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from Movement, 1980, Student Christian Movement,
Wick Court, Wick, near Bristol, England. BS15 5RD.
'Just as men can't have babies, so women can't be
priests. It's as simple as that.'
These, or similar, words have been spoken aloud at many
public gatherings at which the admission of women to the ranks of the ordained
clergy has been under discussion. Such statements are usually made by men, who
are generally also priests. They invariably provoke applause, laughs or groans
according to the predispositions of those in the audience. They also tend to
exasperate some supporters of women priests who consider that these kinds of
utteranees are emotive, illogical and irrelevant to the issue under
consideration.
Those who dismiss the biological difference between men
and women as irrelevant to the issue of women in the priesthood to understand
its importance as a powerful argument against the ordination of women. But the
strength of the argument is not in its rational appeal to observable
differences between men and women,but to its subtle appeal to the antagonism
which men feel towards women, and women towards men, because of their different
biological functions in the reproduction of the human species.
The deepest psychological roots of men's opposition to
the idea of women as priests is rooted in this fundamental jealousy which many
men show about women's ability to give birth to children. Therc is a very good
reason for this sentiment, too. Women have a ready made role in motherhood.
They do not need to 'do' anything in order to feel assured of their importance
to society. They just have to 'be' someone, for they perpetuate themselves
simply by being the mothers of the next generation. Men, on the other hand,
have no such obvious part to play in creation. They have to impress themselves
on history in other more external ways. From their earliest years men know that
they will always have to work outside their homes, that they will have to
thrust themselves forward if they are to succeed, that they will have to prove
their manhood through coitus, that they will have to bury their seed in a
woman's hody if they are to see its fruits in new life.
Until quite recently most men were imprisoned in their
social roles. Their 'being' was subordinate in importance to the social
functions and status which they could acquire through their work outside the
home, and they, therefore, had good reason to feel jealous of women's
self-authenticating, self fulfilling role which needed no external validation
to assure women of the value of her 'being'.
Most men have been unaware of their fundamental jealousy
towards women. Some men have expressed that jealousy in particular ways towards
individual women, but in patriarchal societies men have institutionalised their
jealousy through their insistence on perpetuating themselves through the
transmission of their surnames to their offspring and through patrilineal
descent of titles and property. In male chauvinist societies it has become
customary for married women to call themselves 'Mrs John Smith', for example.
They take their social class and status from their husband's position in
society, and in the tax systems of patriarchal societies married women simply
do not exist as separate persons, Men and women who want to escape from this
institutionalised jealousy have a hard time when they try to go against the
system which enslaves them.
PRIEST AS FEMALE
Until recently men who wanted to 'be' someone rather
than to 'do' things in order to feel valuable to society and the human race
could escape the slavery of being men in male chauvinist societies by becoming
priests. Priesthood is essentially a contradiction to the male way of life. It
is a 'female' role. The priest gives 'birth' to Christ in the symbolic action
of the Mass. He acquires a self-authenticating, self-fulfilling role. It is a
role which men have been able to feel comfortable with because they could act
as women while remaining men, The fact that women were prohibited from becoming
priests protected men in that role from losing the virile image which has been
important to many of them.
Some priests who are closely identified with their role
and think of ordination in terms of priestly 'character' rather than function,
are undoubtedly afraid of women becoming priests because women might usurp
their character and role, be more successful as priests and bring a natural
ability to their work which men have to acquire more painfully, even though
they have not had tpo compete with women until recently. They do not say all
this, of: course, because they do not know why they feel that women should not
be priests, They simply and instinctively feel the threat to their being,
status and even employment, so they try to keep women 'in their place' for as
long as possible.
Rational argument cannot be used to combat this
assumption that biology determines function, nor should it be taken lightly. It
affects priests more than laymen, and homosexuals more than heterosexuals. The
only way to help men who feel that women cannot be priests because men cannot
have babies is to help them to see that the role stereo types which confine
both men and women to sexually defined roles outside their biological functions
are unnecessary prisons for both and contrary to God's will for those who have
been created 'in the image of God'. When men realise that Jesus was not afraid
of his androgynous nature and that they can be contemplative, intuitive and
introverted without losing their virility, and when women realise that they can
be active, rational and outgoing without losing their womanliness then the fear
of each other disappears and the barriers between them can come down.
ELECTRA COMPLEX
The other big fear that men have about women priests is
rooted in the fear that most men have of the power which women can exert over
men.
Men are caught in a love/hate power struggle with their
mothers from the day of their birth. At first the mother dominates the lives of
her children. Later she has to let them go. The girls know that they will grow
up to inherit their mother's biological power over the affections and lives of
men, but many men feel threatened by their potential need of women for sexual
pleasure.
As men grow to maturity they must learn to separate
themselves from their mothers. They usually do this by becoming independent and
by developing sexual lives of secrecy, particularly from the person who once
knew every intimate detail of their anatomy and physiological function. They
may respond to their dependency needs by rejecting their mothers, and
symbolically escaping from their influence through insisting on dominating
other women, keeping them under control and treating them as sex -objects upon
whom to vent their lust or hate feelings. In this way both heterosexual and
homosexual men can preserve their sense of autonomy and maintain the fiction
that women are of no consequence in their lives apart from ministering to men's
needs and bearing children.
Not all men feel this way towards women, of course, and
many of them learn both to acknowledge their own needs of being mothered and
loved and to welcome women as employees, colleagues or employers. It does
appear to be true, however, that insecure men fear the advent of women to
positions of authority more than secure men who have already accomplished their
independence from their mothers successfully, and are, therefore, able to
develop new relationships based upon partnership rather than immature
relationships, remembered from childhood days.
SPIRITUAL MOTHERHOOD
Women priests are closely identified in their role with
spiritual motherhood and with the maternal aspects of God. In one of her
discussions when she was visiting England in April 1978 Canon Mary Michael
Simpson commented that once men got over their hang-ups' about telling their
mothers their sexual sins they found it very helpful to go to women priests for
confession. She herself heard many confessions from men and particularly from
priests.
Since she is a skilled psychotherapist as well as a
priest it is easy to see her ability to fit into such a role in an
unthreatening way. Less skilled women might well deter many laymen from
accepting their ministry as priests because of the difficulty men have in
separating themselves from the tyranny of love for their natural mothers.
These two psychological attitudes are not the only roots
of men's psychological resistance to women priests, but they are probably the
most important. Certainly they are less well documented and understood than the
widespread fear that men have of women's sexuality and power. Whenever pregnant
women priests are referred to, for instance, an uneasy laughter is likely to
erupt as if there is something vaguely indecent about the linking of pregnancy
with priesthood. This laughter is predominantly though not exclusively
male.
The psychological roots of men's resistance to women
priests are different from those of women in some respects and similar in
others. Priests often embody in a particular and symbolic way the combined
fears of many other men and women to situations which are unfamiliar and
potentially threatening to an established tradition which has become so
institutionalised that it has been accepted for many generations without
question. This may be one of the reasons why the greatest opposition to women
priests comes from clergy, especially those who are insecure and unsure of
their own sexual orientation.
These priests, and the men who share their attitudes,
become the oppressors of women and themselves because they cannot free
themselves from their slavery to fear and prejudice until they confront them in
the persons of women priests, ordinands and lay colleagues.
One of the most urgent tasks in the Christian Church
today is that of freeing men and women from misconceptions, prejudices and
fears about sexuality and its purpose in God's creation. This task cannot be
undertaken until men and women can undertake it together as the children and
friends of God. The time and opportunity are here. One may hope that the vision
and courage to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit is not lacking.
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