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by Sidney Callahan
from Women Priests, Arlene Swidler & Leonard
Swidler (eds.), Paulist Press 1977, pp. 291-293.
Republished on our website
with the necessary permissions
(Sidney de S. Callahan holds degrees from Bryn Mawr College and
Sarah Lawrence College and was at the time a doctoral candidate in psychology
at C.U.N.Y. She is the author of many essays and four books, including The
Illusion of Eve: Modern Women's Search for Identity and Parenting:
Principles and Politics of Parenthood) See also her recent article in
Commonweal.
Within the Church we have a disagreement over whether women should be ordained
to the priesthood. Both sides are accused of unworthy motives, but it seems
clear that both groups are trying to be faithful to the will of Jesus Christ
for the Church. We are all straining to hear God’s message, much as
scientists attempt to understand and make sense of natural events as signals of
reality. As a Christian and a psychologist I believe that God is the ultimate
reality and aim of both the theological and scientific quest. The way things
are in a natural world which God has created can be of use in discerning what
God wants us to do and be. This is especially true when we are arguing about
“natural resemblances,” “perceptible signs,” and
“symbols imprinted upon the human psychology.”
My
case for the ordination of women is simply that I think God wills it as a
fitting and appropriate action, faithful to the Lord. Those who would exclude
women seem to be unfortunately caught up in a basic misunderstanding of
sexuality. Sexual identity and sexual social roles and sexual function have not
been kept distinct in their analysis, but more damaging by far has been the
elevation and exaggeration of the sexual symbolism of the gospel message. A
selective reading of Scripture has been made so that the mystery of salvation
has been sexualized, all the while recognizing that God is beyond sexuality and
that Jesus is “the firstborn of all humanity.” Indeed Jesus’
example of treating women with a revolutionary equality is given as the basis
for encouraging women’s equality in all of society and human culture with
the exception of the priesthood. The contradiction and exceptions in the
argument are curious. Why is there such a clinging to male gender as so central
symbolically that only a male can have a “natural resemblance” to
Christ as priest?
The
motivation in my opinion is not due to any hardness of hearts but rather to a
soft romanticism seeking to protect the importance of mystery, transcendence
and symbols with inadequate but very old tactics.(1) In many other religions
the arbitrary refusal or irrational demand has often been identified with the
holy, when and if Divinity has been apprehended as irrational. In the same way
the perception of a principle of dichotomy or absolutely opposite categories
is, according to Levi-Strauss and Piaget,(2) a feature of the primitive mind.
Day-night, good-evil, earth-sky and, in some cultures, male-female are seen as
polar opposites. The need for categorization, clarity and order is so great
that many persons and cultures resist the ambiguity of any in-between
states.(3) But the evolution of mind and knowledge progresses beyond the
surface categorizations of dichotomy, polarity and juxtaposition to deeper
structures of unity and complexity.(4) The mystery of life and reality is
indeed more awesome and subtle, requiring a more complex scheme than any
dichotomy.
Sexuality is an example of a simple polar categorization which is now beside
the point. Not only is there obviously a wide diversity of social sex roles
possible in varying cultures,(5) but even the psychobiological development of
sexual identity is far more complicated than appears on the surface. There
exists a relay stage system of sexual development in which first genetic
factors, then hormonal influences, then morphological and socio-cognitive
factors alternate and mutually influence each other. (6) If one or another
influence is delayed, misfires or is affected by an environmental agent a human
person is still produced.(7) Sexual differentiation and sexual identity is
analogous to an information-processing system in which different signals are
given to activate and suppress latent potentials. It seems to be the case that
we are all programmed more to a basic species model, and that sexual
differentiation can be seen as a fairly minor part of the incredibly
complicated growth process, unless a culture chooses to exaggerate differences.
Generally the lack of sexual differentiation in the early embryo, infants and
small children is again manifest in old age. We begin and end androgynously.
The brief period of mating and sexual reproduction is usually the most sexually
differentiated period of the life cycle. Even at this period males, as seen in
the example of many animal species, are fully capable of nurturance, and always
individual within-sex differences are more pronounced than between-sex
differences.(8)
Sexual identity is submerged in personal, species and population identity and
is ill-suited for bearing the weight of much symbolism in the Church’s
life. If nature is being scientifically misunderstood and distorted by specific
culture-bound perceptions, then a “natural resemblance” will be seen
which is as “perceptible” as the Emperor’s new clothes. In fact
the gospel message seems to be giving a very different view, always and
everywhere downplaying the importance of gender identity and reproduction in
favor of personal affirmations and personal conduct. Jesus is constantly shown
requiring personal adherence and disregarding ascribed conditions such as
sexual identity, blood relationship, status and class. Jesus is also shown as
conceived outside natural sexual conception, transcending sexual mating and
reproductive behavior, and finally possessing a mysterious transfigured risen
body in a state in which there is no marrying. If male gender was so essential
to the economy of salvation, then the savior’s birth, sexual behavior and
promised heaven should have been quite different, as it was among the pagan
religions. Instead of Divine couples and sexual intercourse we have creation by
fiat and the word made flesh. If God is beyond sexuality, and Jesus transcends
sexuality and the risen life transcends sexuality as we know it, how can male
sexuality in the priesthood be a sacramental sign of the firstborn of the new
humanity? It is as symbolically counterproductive and constraining as would be
the requirement for animal sacrifices in and only in the temple in Jerusalem.
The
question of change and the time sense of the Church is also an issue here.
Catholicism has ever tried to conserve the best of the historical past and to
be responsive to the Holy Spirit’s promptings and instruction. But in this
matter of ordaining women, and in this document in particular, the focus is all
on a questionable past model discussed within a static sense of time. There is
too little emphasis upon being faithful to Jesus as the risen Christ who makes
all things new and awaits us in the future. Since no one knows the day or the
hour or the time scheme of salvation, the Church may be in existence for 700
more centuries; should a mere nineteen hundred years’ practice determme
the future? In that future it might better be remembered that in the
Church’s infancy for thirty seconds it imposed Mosaic practices, for forty
minutes it condoned slavery and for its first few hours it excluded women from
the priesthood. Women, like the Gentiles and slaves before them seemed
different and unsuitable while they were being excluded and barred from full
participation.
In
actual fact, an all-male priesthood and hierarchy is handicapped by
exaggerating the importance of sexual difference and symbolism. Without
intimacy with women and fully equal personal working cooperation, sex is seen
as a more intimate decisive aspect of personality than it is. Distance creates
an overblown romanticism and regression to a primitive dichotomous sexual
categorization. In this situation nuptial imagery becomes strangely salient
when it is really only one strand in a rich symbolic tapestry including among
others word, light, water, rock, vine, way, joy, friend, servant, shepherd. A
distorted romantic symbolism might be acceptable by some, but in this case it
is actively obscuring the fullness of God’s message. The mystery of life
and personal identity does not need the nostalgic remnants of a pagan sexual
mystique to sustain wonder. The word become flesh transcends all dichotomies.
The infinite graciousness, greatness and variety of God will be perceived more
fully and clearly when the priesthood is personal and open to all those whom
God saves and chooses for sacramental service.
Notes
1.
David Burrell, “The Vatican Declaration: Another View,”
America, Vol. 136, No 13 (April 2, 1977) p. 289
2.
Claude Levi-Strauss, The Savage Mind, tr. by George Weidenfeld (Chicago:
The University of Chicago Press, 1966); Jean Piaget, The Language and
Thought of the Child, tr. by Marjorie Gabain (New York: The World
Publishing Company, 1966).
3.
Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: an analysis of concepts of pollution and
taboo (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966, Mary Douglas, Natural
Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology (New York: Pantheon Books, 1970
4.
Howard Gardner, The Quest for Mind (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973).
5.
Ann Oakley, Sex. Gender & Society (New York: Harper & Row,
1972).
6.
R.C. Friedman, R. M. Richart and R. L. Vande-Wiele, Sex Differences in
Behavior (New York: Wiley, 1974); B.C. Rosenberg and Brìan
Sutton-Smith, Sex and Identity (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston,
Inc., 1972).
7.
John Money and Anke A. Ehrhardt, Man & Woman: Boy & Girl
(Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972).
8.
Eleanor Emmons Maccoby and Carol Nagy Jacklin, The Psychology of Sex
Differences (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1974).
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