Two stories One Theme: Women, Feminist Theology And The American Catholic Church-- Part 2

TWO STORIES, ONE THEME: WOMEN, FEMINIST THEOLOGY AND THE

AMERICAN CATHOLIC CHURCH---Part 2

In Part 1, we looked at the official teachings of the Church today concerning the ordination of women. According to the Catechism, the Catholic Church sees the male and female genders as two different realities in expressing humanity. While many functions are interchangeable between men and women, some are not, because the essences of being male or female are not interchangeable. The Church teaches that when the priest acts "in the person of Christ" (and since Christ was a man) only a male priest can signify Christ at the Eucharist.

The Church has defined certain ‘matter’ that must be present for the sacraments to be valid. Water, the Church teaches, is necessary for a valid baptism. Because Christ used or authorized it, only wheaten bread and grape wine are necessary for a valid Eucharist. And only men can be validly ordained, regardless of any issues of equality.

Therefore, in the traditional teaching of the Church, no bishop or even the pope, may validly ordain a woman, because her gender renders her ‘improper’ matter for ordination. And her ordination would not be valid. We see an example of this in the story of Ludmilla Javorova. In the early 1970’s the situation of the Church in Czechoslovakia was at a critical point. A Bishop Felix M. Davidek ordained a number of married men and women as priests to meet the needs of the underground church. Single men would cause too much attention, so married men were preferred, and women were needed to minister to Catholic women in prison. Ludmilla Javorova was one of the women who were ordained during this dangerous time. She told reporters of ‘The Table’ (11/11/95) that she had written to Pope John Paul II explaining all the circumstances of her ordination. John Paul II died in 2005, after having never responded to Javorova.

But Pope John Paul II, in his encyclicals, supported the absolute moral norms taught by the hierarchical magisterium. These norms are based upon a neoscholastic approach to natural law. In refusing to see the Church’s social doctrine as ideology, but as moral theology, John Paul II defends and employs the theory of natural law. The concepts of natural law are "universally binding" and "unchanging"; they are "universal and permanent laws." The precepts of natural law are universally valid without exception."

This neoscholastic understanding regard natural law as based on the eternal plan of God for the world, employs a deductive methodology, and insists on the absolute certitude and unchanging character of particular laws belonging to natural law. And of course

the ordination of women would fall in this category.

However, further studies in biblical scholarship, particularly the gospels, and a new ethical methodology, that does not focus upon the eternal, the universal, the immutable, and the unchanging elements of the neoscholastic tradition, developed after Vatican Council II. We will look at these elements.

The Priesthood and Discipleship---Other Viewpoints from the Gospels

Christ’s actions made the ordination of women possible when he revoked the Old Covenant priesthood of Aaron and brought both men and women into a New Covenant, Jesus’ Covenant. This new covenant with a new priesthood replaces the old priesthood that one was born into (tribe of Levi), and is based on the grace from the sacrament of baptism. Baptism is the same whether for a man or a woman. Each woman who is baptized becomes another Christ, sharing in his death, burial and resurrection, just as every man is. Paul tell us:

"All of you are children of God through faith in Christ Jesus. All of you, who have been baptized in Christ, have clothed yourselves in Christ. Thus there is no longer Jew nor Greek, free nor slave, male nor female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus." (Galatians 3:27-28)

New Voices, New Vistas

In the years following Vatican Council II, a shift appeared in the neoscholastic (or classical) method of viewing the human condition. This new method is called historical consciousness gives more importance to the particular, the contingent, the historical and the changing. Historical consciousness strives to be a middle position between the neoscholastic (classicism) and existentialsim. Where classicism has the virtue of being universal and applicable to all; its weakness is failure to give sufficient attention to history, individuality, diversity, and particularity. On the other hand, existentalism emphasizes the particular and the individual to such an extent that it has no place for continuity or any universality.

The shift to historical consciousness appears especially in the broader world of catholic social ethics, especially in liberationist and feminist ethics. Liberation theology first appeared in the Latin American context not as a new area of theology by as a new method. This new approach took root in the soil first plowed by Vatican II. Liberation theology maintains that the Gospel message of liberation affects not only the religious level but also the social, cultural, political, and economic levels of human existence. The Gospel calls for liberation from all forms oppression. Liberation theology begins with the perspective and experience of poor and oppressed people. It is a theology and ethics from the underside and the bottom up. It rejects the so-called universal, objective and neutral perspective of the Catholic neoclassical version of social teaching.

Its main emphasis is that one comes to understand the truth by being involved in the struggle for liberation, not by solving logical syllogisms that have a fixed answer.

Catholic feminist thought in ethics came to the fore, especially in the United States, as a form of liberation. Feminism begins with a particular experience of oppressed women, not from an objective, neutral, or pretended universalist perspective. Women historically have suffered because of a patriarchal mentality that often claimed to be an objective, neutral, value-free starting point. Catholic feminists, however---in keeping with their Catholic self-understanding---do not want to abandon some universality in ethics. They promote the welfare and well being of all human beings and the planet, not just the welfare of women.

The questions that feminist theologians considered in putting forth their works were:

1) What actually comprises theology? How do we go about creating systems of thought, and can we reinterpret those systems of thought? Personal experience is deemed just as important an element of insight into the divine as are sacred texts or tradition.

2) Who is God and how do we go about describing God? Feminist theologians support the use of non-gendered or multi-gendered language for God. Language is seen as a powerful engine to impact belief about the behavior and essence of God.

3) Who and where are women in religious history? Feminist historical theologians study the roles of women in periods throughout history that impacted religion---the Biblical period (Old and New Testaments), the early Christian era, medieval Europe. They study individual women who influenced religion or whose religious faith led them to influence their culture. The work of these scholars has helped feminist theologians claim historical figures as their forerunners in feminist theology. And example of this is seen in Sojourner Truth’s "Ain’t I a Woman?" speech, when she pointed out, "And how came Jesus into the world? Through God who created him and the woman who bore him. Man, where was your part?"

Feminist theology has developed in three distinct phases over the decades. First, there was a critique of the past that reviewed the ways that women have been oppressed. Secondly, an alternative biblical, and extra-biblical traditions were sought that supported the ideals that the feminists were trying to advance. And finally, the feminists set forth their own unique method of theology, which includes the revisioning of Christian/Catholic categories.

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�@Two Pioneers in Feminist Theology