When it's about women, you've gone too far
Print Friendly Version| From Where I Stand by Joan Chittister, OSB | March 15, 2007 |
| Vol. 4, No. 37 |
Editor's Note: A few days after this column was posted, Trocaire and the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland worked out a compromise. The broadcasting commission agreed that if Trocaire removed the words "Lenten Campaign" from the advertisements, they could run on commercial television.
Try to remember this: It is possible to go too far. Remember this, too: It will all depend on what you're talking about whether it turns out to be too far or not.
I got another lesson on that one recently. Last week, in Ireland, Trocáire, the official overseas development agency of the Catholic Church in Ireland, began its regular Lenten ad campaign.
The interesting thing about the campaign -- which is not uncommon to most churches in Lent -- is that it is about more than "charity." It does not ask for alms alone. It asks people to contribute to movements that seek justice. It puts its resources to the service of social consciousness and social change. It always calls for change in the system that is creating the oppression, contributing to the poverty, or justifying the discrimination.
So, in previous Lenten campaigns, for example, it called attention to apartheid in South Africa and channeled money to organizations there who were working to develop a democracy in that country. The Irish government and the church supported that campaign.
Then, in another year, Trocáire concentrated on the liberation of child soldiers and Ireland supported them in that campaign, too.
Finally, Trocáire turned the light and the money on the plight of slave laborers around the world and were applauded for their efforts there, too.
In all their Lenten drives Trocáire uses public information spots on Irish television. It mounts a poster campaign across the country. It publishes public information brochures throughout the republic to focus attention on issues that are at the base of oppression or poverty and collects money to be used to change the system as well as to alleviate the effects of the oppression.
All of these campaigns have revolved around clearly political issues. And all of them have gotten widespread support.
Till this one.
This one features an unending grid of diapered babies, black and white, all infants, all charming and bright-eyed and lively. Finally the voice-over says, "These children will have less education, live in more poverty, contract more disease, suffer more violence, face more disadvantage than if they had malaria or HIV. They will never even be given a chance. Why? Because they're female."
Bingo!
This ad, on gender equality, the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland (BCI) has decreed, must be removed from its commercial airwaves because it is "political."
Oh, give us a break.
Racism isn't political. Child soldiers aren't political. Slave labor and human trafficking aren't political. But gender equality is?
The ad is "political" and contrary to the Radio and Television Act of 1988, BCI argues, because it "calls upon the Government to produce a National Action Plan and seeks public signatures for a petition in this regard."
Protests about the ban are coming from everywhere, true. RTE -- Radio Television Erin -- refuses to comply, for instance. They will show the ads, but they will confine the ads to noncommercial television and public radio channels only. The kind that don't have sponsors, apparently. The implication seems to be that sponsors would -- at least could -- withdraw their own advertising support from programs that are 'political,' meaning in support of gender equality.
The campaign itself has also not been withdrawn. And in columns and Letters to the Editor everywhere, the Irish are raising some very pointed questions.
They are asking things like why Trocáire doesn't focus on the Catholic church itself, its sponsoring institution, as a justifying agent of female discrimination. (Irish Times, Saturday, March 10, 2007, Patsy McGarry, "Trocaire's young girl without a chance lives far closer to home," p. 13.)
They want to know how it is that a government commission can dare to question the need for this ad in a world where two-thirds of the poor are women.
They are pointing out that 66 percent of the illiterate of the world are women who are being denied the right to an education.
They are not unaware that 70 percent of the refugees and internally displaced population of the world in war-torn countries are women.
They know that women, even in Ireland and in developed countries in general, are still earning only 69 percent of male wages for the same level of work.
A people in an agricultural country who have known desperate starvation themselves, realize in a way most don't in our part of the world, that women produce 80 percent of the planet's food but get less than 10 percent of the world's agricultural assistance and aid, even from nations like the United States. (Irish Times, Thursday, March 8, 2007, Mary Raftery, Trocáire ad deserves an airing, p. 16.)
And, finally, they are acutely conscious of the fact that women who are the backbone of the church everywhere, including in Ireland, are barred from the theological formulations of the church. They know that, however much women serve the church, they are nevertheless left out, even of its restored diaconate -- "not even given a chance" -- simply because they are female. Best of all, the questions are getting more numerous, more pointed, more revealing every day.
Why the problem with only this campaign and not with any of the others? Is it because this campaign is so much closer to home for all of us than malaria and child soldiers and apartheid will ever be?
Is it because down deep they -- and maybe even we -- know that this is discrimination in our own society that is hiding in plain sight?
Is it because a change in this social issue would turn both society and church upside down? Or maybe, more to the point, would a change finally turn society and church right side up?
From where I stand, the objection to the ad is far more to be contested than the subject matter of the ad itself. Gender discrimination enslaves or suppresses the development of half the population of the world. The very idea that the attempt to focus on the issue of gender equality can be gagged, can be denied public consciousness, on the grounds that it is a "political problem" -- for whatever reason -- is itself the real problem. The very idea that we cannot discuss the questions of women in church and society without facing either theological or social recrimination is the issue behind the issues.
And we have the nerve to question the treatment of women in other cultures of the world? Now that's going too far.
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When a person doesn't even
When a person doesn't even know where to start in a response, I guess it's better to pass, especially since I've already said that I eat (quite energetically) of the apple of knowledge of good and evil... I'm waiting to see who signs in in agreement. :0)
It is unfortunate that
It is unfortunate that people who disagree with one extreme think the answer is at the other extreme. People are first unique individuals and second members of one or the other sex. When individuals are excluded from something or mistreated because they belong in some category based on certain features that they share with others in that category, then a mistake is being made.
You are right that human behavior has not changed in all of our existence. People continue to demonize women before holding men accountable for their own actions.
Jere Pfister Dear Sister
Jere Pfister
Dear Sister Joan,
There is a God and she is a woman. I haven't looked at your site for a long time. And then in the late of night for who knows what, I read you recent column on the furor over girl babies in an add on Social Justice in Ireland, the land of my grandmothers. I love it. That really puts it right out there.
I would remind you and anyone who reads this letter that it was just 19 years ago, March 23, 1988, that the American Bishops published the first draft of their letter, Partners in the Mystery of Redemption: A Pastoral Response to Women's Concerns for Church and Society.
There were women's voices included (in italics) in the text of that first Draft. At the very end of the Draft were the questions for women who would be studying the text. Bishops across the nation invited women to read and study the Draft and to meet with others and discuss their insights and differences as well as their common areas of agreement.
I took part with a small group who studied the Pastoral under the leadership of a woman historian from the local seminary in Houston, Francis Panchok. Later, I would meet with a larger group of women, called to meet by our bishop, facilitated by women who worked for the Diocese of Houston.
The women who met were all over the place. Some wanted to call God, Mother God. Some had not even read the Pastoral, saying that it was the devil's work. That they followed the Pope and didn't need to have a Pastoral on their lives because well, they were doing just what they were supposed to be doing and they were there to make sure the Bishops knew what right thinking women were thinking.
We broke up into small groups, all enclosed inside the same room. It was lively, to say the least. Everytime tempers and voices and facial expressions began to go over the top, a facilitator would gently stop by our tables and say, Tell a story. And tell them we did. We told stories about our mothers, about ourselves giving birth, about our expectations and dissappointments, about our children, our lives, some were rural others urban. We talked about our educations, our favorite prayers, our church communities, the sense of being part of something bigger than ourselves that growing up in the Catholic Church had given us.
At the end of the day, we were no longer arguing, we were laughing and crying together, and we spoke in a unified voice that our stories, our experiences were important and unique. We wrote our responses to the bishops questions out of that sense of truthful storytelling.
Of course none of us ever received so much as a thankyou note from the Bishops. Certainly not in the diocese of Houston. Not only were our voices not acknowledged the Bishops at the end of the day had cut out the voices of any woman.
And so it goes today. I no longer call myself a Catholic. I am catholic, try to be open to all religions and thought but unwilling to ever give over my belief system to an organization that isn't interested in hearing my truth and your truth. Truth as in lived experience and reality, a life examined. I am incorporating into my daily life, the rituals and disciplines I learned in the church of my grandmothers but which neighter I nor my chidren or grandchildren feel comfortable in anymore. My husband always said, "If you want the church to change get out of it." I can't tell you how hard that was for me, but I finally did it.
Now the reason I went digging through old files this weekend and revisiting the NCR website, is because I have working on a performance piece called, The Church of the Not So Virgin Mothers. As I work on it with a group of other performers who are working on their own stuff, I have been amazed at the feedback I have recieved on a part of the performance where I just speak in the voice of many different women, all of the text gathered from memory, or news accounts, or short bits of story I overhear. So many of these artists had never heard these stories on stage before. Or in the case of our lone male dancer, they have never even thought about the issues raised, by women. On Sunday, March 18th, the file with my notes and the actual first draft of the pastoral appeared as if by magic while I was cleaning out my art studio. Go figure.
As I look at the struggle in the Espiscopal Church over the whole gay Bishop thing, I know it is really about the fear of the feminine. I've had an Eagles CD in my car for a week and the lead song has been driving me crazy. GET OVER IT. A new world is coming. And we had all better be ready. I'm 66 and having the time of my life, stirring up pots,marching for peace, writing, and speaking my mind.
Thanks, Joan for a wonderful column and life. You have touched me in more ways than you know. And if anyone wants another World Wide Women's Conference, give Houston another look. Texas is a strange State. Talk about the tension of opposites. Ya'll come.
Jere Pfister
The principal argument
The principal argument against priestesses in the church is that the office is reserved to the male sex by apostolic tradition. But as a Catholic woman, I see that the tradition stems from the understanding that we women are far more prone to gnosticism and antinomianism. When women attempt to usurp the mystical role of priest (sacramental intermediary between God and man), heresy is an inevitable development. Sister Joan Chittister's theology is Peoples' exhibit A in support of the case.
The primary example in the classical world was the cult of Dionysus. Dionysus was the god of wine and the exemplar of what Freud called id. His followers (the Bacchae or maeneds) were females who drank and danced in the woods with "satyrs" and such (let your imagine run). The Bacchae were in direct opposition to the predominate "Apollonian" state approved religion, which emphasized virtue and restraint. Apollo represents what Freud would have called the "superego." The conflict between anarchic female sexuality and male repression-restraint was a common theme in Greek myth and cultural and social development for centuries.
Authentic Catholicism is an "Apollonian" religion in the sense its ideal is one of masculine virtue, as embodied by Christ and exemplified by our perceptions of St. Michael, for example, typically depicted in the garb of a Roman soldier. By definition each of the three personas of God in the Holy Trinity has a predominately male aspect and the one mind of God can only be understood as representing something like the Apollonian ideal.
Sister Chittister's wish for the Church to elevate women to the priesthood opens a Pandora's box. In the Christian context, our influence would primarily manifest in Gnosticism (a religion born from individual expression as opposed to revealed truth) and antinomianism (the belief that behavior has no bearing on salvation, but only faith). Look no further than the popularity of the da Vinci Code apostasy for evidence of this. The introduction of Dionysian/antinomian thought leads first to the acceptance and then approval of homosexuality. The elevation of "Peace and Justice" issues to the forefront of religious priorities and the practice of pagan earth worship are natural outgrowths.
Men are most comfortable when rules are clear and obediently followed. Women are more inclined to follow the dictates of emotion and compassion. Neither approach is intrinsically superior, each is necessary for the good conduct of the family and society. But, the church must adhere to the Apollonian tradition or chaos and heresy are sure to follow. No church has remained faithful to Christ with women priestesses. None.
Does Sister Joan have a
Does Sister Joan have a theology? Beyond that, these are all justifications for what the writer wishes to believe instead of valid objections based on analysis of cultures, religions, or the psyches of men and women. How many churches have had women priestesses that one can conclude that chaos and heresy are inevitable?
I might agree that most men are more comfortable when rules are clear and obediently followed. I might agree that most women are more inclined to follow the dictates of emotion and compassion. Because of that, I take Jesus' choice of Peter to serve as the foundation of the Church to be an indication that he did not want the Church to be a Church of rules that its members are expected to be able to follow in perfect obedience. I take the implication that Jesus' mother was to serve as the mother of the Church to mean that emotion and compassion were to be prominent.
The man at the highest level of Church governance at this time has been trying to deemphasize the aspect of the Church as a place of rules and emphasize the joy that is to be found in Christ. The devotion to Mary that is found among the leaders of the Church would seem to put them at odds with the writer who claims that the objection to women priests has a foundation beyond tradition. It seems that the writer is the one who is most comfortable when rules are clear and obediently followed.
How many times have we heard
How many times have we heard something along the lines of.... "Women were definitely leaders in the early church and so that's what we're asking to go back to, the early leaders of women in the church and leading to ordination,"
Oh Really? Now we want to go back to something? I love it when Joan points out the way things were "in the early Church". It amazes me that my contemporary sisters want to move forward into a "new Church" where they can be priestesses by invoking what happened almost 2,000 years ago to justify it. Since when do we hearken back to everything that was done in the early Church (by the way that's a heresy too, called Antiquarianism) as our guide? You can't simply ignore 2,000 years of development because it doesn't fit your agenda.
Yes, lets embrace the early Church where men and women didn't sit together at worship, the bishop was the only one to celebrate Eucharist for the local Church and he sent Communion to everyone else in their homes, A Church where there was no recognized Bible as we know it, people put off being baptized until their deathbed because there was no Confession yet, the liturgy was in Greek and, oh yes, many Christians still went to Temple as their main form of worship because they were Jewish! Do we want to "go back" to all of that? I doubt it.
Can any woman here point out ONE example of a church that follows the feminist model and is NOT in a terminal death spiral? The Episcopals? the Presbyterians? The Methodists? The Unitarians? I don't think so. Priestesses are the kiss of death to any church.
Perhaps there is no basis
Perhaps there is no basis for claiming that women should be priests simply based on women having once served in such a capacity. However, many of the changes you cite as development occurring over 2000 years were embraced because they did have historic precedent. Other things that may have developed, did so because they were seen as providing a better approach to accomplishing the mission of the Church. Some people feel that women as priests would be another thing that is beneficial in this way.
I doubt very much that the religions you list are in a terminal death spiral. The issues dividing Episcopalians are not related to the ordination of women even though some people in that Church object to it. One might argue that it is the prejudice that is hurting that Church, not the women.
So far as I can tell the Presbyterians, Methodists, Unitarians, and others are doing fine. There is no single religion that speaks to all people. It seems as though God realizes that and approves of all the various approaches to bringing the Good News to the world.
Well, I'm not sure that any
Well, I'm not sure that any of these churches either follow a feminist model (what exactly is that?) OR are in a "terminal death spiral", whatever that is, but I gather you are throwing the gauntlet out or something. You obviously have lots of energy and investment around these issues. So let me assure you, in the event that you haven't gotten the message. YOU WIN. No "priestesses" in the Catholic Church.
But have you heard of winning graciously? Women have as much right as anyone to think, to look backward, to look forward, to hope, to dream, etc., so I guess you will see lots of that here. That's a natural (ah yes, human) consequence of decisions being made--almost always, someone will be grieving something. If I spend the remainder of my earthly life grieving things that you are sure are heresy, that's still no sin and still no heresy. I have the Godgiven right to grieve also! And faith teaches us that God is actually with us in our grievings...
Heresy involves a bit more action to move away from my church than that. Even in the mind of a pope and all the church. So, this time, why don't you conform yourself to the teachings of the church? People do get to wrestle around like...was that Jacob? So, at least try to fill yourself with compassion for my wrestling, my failings in thought and emotions, and pray for me for time and all eternity! And, if you want to talk with my humble stupid intransigent self, than why not bring it down to something less extreme and more amenable to discussion. I'm not sure what to do being jerked between my conjoining (with whom?) in the forest and my mad mental distraction with tradition...
But wait a minute,
But wait a minute, AnnieO...here's something I don't understand... Why would the patriarchal, female-hating, rights-denying, big bad Catholic Church have declared Catherine of Sienna, Teresa of Avila, and Therese of Lisieux doctors of the Church? The Church has always maintained that these women were persons whose personal holiness was truly outstanding, even among saints; who had a brilliant depth of doctrinal insight; and an extensive body of writings which the Church could recommend to men and women as an expression of the authentic and life-giving Catholic Tradition.
And what about the Saints? Why did the anti-feminist, anti-woman Church see fit to canonize St. Joan of Arc, St. Lucy, St. Clare, St. Victoria, St. Angela Merici, St. Bernadette, St. Rita, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, St. Monica, St. Rose of Lima, St Faustina, along with hundrends of other WOMEN?
I also wonder why is it that, that among all the mere mortals who ever lived, the Church would dogmatically declare a WOMAN as possessing the highest power in heaven, higher than any saint or angel? She is Mary, mother of us all, who acts as co-operator with Jesus in the work of redemption.
I just can't see how any Catholic woman with even a rudimentary knowledge of the history and Glory of the Catholic Church can't immediately see that the Church was the ONLY institution in human history to have raised the dignity of us women from our former lot as property and objects to co-equals with men. Equal in dignity, sanctity and heavenly reward.
Contrast these feminine spiritual lights unto the world with their positive models of love for God and neighbor, their good works and the souls they gained for heaven, with the misery, confusion and discord sown by our sad little collection of "feminist thinkers." Women like Ayn Rand, Elaine Pagels, Simon de Beauvior, Betty Freidan, Margaret Mead, Judith Jarvice Thompson, Elizabeth Badintor, Margaret Sanger, Helen Gurey Brown, Andrea Dworkin and, of course, Joan who periodically come down from from the mountain after their tete a tete with the burning bush to enlighten us poor, "oppressed" women.
There's so little to grieve, my dear sister, and so much to celebrate if we learn about our nature, worth and dignity from the Church's dazzling pantheon of exceptional and holy women, NOT the lies of these embittered feminist misanthropes.
Please, be a little more
Please, be a little more even handed. St. Theresa wanted desparately to be a priest, and wrote quite passionately about how she grieved being born a woman which kept her from being a priest.
The whole of Marian theology has taken Mary from being a human, to being some sort of super entity who left her humanness behind as she wasn't even born with what makes us human--that would be original sin, and lest I forget, she never had sex. She's become a prototypical virgin goddess figure whom JPII was seriously considering declaring a Co-redemptrix. This concept didn't get past Cardinal Ratzinger, not surprisingly.
Had you grown up in Catholic schools you would have been indoctrinated with female saints who were all virgins, and mostly all nuns. They were used as both a recruiting tool for the convent, and models of sexual control. I never saw my mother in any of these models and wondered why any woman would throw away their best shot at sainthood by marrying and having babies. It seems sort of funny now, but this kind of indoctrination is not easy to get over as you reach adulthood and start experiencing hormonal urges.
As far as Sr Joan, disparaging her is beneath you. I would imagine Joan spends far more time amongst the world's truly oppressed women than any of us who read her writings. It's that experience and the insight she draws from it that inspire me.
There are always be those
There are always be those who twist St. Thérèse's words to suit their ends. The passage in question, taken out of all context is this:
"I feel the vocation of the Warrior, the Priest, the Apostle, the Doctor, the Martyr. Finally, I feel the need and the desire of carrying out the most heroic deeds for You, O Jesus. I feel within my soul the courage of the Crusader, the Papal Guard, and I would want to die on the field of battle in defense of the Church. I feel in me the vocation of the PRIEST. With what love, O Jesus, I would take You in my hands when, at my voice, You would come down from heaven. And with what love would I give You to souls!"
But it's her very next sentence which is key to understanding her life (and also what you seldom hear from dissenters):
"But alas! while desiring to be a Priest, I admire and envy the humility of St. Francis of Assisi and I feel the vocation of imitating him in refusing the sublime dignity of the Priesthood."
Thérèse voluntarily abstained from becoming a priest, having opened a path that would allow her to fulfil the vocation that was impossible to her by other means. Through prayer, she understood that the Church was made up of many "different limbs," each with its own function. The most central organ in the body is the heart, the seat of love. Thérèse thus decided to be the heart, to take up Love as her appointed work. "Charity gave me the key to my vocation. ...I understood that love comprised all vocations, that love was everything." By cooperating with God, she found a liberating discovery not only her own path but also a way for all Christians-all the "little souls" who like herself burn with a longing to do that which is BEYOND their powers, and possibilities. Thérèse’s innovation and spiritual guidance to others is what made her a great saint and doctor.
Yes, Col, and the "Little
Yes, Col, and the "Little Flower" wrote that she thought the church was wrong for not letting her be a priest as she felt called to be. Don't you guess that in these days and ages that her sainthood process would be held up for another century or two by those who felt that "thinking" and "feeling" constitute heresy? Perhaps we should look backward to the fut...Oh, back to the future...yow! Thanks for your post!
St. Thérèse NEVER said she
St. Thérèse NEVER said she believed the Church was wrong for not ordaining women. To use her for priestess propaganda is about as legit as the twisting of Naomi and Ruth's story by the GBLT community.
Thérèse writes in a private letter to her sister that her desire for God is so strong that she she wanted to embrace all vocations, especially that of martyr. BUT, through her obedience to God and her love of Christ she finds her vocation as the heart of love in the body of the Church.
Her private letter is in contrast to the very public behavior of certain agitators for priestesses. Notice what St. Thérèse NEVER does. She never organize conferences and forums to oppose Church teachings, never grandstands as a heretic and never chronically complains that the Church is wrong and she is right.
BIG difference
Jolene, given the Therese
Jolene, given the Therese died in the 1890's at the young age of 24, it's very doubtful she had the capacity to organize conferences and forums. She is a product of her times, and her family's ability to promote her status after her death.
I sometimes get very frustrated with discussions of saints. Therese had a willful side demonstrated by her tenacity in obtaining entrance to a Carmelite convent before she turned 16. Somehow she managed to get all the way to the Pope to promote her cause. Given that kind of tenacity I have no doubt she would have been quite the whirlwind in todays age of information.
What I admire about her is she fought off mental illness by training her self to see the other side of suffering, the other side of any situation, by learning to see them as opportunities for life lessons. If you think she didn't have issues with the religious life she led, or didn't desire a priestly role, you are reading only the 'official' side of her story.
Being willful is less
Being willful is less important than where one's will is directed. Therese wanted to enter the Carmelites early to serve the Lord. There is no evidence that she harbored the kind of disobedience common in certain modern religious orders. I am really astonished to hear some suggest that she would, if given more time or another venue, have agitated for the If Therese was merely the product of the backward and naive 19th century, how can one explain that there are still Catholic religious women like her today?
Why have the Sisters of St. Francis of the Martyr St. George in Alton, Illinois (www.altonfranciscans.org) had more than 46 sisters enter their convent in the past 10 years? These women are all young, habited, and like Therese, nurture an intense desire to serve the Lord and the Holy Father. Contrast them with another Franciscan order, just across the Mississippi in St. Louis, which gave up the habit long ago and hasn’t had a SINGLE woman enter and stay in 15 years. Forty-six vs. zero-think about that for a moment.
And there are many new orders just like the Sisters of St. Francis. The Apostles of the Interior Life of Madison, the Dominican Sisters of Mary of Ann Arbor and the Passionist nuns of Erlanger, Kentucky to name a few. All are young, habited, faithful and growing. Virtually ALL the dissident, earth-worshipping orders are circling the drain with median ages of 70 or more. Within 15 years they will cease to exist and their assets sold off. I guess we know where God's grace shines.
You might be making your
You might be making your case to the wrong person. I am not the least bit surprised by the increase in vocations to convents which are highly regimented, any more than I was by the number of enlistments in the military.
In both cases the mission is the object, but the regimentation is the security. One doesn't have to think for themselves or act on their own authority. In this day and age when the younger generations are faced with a multiple array of choices, the regimented way is a very secure and safe choice. These younger generations are so security oriented they use cell phones, IM and text messaging rather than deal with the unsafe environment of spontaneous face to face communication.
No, these numbers of enlistments in regimented convents don't impress me. They sadden me. Advancements are coming too quick for most of the spiritually gifted to shine their light in the real world. It's safer in the quiet back waters, but then it always has been.
Most of our best mystics demonstrated not only great connections with the Spirit, but also disassociative mental illnesses. Therese, was no exception. There are sound scientific reasons for this, but I doubt you really want to know these. Keep praying for these women who join these convents. I myself, work with those who choose to stay in the real, unsafe world, and I pray more for them.
Jolenecasa, you are simply
Jolenecasa, you are simply out of line with your comments. "Virtually ALL The dissident, earth-worshipping orders are CIRCLING THE DRAIN [caps added] with median ages of 70 or more." You need to stop yourself. You are talking about women who have given their whole lives to service in the Church, and most assuredly not as some scum as you write. Simply because you disagree with people does not give you the right to be abusive in your comments. You clearly have problems with other women, and perhaps do not hear yourself patronize and insult. You need to spend some time considering and focusing on practicing the virtues, and spend less time on your movement politics. If there's anything Teresa of Avila talked about it, it was that it 'is for the flowers'--the virtues, that we should be working.
I not being disrepectful,
I not being disrepectful, nor abusive, I'm just reporting the trend. I don't apprciate you putting words in my mouth-I never called anyone "scum." There are very few women religious today who are dedicated to the service of the Church as the Church defines "service." Very few. But we should look at their demise not with sadness but as a completely natural occurence. As Pope Benedict XVI reminds us, the Church has spectacular powers of regeneration which work cyclically over the centuries. The renewal we are witnessing in our generation are some of the women's religious orders I mentioned above along with other's such as Opus Dei, Neocatechumenate, Communion and Liberation etc. I have a few Opus Dei and Legion of Mary friends and they are wonderful and joyful people who love God and neighbor. These people and institutions will fill the vacuum left by the general collapse of those men's and women's religious orders which are no longer Catholic. Now before you raise a hue and cry, I suggest you read their programs and mission statements. You'll never EVER see the words "sin," "salvation," or "sanctity" anywhere. Why? Because the majority are de facto non-governmental organizations primarily concerned with international socialism (peace), toppling the Church patriachy or condoms for Africa (justice) or pantheism/paganism (ecological stewardship)
I'm just restating the Iron law of Faith communities: Religious orders which remain faithful to God through obedience to the Magisterium flourish. Conversely, orders that abandon the teaching of the Church wither. This is the will and design of God and this is how its always going to be. I hope everyone here prays for the Holy Spirit's guidance of these new religious organizations-they are the seeds of the new saints.
Well, that is a better tone
Well, that is a better tone for these threads, that's for sure. I am not one to pit women against women (one of the oldest games a-goin'), so you will need to know that I will drop out of discourse with you if you return to abusive comments. As Sr. Joan said and I will now put in a different context for the future with you, "when it's about women, you've gone too far."
Obviously, you feel that you can detect 'God's shining' in numbers of women in certain religious orders. I don't think there's any particular reason to assume that numbers show anything of being graced, but it is certainly one human perspective. God seems to say we will more likely see the "shining" relate to the fruits, and that's where I tend to look. Perhaps you are in some role that you can judge that there are "very few women religious today who are dedicated...". I don't know. I'm really rarely around religious women anymore and I deeply miss them, but am guessing that I see God's fruits in women that you don't.
Again, I'm not sure you are responding to me (have you noticed that people say this to you again and again), but I'm not sure that I actually feel sad about the decline of religious orders at the present time; perhaps I feel a bit bittersweet, if you are actually talking to me instead of to some "group" you think you find on here. I can certainly agree that there is the likelihood of rather natural occurrences in their cycles. Usually we hear that the women will be 'good' religious if they don't get much edycation, and apparently that approach may help. HT has more to say on that subject, but it's not something that I could or would advocate for the sake of the kingdom, so I'm not the one to understand that perspective.
I can happily pray for all women, and all religious women of all orders.
well, I don't claim to know
well, I don't claim to know a great deal from her readings, since I don't read them. I did get my information from NCR. So, I will give you that until I have the time to look for myself, should I ever wish to. Then I doubt that I will take you at face. However, since up above you state that Therese VOLUNTARILY gave up being a priest, let us at least clarify that a person can't really give up anything voluntarily if it isn't an option. That's called acceptance.
There's acceptance and then
There's acceptance and then there's obedience. Weren't we treated to the spectacle of Christine Mayr-Lumetzberger and Gisela Forster wearing bishop costumes and "ordaining" priestesses on a boat on the St. Lawrence in 2005? Obviously for some of us, ordination is not only an option, it is an accomplished fact. In my brief time here on NCR, I see that about 80% of the posts are by people who ridicule the Holy Father/magisterium and reject the whole concept of "givens" of the Church. Everything is up for grabs in these enlightened times. Therese never would have dreamed of harming the body of Christ in this way. She simply loved God with gratitude and humility.
OK, I responded to your
OK, I responded to your first post before I read this one. Therese, is a product of her times, and her family, and the Church as it existed in her times. The basic reason we know of her at all is because she was promoted by her family, her convent and the papacy of Pius IX. You know, the one who called Vatican I, made infallibility the huge change about the papacy and issued the bazillion reasons against modernism.
In this same reactionary hieracrchical time period we also has the phenomenon of Lourdes and slightly later Fatima. In all three cases these were young peasant children who modeled innocence, poverty--ok not so much in Therese's case--and uneducated youth. All of these instances of mysticism involved Marian appearances or theology, and children---not uppity lay men.
What we do know about this particular time frame in the Church is that the rising classes of middle and independent lower class males in Europe and North America turned away from Church participation, as this feminization and infantilization of Church saints and icons was thrust on the scene, most likely to underscore male clerical supremacy using the soul as the battle ground. The more authoritarian the Church became, the more feminized and pious were it's saints and visionaries. Men turned away, and have stayed away in droves. John Allen succinctly points out this lay male disaffection in his current arcticle about megatrends in Catholicism.
If lay men are only paying, and not praying, and given up obeying, that may be a much bigger issue than 'priestesses' worshipping in the 'woods.'
The reason we know of nearly
The reason we know of nearly every saint is because their cause was promoted by their family, convent, order, community or Pope. That's integral to the process of beatification and canonization.
You speak of the communion of the saints as a purely sociological phenomenon. In your view, how did the pre-eminent miracle of the past 500 years–the Miracle of the Sun at Fatima-occur? How did the sun, at the exact moment predicted months before by 3 shepard children, spin and dance in the sky, plummet towards earth, roll along the horizon and expode in multiform colors before 80,000 gathered witnesses over a 18 mile radius? If it's all sociology, then what are you suggesting-that Benedict XV planned the whole thing? That he, together with his curial officals, used secret Templar technology to pull the sun's strings for the purpose of bolstering male clerical supremacy and filling the pews? I should think THAT is a greater leap of faith than, say, the resurrection.
Men never turned away from the Church when it promoted veneration of the Blessed Mother or women saints. I've never seen credible evidence for that. What I do see is that the Church has consistently reverenced womanhood, not feminization- nature over caricature. Men only began to seriously turn away from the Church in the last 30 years or so, and I would say primarily due to I-am-woman-hear-me-roar types appointing themselves to parish liturgical committees, planning teams and lay ministries. The result is feminization (in the political sense) of parish life and men staying home in droves. There are exceptions. Our 1,100 member parish has a solid 50/50 mix of men and women young and old-in fact I would say it's even slightly in favor of the men, but then again, we don't allow altar girls or women lectors. The first concern of the women in the parish is to foster precious vocations and we do that by encouraging the liturgical participation of our sons and brothers.
Just when I was beginning to
Just when I was beginning to think "ho-hum" nothing new here today, I read this. It is the extremes that make life so interesting. I cannot imagine what it is about not permitting altar girls and women lectors that so invigorates a parish. I would have to say that deciding someone is not fit to do something because of his or her gender only is not what the Church teaches. What I think is being said here is that if men see that women are allowed to do something, then they think it is too effeminate for themselves to participate.
The primary reason for not
The primary reason for not allowing women as altar servers is theological: i.e. it is illicit. Inaestimabile Donum #18)says it plainly enough: "There are various roles that women can perform in the liturgical assembly: These include reading the word of God and proclaiming the intentions of the prayer of the faithful. Women are not, however, permitted to act as altar servers."
The secondary, more practical reason is that having boys participate in the liturgy as altar servers has historically been a rich source of vocations. Without vocations, there is no priesthood, and without a priesthood, the Church ceases to exist functionally. So this issue really boils down to priorities: Do we agitate for a nonexistant "right" to personal liturgical expression or do we support the Church's need for vocations? I hope that all Catholic men or women support those efforts which have proven fruitful to vocations.
At Mass yesterday a
At Mass yesterday a girl/woman served, at least three women distributed the Eucharist, and three of the four "altar server" candidates formally accepted were girl/women. Bacchus and Dionysius were nowhere in sight, and the women's behaviour was appropriate.
Girls are not women. What
Girls are not women. What is it about having girl altar servers that prevents boys from being altar servers? It is a bit of a stretch to claim that the presence of girl altar servers has caused the decline in men seeking the priesthood.
Here's the situation as I
Here's the situation as I have experienced it. Whenever girls/women are introduced as altar servers, within a short period of time the ratio of girls to boys skews strongly in favour of girls. I've been to many other parishes due to business travelling and whenever I've seen girls as altar servers, it's almost exclusively girls-the best I've seen in terms of "equal access" is a 6 to 2 ratio, once in a Mass in Brooklyn. Why this happens as a rule, I just don't know, but it's one of those mysterious givens. Now if these girls' newfound "ministry" resulted in a surge of vocations for boys and convents overflowing with novices, maybe I would change my mind on the matter, but the situation is this: We have a crisis of vocations and de facto destroying this rich source of future priests does not serve Catholic men, women and families.
I'm really mystified at the motivations for altar girls among some parents. Do we love our Church? Then we need to do EVERYTHING we can to foster vocations so the Church can serve her faithful. I wish Catholic parents would take a moment to examine their loyalties: It's an either/or: Will they support the Church and her need for vocations, or is the Church just another a venue for Kodak moments where their little girl can strut around the "stage" in a starched alb and bobby socks? Isn't this perennial parental need the reason we have end-of-year school plays?
Of my four children, two are
Of my four children, two are altar servers. One of them is male and one is female. This was not something that we, their parents, either encouraged or discouraged. What motivated the two to choose to do this? I do not know, but I would say that it is the nature of people not to claim to be divinely called even when they feel drawn to something to which they indeed may be divinely called. Ask any priest why he became a priest and you will hear a variety of fairly mundane reasons, witness a bit of embarrassment perhaps, and know exactly as much about it as I do about why my children have chosen to be altar servers.
It does not seem to me that altar serving contributes, or ever contributed, to vocations. I meet many, many men who are not priests who were loyal altar servers in their youth. Whatever prevented them from becoming priests is the reason why there are fewer priests these days.
This posting should be read
This posting should be read in tandem with jolencasa's March 22nd posting within this thread explaining the exclusion of women from the priesthood.
It should also be noted that
It should also be noted that the church she attends does not allow altar girls or women lectors, and that there is nothing within Catholic teaching or among the various rules and regulations of the Church that prohibits altar girls or women lectors. This is purely discrimination based on gender, unrelated to concerns as to the will of God or the importance of apostolic succession to the valid administration of the Sacraments.
I kinda think there's a
I kinda think there's a sexual issue involved also. That ole domination/submission thing that is such a rush for some people. I doubt this will make press, but sex is written all over some of this stuff...
It would not surprise me if
It would not surprise me if the church in question were located in that part of the US where the air is soft and often smells of honeysuckle, where boys are raised to defer to women and the feminine qualities of beauty and delicate charm are valued above all others.
So, since it wasn't
So, since it wasn't voluntary, was it acceptance or obedience?
I think you are perhaps
I think you are perhaps replying to the wrong post? I can't see anything of the "patriarchal, female-hating, rights-denying, big bad Catholic Church" discussion in my post. Let me know if you want really are responding to me.
This post makes almost as
This post makes almost as much sense as Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger's "Letter to the Bishops ....on the Collaboration of Man and Women...". At least it is more culturally inclusive.
It seems to me what you are
It seems to me what you are saying in this essay is that the male superego must keep the rules for the chaotic, self defining, female id. In other words that male energy represents structure and female energy represents chaos. Interesting point of view.
So, let me get this straight
So, let me get this straight in my wild loose brain...if I go to an Episcopalian church to witness a woman priest celebrate Mass, I will head to a forest to do what?
In Chris Hedges new book
In Chris Hedges new book American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, he writes a chapter on the Cult of Masculinity. While he is not suggesting that sexism was invented by the Christian right, what he is saying is that as part of establishing their power base, they install (unfailingly) male preachers in their mega-churches and instruct women to be subservient. It is an inherent aspect of the belief system.
What this censorship of this ad campaign constitutes is an attempt to quash any discussion of the power over women structure. Starting with baby girls, of course.
Dear Sr Joan, I am a great
Dear Sr Joan,
I am a great fan of your weekly essays because you so eloquently bare the 'truth' for all to read.
Unfortunately, the male of the species of which I am one, has yet to quit the step aerobics routine of their inflated egos.
Keep up the good fight.
'This is my living faith, an active faith, a faith of verbs: to question, explore, experiment, experience, to seek, to embrace the questions, to be wary of answers.' -Terry Tempest Williams, naturalist and author (1955- )
Ninja
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Right on, Sister Joan. Thank
Right on, Sister Joan. Thank God for her ability to speak out on such a truth.
Thank you for the timeliness
Thank you for the timeliness of this article. I just returned from NYC, 2 weeks at the United Nations at the conference Commission on the Status of Women. This is the year of the Girl Child for the United Nations - the invisible and excluded girl child. I was part of a grass roots effort by 40 women to engage the political will to hold a fifth Women's World Conference by 2010. The 4th Women's World Conference was in Beijing in 1995 and was the conference where women were granted Human Rights by the majority of countries in the world. Unfortunately, the implementation of the Beijing Action Platform has not been accomplished. Dear Sister Joan, you speak my heart. Would you consider speaking up and out for the Fifth Women's World Conference? Please go to www.5wwc.org and see if you can join our call for a Fifth Women's World Conference to by held by 2010. I read your book Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope while traveling and recommend it to all. As you said, 'the most faithful thing we can do is to go on living' and 'to struggle is to begin to see the world differently'. The girl child is no longer invisible for me nor for the many who read your article. Thank you.
This abuse also makes
This abuse also makes possible adoption coercion -- forcing poor women to surrender their infants for adoption. So long as women and girls are not supported through their pregnancy and birth of their baby, the abomination of adoption coercion will continue -- to the advantage of women of means. I urge women-of-conscience not to adopt! Instead of adopting, use your wealth and good intentions to mentor a girl/mother and her child. When a society values women it supports them and their babies. We must help the mothers, not help ourselves to their infants.
Once again Sister Joan, you
Once again Sister Joan, you have hit the nail on the head.
This has been a dirty little secret for the past how many thousands of years? From ancient Sparta leaving female babies exposed on mountain sides because they couldn't be warriors (like that's a bad thing?) to the glass ceilings of corporate America, being female is to be second class.
Men run the world and look at the shape it's in. I think that says it all.
Well, obviously, this
Well, obviously, this subject hit a nerve, which is a good sign in its way: at least the discriminators are only defensive and not completely oblivious. The question is: what exactly are they afraid will happen if they acknowledge that on the whole, throughout the world, women suffer simply because they are women? Perhaps they do not wish to acknowlege that their mothers, upon whom they depend emotionally even in adulthood, are not the towers of strength they have always seemed to be.
Marie~ Its gotta be more
Marie~ Its gotta be more than "...simply because they are women". What is it about women that scares the be... out of men? What is it about men that elicits (and has over a lot of history elicited)the need to subjugate, to "use" women? What is it about women that they stick with it?
If we step back for a moment from our tradition, put ourselves in a naive listening stance and contemplate a Roman Catholic describe the immensity of God and of God's love for creation - let it sink in distinct from all else. Now, add and reflect on this absolute, unchallengable, simple reality: God has dictated that women are excluded from the fullness of participation in the highest calling to service in the process that we are told God ordained, that the Son established as the conduit of creation's redemption, salvation, etc., etc. The Church cannot ordain, so women are not called.("I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful", Concerning the CDF Reply Regarding Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Prefect, Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Oct.28,1995).
When you consider this, distinct for a moment, from all the poetic, pius rhetoric, what does it say about women? Or the men who invented the words? Or the women and men who have endured these words and their consequences? You either accept it or reject it.
As a male I read, carefully read, Cardinal Ratzinger's "Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church and in the World"(May 31,2004). It proposes to be a definitive document which places the exclusion of women in the context history, scripture and tradition and of their essential role in Church and society. I read it with an openness to the possibility that it would provide some, any, believable evidence for the exclusion of women. I found it to be an abominable misuse of psychology, spirituality, sociology, reason (since I am not a theologian I can only project a similar disdain for the theology)
Sister Joan mildly criticized it, this same NCR published another mildly supportive article,"Now the Conversation can begin" (Pia Solemmi, moral theologian and Director of Life and Women's issues at the Family Research Council, Wash.DC). How can there be conversation when there is nothing to discuss? Personally, I mildly expected at least protest, if not revolution. Evidently, I was wrong.
I am not a conspiracy freak, but there has to be something more. Is there a connection between this theological judgment which we must hold as an article of faith and the statistics Sr. Joan quotes and those other givens of history and contemporary society(ies) that have made women victims, painful enduring victims in so many unspeakable ways?
MarieR, I just read your
MarieR, I just read your posts (and Dennis') with interest. I think your perspective on the letter is very interesting and I think I feel some embarrassment to have the church's dirty laundry when it comes to women be so obvious! The hierarchy can't seem to get its arms around the issues at all. But I do want to support your support for women and the more basic issues of maltreatment on our earth--it's much more important. I concur with you on that. At the same time, I am not sure that the issues of women in official ministries and women's maltreatment need to be separated. I am inclined to think that hearing about women (and children) on a continual basis and from many directions is just what is in order. I think that the Holy Spirit will figure out the whispers and the shouts, and that all of it needs to be there for any of it to get through. I think it very likely that the vatican folks might listen more to the needs of women in other countries while intently NOT listening to women in the U.S., if only as paybacks for all trouble caused by them having to think much about us at all. So, I think it all works together at this point. That's my hope anyhow.
I just have to ask you, and
I just have to ask you, and Dennis and others too, why it is so important to have women take on the role of priest in the Church. I tend to look at it from what the world would gain from it rather than what women, particularly those who feel called, would gain. It is not clear to me that it matters to the mission of the Church.
As someone who is outside of the authority structure of the Church, I see the priests, even the pope, more like I see my children (in that I care about their welfare), than as obstacles to something. It is obvious that, despite their shortcomings,
When women want everything
When women want everything men are in, it reminds of the Story of Adam and Eve. Eve had equality with Adam, but it didn't take much for her to be tempted by the devil. He offered her equality with God. Why ask for a meal when you can try to take all the food? She took a bite and then offered it to her husband. He took it without question. When God addressed their infidelity, Adam deferred to Eve, and Eve admitted nothing. Adam replied as if God had placed a faulty mate in the Garden and Eve said the serpent tricked her(only slightly, he said they would know what was good and what was bad). Her presumption that she would have great power to do mighty things deceived her....her greed.
This story, allegorical or not, reveals to me that human behavior hasn't changed in all of our existence. Women were painted as not to be trusted with power; both failed, but the devil tempted the woman because he knew the odds of getting both were better if he could successfully tempt the woman.
Countless times I've heard because women carry children (when they do) and raise them for the most part that there would be no wars if Women led all countries. I know that can not ever be true. There will be wars like no other if women ruled. Not that women should be subjegated as slaves or lessor beings, but somethings are better left to men and others better left to women and many others shared.
It also reminds of Feminism. What they only wanted was equality, but as we neared the 50s, 60s, etc. they wanted equality with "everything" Men were capable of doing, both good and bad, from one extreme to the other. Why would women want equality and approval to do the worst that a man could do? It's a failure to recognize that equality is sometimes a raising up and sometimes a bringing down.