Journal of Sr. Carla Mae Streeter, O.P.

St. Louis Breakfast Dialogue Facilitator: Carla Mae Streeter, OP

February 19, 2008 Aquinas Institute of Theology

Gender and Religion: Part II

Once again, I would invite us to begin this session with a blessing…

To review for all of us, and to fill in for those who may not have been with us last month, I’d like to recap our points of discussion from January 15, and then offer a few thoughts on part two of the topic the planning committee has set for us for these two sessions: “Discussing the Difficult Issues:

3. Boundaries: when does one religion question the decisions of another?

4. How does the common good come into play?

First, a review of our last session. To begin, I invited you into that space we call dialogue space. It is a space where the agenda is understanding not debate. Then I reminded all of us that in sharing these thoughts I spoke as myself, not as a representative of any official body. Finally, I reminded us that it is one thing to be convinced we have truth in our religious revelation, and quite another how we express this to others.

Women in Religious Leadership in our Faith Traditions

We discussed this topic as not only a religious question, but a cultural one. We noted that globally women are finding their voice and entering arenas once reserved for men. We discussed the fact that in business women imitate their male counterparts for a time, until they gain tenure or some form of security, when they feel free enough to let their feminine styles of leadership emerge. We understood together that this same dynamic is happening in many of our faith traditions.

Because our case study deals with the Catholic tradition, we then focused in on the Church’s official teaching that priesthood is reserved for those of the male gender. We explored the fact that two clear perspectives on this teaching emerge within the Catholic community and among others: 1. The teaching is unjust and the Church needs to move beyond it. 2. The Church in its teaching is following a sense of faith (that may not be clearly explained or understood.)

From my conversations with Rabbi Talve and with one of the women ordained at Central Reform Congregation, it became clear to me that these women were coming from the first perspective. They are concerned with what they consider to be an issue of justice. In addition, Rabbi Talve is motivated by her congregation’s mission to offer hospitality to those who may not find it elsewhere.

As a theologian, I feel it important to explore and attempt to explain the official position also. The sacramental worldview that is basic to Catholic life distinguishes sacramental ritual from sacramental res or sacred “thing” being revealed in the ritual. Aware of our cultural context of women seeking their voice and freedom from the invisibility or marginalization of the past, we asked if the seeking of the ritual role of the priest might be but one more example of women imitating what men do to realize those goals. In doing so, are women settling for too little? Ritual will pass away, for what is signified will be possessed in eternity. Has the real role of women in both culture and faith been addressed?

Is this the real issue, and it is being neglected? What is the authentic identity of the woman in culture? In our religious traditions? Will she realize this true identity by imitating what men do? Could it be that the role of our various traditions is to ask the real question: What is the role of the feminine in culture? In faith development? I suspect we would have great difficulty in articulating this.

Once again this year the post office issued the tradition “Mother and Child” postage stamp. Mary, the woman imaged never was ordained. She never ritualized. Yet, substantially she can say most truly, “This (child) is my body…my blood.” I have no doubt that the women who felt they needed to be ordained to move the Church forward have experienced a call. What I question is where that call is really leading, and whether we as faith communities have explored it in its fullness.

This being said, I invite us to ask our final two questions for this series:

3. Boundaries: When does one religion question the decisions of another?

It would be clear that I was “out of bounds,” if I as a Catholic Christian wrote your Rabbi that I really thought the prayer shawl worn by Jews was much too small, or if you as a muslim suggested to my pastor that the interior of our church was too dark a color and needed a different paint job. We would all recognize that this is interfering in matters of ritual or worship interior to the other faith tradition.

But should members of your tradition plant bombs on mentally ill women and use them to trigger suicide bombings by remote control, all of us should rise up in protest. Issues that pertain to human rights, oppression of a specific people, or abuse of any human being, call each of us to be a voice of conscience in the human community.

The ordination of the two women at Central Reform was a matter of Catholic liturgy. It concerned ritual. It would be very simple to conclude that it was “out of bounds.” Yet on further inquiry we learn that interfering in the ritual of another tradition was not the real motive behind the action. As I understand from Rabbi Talve, it was the justice perception that motivated the decision, along with the congregational mission of hospitality. Those of us who understand this decision from the perspective of interference in another tradition’s ritualizing will conclude that boundaries were not respected. Those who made the decisions from a justice perspective understand it differently. The result was great hurt, sadness, and anger on the part of some. We find ourselves puzzled and confused at this behavior, to say the least. This confusion comes because we don’t understand why people do what they do. We all can be grateful that it is God who reads the heart. It is this Divine Mystery that will judge our respect or disrespect for one another. The question of boundaries suddenly is not so clear. What boundaries? And whose?

4. How does the common good come into play?

In the Catholic tradition the common good and the good of the individual are not opposed. My growth as an individual takes place as part of a greater reality. That reality is a community of relationships that forms a network in my life. I am not a Lone Ranger, but a member of several different communities: family, faith, national, and global. My development, education, and flourishing enhances all of these relationships. My selfish decisions wound them. What I choose to do or not do effects these communal relationships. What happens to these communities in turn effects me. I understand that the Jewish belief of remaining in relationship with the Divine is also based on being “a part of a people.”

Again, this awareness can appear to have been violated in the case study we have considered. From one perspective it can be understood as “doing my thing” and not caring what the effects might be on the greater community. From another perspective, it can be understood as taking a prophetic stand with all the pain that entails, in order to bring about justice in the wider community. Once again I challenge us to see the full range of possible motivation here, and suggest we will not know why a decision was made unless we ask. To suppose that we know the interior of another when we have not asked for clarification is called rash judgment. Our traditions warn us of rashly judging another.

For this reason it is humbling and wise to have an open and respectful conversation about matters that could divide us. This is what the planning committee envisioned, I suspect, in planning these two sessions. Behavior is clear. The motives behind the behavior often are not. To that inquiry and non-judgmental and transparent conversation I now invite us.

Discussion by Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, Protestant, and Catholic faith leaders present.

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?

Dear Heart,

Yesterday in the worldwide Catholic community was the Feast of the Holy Cross. Some in the church community will begin to fast today…choosing to take only one full meal each day until Easter. Others will “fast” mentally from the grudges they nurse, or the bad language they are in the habit of using. They choose to do this as a form of loving. Others will wait until lent, 40 days before Easter when the entire community chooses to fast is some way to do “spring housecleaning” of the soul. The word lent means springtime.The cross is a tree of sorts. It was back then a form of execution. It is a good exercise to ask why the Word made flesh chose that form of death. Those close to God have some good insights to offer us. We lost our friendship with God through a tree…and we regain that friendship through the tree of the cross.

We celebrated the feast of St. Bernard on August 20.  He had a special love for the Mother of God.  I found myself reflecting a bit on one of his writings about her, and so I add my own musings…

What does the grace of Preaching mean today?

What does the grace of Preaching mean today?

The time, that is. It’s ordinary time, right? A closer look at the scriptures given us for bread each Sunday points to something rather extraordinary about ordinary time.

A Surprise Package
He is so small. Tiny fingers and toes, eyelashes like feathers…nursing
at a woman’s breast… Come now. This is no way for a God to act. This is
no way for a God to present Itself.
“…the image of the invisible God…” This helpless infant images the
Triune Mystery? Some might say that’s quite a stretch.
But let’s take a closer look at this small package. Let’s unwrap the Gift.
There is a Mystery hidden in this Child, just as there is a mystery hidden
in each newborn. What shall this Child be?
The hiddenness of God has a name in Christian theological language. From
earliest days this hidden Godhead is called “Father.” (Mother would do just
as well, except the patriarchy of the times and the popularity of goddess
worship in the middle east made a feminine reference unlikely.) If the
Christ is the image of the invisible God, then the One who has taken on
our DNA will reveal this loving Source, quite at home in the boundaries of
human limitation. This hiddenness now manifest in an unspeakable
humbleness driven to join us in our humanness.
But this Triune Mystery does not stay all locked up in Itself. It breathes
Itself out in an Expression that includes the entire cosmos. This Word
delights crafting all manner of shapes and forms, pulsating with life and
beauty. “In the beginning was the Word…and all that came to be came to
be in the Word…” So, most divine Self-Expression, did you delight in
weaving yourself flesh from the virgin’s womb? One with your dear Abba did
you delight in your nine month confinement? Are you delighted as you are
held in a woman’s arms and learn to recognize the contours of her face?
What drove you to this madness? Why do you cloak your majesty in
littleness? Have you now fear of being dethroned from your majesty? What
Divine Breath brooded over Mary’s humanness to produce this infant beauty?
Spirit of the Heart of God, is this what you are about with our human
stuff? Is this how you reveal Yourself? Is this how you want the Godhead
to be known? Hiddeness fired by a mad Love that crafts an Expression of
God in the vulnerable beauty of an infant?
This is shocking. Allowed its way, it would undo all our carefully crafted
images of the Triune God, so doctinally lofty. And yet this is how you
present Yourself to us in this season. A surprise package indeed.

A Surprise PackageHe is so small. Tiny fingers and toes, eyelashes like feathers…nursing at a woman’s breast… Come now. This is no way for a God to act. This is no way for a God to present Itself.