by Joan White from New Directions
If one considers the apparent sincerity of the Islamist suicide bomber, one can see that the conviction does not tie in with what is known of Godhead, either as a Muslim or as a Christian. The first I knew of the idea of female ordination was the claim that many women had heard a call, a vocation. This did not disturb me: I, myself, have heard such a calling, beginning at the age of four, to be a teacher. The idea, however, that God had called these women to serve as eucharistic priests came to me as a severe shock.
When I argued that the tradition did not allow for this, I was patiently given to understand that at the time of the Last Supper of our Lord, women were not allowed public positions and so this all had to wait. Reading Christina Rees’s article [ND September] develops this idea. There is a continuum in which women (and men) are called to extend and fulfil the work Jesus started, because he could not complete it all at that time.
To my mind, however, there is, was and ever shall be nothing which God is unable to do. God is Lord of all creation, and has no need for the kind offers to complete what he left half-done, nor has he, from his utterances, any use for acts of envy, ambition or dissatisfaction with the created roles he established for men and women at his creation.
We can ask, legitimately, why he gave his vocations to the males, and it requires female meditation to tease out the answers. The secret lies in the donation to the female of the act of creation of all the people of the earth. This is a divine sharing, which men have treated with contempt, as an excuse for their own envy. Women, resenting this attitude have rejected their privilege in favour of worldly status on a par with men.
The sacrifice of the cross, equal in creative pain to the extremity of childbirth, is a true rebirth of humanity, and once this symbol is grasped and accepted it is easy to see why women are not sacrificing priests. Women have their own elevated role in renewing the earth, and men are charged with tending the humanity whose spiritual life has been atoned-for in the priesthood of Christ.
Women priests and bishops make as much sense to God’s intentions as male pregnancy and lactation. If we honour God and his created order, it is time to reorder our ideas in obedience, respect and recognition. The current impertinence, foisted upon an unsuspecting Church by a very few misguided people, however articulate, is ungodly. There is no room in our human society for the vanity of the ordination idea, for the harvest needs labourers and quickly.
5 comments:
That's a good piece.
Of course, this sort of understanding is only convincing and satisfying for those who already accept it. To tell an egalitarian "hey, look I can't be a mother, you can't be a priest... even-steven" well, the egalitarian mentality is more convoluted than to find such distinctions significant.
As with much of theology, it might have less to do with initially seeing the "cogency" of position than with first accepting the absolute authority of Scripture... and then this faith-on-bended-knee can seek and find understanding.
That is a good post - thanks! I still keep you and your vocation in my prayers. E-mail me and give me an update.
JGA+
Well, thank God I already had a kid, so I don't even have to worry about being called to the ministry, since the two are mutually exclusive.
But what about all those women who can't have kids? Or are called to celibacy?
:)
Women cannot serve as priests, because the priest is the sacramental representation of Jesus Christ, who was a male. That is the basic idea.
You bring up a good point. Most people think "the ministry" means becoming a priest. Nothing could be further from the gospel message... We are all ministers of the gospel by virtue of our Baptism (just not sacrificing priests). Also, her point was not to say that women are only validated as women if they have babies. But she says that this gift and power (like the priesthood) is unique to one sex. Not all women have to have babies and not all men have to be priests. Some in fact, shouldn't or can't.
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