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Women as priests, continued
Maureen revisits the issue, discussed at VFR a week ago (though it seems a month ago) of whether women should be priests and pastors:
You wrote: “A woman cannot do this. The moment you have women priests—and I’ve attended Episcopal churches with women priests conducting the mass—you have the physical particularities of a woman, her soft, lustrous hair (and what does a woman priest do with her hair?) drawing attention to the woman’s own physicality, that militate against the transcendent and impersonal aspect of the priest’s symbolic function. Women simply cannot carry out an impersonal, transcendent function the way a man can; the focus ends up on the woman, her emotionality, her physicality, rather than on the transcendent. A man’s being draws us to something beyond himself, to something larger than himself. A woman’s being draws us to herself, her personality.”
Well, for men it does.
I’m not particularly fired up about whether or not a woman is a pastor—but the sex-based reasoning against women priests in the above paragraph is specious.
One could assert the same sex-based argument against male priests from a female biological perspective:
A man cannot do this. The moment you have men priests, you have the particularities of a man – his broad shoulders, the bluish tinge of 5:00 shadow outlining his square jaw, his powerful sonorous voice – that militate against the transcendent and impersonal aspect of the priest’s symbolic function. How CAN parish women keep their minds on God when presented with this manly seductive image? The focus ends up on the priest’s maleness, his physicality, his rock-star-like role as “stand-in” for Jesus Christ.
While I agree that the world we live in is run (and often runs well) on its male energy and male perspectives, the evidence of the New Testament shows that Jesus sought to counter the ugliness (crime and war) that is also generated by this gender one-sidedness. For example, Jesus’ FIRST miracle was done for his mother—in support of a wedding between male and female.
Paul not only said that in Christ there was NO female or male, but when it came to sexual conduct—in every case, Jesus put the onus for sexual self-control and for limiting male aggressive behavior on men and men only. He even rescued a PROVEN adulteress: “Let those among YOU without sin [men] cast the first stone.”
LA replies:
There are several things to be said in reply to Maureen.
First, in the passage of mine that she quotes, I did not mean that male parishioners would be sexually attracted to a female priest (though that is possible), but that a female naturally draws the attention of both men and women to her physical person in a way that a man does not do.
Second, even if we are speaking specifically of sexual attraction, you have to acknowledge the sexual differences between the sexes. It is simply the case that men are not the objects of females’ sexual desire in the same way that women are of men’s. Women’s sexuality is more subtle than men’s. Men are more readily turned on by women than women are by men. Why don’t women buy the equivalent of Playboy? They tried to start that, and it didn’t take.
Third, to the degree that females’ attraction to male priests might be a distraction, the vestments (speaking of Catholic or Anglican priests, not to Protestant pastors) are meant to disguise anything erotic. The vestments all point beyond the personality of the priest, to a spiritual role and function.
But, fourth, here again the difference between men and women comes to the fore. To wear a uniform that points beyond one’s own person is a much more “natural” thing for a man to do; it doesn’t “work” when a female does it, because her female being naturally draws attention to her person and so contradicts the impersonal sacerdotal function.
Fifth, this brings us back to the Catholic argument concerning the role of priest as symbol of Jesus Christ. Jesus was a man. A priest in his vestments represents Jesus Christ. A woman simply cannot do that. It’s a distraction. It would be like having a woman play the part of King Henry IV or Julius Caesar.
Mutatis mutandis, it’s analogous to the impression created on at least one person, myself, at the sight of a female police officer. When I see a woman dressed in the blue uniform, I always feel, this is a joke, right? The woman is dressed up as something—a man—that she is not, she is pretending to be something she obviously is not.
So, sixth, in addition to the woman’s femaleness objectively being a distraction from the function of priest, there is the distraction created by annoyance at the politically correct imposition of a palpable liberal falsehood on the world. Seventh, there is the further annoyance at the expectation that we are not supposed to notice this falsehood or object to it.
Jeff writes from England:
I’m not going to get directly involved in the Christian pastors/priests argument. Rather, in the bigger picture, it seems to be a habit for “progressives” to want various religions to do it their way (the progressive way) despite, especially in the revelation religions, intractable laws and declarations from God. Now if you don’t want to live under the Christian laws or Jewish laws etc., go and start your own progressive religion, no problem there. But no, the liberal progressive elements have to have it their way. Now in non-revelatory religions that may be ok; a rebellion against various rules and laws can occur periodically as the laws are not set in stone by God. But in revelation religion, the rules and laws are from God (or his prophets and speakers) and not changeable. But do progressives care about that little fact? Nope. Women priests and rabbis, homosexual relationships, practice of witchcraft and astrology, sexual promiscuity, easy divorce, all prohibited by the revelation religions, are to be ok because progressives say they are reactionary. And maybe they are (that’s another article), but as God has said they are prohibited. That by any sensible logic is the end of the story. Except for progressives. A comparison would be wanting to play chess or football or any sport under the rules that you want to play under, not the traditional rules. The question is then why, if you are a progressive, do you want to be part of that reactionary religion? Ah the $64,000 question! They see religions with horrendous but intractable rules but instead of starting their own religion with the progressive rules they want to live under, they have to stay in or join and then undermine the established religions. Something very infantile and desperate there. Says a lot about the progressive culture and its need to take over everything in sight. By the way, how come the progressives don’t try and change the basic laws of Islam? Easy answer: they’d get killed if they tried it.
LA replies:
The answer to Jeff’s $64,000 question is easy, but we need to divide it into two answers, one for liberals, the other for progressives. The essence of liberalism is to deny the truth of our heritage, while keeping its forms and the benefits and nice things that come from it. As for the progressives of whom Jeff speaks, they want to destroy our heritage outright; how can they do that if, as Jeff suggests, they respect the revelatory religions and leave them alone?
It goes back to the question I thought of asking Frank Griswold after his obnoxious Christmas eve homily in my church but did not: “Since you don’t believe in Christianity, why don’t you get another job? Why do you have to destroy Christianity from within?” Well, the question answers itself. He didn’t get another job, obviously, because his goal was in fact to destroy Christianity from within.
J. writes:
Great point on the inability of women to don male uniforms with the same authority.
Christ chose twelve men as his inner circle of disciples, rather than the numerous women who were faithful followers or the subjects (or objects) of His miracles. Women were the first to discover the empty tomb, the first to see the risen Lord, yet none were chosen to lead the church. Doesn’t that speak volumes?
Maureen’s use of the phrase “male energy” also speaks volumes. Is that like the Dark Side of the Force, or yin v. yang? New Age feminism?
LA replies:
Please explain what you mean about Maureen’s use of the phrase “male energy.”
J. writes back:
It’s code for new age (anti-male) female worship—it’s like when someone says “institutional racism” you know he’s a liberal. Here are some Googled links, just a few off the first search page:
http://www.michaelteachings.com/m-f_ratio.html
http://www.americanspiritnews.com/ON03/MaleFemale.html
http://www.crystalinks.com/male_energy.html
If this is the sense in which Maureen used the term “male energy,” then it indicates that she is not a Christian arguing a good faith scriptural position from within the body of believers, which is the impression I think she tried to give, but is a liberal enemy of the church selectively quoting scripture in bad faith.
LA:
Maureen is seeking to inject a feminist perspective into Christianity, which I disagree with, but I see no evidence that she is an enemy of Christianity. I think she both respects the achievements of “male energy” and opposes what she sees as the bad things that exclusive rule by men has done. But I should let her answer for herself.
Gordon writes:
Jeff writes from England:
“…Now if you don’t want to live under the Christian laws or Jewish laws etc., go and start your own progressive religion, no problem there. But no, the liberal progressive elements have to have it their way.”
My response: This was observed over a century ago by Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch with prophetic precision:
It is now no longer enough for the apostate to be able to live undisturbed according to his convictions, as he calls them; to him there is no well-being and no peace as long as his convictions have not become the only ones recognized as right and valid.
He sees in the Law an intellectual slavery from which it is the godly task of a second Moses to redeem his unfortunate brothers. In Torah-loyalty he sees superstition, backwardness, and at the same time a calamity which is to blame for all the miseries of the past.
He sees in “liberation” from the yoke of the Law a goal so high and so humanitarian that every means which seems capable of bringing about progress toward this great goal must be employed.
He has reached the stage of waging fanatical campaigns of persecution against those loyal to the Law.
Certain women in my parish are constantly agitating for the ordination of women, and I ask them what right they have to force a change on me that I don’t accept. It’s like my going to a Chevrolet dealer and demanding that he stop selling Chevrolets and sell Fords instead, all the while there’s a Ford dealer just up the street. I also keep telling them they are shoveling sand against the tide because the pope has already declare infallible the teaching that the church lacks the authority to ordain women. If the pope were to reverse this infallible teaching, the doctrine of infallibility would be down the drain and the church with it.
Perhaps that’s their ultimate goal. A common element can be seen in many of those agitating for women’s ordination. They are striving for change and revolution because, like other extreme Leftists, they themselves are troubled people. Within themselves, there is a revolution going on, an interior revolution of rage, power-seeking, a rejection of the cross of Christ, and a contempt for God-given authority. To start their own progressive religion, as Jeff suggests, would be insufficient, as Rabbi Hirsch observes, to assuage those interior troubles.
Maureen writes:
In the quote about throwing the stone that J responded to, I left out the critical words “without sin” as in “Let those among you WITHOUT SIN cast the first stone.” They should be added, as the quote is simply wrong without them. [They have been added.]
This incident (Stoning the Adulteress) from the Gospels resonates beyond its simple words. This woman taken in adultery was clearly GUILTY as charged; there was no ambiguity about her crime; therefore, according to Jewish law, she HAD to be stoned to death—but Jesus, as he always does, spotted the inhumanity encoded in the LAW and defended the woman. It is important for all Christians but especially for rule-based, dogmatic male and female thinkers to reflect on the ramifications of this incident to ask themselves WHY Jesus defends a clearly GUILTY woman. What is He teaching those males whose hands are full of stone? I say that he is teaching them to protect women, not stone them—and to take the log out of their own eyes before they dare to start killing women.
Now to answer J:
Larry wrote: “Maureen is seeking to inject a feminist perspective into Christianity, which I disagree with, but I see no evidence that she is an enemy of Christianity. I think she both respects the achievements of “male energy” and opposes what she sees as the bad things that exclusive rule by men has done. But I should let her answer for herself.”
Yes, you’re right. I do respect male energy. I wish more males respected female energy. I am not using “energy” as some sort of code word. Put in “force,” or “drive” or “biological predispositions,”—as a substitute, if you will.
As for my injecting Christianity with “feminism” it is not I who is doing the injecting. It takes a determined blind eye to fail to see that part of Jesus’ uniqueness was that He Himself most deliberately injected women into the Gospels—so deliberately that even the misogynistic Mideast cultures could not expunge females completely from the Christian writings.
One cannot dismiss women as teachers of the sacred by saying that Jesus’ disciples were all males and not women; therefore males should be in charge. It’s not that simple:
Jesus put women in major roles to the degree that the aggressive, stoning and crucifying society around him would permit. The degree of understanding Jesus gave women is what attracted his many women followers. For example, He healed (rather than berated) a hemorrhaging woman who touched the fringe of his rabbinical shawl—a sacrilege under Jewish Law. The examples of Jesus’ jettisoning Jewish Law to help the “person,” and specifically the “woman,” are numerous and unusual for an era which regarded women as nonentities. I suggest that your readers go through the New Testament, reading it only for Jesus’ interactions with women to get Jesus’ perspective on women.
Also, we need to be careful in reasoning about what Jesus taught. There is a lot that we do not know about Jesus’ ministry because the Early Church Fathers chose only four from the hundreds of collections of Jesus’ sayings that were circulating from Syria to Anatolia to Greece between 100-500 A.D. In 1949 at Nag Hammadhi God allowed a cache of “alternative” gospels to be found. One of the gospels, The Gospel of Thomas, is being seriously considered by scholars as a source for authentic Jesus sayings. The Nag Hammadhi Noncanonical Gospels have been brought to light by God for whatever reason—perhaps merely to raise the authority of the Four Synoptic Gospels. Perhaps the Egyptian desert will yield even more gospels.
The allegation that Jesus did not value women as authoritative figures, because he did not make them disciples is debated in one of these newly found gospels—The Gospel of Mary Magdalen. Ironically, this gospel contains a mirror image of the debate about women as sacral figures of authority that has occurred on the pages of VFR: In this gospel the disciples are gathered together to hear Mary speak, when Peter jumps up and won’t let her speak. Another male disciple accuses Peter of misogyny and defends Mary’s right to speak, saying, “Jesus told Mary many things He did not tell us.”
I stand by my interpretation, based SOLELY on the Four Synoptics, that Jesus was uniquely (given time and place) compassionate towards women and sought to raise their status—certainly for the benefit of women but mostly for the benefit of MEN.
LA replies:
First I want to say that we cannot take the adulteress incident as a general command that only sinless citizens can punish criminals. If we did, it would mean the end of all criminal law, the end of all punishment of criminals, the release of all criminals from jail, and the destruction of society. We must understand that Jesus over and over in the Gospels is responding to particular situations and persons, using them to convey a sometimes mysterious lesson of his own. For example, when he tells the rich young man that he must give away all his possessions, that is not a general command to all Christians to give away all their possessions; it is something that that particular man, because of his own particular attachments and hangups, needed to do, if he was to become a true follower of Jesus. However, I think it would be reasonable to suppose that in defending the adulteress, Jesus did intend to criticize, as too barbaric, the Jewish law commanding the stoning to death of an adulteress.
I think Maureen makes several unwarranted leaps driven by her feminist assumptions which alter one idea after another into a woman-centric (or rather feminist-centric) idea. Thus Jesus’ challenge to the people not to stone the woman to death becomes not a response to a particular situation that he happened to find himself in, and not a rejection of that particular punishment for that particular crime, but a general proposition that MEN must not execute WOMEN.
Similarly, she leaps from the acknowledged importance that the Gospels give women, to the notion that women should be priests. This is just wrong. The Gospels certainly raised the spiritual status of women, and thus established the basis of Christian society in which women are more respected than in non-Christian societies. But to say that women are spiritually equal to men in their potential capacities to be followers of Jesus, and even to be teachers and evangelists, is not to say that women should be priests. There are different issues involved, fundamental distinctions which Maureen in advocating a feminist interpretation of Christianity ignores.
In pushing complete male-female functional equality in Christianity Maureen goes so far as to appeal to later “gospels” that have no authority whatsoever in Christianity.
Laura writes:
Indeed, feminist reasoning cannot get around the choice of twelve male disciples. One would have to believe that this was somehow a fluke or an oversight on Jesus’ part and thereby strip Him of his divinity. Jesus overlooked nothing. As a woman, I am offended by efforts to portray Jesus as some kind of women’s rights advocate. What a gross simplification of His message!
Regarding the physical differences between men and women on the altar, I thought of this issue again this weekend when I attended a mass where both priests officiating were elderly (as so many are these days). Many of those attending the mass were also old. Looking at the men and women, I was struck by how incongruous it would be to see some of the women, so tiny and fragile, on the altar. To me, a hunched and shrunken woman in her 80’s cries out for protection in a way that an old man does not. She is so delicate, so vulnerable. Might she be blown away by the next breeze? Quite honestly, I think when many people imagine women becoming priests, they envision women who look quite masculine. They don’t imagine beautiful women priests, doll-like elderly women with barely audible voices, or pregnant women. Surely, if Jesus meant women to become priests, he didn’t mean those who just look and act like men!
Finally, your observation that men respond to the appearance of women more than women do to men is a most inconvenient and inexplicable fact for the feminist who struggles toward androgyny. She simply cannot make sense of this and must wish it away. But, it is like saying that tress have leaves and oceans have salt. It is simply one of the physical laws of the universe. Frankly, in this sense, I am thankful I am a woman. A man is so easily fooled by beauty.
P.S. I’m glad someone else considers the sight of a woman in a police uniform as something out of a cartoon. Don’t their caps always look too big? And those shirt pockets on the chest!
LA replies:
Great minds think alike. So few people grasp on a basic, physical level the sheer incongruity of women being in certain types of positions, such as in integrated military units, or the police, or the priesthood. I would guess that this lack of understanding is connected with the modern tendency to reduce reality to functional abstractions that can be more easily managed and “studied.”
Laura writes:
It is interesting that Maureen has brought up the Gospel of Thomas, which has been rejected by New Testament scholars as containing clearly apocryphal statements. I quote Bruce Metzger, one of the world’s leading secular authorities on the authenticity of the Gospels and a translator of the Gospel of Thomas: “It’s not right to say that the Gospel of Thomas was excluded by some fiat on the part of a council; the right way to put it is, the Gospel of Thomas excluded itself! It did not harmonize with other testimony about Jesus that early Christians accepted as trustworthy.” (The Case for Christ, Lee Strobel.)
One of the ways in which it was incongruous was in its portrayal of women. The Gospel of Thomas ends with this statement: “Let Mary go away from us, because women are not worthy of life.” Jesus responds, “Lo, I shall lead her in order to make her a male, so that she too may become a living spirit, resembling you males. For every woman who makes herself male will enter into the kingdom of heaven.”
To accept this statement one must reject the Jesus portrayed in Mark, Luke, Matthew and John. One must accuse these men of lies or the spinning of tales. Thomas apparently was a feminist. Like many women today, he saw women as “not worthy of life.” At the root of feminism, there is contempt for women.
Thank you to Gordon for his wonderful insights regarding the internal struggles that lead people to push for the ordination of women. I would only add that these struggles are not psychological, but moral.
LA replies:
I don’t quite follow. How does contempt for women lead to the feminist demand for women’s empowerment?
Laura replies:
Power in public affairs or even in the role of husband or father is not the only kind of power there is. Women have always and always will be as powerful as men. As mothers and wives, they control human affairs at least as much as (male) presidents, priests and senators. (Ask your average priest who most influenced him to become a priest and you will likely hear it was his mother and the power of her faith.) But feminists deny and despise this power and say that only if a woman’s power is public—instead of working unseen behind everything that is—has it any importance. Is there anyone more of a literalist, more of a materialist than your average feminist? She must have rank and money to prove her worth. And so the power she was born to vanishes and she is left with nothing but her own rage.
LA replies:
A magnificent statement. I would add that many feminists, by insisting on an equality of female “power” with that of men, and then by boasting of their “power” once they have it, distort the very institutions and roles in which they seek to be “equally” included. Men traditionally never talked about their own “power” or made their “power” their validation, and would have regarded it as shameful to do so. What came first was the responsibility of the job. It was duty to the community and leadership of the community that were the primary values, not the glorification of one’s egoistic power. Yet the glorification of one’s egoistic power is what feminists have made the primary focus, because feminists look at jobs of influence not as a responsibility to the community but as a way of advancing oneself or one’s sex. This follows logically from the natural order of things, and from violating that order. Women are primarily oriented toward the private and personal. Putting women wholesale into public positions of leadership means injecting women’s personalist focus into those positions (i.e., “my” power, or “our”—female—power), and thus distorting their meaning and purpose and ruining public life.
Laura writes:
Your closing remarks are so well said. I weep when I think of how this naked egotism has ravaged higher education. Every subject has been affected. It’s all careerism, self-glorification and, yes, contempt for women. Just look at the course catalogues and you see it. I am looking for a college for my older son and have rarely felt so hopeless.
Ben writes:
Maureen wrote:
“Also, we need to be careful in reasoning about what Jesus taught. There is a lot that we do not know about Jesus’ ministry because the Early Church Fathers chose only four from the hundreds of collections of Jesus’ sayings that were circulating from Syria to Anatolia to Greece between 100-500 A.D.”
This statement shows Maureen doesn’t believe that the Bible was inspired by God but that it is flawed by the “men” who wrote it, hence we need further truth and knowledge that can only be given to us by the Gnostics and other sources.
By Maureen’s claiming the authenticity of the gnostic gospels she has to me become irrelevant when speaking about Christianity. Those “gospels” were written by gnostics who believed they were given “secret truth.” It’s nothing but Greek philosophy tied into Christ’s work on Earth.
I’m not even going to say anymore about this. Maureen is a feminist who will use any means necessary to bring about feminism in the Church, even turning to false gospels to prove her points. Any scholar with even a remote understanding of the Old Testament and New realizes who the gnostics were and that these so called “gospels” they are finding are not new and were debunked (by the Church Fathers) from the day they were written. The reawakening of these gospels is not surprising to me considering the state of liberalism in America today and liberals’ desire to destroy the Church.
A female reader replies to Laura’s comment on women police:
Shrewd. And the thing on women cops is so true—their caps do look too big and the shirt pockets make them look even bustier…. Also, I don’t think I’ve seen a woman cop who was trim and in proportion, with a sort of long-legged type physique. They all seem at least a little overweight, and short, and, frankly, a bit dumpy, with big hips.
Also, Laura’s info on the Gospel of Thomas is most useful. The Gospel of Thomas may well have been a Da Vinci Code of that time! Trying to suggest that Jesus was really about something other than what the Gospels tell us.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 02, 2006 09:10 PM | Send
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