Women and Scholasticism's Unrepented Blunder
As to the status of women in cultural history, there is indeed a long train of philosophical/ theological thinking back into the deep past of consciousness by which thought advances the ascendancy of insight into self-understanding as it obtains in the "Sacrament of Natural Order" — the cultural source of intrinsic order and remembrance in the divine/ human hypostasis.
The PARADIGMATIC HUMAN (female/ male in God’s image) is the continuity medium of the gendered personae (not the presumed male model) in which divine/ human hypostasis (understanding, consciousness) obtains and by which intrinsic order in nature sustains and evolves.
It is quizzical but notable to observe in Sacred Scripture the male accounting of females in the genealogy of Jesus. All female persons accounted are notably less than reputable in the male estimation. One wonders about the “rationality” behind the selective accounting by writers who have Jesus arise from less than reputable female ancestry.
Perhaps the answer is found in the “rationality” brought forward by St. Thomas Aquinas in the philosophy/ theology of Scholasticism, which still obtains officially in Roman Catholic Theology. In patriarchal culture/ theology, the female is memorable (demeaned) for the “intrinsic disorder” that she introduced into the human heritage, i.e., Original Sin.
“St. Thomas [reflected] the best science of his day when he said that a woman is a misbegotten or defective male (‘mas occasionatus’ I.99.2. ad 1, Summa Theologica)
“ ‘The active power which is in the male seed is intended to produce a perfect image of itself, a masculine sex’, he said. ‘When a female results it is either because of a weakness in this active power or because of some indisposition of the materials provided by the woman or even from a change produced by some outside factor… for example, from south winds, which are humid.” (ID: I.92.1. ad 1)
“Clearly such erroneous biology easily leads to other equally bizarre conclusions. Thomas says, for example, that women need the virtue of sobriety more than men ‘because there is in them a greater proneness to concupiscence… sobriety is more required in women’ (ID: II.11, 149. 4)
“These supposedly scientific conclusions led to spiritual implications as well. Women cannot be validly ordained to the priesthood, said Thomas, regardless their other qualifications, since ‘no status of prominence can be signified in the feminine sex, because women have the status of subjection, and so cannot receive the Sacrament of Orders.’ (ID: Supp—39)
“Thomas and other great thinkers [accepted] what was almost universally believed to be scientific fact. It illustrates, however, the kinds of baggage we need to sort out to understand better the relationship of men and women in human society and in church. Ultimately the answer appears in the fundamental equality between men and women as taught by Jesus and the rest of the New Testament, a position these theologians found it almost impossible to integrate with what they ‘knew’ to be scientifically true.” [John Dietzen, THE NEW QUESTION BOX, “Status of Women”, Guildhall, Peoria, IL 61651]
As long as Church hierarchy leaves this ancient and fraudulent characterization of women stand, it is seen to endorse the destructive consequences of it on the man/ woman relationship. The Church’s endorsement of discredited “science” discredits Church and the episcopacy, for bishops are perceived to objectify themselves and Church in an unwarranted arrogance that puts them above paradigmatic humankind.
Before bishops advance other ill-conceived pronouncements regarding gender differences and discrimination against women, they do well to distance themselves unequivocally from this long-standing cultural error of religion, and to deal with the “baggage” of wrongful theological extrapolations advanced on it, e.g., denying women their rightful place in the priesthood of humankind, for such denial agitates and aggravates intrinsic disorder by demeaning sacramental femininity and corrupting interpersonal relationships and ecological economics (Eucharist).
Faith, Reason and
Faith, Reason and Dysfunctional Marriage: As gathering eco-social crises close in, the work of Church in the Third Millennium becomes ever more urgent. Pope John Paul II identified for Church in his encyclical “Tertio Millennio Adveniente” the task of the authentic assimilation of the teaching of the Second Vatican Council. [See Maureen Sullivan’s book review of “VATICAN II, Did Anything Happen?” AMERICA Magazine, March 3, 2008, pp 24-26]
Before root causes can be assigned to eco-social crises, the function and dysfunction of faith and reason need to be put in perspective. The fruitfulness of faith and reason relies on the committed intention of emotional/ rational intelligence, an essentially nuptial commitment. The dispositions of mutuality and intentional harmony are preconditions of nuptial fruitfulness.
Fruitfulness is bonded in faithfulness, in purposefulness. Fruitfulness is the produce of universal connections and of fidelity to them. Faith is desire, reason is destiny. Together, emotional intention and rational reflection self-fulfill fruitfulness and the iterations of desire and destiny. Together, desire and destiny motivate evolutionary processes.
Human personhood is bonded in fruitfulness. Fruitful spirituality weaves the forms and the consciousness of personhood, female and male. The motivational spirituality of the individual/ social person is joined desire/ destiny, faith/ reason.
Faith has been and continues to be misused in the overreach of reason; frustrating reason is what fideism does, what cultic religion does, and what patriarchy does. Wisdom is the transcendent fruit of collective experience encoded in intelligence by the continuous and ubiquitous processes of communication, consciousness and conscience. Marital fruitfulness is first and foremost spiritual, even as all physicality is the complexity weave of cosmic energy.
At this very time, our Roman Catholic Church is still a Church of two minds; one, the cultist, fideistic mind of Trent and Vatican I, and two, the faith/ reason mind of Vatican II. When the cultist mindset dominates reason, it effectively defeats the right functioning of reason and faith. The cultic habits and attractions of fideistic theology effectively compromise the spirituality and physicality of holistic relationships. The disabilities of spiritual and physical dysfunction are handed down from generation to generation by the dominion overreach of religious cult.
Dominion Theology, as advanced in patriarchal culture, creates a schizophrenic consciousness that violates the personal/ social characterization of emotional/ rational intelligence. The failure of the faith/ reason nuptial frustrates marriages, families and personal authenticity. In its expectation of blind and absolute trust in the pronouncements of the controlling hierarchy, the cultic Church of pre-Vatican II distrusts and disdains reason. In contrast, Vatican II sees every person in equal standing before God and in Church. Everyone is commonly gifted in emotional/ rational intelligence, and is female/ male characterized.
The task of Church in the Third Millennium is to affirm the authentic female/ male personhood and to facilitate the essential correlation of emotional intelligence and rational intelligence.
The Other Face: Not to be
The Other Face: Not to be overlooked is the other face of "Scholasticism's Blunder". The first face is the ancient mistaken notion as to female "disordering" in the gestation of the male embryo; the other face is presumptive male singularity in the fathering of human life.
The ancient presumption is mistaken as to what the "male seed" is. The male sperm is not, as Scholasticism represents, a miniature male. The contribution of the sperm in bringing into existence a new person, conceptus(a), is one-half the DNA of the cell nucleus; the other half is provided in the ovum. The other DNA (as in mitochondria and plastids) is provided also in the ovum only, and NOT in the sperm.
Philosophy's radical mistake of wrong science is perpetuated in theologies and impacts societies in harmful ways. The Judaic, Christian and Islamic traditions even now are all culpable in the matters of the putdown of women and the super-arrogation of men.
Science and philosophy both know better; it remains for religions, theologies and cultures to correct the blunders they advance on mistaken presumptions of science. Ignorance is no excuse for continuing fraudulent religious cultures which are based on formal error; the perpetration of personal injuries and social havoc stemming from the known errors of philosophy/ theology is malicious and idolatrous.
Mistakes of theology affect religious practice also, as for example, rituals and understandings of Eucharistic. In regard to Eucharistic bread, cereal grain science may be spiritually instructive with respect to "virgin birth" and the wrongly presumed "macula" of woman in the gestation of life and contribution to "original sin".
The identification of God as Light reflects on the synthetic capacity of life to derive food (autotrophism) from light energy, as in photosynthesis. Chlorophyll potentials for capturing photons and constructing sugars and carbohydrates from water and carbon dioxide are coded in the DNA of plastids.
In cereal grains, the plastids abound in the seed endosperm which is of wholly female origin. Modified plastids abound in cells of higher organisms, e.g., chloroplasts. The flour of cereal grains is made from endosperm (starch), which is of "virgin birth", that is, wholly of female origin. This is equally true of all cereal grains, corn, wheat, oats, rye, rice, etc. It makes no sense to assume that one cereal grain (e.g., wheat) has some greater ontological significance in making bread wafers than other cereal grains. And this reality can be of life-and-death importance to persons who suffer gluten intolerance.
[For more detailed understandings about the science of cereal grains, visit the website http://www.secondenlightenment.org/ and see free download, Booklet on Corn Ecology/ Economy: Right As Grain. ]
If David Letterman had a top
If David Letterman had a top ten list, "The Things They Never Taught You in Theology Class," this would surely make number one! Sounds like a doctoral dissertation is in the making, "Toward an Understanding of Breakfast Cereals and the Incarnation - Exploring Virginal Births, the Origin of Species, and Eucharistic Hermaneutics."
In her article “The
In her article “The ‘New’ Feminism” (COMMONWEAL, 03/28/08, pg 8), Cathleen Kaveny overlays the continuing theology of Scholasticism (the 1912 Catholic Encyclopedia) on Pope John Paul II’s apostolic letter "Mulieris dignitatem"; this letter represents the thinking of Pope John Paul II on “new” feminism.
Ms Kaveny asks why there is so much wariness about Pope John Paul II’s new feminism, and she answers, “That wariness is rooted in the history of ideas and arguments.” Ms. Kaveny finds the development of Mulieris dignitatem “striking—and troubling” in its similarities with the 1912 Catholic Encyclopedia (find online at www.newadvent.org).
About troubling similarities, she says “Both (the letter and the encyclopedia) strongly defend…difference and complementarity between men and women…both are worried about the baleful effects of blurred gender roles.” Pope John Paul II says, “In the name of liberation from male ‘domination’ women must not appropriate to themselves male characteristics contrary to their own feminine originality.” While the Pope doesn’t detail specifically what he means, the 1912 encyclopedia does detail what it means. It is unacceptable for women to appropriate political/ social leadership, for “man is called by the Creator to this position of leader, as is shown by his entire bodily and intellectual make-up.”
Ms. Kaveny writes, “The encyclopedia maintains that society must first recognize that the primary vocation of women is to be wives and mothers—and therefore (must) refuse to admit women to jobs that interfere with their primary vocation… Societies should direct the education of women toward the roles as wives and mothers. The encyclopedia hastens to observe that ‘the Catholic Church places here no barriers that have not already been established by nature…. The sexes can never be on an equality as regards studies pursued at a university.’” In society, “women ought to influence political life indirectly, not directly, because ‘it is difficult to unite the direct participation of women in the political and parliamentary life of the present time with her predominant duty as mother.’… Opposition to women’s suffrage ‘should be regarded by Catholics as, at least, the voice of common sense.’”
The encyclopedia proclaims that women who seek the right to vote wrongly interfere with God’s plan for sexual complementarity. While Pope John Paul II did not endorse this view, he did premise his “anthropological argument” on virtually identical premises (Scholastic) “to those of the encyclopedia.”
Ms. Kaveny believes that this matters: “With the rise of religious fundamentalism, especially fundamentalist Islam in Europe, however, it will be equally important to emphasize the common gifts and abilities of men and women—including a common right and duty to participate in the political life of the nation.”
Religious Paralysis Syndrome
Religious Paralysis Syndrome / Social Sin and Cultural Disconnection
Dear Sylvester,
I did not initially understand your post and RPS. It makes more sense to me now. I personally thank you for bringing together concepts that explain this disorder. I know some people suffering from depression and medication seems the only relief. While I have suffered depression years ago and may well have experienced the dark night of the soul in that period of my life, I found that finding Jesus and developing a personal relationship with Him and reading the Gospels and returning to Church were the key to my healing and continues to be so. I no longer need medication because He has truly healed me. While I've tried to convey this to those I know still suffering from depression and taking medication, they are unwilling to discard the medication out of fear and habit. They feel good, so why bother is the attitude. When I tell them to trust in Jesus, they are reluctant and brush it off and would rather trust the medication.
Now, from some of those same people, college educated I will add and not stupid in the least, I have been receiving forwarded emails that are at least to me blatant propaganda in this election year against Democrats that connects images of Jesus with a negative comment against the ACLU at the same time. In another email the propagandist reports on a vote in the Senate by a Democratic majority against making English the official language in the US and at the end appears a quote from Abraham Lincoln which reads: "Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled or hanged!"
How the connection by the propagandist is made to a vote in the Senate regarding English to a quote by Lincoln is fascinating, and utterly twisted and reminds me of Nazi propaganda tactics of the early 1930's prior to Hitler's ascendancy to power. [In Hitler's speeches he makes many references to the Resurrection, not of Christ, but of the German people. He unmistakably draws Christians into his world view by attaching images of their faith in a similar dynamic.]
In the forwarded propaganda emails it is not just a slant against Democrats or liberals, it is not only demonizing them, but INCULCATING THE IDEA to execute them! Critical thinking is not occurring and many are forwarding this stuff on the internet without realizing the seed that is planted for the permeation and promulgation of hatred and killing others; an immoral act and a true mortal sin and death of the soul and death of our nation as well.
Also, the websites like fisheaters which a poster said to go to recently for more information is also full of a lack of critical thinking. My comment here is not to denigrate the poster who has taken a liking to that website, but to point out that we can easily be led astray by taking snippets of truths and then rearranging the words and paragraphs to suit a certain agenda or create a certain agenda against our own best interest. That is not critical thinking or making proper connections; it is more the disconnect to truth that leads to social sin.
ABOUT MY PERSONAL LIFE
ABOUT MY PERSONAL LIFE DECISION: by my 10th year in the Seminary (1956, age 23) preparing for the Catholic priesthood I began to question more seriously my lifetime intention to be a priest. From my earliest childhood I had the unswerving intention to become an institutional priest; so why did I change my mind?
I have given much thought to this question, and from the perspective of a 75 year old man, I have come to what I think is closest to the real answer. I was from birth to my adult years brought up imbued in Vatican I culture. (By the time of Vatican II my wife and I already had three children.) I think I was “good material” for the priesthood due to family upbringing and personal disposition. I enjoyed Seminary life and I treasure greatly to this day my Seminary years. I got along well with Superiors and Seminarians alike. It is my sense that my decision to opt out was very much unexpected, even shocking, especially to my family — and I’m sure it was difficult for my mother and two sisters who were/ are (my oldest sister is deceased) Dubuque Franciscan Sisters.
While I grew up in circumstances conducive to cocooning me in what I call “religious paralysis”, my childhood experience and education taught me to be personally responsible and intellectually discerning in matters of reason and conscience. While I grew up in the culture of dominion-faith, I didn’t lose my rational capacity to make decisions of personal conscience, even in matters of faith. My rational intelligence was not captured in childhood by the emotional bonds of fideistic religion, and with maturity it eventually asserted itself in an all important life choice. How so?
That my rationality preserved its independence goes back to my childhood years and to my eight grades of schooling in a one-room public country school which had one teacher who taught all eight grades. I was exceptionally fortunate to have exceptionally good teachers. I give them (and family) credit for the healthy balance of emotional/ rational intelligence that I came to acquire. I have preserved a mind of independent inquisitiveness and openness to question all matters of doubtful credibility. There is no doubt in my mind that had I spent my grade school years in a Catholic Parochial School, taught by God-loving Sisters, I would likely have been emotionally captured and would not have come to the rational clarity I now have.
I choose to remain a priest, but a universal priest, faithful to my conscience, not indentured to the rigid traditions of inflexible faith expectations; this choice I have never doubted or regretted. Before God and man, I continue to pursue a life of fidelity to faith and reason.
What is the point? The point is that male/ female personae of paradigmatic humankind recognize the equal importance of faith and reason in preserving intellectual balance (emotional/ rational intelligence). But there are wonderful saintly people, faithful to the ancient tradition of Church culture, who inadvertently perpetuate the "scholastic blunder" and "religious paralysis".
Scholasticism's blunder justifies the alienation of women in theological rationalizing; clerical fideism paralyzes personal conscience, and patriarchal dominion violates the female persona and idolizes the male persona.
Nancy J Coleman I agree that
Nancy J Coleman I agree that Mary often seems like the only woman the Church respects and reveres but I don't believe that's true. I've seen some documentaries on t.v. that talk about the historical Mary and the times she lived in. Women may have been victims of acts of war like rape in Mary's lifetime. They also bore children at a young age-sounds like our times. Mary certainly was blessed to be chosen by God to be impregnated by the angel (especially in historic terms). It would be a miracle for rape and other acts of war to be terminated in the world (or classified as mental illness,at the very least). Freud may have said that the world was driven by sex and aggression, but that did not not mean he was pro-war or pro-rape.
Despite all the reasons
Despite all the reasons given here, there, and everywhere, the chances of the church ordaining women to the priesthood between now and the Second Coming is absolute zero. The church has coherently addressed this despite the retread 60's-type rhetoric one continually finds on the NCR pages. A lay accessible rendering of the church's position was nicely done in "The Catholic Priesthood and Women: A Guide to the Teaching of the Church" by Sara Butler-- a nun and professor of dogmatic theology at the St. Joesph's Seminary in New York.
Dear when the bough~ It is
Dear when the bough~ It is neither accurate nor polite to dismiss those who contend to woman's full gift of sacrament and full access as "retread 60's type rhetoric". It is current, it is thoughtful and sincere and for those who hold to it, accurate. One could say that your put-down is arrogantly medievalist. It is unfortunate that you sully Sister Sara Butler with the fundamentalist aura you seem to bring to the discussion. But then I have focused on contemporary source documents so far.
"A lay accessible rendering
"A lay accessible rendering of the church's position was nicely done"
Thank you ever so much for providing me with something more in keeping with my lack of intellectual ability to read JPII and Bendict XVI in the original. I'm quite thankful such an erudite woman as Sara Butler would take the time to make this issue "lay accessible". I don't know though, given my inability to divorce myself from 60's-type rhetoric that I'll be able to translate her musings 'coherently'. I'm ever so sad ...
colkoch.blogtoolkit.com
Colkoch~ Beautifully done.
Colkoch~ Beautifully done.
There were times in the
There were times in the church when women stood out as leaders and had the ear of the pontiff but this is not one of those times. However to say that Hell will freeze over before a woman is an ordained priest is not proper thinking for either a pope or any evolutionary thinker. Society moves slowly and then there is ROME but it will happen............before the second coming.
Sounds like your energy is
Sounds like your energy is wrapped more around protesting an older generation's (or two's) youthful cultural exuberance than on whatever else is the topic of these threads? Surely you have time to read up on the role of women in the early church to get some idea what the conversation about returning to the fundamentals of the church is about, which was, after all, a major emphasis of the bishops of--and since--V2.
Nancy J Coleman Let me put
Nancy J Coleman Let me put this unpopular proposition out to the public: The Church cares about women's health more than feminists who want women to down contraception pills that may cause breast cancer. Fooling around with your biological hormonal system in such a drastic way can not be very healthy. The sex act,no matter how much we whine and cry, is mainly an act for biological reproduction. Women must take that responsibility seriously. I read in an evangelical Christian paper that a woman should not refuse a man's biological need or she is a bad wife. I do not agree with them. Men do not suffer from abstaining from sex when their wives are ovulating. In the era of AIDS, I would have thought people would have sobered up about sex. Instead, they have grown more hedonistic. Hedonism is childless and nothing new. It never advances a civilization.
Although, and by the way,
Although, and by the way, (even without your awaited response), the day that Catholics have to have hormonal management in order TO reproduce, the Church will most certainly re-think its position on the whole todo.
"I read in an evangelical
"I read in an evangelical Christian paper that a woman should not refuse a man's biological need or she is a bad wife. I do not agree with them."
This in and of itself is a choice you are free to make because of the influence of feminism. If the ex governor of New York is any indication men don't suffer from abstaining from sex when their wives are ovulating, because they aren't---abstaining that is. :)
colkoch.blogtoolkit.com
An almost incurable social
An almost incurable social and sexual disorder seems to be the problem of some politicians. Sex for some men [and probably women too] is conceived as something dirty and 'seedy'. Dirty, non marital,and abnormal sex is the only thing that excites some men. There was a movie some time ago about a doctor who had a beautiful wife and marriage but could not perform his biological duty within the marriage. This is a serious disorder.
The feminist position (and,
The feminist position (and, of course, there are many positions among feminists if you want a bigger understanding of reality than the bumper sticker variety) would be for choice, and for the healthiest of choices. It would take into account the many dimensions of a human woman's life, which includes physical health. It is painfully true that the biological hormonal system is not perfect and there may be costs and benefits to all choices, including leaving it alone. Assuming that you are a woman, you may even know women who cannot function at all 'normally' due to "natural" hormonal problems. It is painfully true that there are those men and those other women who would condemn them to live at home or in medical institutional care as a result of the problem, I guess in the name of God, but I am not one. It is also painfully true that human industries have been shooting industrial estrogen into the environment for years, decreasing the availability of men's sperm and increasing women's risk of having too much estrogen. If that is allowed to continue without controls, we all may need to take hormones to become 'normal' again. I suppose we shouldn't deal with that issue either because "God" wants us to make money at the expense of human health, but, oh well, the pope doesn't seem to be agreeing with that one, so what's a catholic to do? Nothing is so simple in such a complicated life in a complicated world.
I can't think that the sex act has ever made me 'whine or cry!' I am sorry that you see sex in only one biological way, because the psycho-social-spiritual reasons for sexual relationship are those that bond people to each other, and it is the bonding that ties it to the spiritual and to God. Biology would have something else happening!
Nancy J~ Maybe your post
Nancy J~ Maybe your post would be more accurate if it said that "The Church cares about women's health more than THOSE feminists who....". You appear to imply that all feminists want women to.... As a male and therefore somewhat limited in scope I was of the opinion that feminists, generally, seek right to choice for women. Again, as a free minded person, your choice to emphasize the biologic reproduction function of sex is not to be disputed but as a reasonable person you cannot really deny the relational dimension or that some others might maintain that that relational dimension is at least equally valuable. Even traditional RC "Marriage and the Family" position seem to reflect at least that.
As a final thought I agree with you that "in the era of AIDS" people might be expected to "have sobered up" about sex. I would contend that being "sober" in the sense which I think you intend, is compatible with passion.
"Who for us men and for our
"Who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven... and was made man"
The end of the quote from the Nicene Creed above seems to me to state a fact of history - Christ was a male. The first part of the quote though: "Who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven", doesn't make that distinction. It is not surprising that all of the women members of the Roman Catholic Church are included within the notion of "us men" (nos homines) and "our salvation" and that all of "us men", in the humankind sense, are expected to affirm the "I Believe" (Credo)in response.
So the salvation act in all of its (humanly speaking) bits and pieces, as outlined in the Creed, is directed to all men and women equally. Christ does not, I believe, direct his salvation intention and act differentially. And all Roman Catholics men and women are invited/challenged to respond as a race, not as differentiated classes. The prolific use of "and" in the Creed would seem to reinforce this view that signifies the interconnectedness and inclusiveness of the elements which comprise the salvivic act.
The -within and beyond time and space - presence of Christ's salvation act is the sacraments. But, are men "saved" differently than women? Is the Nicene Creed misleading? They must be, it must, because the Church's authoritative teaching on Christ's intention in giving and "man's" access to and response to the Sacramental gift in its elements differentiates between men and women in one critical element. All are given the gift of Baptism and expected to respond in love and faithfulness, some heroically; all are given the gift of Eucharist and are expected to respond in love and faithfulness, some heroically; all are given the gift of Confirmation and are expected to respond in love and faithfulness, some heroically; all are given the gift of Reconciliation and expected to respond in love and faithfulness, again some heroically, and so with the Sacrament of the sick. So too with the gift of Matrimony but for what we all know is a man-made decision to exclude those within Holy Orders. But we are ordered to believe that Jesus Himself discriminated in bestowing the gift of Holy Orders to men and excluding women. No invitation no challenge, heroic or otherwise. The distinction, the logic, the inconsistency and its curious specificity just does not seem to fit the simplicity, straight-forwardness or universality of Jesus nor the impression one gets from the Creed.
Personally, I have not seen, heard nor read any credible statement biblical or rational for discrimination in that element of the sacramental packgage gift/invitation to the human race that can support the leap of faith excluding women from Holy Orders.
Sin-list. What is on the new
Sin-list. What is on the new list that was released a few days ago? I heard that the seven deadly sins have been extended. They should include the sin of not looking beyond the 'fundamentals'
One of the network evening
One of the network evening news programs several nights ago mentioned very briefly a bishop (I didn't get the specifics) who was proposing a new sin list with ecological issues at the top. Did anyone else hear anything to that affect? Or am I just dreaming?
March 20, 2008 update: See NCR back cover EDITORIAL "Old sins revisited", 2/21/08.
Not dreaming.........but not
Not dreaming.........but not quite awake. I heard it too, on NPR in the morning but I'm surprised that NPR got it and not NCR. I asked for more information here and have not seen it yet.
Shirley Bianchi Pope
Shirley Bianchi
Pope Benedict XVI issued a great statement (and I paraphrase) regarding the fact that the scientific theory of evolution is the more accurate theory, and certainly supercedes the creation story in the Bible. Yet the Church insists on using the biology, theology, psychology and misogyny of the first five hundred years after Christ as its basis for its pronouncements regarding women, sex, sexuality, gender identification, and birth control. There is no desire, apparently, to upgrade its knowledge and understanding of these issues from a modern, 21st century scientific perspective.
It is a scandal to the world in the pre-Vatican II sense of the word that the Church continues to do so. Because of this scandal, the Church's statements on poverty, war, homeslessness, greed and its many, many other great moral and ethical statements on social justice are compeltely ignored.
In conclusion, there is one subject where I have much more knowledge and experience than anyone in the hierarchy from parish priest to Pope. I know and have experienced the essence of being a woman. None of them can make that same claim.
How can anyone lend
How can anyone lend credibility to the Church's stands on justice, human rights, reason or faith when it has positioned itself firmly within the history and practice of misogyny? Rather than confront this persistent evil it has lent its considerable intellectual, spiritual, institutional and 'moral' resources to its preservation, rationalization, legitimization. It has rejected right action and in the process denied full participation of the other essential human component to progress in Christ's mission. Even the mother of Christ has been dehumanized in order to better accommodate its own version of misogyny.
If we were more aware of the long and broad historical roots and continuity of our perception of women we would, I think, be either more than horrified with the contemporary illogic and injustice or we would be compelled to join in the relegation of women to subservience.
I don't know that I would
I don't know that I would say Mary has been de-humanized. I see it more as Divinized, at the complete expense of her humanity.
I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about the Church's definitions of Mary. The one thing that has struck me quite strongly is she is amost exclusively defined in her role as a woman by the terms mother and virgin. That she was a daughter, a sister, an aunt, a niece, and a wife are virtually unacknowledged. It's almost as if an all male clergy, which was unable to come to grips with the sexual reality of their mothers---as proclaimed by their own existence---has been transferred to Mary who then becomes the perpetual 'virgin mother'. I'm sure Freud had something to say about this phenomenon. If I remember correctly, he called this projection. There might have been something about an 'eodipal' complex as well.
Here's another thought I had. She's also never given credit for other human attributes, such as intelligence. I wonder why this is.
colkoch.blogtoolkit.com
How does "Scholasticsm's
How does "Scholasticsm's Blunder" radically dsorder theological thinking? By radically distorting religious consciousness in its gender sense of divine hypostasis. "Male and female in God's image" is humankind.
The priesthood of humanity is male/female, not exclusively male. The presumptive exclusion of women, to the contrary, radically disorders social consciousness in the Sacrament of Natural Order. Male priesthood exclusively arrogated is intrinsically disordered.
This breach of Covenant corrupts male sense in his attitude toward ecological fruitfulness, and in his justification of the exploitation of nature. As Walter Brueggemann says, humankind's disordered relationship with nature will not be healed except his disordered relationship with women is first healed.
Humankind is hellbent in its disordered "religious" thinking. Perhaps Rome is now ready to reprioritize its sin-list.
"Perhaps Rome is now ready
"Perhaps Rome is now ready to reprioritize its sin-list."
I doubt it Sylvester. They may paint the surface of the walls a different color, but it will still be the same walls. I just read an interview with the German theologian Uta Ranke-Heillmann. Here's what she had to say about the future of the Church:
"I don't see any future for a church in which all shepherds are men, and all women are sheep. How could that be a universal church? It's a mutilated construct!"
The "scholastic blunder" could only have been made in a closed society, free from dialogue with the very class of people it was defining. The really funny thing to me is that the embryological scientific truth is just the opposite. All embryos begin as female and maleness is essentially a mutation from the norm. So much for natural law.
colkoch.blogtoolkit.com
Who knows if it will do any
Who knows if it will do any good, but I e-mailed this "HOLY THURSDAY REFLECTION" to Pope Benedict, my Archbishop and my Pastor on this Holy Thursday morning:
RELIGIOUS PARALYSIS SYNDROME / Social Sin and Cultural Disconnection
Pope John XXIII, of blessed memory, and Vatican II recognized that humankind suffers spiritually and culturally from a profound depressive and destructive disorder, what I call the RELIGIOUS PARALYSIS SYNDROME — RPS.
WHAT RPS IS: It is an immune deficiency disease (IDD) acquired in childhood — what might be called a psychological version if infantile paralysis. RPS is a disease of cultural repression in which mental depression roots. Few people are completely unaffected by it. It is a disease that disables information-processing. It affects judgment, worldview, and the functioning of communication, consciousness and conscience. It is an acute mental disorder that limits intellectual capacity to the minimal capabilities of childhood.
RPS SYMPTOMS: A person suffering from the disease lacks a capacity for critical judgment. Vision and judgment are impaired by small-world processing that is fixed in anachronistic experiences and misinformed valuation. The impairment processes new experience in the framework of religious reductionism and conforms reason to the mold of hierarchical, authoritarian suppositions fixated in deity dominion. Victims lack progressive consciousness and real world connection. Their rationality is regressive, that is, consciousness is backward directed and closed to accommodation and change. The suppressed mindset acquired in childhood remains in place for a lifetime. Evidence of the damaging consequences of the syndrome accumulate only gradually in outcomes of cultural inauthenticity and eco-environmental collapses caused by the actual denial of the disease, and with denial, persistence in ignorance, arrogance and the culture of violent imposition and obsession. Eco-environmental collapses infect vital immunities and open life to catastrophic deficits.
RPS CAUSES: The transmission of the disease is accomplished by adult imposition, that is, by adults who themselves suffer from it and whose consciences are rigidified in conformity to the mold of RPS and who cannot think outside it. The disease is genetically predisposed, that is, it is culturally (in memes) and biologically (in genes) ingrained. The grave crises of the eco-environment are now awakening people to seek causes and solutions. The crisis the people are discovering is the radical degradation of the eco-environment, whose cumulative damage has been long in the process of developing and which has its cause in part in the social disease of the Religious Paralysis disorder. RPS is perniciously difficult to eradicate because of deep religious and cultural habits and because of inheritance imprint. Recovery from eco-environmental degradation and societal violence cannot happen until RPS is recognized and remedied in personal/ social consciousness.
Sylvester L. Steffen
I hope someone at the
I hope someone at the Vatican reads this Sylvester. I remember very vividly one of my theology professors lamenting about how frustrating it was for him to deal with Catholics trained in scientific professions. He couldn't understand how they could hold to the latest in scientific advances and operate out of a Catholicism which never progressed much beyond fifth grade. What's worse he said, is that they had this unique blindness to the cognitive dissonance between their faith maturity and their professional maturity. A lot of them were frustrated and depressed and didn't know why. He had a hard time helping them because they couldn't get past their idealized notion of what a priest was and what a priest was supposed to say. This was especially hard in marriage counseling. Women social workers for instance, would tolerate abuse in their own marriages they wouldn't tolerate in the marriages of their clients because their own Catholic marriage was forever. This essentially placed the Catholic theological concept of the sacramentality of marriage over the fact the abuse was killing them and raising a generation of equally abused children. Just one example of many.
I realized after listening to him, I didn't want to be in his shoes, unable to offer practical meaningful suggestions such as 'leave the bum'.
This may have been twenty some years ago, but it truly looks like we're expected to return to the whole 'jam that square peg into this round hole' mentality. Is this not in itself a form of relativism?
colkoch.blogtoolkit.com
I hope it makes a
I hope it makes a difference, and I thank you for writing about it. It's all so lovely, but lofty.
My husband is a carpenter and would not have one clue how to read what has been written here. He clearly has what Steffen called RPS in a note previous to this one. Conversation never has much of a chance when the educated meet illiteracy.
It's too bad that there is such an intellectual divide between those who have studied and thought things through this carefully and the people who just try to get to the end of the day without insult or injury. It would be so useful to have a common person's guide to liberation theology. Then maybe a grass roots ground swell might have a chance.
Meanwhile, may I offer my personal consolation for having a men-only hierarchy. The male clerical organization is, in the final analysis, a powerful way of keeping some of the most annoying men in history out of our neighborhoods. Down here on earth, I have raised a family, cared for my elders, and forgiven deeply the sins of my religion. Thanks be to the Holy Spirit, may Her glory be fully realized!
Janet
One+Heart
Live in peace. Forgive everybody. Blame no one.