What was Mary Magdalene thinking?

What Was Mary Magdalene Thinking?

 

I wonder what Mary Magdalene was thinking when:

In The Gospel of Mary, the disciples are frightened and perplexed and Peter asks her to tell them the revelations that she knows, because (in the Greek version) “the Savior loved her more than any other woman.” As she comforts them and explains the secrets that Jesus told her, Peter himself (why would he ask, if later he would doubt?) along with Andrew, question and doubt her knowledge. Peter’s objection explicitly entails regard for Mary’s gender. In the Greek version he questions why Jesus would tell secrets to a woman that he did not speak aloud to the others. Levi interjects. He chastises Peter for his hostility and then defends Mary’s authority to speak with the claim that Jesus, “knew her completely [hmmm…what does that mean?] (and) loved her devotedly.” (parentheses mine).  In the Coptic version Peter asks, “Are we to turn and listen to her?” Levi responds that the Savior “loved her more than us.”

In Chapter 9 of the Gospel we are then told that, “Mary wept,” and said to Peter, “My brother Peter, what do you think? Do you think that I have thought this up myself in my heart, or that I am lying about the Savior?”

Why did Mary weep? The Gospel doesn’t say. Perhaps she wept because in speaking about her beloved Lord and friend her grief was renewed and she missed him and the sorrow welled up within her. Perhaps she wept because her “brother” Peter who had been with her throughout the discipleship was now questioning her integrity. She, loyal and trustworthy friend, who despite the danger and certain fear, remained with Jesus at the time of his death, at the foot of the cross (while the others abandoned) and was the first at the tomb.

Does it occur to anyone else to find a bitter irony in this? That the one who stood in defiance; the one who doubted her word and challenged her authority to speak was the very one who the Gospels say slept when his friend needed for him to “watch,” denied Jesus three times and in cowardice fled from his friend’s last moments on earth? Perhaps Mary thought of all these things but considered them too unkind or painful to mention. Perhaps she bit the inside of her lip. Yes, perhaps she bit her lip. And that was why she wept.

If the saints and angels can look down upon us and watch the follies of human speech and action, I wonder what Mary Magdalene was thinking when Pope Gregory (the Great), in the 6th century identified her as the same woman (of dubious sexual reputation) who washed Jesus feet with perfumed oil and wiped them with her hair. (By the way… not ALL the “historical” information in The DaVinci Code is false. This “fact” happens to be true. Pope Gregory really did start the slander). And there is no reasonable foundation for doing so. There is no scriptural evidence for identifying Mary Magdalene as the “prostitute.” But this is what happens when women are of so little consequence that identifying them by name isn’t important. There is this danger that future generations (even Popes!) will get them mixed up, intentionally or unintentionally. The story of “the anointing” is told in all four canonical Gospels. In the Markan account Jesus comments on the woman’s action by saying, “Wherever the Gospel is preached in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of HER.” (emphasis mine). And yet, we do not even know her name.

 

Indeed, that Mary was identified by her place of origin is simply another piece of evidence that points to her importance to the early Christian communities. Everyone knew who she was simply by saying she was the Mary “from Magdala.”  And when she is not so identified, chances are that the woman in question is NOT her.

 

I wonder what Mary would think now that she is such a hot topic of conversation.

I wonder what Mary would think to know that people are so upset over the possibility that she and Jesus might have been lovers, spouses. Why are the conversations always about her sexuality? This woman was an apostle, a disciple, a close companion of Jesus and primary in the company of those who were first to proclaim a resurrection. I wonder what Mary was thinking when Saint Paul counted himself among the Apostles (even though he had never met Jesus in the flesh) by pointing to the following criteria; that he had a “post-resurrection” encounter and that he was commissioned to tell others. Considering Saint Paul’s own criteria for apostleship, Mary fits the bill and yet she is not even identified by him in his list of those who had the experience let alone given the same distinction that he would give to himself.

 

I wonder what Mary Magdalene would think about all the medieval art that identifies her with one object, the jar; the jar that supposedly held the oil with which she presumably anointed Jesus. That single object, in hundreds perhaps thousands of paintings (and if you let Medieval artists tell it, she carried the damn jar around with her everywhere) identifies the figure as Mary Magdalene and it is based upon a scandalous lie, a “mistake,” and a centuries’ long error. Hey, wait a minute. Do you think? Just maybe? There could be others? 

 

I wonder what Mary was thinking if she overheard this conversation as recounted in the Gospel of Philip, (my favorite passage about Mary Magdalene from all the Gospels):

 

And the companion of the [...] Mary Magdalene. [...] loved her more than all the disciples, and used to kiss her often on her mouth. The rest of the disciples [...]. They said to him "Why do you love her more than all of us?" The Savior answered and said to them, “Why do I not love you like her?”

 

She might have thought, "So like Jesus, to answer a question with a question. So like the rest of the disciples to be so petty."

And I think she might have smiled.

Imagine

The following is a presentation that was given for a faculty panel on the war with Iraq. Later, I presented the same essay at a Peace Rally in the "town square." It was just like the 70s, man. I spoke about peace.

When I was a little younger than most of the students present this evening and first heard John Lennon’s Imagine, the song terrified me. I was raised as a Roman Catholic and was taught that the Church alone possessed truth.  As a descendent of French-Canadians whose family took pride in their continued use of the French language, and as an American from New England whose father, a Veteran of WWII, could not see the American flag without removing his hat and placing it on his heart, the idea of a world where there is no religion, no nationality, no country was UNimaginable and frightening, for these are the elements through which we form our identities; our loyalties; our place in the world.

Tonight, it is to the mystic and the visionary and the social activist that I turn for a vision of a world that seems very much like John Lennon’s vision.

 

Many of us have been introduced to the idea of dualism, the understanding and presentation of reality that places “truth,” or reality in terms that reflect polar opposition. We are familiar with the critique of constructing the entities of our lives in categories of black/white; good/evil; male/female; heaven/earth; spirit/body; Us/Them, with no room in between for subtle shadings of difference. We walk around and speak about “gray areas,” and moral relativism, and patriarchal deconstruction when analyzing specific issues, but seldom realize that our very worldview has been profoundly shaped by a pervasive assumption of dualism, as ancient perhaps as the Neolithic Period of human history. This tendency to understand the world in dualistic terms is so familiar to us that we are hard-pressed to imagine any other way of constructing reality, in perhaps, say, cyclical and wholistic images.

 

Unfortunately, as well as living within a context of dualism we also live within what Darrell Fasching of the University of South Florida has called a “war mythology;” an archetype, if you will, of the “story” in which we find ourselves. He writes,

 

                   Stories of war are stories of wrestling with the stranger that have been

                   infected by a sacred dualism…Perhaps no other type of story has a more

                   disturbing impact on human behavior than that of war. For stories of

                   war invert normal ethical orientations. While in most cultures people

                   would normally say that killing is evil and not killing is good, in times

                   of war these admonitions are inverted. Within a story of war, killing is

                   considered good and not killing is considered evil. Indeed, notkilling

                   will be considered cowardly and unpatriotic…The implications of this

                   inversion are profound…In times of war the very activities that would

                   normally horrify our ethical sensibilities come to be seen as our high-

                   est ethical obligation. [1]

 

         The consequence of living within both a dualistic form of reality AND a war mythology engenders the conditions in which we find ourselves separating ourselves further and further away from other human beings as beings. The enemy becomes the “Other;” the one not like us; the one who is different, and ultimately the evil one. There is a tendency then to de-humanize and demonize them so that the inversion of ethics which allows for the killing can be more easily achieved. Our reality, our world becomes sacred; theirs profane. We become good; they, evil. And as the noble upholders of truth and justice it becomes noble, ethical to rid the world of this perceived evil.

 

The mystic, the visionary, the social activist of every major religious tradition in the world today illustrate and exemplify fundamental ethical principles which all of these religious traditions claim as ethical truth. These include a fundamental affirmation of the Oneness of all Being. In Hinduism, from the Rg Veda, the oldest sacred text in the world (c. 3000BCE) himsa or, in which violence is described as including the following:

 

                  *Treating oneself as different from others

                   * Failing to realize the fundamental unity of all beings

                   * Causing pain to others

                   * Hurting or injuring others by speech, mind and body

                   * Killing or separating the life force from the body of others

                   * Exhibiting hatred towards others

                   * Injuring other harmless beings for the sake of one’s own pleasure

                

to Mohandas Gandhi for whom violence was the very measure of truth. When one has judged that the necessary response to a situation or event is violence, Gandhi charged, the response is already a lie.

        In Buddhism, from the Buddha’s teaching of “no-self” and the interdependence of all things, to Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, whose sense of omnipartiality goes beyond the attempt to simply be impartial or without self-interest but to move into a place where one becomes ethically informed by a mindful awareness of the perspective and well-being of all.  In Judaism, from the Patriarch Abraham’s hospitality to the stranger in the desert to Hasidic Rabbi Abraham Heschel, who declared that idolatry is “any god who is mine but not yours, any god concerned with me but not with you,” and, “whenever one man is hurt, we are all injured.” In Christianity, from the story of Jesus of Nazareth, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God.” Jesus, who affirmed the Jewish ethical imperative of hospitality to the Other, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,” and the Oneness of all Being, “Truly I tell you just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me,” to Martin Luther King, Jr., “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”  In Islam, from Muhammad, who in his time put an end to female infanticide declaring it an abominable practice, to Malcolm X whose second conversion in Mecca led him to declare, as a Muslim and as an American, “I could see from this, that perhaps if white America could accept the Oneness of God, then perhaps, too, they could accept in reality the oneness of Man.”

        The ultimate irony of course, is that despite the fundamental affirmation of all religious ethical traditions to welcome the stranger, of hospitality to the Other, and of the Oneness of All Being, in each of their histories, these remain the ultimate challenge as well. Perhaps that is why there is an obstinate insistence that these traditions do uphold their ethics while at the very same time they betray them. Perhaps then also, the ultimate battle against evil may be against the dualistic construction of an idea of evil itself; and the war we should be waging is a war against war itself and to refuse to live within a mythology which makes killing good and not killing evil.

 

The vision of John Lennon, which I once feared, has become my hope.

So much so, that on the evening of September 11, 2001, I wrote the following poem:

 

I pray to no God today.

I am neither Christian, nor Muslim, nor Jew.

The spirit of the earth is my strength.

I claim no country today.

I am neither American, nor Israeli, nor Palestinian,

nor Irish, nor African.

I am a citizen of the universe.

I claim no race, nor color, nor creed.

I am not white, nor black,

not Indian, nor Asian, nor Hispanic.

I am living creature.

I grieve for those who hate,

and for the victims of hatred.

I mourn those who kill,

and those who have lost their lives.

I hold ever before me,

the vision of a world where

there are no strangers.

Where nothing is sacred,

but all is holy.

When the earth will no longer groan.  And the only tears will be gentle rain.

[1] Fasching, Darrell, Comparative Religious Ethics, Blackwell, 2000

 

 

Gift on the Beach

Gift on the Beach

 

Today I sat on a very windy beach, so windy I couldn’t read. It was too much work just to hold the pages flat. I sat alone far away from the water’s edge. My choice was dictated by the presence of about 100 children and their adult chaperones nearer to the shore, no doubt on some kind of dubious school field trip. After my walk I sat. And sat. After a while a woman passed by hauling behind her a chunky, blue, plastic wagon on which sat a little girl no more than 2 years old. She had a beautiful round face and was wearing a blue bonnet secured at the neck by a blue ribbon. As they passed, the baby strained her neck to eye me curiously. I began to silently wave bye-bye. She looked and looked and then turned away. Suddenly, without turning to actually greet me, her arm shot up like a rocket, almost a salute. Then she turned to look at me. Mimicking her gesture I shot my arm straight up into the air. She did the same. I returned her salute. Again and again, while her mother trekked and pulled for almost 50 yards we saluted each other. Her mother remained completely oblivious to her daughter’s encounter with this delighted stranger. There I sat, shooting my arm into the air to have it answered in the same manner. I knew she was laughing though I couldn’t hear her. I was laughing too. I thought to myself, “OK. I can go home now. This is my gift for today.” Because there always is one. Sometimes it is something I see. Sometimes it is something I feel. Sometimes it is something I take away with me, a shell or a poem. Today it was this.

 

And as she disappeared behind a dune, I made a silent wish for her that was almost a prayer.

poem/Constantine's Sword

Constantine's Sword

 

I am reading Constantine's Sword.

James Carroll strikes at the heart.

My Catholic heart.

I love her still.

I love her yet.

I love her wounded.

Grievous love denied by fury.

I am furious with her.

For the promise of a love,

answered by a raised and open hand

that leaves its mark upon the cheek.

 

I love her memory.

Childhood days filled with the hope

of touching God.

Innocent nights lit by mystical

candlelight.

Tiny hand marked the forehead

in an ancient gesture of sorrow.

Scraped knee touched the floor

in reverent genuflection.

 

Separated by betrayals

and wrongs long since committed,

the ties that bind remain.

Her hold on me is as a home,

the taste of oatmeal on the tongue,

the first bite that scalds and scars.

The smell of Grandmother's dress,

lily of the valley and peppermint.

A touch of fear

at her indomitable strength.

 

This Church is Mother.

A mother with whom I cannot live.

A mother whose song by day

soothed the pain of scraped knee and battered soul.

By night, the caustic voice of

hatred heard, of love denied.

In silence accepted, though undeserved.

O! What beauty she brought!

Ancient myth of a god dying and rising,

Poeticritual of water and wine;

Sacrificial altar of human and divine communion.

Childhood innocence, the burnt offering.

Happy Birthday, Bob

Happy Birthday, Bob

 

Today is Bob Dylan’s birthday. And today he is 65.

There will be many stories and newspaper articles and radio show tributes that will mark the day in their own way. But I cannot let the day slip by without my own tribute, insignificant to the world as it might be.

 

I was introduced to Bob Dylan in the 5th grade. I was 10 years old.

It was a dark, cold, wintry New England afternoon.

My fifth grade teacher was a hippie who had just returned from the Peace Corps. She introduced us to all manner of exotic things including her water pipe collection. She was the only teacher I’d ever seen strike a student. (Joey Rousseau, you deserved it).

 

One afternoon, she made us move all of our desks to the perimeter of the room and sit in a circle in the center of the floor. She had borrowed a small, red “record-player” from the Audio-Visual Room (which then, contained only this little record-player, a filmstrip projector and an overhead projector). She placed the record-player in the center of our circle creating (what I now recognize as) sacred space. Then, like a call to prayer she said, “Listen to this,” and she played his first LP, “Bob Dylan,” straight through.

 

And on that afternoon, she set me up. She made it impossible for me not to fall in love. (Thank you Miss Dalton, wherever you are).

 

And the love affair continues. It is the longest love affair of my life.

I take out the songs over and over again and listen to the words like an old lover reads her letters and to the new songs with amazement that the beloved still writes.

I remember places and times associated with certain songs. I remember crying with some, and smiling at others and raging against the wind to others; standing in my pink bedroom in the early 70’s belting out “Positively 4th Street” at the painful, enraging betrayal of a friend; laughing my ass off at “Leopard Skin Pill Box Hat” (and still am); knowing who “Just Like a Woman” was written for, because it was written for me; aching at the tenderness expressed in “Girl From the North Country,” and my obsession (yes, obsession) with “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands.” ALL of the women in my life were the sad-eyed lady. And one day, in tribute to them and in gratitude to Bob I had an Arabian drum tattooed on the back of my right shoulder.

 

And when I was in the 9th grade, on one extremely hot Rhode Island summer day, I played "Rainy Day Woman" at full volume lying on my bed with all the windows open. My father walked by the door and said, "Louise, the windows are open." I said, "But DAD, it's BOB DYLAN." He said, "Louise, the windows are open."  "Aw...Daaaad."  That moment marks my own personal definition of the term "generation gap."

 

When I was no more than a child and knew that there was something wrong with the world, he gave me the words to know what that was.

When I was a teenager he gave it all; words of tenderness and hope and love and outrage and pain.

Now that I am a woman, and have put away childish things, I know that I do not have a love affair with Bob Dylan. I know that he doesn’t write for me. I know that I do not know him. All I know is that his music and lyrics stand in my life as something solid, something sure, something that never disappoints, something that I always love and for which I am forever grateful.

 

Up until New Year’s Day 2005, I had never made New Year’s resolutions. But in both 2005 and 2006, I did. The first thing I wrote on both lists was the resolution to, “Kiss Bob Dylan.” There is no lust there. It would not be a lover’s kiss. It would be a kiss of tenderness for the gift that he has been and continues to be in my life. It would be a kiss of gratitude.

 

In Hibbing, Minnesota they will bake cakes and celebrate today.

Perhaps, I too will bake a cake

And I’ll blow a kiss to Bob.

And Miss Dalton too.

It's not easy being a feminist...

It’s not easy being a feminist…

 

It’s not easy being a feminist because as soon as you say the word, or any word connected to it say… “sexism,” or “patriarchy,” people assume that you are a raving, angry bitch who hates men and all things male. In fact, some put up their defenses so quickly they can’t see past your “this is what a feminist looks like” t-shirt, or your “god is coming and she is pissed” button. They don’t look into your eyes, they don’t see that the book you’re carrying is by Aristotle for Pete’s sake, and they don’t listen to the compassionate and gentle tone of your voice. The t-shirt (or word) stops them cold and they think they know you. But they don’t. They don’t know that there are men in your life that you love more than life itself. They don’t know that there have been men in your life who have been the most compassionate, loving and nurturing people that you have known. They don’t know that you think some women are nasty and mean-spirited and puny-hearted. They don’t know that you do not generalize between “men” and “women” and make huge sweeping assumptions about them based on their sex. Ironically, they don’t know that a feminist is not necessarily a sexist.

 

It’s not easy being a feminist because people tell you to “let it gooooooo.” They tell you that “all that” is in the past, and you need to “get over it.” They think that the whole world looks like Boston, Massachusetts. But then, you remember:

 

*Women remain at the lower end of a segregated labor market and continue to be concentrated in a few occupations, to hold positions of little or no authority and to receive less pay than men.

 

*Women and girls comprise half of the world's refugees and, as refugees, are particularly vulnerable to sexual violence while in flight, in refugee camps and/or during resettlement.

 

*Despite calls for gender equality, women are significantly under-represented in Governments, political parties and at the United Nations

 

*Every 2 and ½ minutes a woman is sexually assaulted in the U.S.

 

*2/3 of the world’s illiterate are women

 

*One out of six American women have been victims of attempted or completed rape

 

*In 2004 alone there were 210,000 victims of rape or attempted rape in the U.S.

 

*The #1 cause of death among pregnant women is murder

 

*The third largest global illegal trade (after drugs and arms) is the trafficking in women’s and children’s bodies.

 

And so you tell those people that no, it isn’t “in the past.” It was just last week. It was just yesterday. It was just two and a half minutes ago.

 

It’s not easy being a feminist because the men you meet whom you have not met before get scared, as if you have said, "I am a terrorist," or "I am an anarchist." But the last thing you want to do is scare people. Especially men. Especially the cute ones. And when you meet one, you know that it will happen and you hope that when it does they will have spent enough time with you to know who you are. You know it will happen. His friend will say something stupid about "women" and off you go. You want to stop but you can’t help yourself. Before you know it you find yourself talking about the Neolithic Period and your head says, “Stop now before it’s too late.” But it’s alreadytoo late. Because now you’re talking about  the death of Tiamat for Cripe's sake, and war mythology and men’s greatest source of angst; the need to know who their children are and that this is why in a patriarchal world women’s sexuality needed to be controlled. And then you’re talking about the Church and the theologians and Mary Magdalene and you’re out of control.

 

It’s not easy being a feminist if you are also a mother. Because you want to raise sons and daughters who do not subscribe to those antiquated and false gender restrictions and you wonder sometimes if you go too far; when you rant in the living room and no one in the family knows what to do. And when you watch The Little Mermaid with your 10 year-old daughter and you turn to her and say, “Now, you know what she’s giving up for this man, right?” And she says, “Mom, can’t I just watch a Disney movie without the feminist critique?” And you say, “OK, just checking.” But by the time she is sixteen and someone has given her a subscription to Seventeen magazine and you say, “Now remember to read that with your ‘feminist eye,’” she says, “Mom, I always read everything with my feminist eye.” And then, you breeeeathe.

 

It’s not easy being a feminist because it’s easier not to be. It’s easier not to have to walk around the world seeing.It’s easier not to care so much. It’s easier not to feel responsible for the liberation and re-construction of history. It’s easier just to be silent, invisible. It’s easier not to try to “lift a manhole cover with your head” (Marge Piercy). It’s easier not to stand against 5,000 years of androcentric literature, philosophy, theology, science, anthropology and political organization. It’s easier just to lay down and die.

 

So, why use the word at all? Because it is the only word that describes what it is.

It’s like asking a carpenter to call himself “a wood craftsperson who cuts and shaves and constructs stuff out of dead trees,” or a plumber, “someone who unclogs drains and plugs up leaking faucets and installs bathtubs.”

Nothing describes a plumber the way the word “plumber” does. And no string of words when tied together describes a feminist the way the word “feminist” does.

 

So, that’s why I use it. And that’s why I will never be heard to utter the words, “I’m not a feminist BUT…”  Because anyone who speaks those words IS a feminist. They are a feminist as soon as they say the word “BUT.” Because inevitably what follows that word will be what a feminist is. Even though it’s not easy.

poem/Dear Dr. Freud

Dear Dr. Freud

 

Dr. Freud, though Psyche’s rogue

Was faced with a dilemma.

In moments fraught with pensive doubt

He pondered this enigma.

 

He asked, “What does a woman want?”

The question since the Fall.

Dear Dr. Freud, the answer’s clear.

We women want it all.

 

A cue from Eve might help you, Sir.

For Serpent proved most wise.

She wanted beauty and delight

But knowledge was the prize.

 

A few things have been added,

Since Eve was first made mute.

Dear Dr. Sigmund, here they are,

A modern woman’s fruit.

 

The perfect pair of sleek, black pumps,

Sure-footed, stable, sound.

But oh, they must be sexy too

And gently touch the ground.

 

The perfect t-shirt would be white

And press against the breast

And never shrink or get stretched out

Ah yes, that is the test.

 

The perfect handbag would perform

All tasks and many deeds

Of course it must be big enough

To service all my needs.

 

The perfect lipstick should provide

A tint that’s strong and sure.

And when I kiss wineglass to lips

The color would endure.

 

My dear, dear puzzled Dr. Freud

Just one more thing to say.

The perfect man would also act

Precisely the same way.

Sure-footed, stable, sound he’d be

But he’d be sexy too.

And hold me tightly to his chest,

Be steadfast, loyal, true.

 

I must object to those who say

That size just doesn’t matter.

When choosing purse size, small or large,

I’d rather have the latter.

 

And like the stain upon my lips

What would be most sublime?

Someone who’ll stay with me the night,

And last a long, long time.

Infallible Teaching?

Someone actually asked me to post this on my blog. A "request" for a blog? Go figure. But, here it is, my argument for the ordination of women...

     Within the global religious "marketplace", Christianity claims the most adherents at over 2 billion. Of these, 1.3 billion are Catholic, two-thirds of whom live in developing countries. Ten percent of the world's Catholics live in Africa, where the number of Catholics has tripled in the past thirty years.  This staggering rise in numbers may signal a vocational crisis for the Catholic Church which has seen a recent dearth in vocations to the priesthood.  Yet, even faced with this global vocational crisis the Church continues to deny half of its membership the opportunity to serve in ordained ministries.

     The non-ordination of women by the Catholic Church is old news. What may come as a surprise to many however, is that the debate was summarily and quietly put to rest in 1995 when the Church's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (headed by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI) declared the practice a matter of faith and therefore an "infallible teaching".  According to the Vatican Council II Document Lumen Gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution of the Church, if the pope and bishops are in agreement regarding a matter of faith or morals, the teaching is to be held definitively and is taught infallibly. The declaration of the non-ordination of women as part of that deposit of faith then, places it within the realm of infallible teaching.  That the declaration was not accompanied by the fanfare that might have ensued had Pope John Paul II spoken ex cathedra, that is, when in the exercise of his office as pastor and teacher, does not make the teaching any less "infallible" nor binding upon the members of the Church.  

     With the emergence of feminist theology and feminist biblical reconstruction, the traditional arguments for the Church's insistence on an all-male priesthood have been scrutinized and have been found wanting.  Perhaps the most often cited argument for an all-male priesthood was the presence of "the Twelve" at the Last Supper, the night on which Jesus is considered to have "instituted" the priesthood.  Biblical scholar Elisabeth Schussler-Fiorenza speaks of the need for a "hermeneutic of suspicion" when approaching androcentric texts which place men in the center of action. She reveals a stunning but obvious characteristic of androcentric texts: simply because women are not mentioned, does not mean they are not there. That Jesus "took his place with the twelve" (Matt. 26:20), does not signify that ONLY the twelve were present.  In fact, it is highly unlikely that Jesus, who had women as disciples and close companions throughout his ministry would have chosen to exclude them at the Passover meal the night before he died. In Luke 22:14, it was simply "the apostles" with Jesus and in John, "the disciples", plural forms that in other texts are used in reference to both men and women (eg., Romans 16:7).  The implication is obvious. There is no conclusive evidence for judging as valid the Church's argument that the Last Supper was a "males only" event.

     Another traditional claim made by the Church in its defense of an exclusive male clergy regards the priest as he acts in persona Christi in the performance of the duties of his office of preaching the Gospel and presiding at divine worship.  The argument follows that since the priest presides in the "person of Christ" and since Jesus was male, a priest must also be male.  The most profound objection to this argument is that it ignores the transformative and transcendent power of the Resurrection. On the third day, according to the tradition, Jesus rose from the dead to take his place beside the Father. Jesus of Nazareth "became" Jesus the Christ. This Christic event is mystical and eschatological and cannot be sustained within the exclusive realm of Jesus' physicality.  Jesus' physical body became the "Mystical Body of Christ". The Resurrection renders Jesus' body irrelevant.  Additionally, because of this Christic event, the entire Church is called upon to be the Body of Christ on earth.  This presumably includes women.  If, however,  women cannot image/represent the Body of Christ on the altar, then neither can they do so in the world. The implication is that women cannot be Christians at all.  It is obvious why the Church found it necessary to abandon this argument.

     Finally, when faced with these scriptural and theological arguments the Church turned, out of desperation, to the appeal to tradition saying essentially that they would not ordain women because they have never ordained women.  As any first-year philosophy student well knows, it is always a fallacy to argue for the continuation of a behavior or action on the basis of its always having "been that way".  But this is the Church. And where others may appeal to tradition, they appeal to Tradition, and thereby claim a sacrality of history that is paramount even to justice.  It can also be argued that the ordination of women is not unprecedented in Church history.  Acts 6:6 is traditionally regarded as the text that records the appointment of the first deacons, now a major order within the hierarchy of sacred consecration.  The first deacons are commissioned (ordained) by the Apostles who "laid their hands on them".  In Romans 16, Paul "commends" to the community in Rome, Phoebe, a "deacon of the church at Cenchreae".  The term is diakonos in reference to Phoebe. But do not run to check your English Bibles.  In many English versions of Christian Scripture, whenever the word diakonos is used in reference to a man it has been translated "deacon".  When the same word is used in reference to Phoebe it is most often given the diminished translation of "servant", or "helper" (the NRSV*, a notable exception).  Phoebe was diakonos and until proven otherwise, there is no reason to suspect that she would not have received "a laying on of hands" in the same way as her male counterparts. 

     The designation of the practice of the non-ordination of women as a matter of faith by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1995--thereby rendering it an infallible teaching--essentially closed the door of debate on the issue.  Yet, the denial of full participation in the ministry of the Church solely on the basis of sex cannot be judged as anything less than sexism. The Church it would seem suffers from a persistent inability to live up to its own vision of itself; it is a two thousand year-old tension.  For just as Paul envisioned a discipleship of equals as expressed in the Letter to the Galatians, so too in 1 Corinthians 14 we read of his inability to free himself from the sexist practices and patriarchal biases of his time: "As in all the churches of the saints, women should be silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as the law also says. If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church."  Ironically, the Vatican Council II Document Lumen Gentium cites Paul when it states, "There is therefore in Christ and in the Church no inequality on the basis of race or nationality, social condition or sex, because 'there is neither Jew nor Greek; there is neither bond nor free; there is neither male nor female, for you are all One in Christ Jesus'" (Gal. 3:28).  Yes, and the Emperor has new clothes.

 

poem/Easter, 2006

Easter

Tiny purple caps of tulips on my kitchen table

Sprout from bulbs thought too long dormant.

A winter’s worth of death defied,

By stalks that bend to life.

And here, on this beach,

There are hundreds of signs.

Descents and risings of a kind too often

ignored in favor of the more dramatic.

And mythical.

Birds that plummet into the deep of the sea.

Emerge victorious too.

A fish clutched in the beak,

and with it the promise of continued life.

Miraculous butterflies that flutter close

To the sand and then,

In a surprising but decisive move,

Soar to heights that must seem like heaven.

Sand crabs that burrow tirelessly into

little tombs that await.

It is frantic work, this act of burial.

If one waits long enough, they too

resurface to light.

Dolphins dive into waters unseen.

Sleek, fluid bodies break through

the surf once more.

And repeat the ballet like eternal spring.

And today, a little boy, buried to the neck

by a sister who relished the game perhaps

a bit too much.

He too arose from that would-be grave.

His ascension secured by a father

who does not abandon.

I need no story of tortured human flesh

that returns to life a god.

No Icarus, Phoenix, or Osiris,

To remind me.

For with every fall and determined ascent

Of bird, of butterfly or dolphin,

I too know a soaring of spirit;

A newness to life.

And join the endless dance

Of nature’s resurrection.

                                          Easter Sunday, 2006

poem/Holy Ground

Holy Ground

 

Altars visited by my child's eye

held the magic of God and grace upon the sacred linens.

Tables made holy by bread and wine,

consecrated by hands and lips

that whispered lies in the dark.

 

Candles reflected the

powerful promise of redemption

offered in trade for my innocent soul.

Reminders that the failure

to attend these empty feasts

would bring the fires of hell upon our backs.

 

Holy water rationed among us,

one careful, baptismal drop at a time,

for a people dying of thirst.

Stingy, measured blessings,

when what we needed were gushing fonts of life;

overflowing springs to cool us.

 

Sacred Word spoken at me, with an angry finger

pointing out my sin.

Speech made unholy

by hisses of hate under the breath,

hidden in the sweet smiles of deception.

 

The smell of incense,

remembered even now.

Lovely, scented mysteries of smoke and ash,

rising with our prayers to the heavens.

A multitude of lips moving

in an ancient plea for mercy,

that would not come.

 

Melodies of angelic choirs

lifting a desperate Glory to God.

Music tortured by throats enslaved.

Crystal clear sopranos, the only sound allowed

within the stained glass vestries of silence.

 

Now, my altar has a simple design.

Kitchen table, or coffee table

spread with a eucharist

of chicken salad and carrot cake.

Paten and chalice, the floral dishes and cups

of a meal made holy by love.

Bread and brie and pears, divine communion

of intimacy and grace.

 

My candles of salvation are the lights of the sky.

Sun and moon and stars offered in freedom.

No payment of spirit or soul

required for their beauty.

 

Holy water sprinkled

from fingers which seek only to heal.

Mother's spit washing away

the blood and tears of hurt and fear.

Baby's bath poured on the forehead

in a sacrament of belonging.

 

And blessed incense, the dew-dropped purple

of wisteria, the sweet rising

scent of freshly cut cantaloupe.

Beaded sweat on the body of my beloved,

perfuming the air of my prayer with mercy.

 

And sacred music, the sound

of ocean wave and birdsong.

Voices of son and daughter,  soothing balm to a soul

too long  seeking solace in the empty echoes

of cathedral organs.

 

My altars are much simpler now.

Sanctuaries of sea and sky.

The sacred linen of earth  made holy by flesh and blood.

The ritual dance of life sung in a kyrie of joy and pain.

The act of consecration made manifest

in the terrible beauty of being.

Holy ground is no longer a place I enter.

It is a place which enters me.

 

the architects of the West?

One of the reasons why the mainstream Churchmen and theologians hated sex so much is because they had so separated the mind/spirit from the body/physical (following Greek philosophy's lead) that they saw the body/sex as an obstacle to the attainment of God. The body became that which separated God from men. If they were "slaves to the body" they couldn't concentrate on God and prayer. But they were men after all, so because they did have "stirrings in the loins," women became the constant reminder that they were "weak" and open to temptation and therefore unable to attain their "true" calling, which was unity with God. Women then, became the evil tempters (and the myth of Eve didn't help) who kept men from God. Women and sex became that which must be controlled. Christianity, especially the Catholic Church still tries to control and determine peoples' sexuality and sex lives. One Father of the Church, and early theologian, Origen of Alexandria (2nd-3rd century), was actually so determined not to allow anything to separate him from God, and saw sex as such an obstacle that he castrated himself. Sick bastard.

The following is just an example of the kinds of things that important theologians have said about women:

As in all the churches of the saints, women should be silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as the law also says.  St. Paul

"You (women) are the Devil's Gateway. You are the unsealer of that forbidden tree. You are she who persuaded him whom the Devil was not valiant enough to attack. You destroyed so easily God's image, man...therefore cover your head and figure with sackcloth and ashes.      Tertullian (2nd century)

Why must a woman cover her head? Because, as I explained before, the woman does not possess the image of God in herself.    Augustine, On the Trinity

As the philosopher (Aristotle) says, "Woman is a misbegotten male. Yet it is necessary that woman was made in the first production of things as a helpmate. Not indeed as a helpmate in any other works tham procreation, for in all other works man can be more efficiently helped by another man than by a woman, but as a helper in the work of generation...The woman is in a state of subjugation in the original order of things."

                 Thomas Aquinas 13th century, (the man who should have known better)

When a woman thinks alone she thinks evil, for the woman was made from the crooked rib which is bent in the contrary direction from the man...she is insatiable lust by nature. Because of this lust she consorts even with Devils."

                          Malleus Maleficarum (15th century Inquisition manual used during the persecution of women as witches)

Eve originally was more equally a partner with Adam, but because of sin the present woman is a far inferior creature. Because she is responsible for the Fall, woman is in a state of subjugation. The man rules the home and the world, wages war and tills the soil. The woman is like a nail driven into the wall, she sits at home.    Martin Luther

And these were the constructors of Christianity, the architects of the West. Can you see why I am so dedicated and determined to de-construct and re-construct this legacy? Some of the young women in my courses have told me that for so long they didn't really know why they felt so lousy about themselves, or why they never feel that they are quite "enough." They have told me that I give them the language to understand. And once they understand, they can begin to change it all.

I go on and on and on. I can't help it. This is what I do.

Sitz im Lieben

The following is an essay presented at a faculty panel on women's bodies in 2004. It is still relevant. It is still "true."

 

MY focus today will deal with women’s bodies and the Christian tradition. Allow me to begin my comments with what Elisabeth Fiorenza calls a

Sitz im Lieben or life setting.

 

I was raised (obviously) female, in a devoutly Roman Catholic family. I was an obese child, an obese teenager and an obese young woman. In fact, I did not know what it was to be of an average weight for my height until I was 25 years old.

 

I was raised within the context of a faith that was suspect, if not hostile to my being and a culture that was rejecting and disapproving of my appearance. It is a wonder that I survived (somewhat) psychologically intact.

 

In part, this experience led me to an interest and a subsequent study of the Christian tradition and its popular and doctrinal views towards women and women’s bodies.  The initial critique of course includes an acknowledgement that attitudes and beliefs about “who woman are” were constructed within a patriarchal religion and as such women’s anthropology was derived androcentrically, that is, within the assumption that men constitute the norm for what it means to be human and stand at the center of human existence.  Women then are placed on the margins of that assessment. It also means that women’s very being was represented through the eyes and experience of men. Men, and as regards much of Christian anthropology and theology, celibate men, have defined and determined descriptions and definitions of women’s nature, women’s sexuality, of women’s acceptable roles in society and of women as they stand in relation to the divine.

 

 

As I so often point out in my courses, if one is to understand the “anthropology of woman” in the tradition, one cannot ignore influential and powerful interpretations of Eve as she is presented in the mythology of creation. That she is created second in the order of the creation of humanity (in Chapter 2), that she is created differently and that the myth provides a purpose for her creation has not escaped centuries of notice. From Saint Paul to Saint Augustine, to Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, John Calvin and Karl Barth this distinction in creation provided the justification for finding her (and consequently all women), wanting, inferior and in need of subjugation. Her body was the locus for her association with male temptation, carnal license and moral weakness.

 

In the myth, woman is not created as an end in herself but as a helpmate for the purpose of procreation for according to both Augustine and Thomas Aquinas the man would have been better served in any other endeavor by a helper who was male (both in companionship and work). Indeed, Thomas included in his Summa a chapter that dealt with the question of whether or not it was necessary that woman had been created at all. He concluded that since men are the better companions of men, the only purpose for woman’s creation is her role in procreation.

 

But in order to accomplish the purpose of her existence, she must engage in sexual activity, which is associated in a dualistic worldview as base, sinful, and even within the context of marriage is described by Augustine as a “legalized depravity.” Motherhood was a double-edged sword.

 

Margaret Miles, commenting on Augustine’s view in Carnal Knowing, writes:

        

          Between men and women ‘there is no difference except in

          relation to the body.” But this difference was a large one

          As Augustine’s statement suggests, women’s “nature” was

          determined by their physical difference from men, that is,

          by their bodies. Although women possess rationality, men’s

          “nature” was determined by it.

 

So determined in fact, that by the middle of the 16th century, at the Council of Trent the ongoing debate as to whether or not women even possessed souls was finally put to rest. It was decided that they did.

 

The body or more specifically, women’s bodies separate them from the realm of the divine, which is associated with Mind, Logos and Spirit. And very early, though not immediately in the tradition, women were barred from serving officially as the mediators between God and men. Never did that become more stunningly clear to me than when in Paris 3 ½ years ago, while visiting one of the churches, and while purchasing an icon, I misinterpreted a gesture as one instructing me to follow a young man as he made his way up the center aisle towards the altar. As I took my first steps into the sanctuary I heard two screams behind me. An older man, praying in the front pew had risen and shouted, clearly filled with anxiety, almost dread. My friend, having seen his reaction called to me as well.  It was only then that I realized my grave error. I, possessed of a women’s body, had entered and thereby violated sacred space, space that was forbidden to me simply by virtue of my being a woman.

 

It has become a part of the feminist “canon of critique” to cite the now-famous Augustinian reflection on how women and men uniquely reflect the image of God, found in his treatise On the Trinity:

          

            …that the woman together with her husband is the image

            of God, so that that whole substance is one image.  But

            when she is assigned as a help-mate, a function that pertains

            to her alone, then she is not the image of God; but as far as

            the man is concerned, he is by himself alone the image of God,

            just as fully and completely as when he and the woman are

            joined together into one.   

 

The juxtaposition of Eve with Mary, the mother of Jesus does not lessen the tradition’s anxiety.  Mary is doctrinally described as both Virgin and Mother, an accomplishment, I daresay, no mere ordinary woman can imitate. And yet, it is this very construction that has been presentedto women throughout the ages as that image of womanhood to be emulated.

 

Motherhood or virginity then, both biologically based, became the essential ways of being.  But they were not equally valued. Margaret Miles writes:

                  

                  

                    In orthodox Christianity two roles were acceptable for women-

                    Virginity or motherhood…No reader of patristic literature could

                    miss the difference in interest, tone and length in discussions of

                    virginity and marriage…for example, Jerome, ‘The woman will

                    then be saved if she bear children who will remain virgins:

                    if what she has herself lost, she attains  

                    in her children, and makes up for the loss and decay of

                    the root by the excellence of the 

                    flower and fruit.’

 

    And Saint Ambrose, “The marriage bond is not to be shunned as though it were sinful, but rather declined as being a galling burden.” 

 

    Gregory of Nyssa, “The more exactly we understand the riches of virginity,the more we must bewail the other life…how poor it is.’

 

And lest we think that this construction is an exclusively medieval idea, in 1988, in his Apostolic Letter On the Vocation and Dignity of Women, Pope John Paul II named motherhood and virginity as “the two dimensions of women’s vocation.”

 

There are of course, women in the tradition who broke the bonds of restriction placed upon them, not the least of which was Mary Magdalene for whom there is no scriptural foundation at all for an association with sexual promiscuity. There is suspicion by modern scholars of Christian antiquity that sexual promiscuity was attached to Mary Magdalene in an effort to discredit her power and authority in the early Christian churches.

It does not escape notice that in an effort to undermine her apostleship, the worse that could be said about her was that she had sex. 

 

Other women also, like Saint Teresa and Saint Catherine of Siena who are named Doctors of the Church, the Medieval Rhineland Mystics and Julian of Norwich who offered an apology for being a mere woman, “ignorant, feeble and frail,” but who appealed to the tradition’s affirmation, beginning with Saint Paul, that women can experience the “inward workings of the Holy Spirit.” According to Rosemary Ruether, “these women mystics evoked the Wisdom tradition of female-identified divine immanence [that] potentially overcomes concepts of a male God and androcentric concepts of the human.”

 

I have spent most of this presentation focusing on the past. The theme of this panel is “The Human Body and the New Millennium.” The human body in the new millennium is constructed FROM the past and if it is to “look” differently in the future then critical analysis of the past must be a part of the project. Biblical scholars, theologians, and scholars of religion who are engaged in the work of re-constructing Christianity’s origins in order to determine women’s “real” roles, who invoke feminine images to describe the divine, who examine the depiction of women in Christian art and anthropology, and who challenge androcentric ideology are constructing that future. The human body in the new millennium is changing its shape right now, right here.