Church listening to women would be a start
MARY McAleese, speaking in a Jesuit venue outside the Vatican (having been prohibited from speaking this week inside the Vatican) called for a strategy for a more inclusive Church community where equality of all the baptised is valued.
Women’s voices remain, for the greater part, unheard in the Catholic Church, especially in the interpretation of scripture, the formation of doctrine and moral teachings especially in matters that deeply affect women’s lives such as sexuality and reproductive ethics. The voices of women are an essential resource for a new vision of Church.
Pope Francis has embarked on Church reform in many ways: he speaks of a more pastoral, less monarchical model of Church – a Church in service to humanity, journeying, a pilgrim Church as envisioned in the Vatican II documents, a Church healing the wounds of the marginalised, the vulnerable, the poor. But what place do women occupy in this vision?
Women and Maternity
For centuries, the Catholic Church has seen women in terms of maternity. Francis has yet to emerge from this narrow vision of women. Can this happen if the Church’s understanding of the female is limited to the maternal role? Pope Francis seems to struggle with any other understanding of women. He praises women, comments on the “genius of women” and calls for a theology of women.
These views all come from a very traditional and limited understanding of the female in which women are solely identified with Kinder, Küche, and Kirche – children, kitchen and church. Or in other words “a woman’s place is in the home”.
Pope Francis speaks of women theologians as “strawberries on the cake” and compares Europe to a grandmother who is “no longer fertile and vibrant”. The 86-year-old grandmother, who cruised downhill in the recent snow in Cork with her 19-year-old grandson, might have something to say about this! The Pope tells women in the consecrated life to be “a mother not an old maid”! As Mary McAleese said on Thursday, women don’t need a separate theology, they need to be treated as equal human beings. Nobody has ever suggested the need for a theology of men.
A strategy for inclusion
Could we suggest where a strategy as opposed to a theology of woman might begin for Pope Francis and the whole Church?
As a Jesuit, Francis knows the very Jesuitical practice of “discernment”. This involves being attentive, being reflective and being loving followed by a decision.
Discernment requires listening: listening to the voices of women would be a good start. Previous popes silenced many theological voices, six of them Irish priests, who challenged the Church to at least reconsider the teaching and practices of the Church in relation to equality, conscience, the ordination of women and sexual morality. Their voices were shut down. The voices of women have yet to inform Church thinking at all levels. The institutional Church may yet regret preventing Mary McAleese and two other women from speaking this week inside the walls of the Vatican. No bird ever flew on one wing – trying to do so has led the Church on a path that many see as at best misguided, and at worst misogynistic.
Archbishop Diarmuid Martin has on more than one occasion lent his voice to pointing out the consequences of alienating women. In response to Ms McAleese’s call for equality the Archbishop responded: “Probably the most significant negative factor that influences attitudes to the Church in today’s Ireland is the place of women in the Church.” Insight such as this needs a clear strategy to implement a more inclusive, authentic community.
Listening to women and studying the writings of women theologians would bring other insights. Jesus’s words and actions were counter-cultural for his time. He was accompanied by women disciples. Women remained at the foot of the cross after Jesus died. Women were the first messengers of the Resurrection. The early Eucharist took place in house churches, organised by women. The writings of women theologians such as Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Mary Hunt, Rosemary Radford Ruether, Margaret A Farley and Daphne Hampson highlight ways of being authentic to the ‘Gospel’, interpreted and lived in the light of women’s insights and experience. Readers of these writings cannot remain unchallenged to rediscover the endless possibilities and resources for Church reform these writings contain.
The ordination question
Teaching, scriptural interpretation and doctrine formation continue to be confined to an all-male celibate elite, which also excludes non-ordained males. Therefore, the ordination issue will not go away.
The early centuries were a Church of radical equality, as Paul says: ‘There are no more distinctions between male and female, all of you are one in Christ Jesus’
Pope Francis says the matter is closed. But, only the ordained exercise power (even with a small ‘p’) in the current community. Hence comes the call for the inclusion of women in ordained ministry. Scriptural scholars tell us that Jesus ordained no one and that his movement grew from his followers, female and male, many who exercised leadership roles in the early communities.
The early centuries of the Christian faith were a Church of radical equality, as Paul says (Galatians 3:28): “There are no more distinctions between Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female, but all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”
Pope Francis has opened up dialogue within the Church and with the world. Is a dialogue with women something to fear?