The Power of Women in the Catholic Church
Recently, after a talk, in the question and answer session, a question was posed that could have been taken two different ways. While I do not recall the specific wording the two different meanings were 1) The Catholic Church was man-made, why should we believe in it
or
2) The Catholic Church is only for males why should we follow it.
At the time, I answered the first way but it got me thinking that maybe they meant the second way. Especially with the entire secular media believing that Pope Francis is going to ordain female deacons any day now, I thought I'd address the second possible meaning.
Rephrased the question becomes: Isn't it unbalanced or unfair that men have all the power in the Church? This is a great question and the answer speaks to (though doesn't answer entirely) other issues such as people with Same Sex Attraction, Transgendered issues, Abortion, the Divorce culture and many others.
What I will NOT do is spend my time saying, "Well, Jesus appointed 12 men..." as I saw an obviously ambushed Jesuit Priest on CNN start with. This line of reasoning doesn't make sense to people who don't already deeply believe in Scripture and / or Catholic Teaching.
What I WILL start with is explaining that this question is the pinnical of a tall tower based on science, philosophy and finally revelation. But our world has destroyed the base of the tower; the foundation upon which that pininical rests, several stories up. So for us to discuss this question, I need to back up...
What I WILL start with is explaining that this question is the pinnical of a tall tower based on science, philosophy and finally revelation. But our world has destroyed the base of the tower; the foundation upon which that pininical rests, several stories up. So for us to discuss this question, I need to back up...
XX or XY and Nothing else
"God created them male and female" Genesis tells us. But we don't need Genesis - or any Divine Revelation for that matter - to tell us that there are men, there are women and they are different. But maybe we do. Today we have people who think science is wrong in this matter. These are some of the same people who would tell you that science proves religion is wrong, but in this case I guess their "religion" trumps science. However I think everyone would agree that our in our physical bodies there are only XX or XY chromosomes.
But can't we become "trapped" in the wrong one? This is not supported by science, religion or philosophy. I don't think we need to dive into science or religion to see this but I will take a brief fly-by of the philosophy. What people who believe "we" can become trapped in the "wrong body" are espousing is a type of Gnosticism: a belief system that came on the scene in the 1st Century AD. While Gnosticism has many distinctive beliefs that keep cropping up over and over throughout history, one of them is that Spirit and Matter are completely separate. Spirit is 'good' and Matter is 'bad;' hence my 'mind' (who I think I REALLY am) is good and my body (what "I'm" trapped in) is bad. A latter manifestation of Gnosticism, Manicheism, practiced a form of ritual suicide to "release" the good spirit from its fleshy prison. (Marital intimacy and becoming pregnant was also seen as evil since that "trapped" a good soul in a fleshy prison).
Mix this with a heaping dose of Relativism - the belief, in part, that there are no objective truths and we must disbelieve our senses, including the objective truth and sense of our physical bodies as part of us - and you get the modern belief that "gender" is arbitrary and "I" (as different from my body) can decide what my "real" gender is... and then I can force you to believe this to.
Mix this with a heaping dose of Relativism - the belief, in part, that there are no objective truths and we must disbelieve our senses, including the objective truth and sense of our physical bodies as part of us - and you get the modern belief that "gender" is arbitrary and "I" (as different from my body) can decide what my "real" gender is... and then I can force you to believe this to.
What proper philosophy, like Thomism, shows us is that the soul is what animates the body and is the body's form. We can no more be "trapped" in the wrong body then electricity can be "trapped" in the "wrong" electrical circuit - so to speak. They are part of the same thing. There's much more to a soul / body unity than that, but I think the analogy suffices for what I'm trying to say. However, we can have feelings that do not corospond to reality: I once met a woman who felt that the local diocese was sending in the "Priest SWAT team" into her house, at night, to do exorcisms on her - but then would disappear without a trace, because they were all trained ninjas. I think we all recognize that her feelings did not corospond to reality.
We could get side tracked here for a while, but I think it is enough to say that science, religion and proper philosophy shows us that there are only two possible, objective realities: male and female / men and women and they are different from each other.
Feminine Genesis
Our Western society has decided, for some time now, to devalue women and despise what it means to be 'woman,' eventually making it so meaningless that being a 'woman' is now an arbitrary choice that one can make one day, but chose against the next. Yes, other cultures devalue women by physically demeaning them and legally making them second class citizens to men, but ours is much more sinister with it. While, legally - and obviously correctly - our Western legal system gives equal rights under the law to women, it is our culture that has not embraced the underlying reasons for this.
In Genesis, when "Woman" (Eve's original name) was created, she was created from "Man's" (Adams original name) rib. Jewish commentators have thought about this for centuries longer than Christian. Their question was, "Why the rib?" Their answer was that Woman was not created from Man's head - she should not rule over Man; neither was she created from his feet - she should not be subservient to Man; rather she was created from his rib to be equal dignity, equal worth and equal value to Man.
Where our culture gets all messed up with this is it only sees the value in a woman in one of two ways: 1) How she can please a man and 2) How she can be like a man. Take a look at most popular "women's" magazine covers in the grocery checkout isle: between the cover model and articles they're all about how a woman can please a man. I'm not even going to address the popular "men's" magazines... Look at the beer adds: The supermodel is drinking the same thing as the man, and as much of it as the man. Look at the movies and T.V.: a woman must look a certain way, act a certain way and interact in a certain way to be like, just as good as or pleasing to a man. Look at the workforce. What does the modern thought say? Women must work the same jobs at the same hours for the same pay as a man. Some of that IS legitimate but it still begs the question:
Why is a man the standard by which women's worth is judged? Shouldn't women be their own standard? Shouldn't a women be valued for being the best Woman she can be and not for how much she's like (or liked by) a man?
Equal, not Identical
What the Catholic Church has always taught - though understood more fully today - is that men and women have equal value, equal dignity and equal worth but not identical roles. I can think of no better way to sum this up than with Dr. Peter Kreeft's statement, "Women are better than men at being women; and men are better than women at being men." This is Catholic teaching. Men and women each have their own, unique, irreplaceable, positive contributions to society and life BUT there are differences that the other cannot do.
Case and point: I am of the opinion that God gave the Priesthood to only men to make us men feel like our roles were almost as important as women's. WAIT DID YOU READ THAT RIGHT? Yes. I believe that the all-male priesthood was given to men to make us men feel like our rolls were almost as important as a woman's.
So what is this role that women were given that is so highly important, so powerful, so valued?
The all-woman Motherhood. None of us would exist without it and I, as a man, cannot be "ordained" into it, no matter how much I may think it unfair.
I'm in agreement with G.K. Chesterton. He, jokingly, did not believe in equality of the sexes. Since he lived in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, one would be tempted to think he thought men were better. This is incorrect. Chesterton believe WOMEN were far more valuable and important to society. Paraphrasing one of Chesterton's essays, Chesterton states that a man means only little to the many people he encounters each day. A woman, on the other hand, means the UNIVERSE to her children. It truly is the hand that rocks the cradle changes the world.
This isn't to say that a "woman's place is in the home" or that a woman shouldn't do anything but get pregnant as many times as she can. But it does mean that we need to understand AND RECLAIM woman AS WOMAN and not as a man.
This is what the Catholic Church has always taught; this is the entire point of Pope St. John Paul the Great's encyclical "Letter to Women." Going back to Biblical times, the Catholic Church was one of the first, and certainly the most influential force, in showing that women are more than just property; that women have equal dignity, worth and value as men. In a time where women were property and even in the progressive - for the day - religion of Judaism, women could be "put away" (divorced) without right or council and women's testimony was weighed 1/4 of that of a man's; in that culture and time Paul writes this bombshell (inspired by the Holy Spirit): "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus." (Gal 3:28) or "Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her...Even so husbands should love their wives as their own bodies... For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh." (excerpts from Eph 5:25-33). Other passages near there show that a husband's role is NOT living for himself, and using his wife in the process, but instead "that he might sanctify her."
In the modern day, the Catholic Church is still telling women that they have intrinsic, infinite value AS WOMEN, not in how a woman can please, or be like a man. In these, and many more ways than I can list here, when properly understood, the only Truly FEMINIST movements have been in the Catholic Church. All others have been masculinist movements. This is shocking to the modern mind, raised on and accepting of the degradation, demonization and demoralization of true feminism.
This is what the Catholic Church has always taught; this is the entire point of Pope St. John Paul the Great's encyclical "Letter to Women." Going back to Biblical times, the Catholic Church was one of the first, and certainly the most influential force, in showing that women are more than just property; that women have equal dignity, worth and value as men. In a time where women were property and even in the progressive - for the day - religion of Judaism, women could be "put away" (divorced) without right or council and women's testimony was weighed 1/4 of that of a man's; in that culture and time Paul writes this bombshell (inspired by the Holy Spirit): "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus." (Gal 3:28) or "Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her...Even so husbands should love their wives as their own bodies... For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh." (excerpts from Eph 5:25-33). Other passages near there show that a husband's role is NOT living for himself, and using his wife in the process, but instead "that he might sanctify her."
In the modern day, the Catholic Church is still telling women that they have intrinsic, infinite value AS WOMEN, not in how a woman can please, or be like a man. In these, and many more ways than I can list here, when properly understood, the only Truly FEMINIST movements have been in the Catholic Church. All others have been masculinist movements. This is shocking to the modern mind, raised on and accepting of the degradation, demonization and demoralization of true feminism.
Women's Power in the Church
So am I saying that women have no power or roll in the Catholic Church's decisions other than to have kids? Absolutely not, though let us not just pass over that! Again, NONE of us would be here with out women embracing the blessing (and cross) of the all woman Motherhood (of which I cannot participate in, no matter what I self identify as). But the Catholic Church doesn't see that as women's only roll either. Several of the Doctors of the Church - those Saints whose writings we can rely on for accurate, official, Catholic Teaching - are women: St. Theresa of Avila, St. Therese of Lisieux; St. Edith Stein and others; soon-to-be St. Mother Theresa told bishops, and even St. JP II what to do, at times, in decisions that effected her ministry (She also made then Pres. Bill Clinton absolutely speechless by taking him to task for his stand on abortion; an encounter which I have no doubt factored into Clinton's decision to sign some pro-Life legislation).
If it hadn't been for women, our churches would have collapsed in America in the last 50 years: As we've lost the sense of what "Woman" is, so we have lost what it means to be "Man." Men have shirked their rolls for far too long. Women have been there to pick up the pieces that men drop - as they always have. Recall, when weak men in the Church gave into the demands of a secular king and moved the Papal offices and residence to France, one woman - who knew one of her unique rolls as woman (as any wife knows) is to spur men on to be better men (read: give them a swift kick in the pants) - approached the pope with a message. St. Catherine of Sienna told Pope Gregory XI to his face, "ESTO VIR!" ( or "BE A MAN!") and get the Papacy back to Rome where St. Peter founded it. Pope Gregory promptly moved the Papacy back to Rome. Notice what St. Catherine is and is NOT saying in this? She is saying: This is wrong. You are wrong. YOU need change this. She is NOT saying: Our rolls are identical, but you're just oppressing me. Give ME this roll and I'LL change it myself.
If it hadn't been for women, our churches would have collapsed in America in the last 50 years: As we've lost the sense of what "Woman" is, so we have lost what it means to be "Man." Men have shirked their rolls for far too long. Women have been there to pick up the pieces that men drop - as they always have. Recall, when weak men in the Church gave into the demands of a secular king and moved the Papal offices and residence to France, one woman - who knew one of her unique rolls as woman (as any wife knows) is to spur men on to be better men (read: give them a swift kick in the pants) - approached the pope with a message. St. Catherine of Sienna told Pope Gregory XI to his face, "ESTO VIR!" ( or "BE A MAN!") and get the Papacy back to Rome where St. Peter founded it. Pope Gregory promptly moved the Papacy back to Rome. Notice what St. Catherine is and is NOT saying in this? She is saying: This is wrong. You are wrong. YOU need change this. She is NOT saying: Our rolls are identical, but you're just oppressing me. Give ME this roll and I'LL change it myself.
But isn't that one of the powers of women as Woman: to show what real manhood is too? When we know the differences, the different roles, and appreciate them, we know how to help each other, unite with each other and lead each other to Christ. This kind of unity is so absolute and full that it can create new life! When we blur those lines, devalue each other's differences, roles, become jealous of each other and try to be identical to each other, that is when we are truly divided, devalued and eventually come to the conclusion that gender is arbitrary, that children are a burden and marriage is nothing special.
Please, women, continue your absolutely necessary, tremendously powerful and uniquely beautiful role in our Church. We all need you and we are all infinitely indebted to you, as women.
God Bless,
Fidei Defensor
Please, women, continue your absolutely necessary, tremendously powerful and uniquely beautiful role in our Church. We all need you and we are all infinitely indebted to you, as women.
God Bless,
Fidei Defensor
