When sultry song stylist Sarah Vaughan sang “It’s a Man’s World” from her 1967 album, everyone understood what she was saying, but very few people knew that times were about to change. American women were about to embark on a peaceful revolution that, in a few decades, would result in full equality in all areas of society, all, that is, except one, the Catholic Church. If Ms. Vaughan were singing today, she could hit the Billboard’s Top Ten with a blockbuster song called “It’s a Man’s Church”.
It’s not that women do not participate in the life of the Church. They attend the services, receive the Sacraments, raise their children with Sunday School classes, First Communion, Confirmation and Catholic education. On the parish level women donate their funds, work in the church kitchens, lead the rosary society and clean the church. Women are active in the Church. What they lack, however, is what today psychologists call “Voice”. In the realm of authority, i.e. decision-making of the Church, women are non-existent.
This chapter is not a brief for the ordination of women priests or, God forbid, women bishops! That decision can be made only by those far above me in rank and rule. The main concern here is that when any society bars one half of its population, a priori, from its structure of authority, that society will be less than fair and much less than successful in its mission. The Church has a long history of dealing unfairly with women, a history that must be understood and overcome.
As early as the 2nd century, Church Fathers wrote about the “inferior nature” of women. Clement of Alexandria in his “Paedagogus” (2:33) said that women should be ashamed of their female nature. The North African Tertullian opined that women, as daughters of Eve, are the doors by which the Evil One enters (“De Cultu Feminarum”, Ch. I). The writers lived in the heady matrix of Hellenistic misogynism, which followed Aristotle in regarding women as deformed males and liars by nature. St. John Chrysostom (c. 347-407) wrote “On the Priesthood” in 386, right after his ordination, and says that “When someone has to preside over the Church and be entrusted with the care of so many souls, then let all womankind give way before the magnitude of the task…” (2, 2). Commenting on I Timothy (II:12-15), John proffers the rationale for the “inferiority” of women in Homily IX: “The male sex enjoys the higher honor, for man was formed first and is due superior status. For the woman Eve once taught the man Adam and made him guilty of disobedience, and she wrought our ruin.” With the appearance in the West of “scientific” Aristotelism in the 13th century Christian writers reaffirmed the debased nature of women. Albertus Magnus, the mentor of Thomas Aquinas, wrote that woman is a misbegotten man and has a defective nature…”and so one should guard against every woman, as if she were a deadly viper and horned devil.” (“Commentary on Aristotle”, No. 15). The Father of scholastic philosophy and theology, St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1275) held that women’s only purpose on earth was to give birth. In his masterwork “The Summa Theologica” Thomas writes that “we are told that woman was made to be a help to man, but she was not fitted to help a man except in generation, because another man would have proved to be a more effective help in anything else.” (Q. 98, Art. 2). Discoursing on the virtue of sobriety is the “Summa” the Angelic Doctor held that “sobriety is most requisite in the young and in women, because concupiscence of pleasure thrives in the young on account of the heat of youth, while in women there is not sufficient strength of mind to resist concupiscence.” (Q. 149, Art. 4). These sentiments echoed throughout Western schools, seminaries and chanceries for centuries. These early Christian writers gave voice to the basic elements of Christian anthropology, the study of the origin, nature and destiny of all Christians, even all of mankind. Platonism was the main pagan source for the earliest of these Fathers, while Aristotle served this purpose during the late Middle Ages. Platonic idealism held that the mind (“Nous”) is the highest and most divine-like quality in humans and can be found only in males. Females are characterized by the bodily passions and emotions, which by nature make them inferior to males. Plato’s student Aristotle was more a realist than an idealist but still believed in man’s superiority over women. Aristotle’s hierarchy of beings reads “God-Spirits-Man-Woman-Non Humans-Matter”, according to Rosemary Radford Ruether in “Sexism and God-Talk”, (1983), p. 79. On the basis of the Greek anthropology formulated by Plato, Aristotle and their followers, the early Christian thinkers built their edifice of the Church’s outlook on man’s/woman’s place in the world. First the Christian Fathers studied the Genesis accounts of creation and concluded that the Greeks were indeed correct, because man was created by God before woman, man’s rib was the material of women’s creation and woman’s purpose was to be a helpmate for man. Then the Fathers studied St. Paul and determined that women are to be subjected to men, be silent in church (1 Cor. 14:34), receive instruction silently and under complete control. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man. She must be quiet. (1 Tim. 3:11-13). The first Christian writers were convinced that women by nature itself were inferior to and under the domination of men. If women by both Edenic origin and nature itself are inferior to men, who are full participants in the “Imago Dei” and so destined to return someday to God in Heaven, then what are women’s eschatological hopes? Did not Christ gain salvation for both men and women? Of course, say the Fathers. But women share in the redemptive promise of Christ’s death and resurrection mainly and only by being faithful helpmates to men and bringing forth new life as mothers. As Ruether explains: “Aquinas concluded that woman, although defective and misbegotten in her individual nature, nevertheless belongs to the overall ‘perfection’ of nature because of her role in procreation.”
|