and the res is the very thing delivered. All rituals will cease. They are only for now because we live in faith. There will be no Eucharist in eternity, for we will possess what it is signing.
We will have no need of rituals. Could it be that women seeking leadership ritually are seeking too little? Are women being led religiously to do just what women in business have done? Is she seeking to imitate what the male does to gain her voice? Is the real question being overlooked? Is both the culture and the Church neglecting to address what the woman’s real role is when she finds her voice, and that voice is distinct from but in harmony with the male’s?
I find myself looking at the various images of the Madonna…Mary holding the Word made flesh. Mary didn’t have to ritualize. She was never ordained. She gazes on him as says …substantially…”This is my body…this is my blood…” She provides the res. Is the real role of women in both culture and Church much more significant than ritual? Is it waiting to be articulated both by women and men? Is it in the shadows and thus the woman tries to find voice by doing what men have been doing to compensate?
Sex symbols, men pleasers, whores, witches, nuns or madonnas…who are women really? Is moving into ritualizing through ordination the answer? I have no doubt that these women are hearing a call. I question where that call really leads and if we really have explored it in its fullness.
Discussion by Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, Protestant, and Catholic faith leaders.
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February 19, 2008 Part Two: Carla Mae Streeter, OP, Facilitator
Continuation of Topic focusing on:
3. Boundaries: when does one religion question the decisions of another?
4. How does the common good come into play?
Tags: interfaith