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by Mary Grey
a lecture to the Annual General Assembly of Catholic
Women's Ordination, London 7 May 2002, here reprinted with her permission
Since
efforts for the last 20 years to address the arguments used by the Magisterium
to forbid the Ordination of women have not proved successful(1) -except in
showing the absurdity of their very foundations - a multi-strategic approach
must be a way forward. That is, while continuing to show the emptiness and
sheer untruth of the oft-repeated prohibitions -at the same time to approach
the question from different angles. This paper tried to do exactly that, namely
to ask what new understandings of priesthood appear, when approached through a
widened notion of what is meant by sacrament. First, I ask how the idea of
sacrament was changed by the Second Vatican council.
1. Post- Vatican II and the widened and deepened notion of
sacrament.
Four
main approaches are explored- because these seemed to offer an enriched
sacramental experience. Firstly, Sacraments were seen as encounter with Christ:
encounter with Christ as fundamental sacrament - not the cultic focus of seven
discrete events- became understood as a more fruitful approach. Thus initiation
is entry into the Christ-mystery, Eucharist is the climax of this, and ongoing
nourishment from Christ, anointing is Christ’s healing, and
marriage/priesthood became seen as concrete expressions of discipleship.
(2)
Secondly, at the same time, a different understanding of Church arose:
sacraments are ecclesial celebrations. So, the Church is the primordial
sacrament/place, the graced space where the Christ-saving-events are
encountered. The Community’s role in celebration of sacrament became
emphasised over the rather individualised, privatised ideas of the reception of
grace which had preceded the Council.
Thirdly, the incarnational dimension of sacrament began to stress the
world as Sacrament - drawing on both Roman Catholic and Orthodox
traditions. This approach both broadened and deepened what was already an
implicit sacramental theology of Creation. Finally, almost as an extension of
the previous point, Sacraments are graced events, embodied events, and at the
same time, celebrations of key human events or peak moments of human
experience. For young people this was very appealing: the idea that a coffee
house encounter revealing the love, forgiveness and healing of Christ could be
sacramental, somehow made the notion of sacrament less cultic and more
accessible. Thus all of these new dimensions - or ancient dimensions in a new
form - are also attempts to bridge the gap between the sacred and the profane,
the cultic event and the human experience which grounds it.
2.Problems arising:
Yet it
proved not so easy to shift understandings. For, despite the genuine
intention of realistic engagement with “the world”, the cultic
understanding of sacraments still prevailed - and therefore the ordering and
controlling of the cult still assumes primary importance: (3) Hence, the
role of the priest as orderer of the cult is untouched. Consequent on this is
the “invisibility” of women in the celebration of sacraments.
Although in fact much essential women’s work is going on - in catechesis,
teaching, flower-arranging, music, this is not given sacramental
recognition.
Thirdly, it became apparent that there was a loss of touch with (or
abstract understanding of) concrete implications of bodiliness, embodiment and
materiality across a diversity of contexts. This includes a lack of attention
to, a lack of focus on justice - despite the attempts of Liberation theologians
(such as Tissa Balasuriya and Rafael Avila) to articulate what this means.4
There was only limited experience (or the attempt to experience) of sacraments
as celebrating all of life’s sacredness and holiness. Hence a wider gulf
than ever grew between Church and world. What seemed to happen was that those
concerned with justice became more and more associated with groups like CAFOD,
CIIR, Pax Christi: those concerned with liturgy by and large were untroubled
about wider issues of justice, or if they were, did not think that sacramental
experience ought to have anything to do with them! Could there be another
approach?
3. New Foundations
If
Sacraments are because of Christ, primordial sacrament, don’t we
have to ask, how is Christ to be understood? An inclusive Christology
has been developing: this sees Christ as representative of all humanity, not of
biological maleness, and encountered in community, in our brothers and sisters,
especially in those most marginalised, as well as having cosmic significance
for the non-human creation. The cosmic Christ is the pattern which connects...
Hence the representation of Christ assumes new possibilities. In fact, the
presence of Christ was already understood more widely in the Vatican II
Constitution of the Liturgy, Section7. Christ is present through the
community, the Word, as well as through the figure of the celebrant.
Secondly, whereas the Church is primordial Sacrament, place of
encounter with the Christ mystery, the question has to be asked within what
understanding of Church? The institutional paradigm is all too familiar and
difficult to shift even in the imagination. But, the Feminist paradigm of
discipleship of equals is an egalitarian paradigm: within this, there is less
emphasis on control and more on respect for all creation; “this paradigm
operates with a sense of power as the energy of proper relatedness”. (5)
Feminist theology has spent much energy in developing understandings of power
as empowerment, as the power of relation, empathy, sensitivity, presence and
compassion. (6) Another paradigm of Church is Prophetic Church where the
marginalised are not only welcomed but are the centre of concern. (7) Metaphors
of fragmentation, on the edges are frequent here. Prophetic Church is close to
understandings of the church as Suffering (for Justice and righteousness), as
servant (where this is understood in a model respecting mutuality and justice
for all), and the vision of the kingdom of God. (8)
Thirdly, Sacraments and Embodiment.
If the
root meaning of the sacraments builds on bodily experience, on being in the
body, then humanity comes in two sorts of bodies. (At least). Thus gendered
experience ought to be -and never has been represented. Along with this, note
the ambiguous Christian tradition with regard to the body and to
decay.
This
understanding of the sacrament has as its focus the weight of bodily/spiritual
experience for which the sacramental moment is one condensed moment in a
whole process. See the words of the poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, on the
sheer amount of experience underlying the one sacramental word:
For
the sake of a single verse, one must see many cities, people and things. One
must know the animals, one must feel how the birds fly and know the gestures
with which the small flowers open in the morning. One must be able to think
back to roads in unknown regions, to unexpected meetings and to partings one
had long seen coming; to days of childhood that are still unexplained... One
must have memories of many nights of love... and of the screams of women in
labour.. But one must also have been beside the dying, must have sat beside the
dead in the room with open window and the fitful noises. And it is still not
enough to have memories. ...for it is not yet the memories themselves....Not
until they have turned to blood within us. Not until then can it happen that in
a most rare hour the first word of a verse arises within their midst and goes
forth from them. (9)
Along
with this goes the immense loss of presence/representation of female
bodiliness. This means that not only are female bodily processes
-menstruation/lactation/menopause - not taken up into the process of bodily
maturing, as symbolised by the sacraments - (note that confirmation builds
heavily on initiation symbolism, but not on accompanying bodily processes,) -
but that the underlying model of sexuality is the male, patriarchal, phallic
model. By contrast, within the egalitarian model of Church, sexuality is
understood within contexts of justice and economic realities:
The
newer paradigm sees sexuality as a concern of social justice as well as of
personal virtue....It recognises that the focal sign of religious devotion
should not be the directing of one’s energy to controlling bodily impulses
and other people but must involve a stance of ongoing commitment to the
well-being of oneself and others.... And entails building social relations of
respect, equality and mutuality. (Anne Patrick, p.79)
The
dominant male model is based on the penetrative model of sexuality, seeing
woman’s role as receptivity.(10) This is seen clearly in the
Baptismal symbolism of Easter night. The Candle/ fire (=Rising Christ)
penetrates the receptive waters of Baptism. We note, too, that Baptism requires
rebirth in water and spirit - away from being born of woman. Many of us
remember clearly the old taboo that a woman, after the birth of her child,
could not receive communion before being Churched. I remember that my mother
was unable to come to the baptism of many of my siblings- because of weakness,
she had been unable to be “churched” and the Church demanded at that
point that a baby be baptised within a week of birth. Woman were symbolised as
the Chalice of the Grail this is highlighted by
the
Marian symbolism of the Annunciation. Mary the receptive chalice to be
penetrated and made fecund by the power of the Spirit is the model for all
women. As we have seen above, this is related to the authoritative symbolism of
the Bride/Bridegroom image and its weight in prohibiting women from
representing Christ. As the poet Charles Williams put it:
Well are women warned from serving at the altar, Who by nature
of their creature.....Share with the Sacrifice the victimisation of
blood...(11)
Here
we have it in one fell swoop - gender essentialism and the link with woman as
sacrificial victim: this evokes the work of Nancy Jay, “Sacrifice as
Remedy for having been born of woman”. She writes:
Sacrifice can expiate, get rid of, the consequences of having
been bom of woman... and the same time integrate the pure and eternal
patrilineage. Sacrificially constituted descent, incorporating women’s
mortal children into an eternal" ..kin group, in which membership is recognised
by participation in sacrificial ritual, not merely by birth, enables a
patrilineal group to transcend mortality in the same process in which it
transcends birth. (12)
Yet,
in the context of post - Vat. II Sacraments, there was a shift from the
sacrificial understanding of sacrament to the “sharing a meal”
dimension of the Eucharist. Also, where the emphasis is community, to
understand the sacrificial dimension of sacrament as the community’s
commitment to the demands of the gospel moves away sacrifice as a male ritual
handed on from generation to generation, to mimic the birthing energies of
women. ."To offer your bodies as living sacrifice - this is your proper
worship." (Paul, Romans 12.1) suggests this community commitment. At the same
time, the cultural implications of this - that human and non-human bodies are
sacrificed by violence and the economic violence of global capitalism.
Sacrifice can also be rediscovered positively as ecological call to austerity
to save the planet.
4. Sacraments and Symbolism
We are
also beginning to face the fact of the absence of women as symbolic subjects -
an area being explored by French Feminism and the linguistic theory of, for
example, Julia Kristeva, (herself dependent on Lacan). For Lacan and Kristeva
the realm of the symbolic, the world of signifiers and signified, and the
universal signifier (the phallus), which one has to enter to become a speaking
subject, (in the name of the Father), means leaving behind the semiotic,
(associated with the mother). (13) The world of the semiotic is what Freud used
to call the oceanic. It is pre-linguistic. Each child -male or female- has to
leave the semiotic, pleasurable world of being bonded with the mother, to enter
the symbolic world of the Father. But this world is a male-constructed world:
woman is there in the gaps, ruptures and silences- and only occasionally are
there bursts of what Kristeva calls jouissance - female sexual pleasure.
Kristeva argues that this gap - the absence of women - gives the possibility of
a new kind of language and symbolic structure. So, the male desire/nostalgia -
(for un-mediated return to the mother?) - for un-mediated relationship with the
divine/transcendent could possibly lie behind the instrumental view of
sacraments- the cause/effect of scholastics). (14) Is it possible that the
desire for the absent mother/desire for God are linked?
Is it
also possible that the world of symbolic itself represents more a move away
from embodied and emotional connectedness? This is well-argued by Margaret
Homans. (15) Since the “death or absence of the mother” is the very
condition of language, and the “symbolic” means a move away from the
literal, pre-linguistic world, (and this is a crucial stage in gender
identity), then the symbol refers to the masculine and the literal to the
feminine. The literal is then undervalued as compared with the symbolic. (We
can compare this also with the dualistic split between also particular/
universal split). Hence the ambiguous nature of the subjectivity of women - and
the dialectic of presence/absence.
It is
now well-known, through object-relations theory, (16) that boys and girls
negotiate the split from the mother differently, and that separation is
more an issue for boys, (see, sacrifice as compensation for remedy for this)
and connection for girls. Yet, though separation from the mother is not
such a problem for women, women too look for individuation/subjectivity.
Therefore, a symbolic system, respecting this gender difference, allowing for
both separation and embodied connection is what is urgently needed - and given
sacramental expression.
5. Implications of all of this for the issue of
Ordination
First, the Bridegroom/Bride symbolism hangs on inadequate grasp of complexity
of family relations. (Yet, it retains importance not only for its scriptural
heritage, but because of its stress on bodiliness, relation, mutuality). It is
dependent on false understanding of sexuality. Women - and men- are both
receptive and initiative-taking. Family life is a complexity of relations. We
recall Jesus’ emphasis that family life should be based on
kingdom-communities and that he seemed to urge the breaking of strictly
patriarchal family patterns in the name of wider loyalties.
Secondly, the experience, responsibility and authority of women in
caring roles and situations needs sacramental recognition. The recognition of
what happens already, for example, in teaching and in family situations the
role of women in faith education, in transmission of cultural values is heavily
leant-upon, but not given sacramental authority. In ministries of caring, (for
the disabled, the mentally ill, the dying), as well as in spiritual direction,
prayer leadership, counselling, retreats, hospital chaplaincies, there is no
sacramental recognition of what already is happening. The authority of women in
these situations is clearly already making a growing pastoral contribution to
Church life. Thirdly, a more fluid boundary between sacrament and sacramental
needed - thus an appreciation of the link between home/community, everyday
life/cultic experience needs to be built. The hallowing of the everyday and the
acknowledging value to ordinary experience is the way to do this.
Fourthly, the strengthening of the links between ethical, justice
dimensions and the actual celebration of Sacraments must happen. (17) And
finally, as a result of all this, will we see a re-naming of 1) sacramental
power, and 2) sacramental grace?
In
conclusion, I offer the suggestion of the French linguistic philosopher and
psychotherapist, Luce Irigaray. Her project is enormous: to build an entire
female symbolic imaginary, redeeming the loss of this in western philosophy.
Her idea is quite surprising for someone who is not a Christian. She wants to
redeem the mother/daughter separation - noting its absence in the iconography
of the west. (In this respect she is delighted when she discovers the paintings
or statues of St Anne and Mary: this shows it was not completely absent from
the Christian tradition). Women, she advises, should celebrate the Eucharist
together: not only would this do much to heal mother/daughter wounds; it would
also emphasis the creative, fruitful, birth-giving dimension of Eucharist. It
would reveal the true meaning sacrifice: look, this death is not the end -we
eat of the fruits of the earth, I who gave you life, am saying to you that this
is not the end: life goes on in the eating and sharing of life. And the
fruitfulness we give each other. (18)
NOTES
(1) This is a brief summary of the key arguments:
(a) 1976 Inter Insigniores
Basically
there are two arguments: drawn from what is assumed to be tradition: the
historical example: Jesus only called 12 men to be apostles. This remains of
lasting significance. Secondly, the “mystery” of sacramental
representation, in which the “natural resemblance” of the minister to
Christ as a male is normative. “Mystery of the covenant ” is referred
to and the Bridegroom -Bride model reveals that Jesus is the bridegroom and
head of the Church and as such is necessarily male. (See Elizabeth
Johnson’s critique in “The Maleness of Christ” in Concilium,
The Special Nature of Women).
(b). Mulieris Dignitatem. 1988. “On the
Dignity and Vocation of women”.
The spousal image is grounded in Genesis 1.
Human beings achieve unity by the integration of the “masculine ” and
the “feminine”. The real nature of women is described in terms of
“openness and orientation to the gift of life”, “readiness to
accept life,” the vocation of motherhood as identifying the core of
womanhood- motherhood both biological and spiritual. Mary is the model for
womanhood The core of the spousal image is described in gender-loaded terms:
“The bridegroom is the one who loves: the bride is the one who is loved.
It is she who receives love, in order to love in
return”.(par,2)
(c).Vatican directive for Non-ordained Pastoral
Workers. Nov. 27th, 1997.
The background is the growing participation
of laity in preaching/extraordinary ministry of the Eucharist and generally in
pastoral ministry where there is a great shortage of priests.The mission of the
laity is affirmed in evangelization -but this is a secular mission -in the
world. They may assist the ordained priest in his task, but assist does not
mean substitute for. Those priests who have accepted the assistance of laity
without upsetting the necessary aspect of hierarchy despite the emergency of
the situation are complimented. Also, ministerial priesthood is different in
essence from the priesthood of all the faithful. It is vested in potestas
sacra.
(2) I explored these ideas in M.Grey, In Search of the
Sacred: Sacraments and Parish Renewal, (Wheathampstead: Anthony Clarke,
1983).
(3) See 1997 Vatican document above.
(4) See Tissa Balasuriya, The Eucharist and human
Liberation, (London:SCM,1979)
(5) See Anne Patrick, Liberating Conscience,
(London: SCM, 1996), pp.78-9
(6) See M.Grey, “Listening to the disinherited”
in Priests and People, August/September 1997, pp.306-311.
(7) Francis Moloney, A Body Broken for a Broken
People, (Melboume: Dove Books, 19) argues that the Eucharist from its
origins has been all about breaking boundaries and welcoming people who do not
fit into respectable categories.
(8) The notion of the kin-dom of God comes from Ada Maria
Isai Diaz, and the Hispanic women’s community in the US. The word kin
expresses that we are all sisters and brothers in the new creation.
(9) Rainer Maria Rilke,
(10) See Paul Quay, SJ: “The man’s initiative and
the omen’s opening are not merely physical but also psychological. The
man’s dominance in penetrating and taking possession is an attitude of
mind and heart, not merely bodily power”. The Christian Meaning of
Sexuality. (San Francisco: St Ignatius Press, 1985), p.29.
11.
Charles Williams, “The Region of the Summer Stars”, (London: Editions
Poetry 1944), pp.26-7
(12). Nancy Jay, Throughout your Generations forever:
Sacrifice, Religion and Paternity, (Chicago University Press. 1992), p.40
(13) Jane Flax, Thinking Fragments, p.99.
(14) See Louis-Marie Chauvet, Symbol and sacrament,
(Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1995).
(15) Margaret Homan, Bearing the word: Language and
Female Experience in 19th Century Women’s Writing. (Chicago University
Press, 1986). This is argued in Susan Ross, Extravagant Affections; A
Feminist Sacramental theology, (NY: Continuum, 1998), pp/149 ff.
(16) Nancy Chodorow, Gender and the Reproduction of
mothering, (University of California, 1986).
(17) See the huge body of work in Feminist Theology on
care, justice in vastly different contexts. See also, Carol Gilligan, In A
Different voice? (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982).
(18) This is a paraphrase of some of her ideas. See,
Irigaray Reader, 1997, M.Whitford, Blackwell: Oxford
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