Just yesterday I listened briefly to a news clip from the Huffington Post of a young Baptist minister in AZ. He was preaching from the first letter of Paul to Timothy—a letter ascribed to Paul, though most scholars agree it was not written by Paul. This young man was telling his congregation that women must be silent in the church. He went so far as to say that women aren’t allowed to say ‘amen’ in his church because ‘amen’ is an affirmation of truth, and women can only RECEIVE truth, not affirm it. Women are to simply listen and receive the teachings from their minister or their husband. They must never teach, preach or lead MEN in any way!!
Contrast this position with what you heard last week in Jesus’ conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well. She engaged Jesus in a complex theological discussion which led her to not only believe in him, but to EVANGELIZE her entire village!
What this Arizona pastor is telling his congregation is adamantly opposed to Jesus’ inclusive ministry. It is a patently un-Christian message built on a misogynistic belief system. If anything is pure heresy—THIS is.
On the same day I listened to an interview with former President Jimmy Carter about his new book: A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence and Power. In it he says the biggest challenge facing our world today is the subjugation and abuse of women and girls. He calls it the “worst and most pervasive and unaddressed human rights violation on Earth.
Carter criticizes conservative religious leaders for claiming women are inferior in the eyes of God saying they indirectly contribute to the ongoing violence against women by furthering a society that allows inequality to flourish. He told NBC News, and I quote: “Religious leaders say women are inferior in the eyes of God, which is a false interpretation of the Holy Scriptures. When [people] see the Pope, the Southern Baptist Convention, and others saying that women can’t serve as priests equally with men, they say well, I’ll treat my wife the way I want to because she’s inferior to me.”
This is exactly what that young preacher in Arizona is promoting in his congregation, and it is an act of violence that endorses and perpetuates the abuse of women and girls.
From the time I was a little girl I knew in the depths of my being I felt called to be a Roman Catholic priest. Everything in my life from that time forward grew out of this calling—the decision to study Theology as an undergraduate, to enter the field of Counseling, to pursue a Master of Divinity, to eventually (and illegally) be ordained, and then to found and nurture Sophia Christi Catholic Community as its pastor. The ONLY reason I was not allowed to follow this calling within official institutional channels is because I’m a woman.
How does this reason square with God’s words to Samuel in our first reading: “Do not judge from Eliab’s appearance” God tells Samuel. “I do not see as people see: people look at appearances, but I look at the heart’.” God does not look at gender and judge on the basis of biology. God does not look at age, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity or any of the other divisive distinctions human beings create to give or restrict access to leadership and spiritual guidance. God looks at the heart—at its motives, hopes and fears.
In our second reading Jesus smears mud on the eyes of the one born blind. After smearing on the mud, Jesus sends the man to wash and now, miraculously, he can SEE. He no longer sits and begs. Now he is witnesses to those religious authorities who are so incensed by the healing. Not only does he witness—he offers them the benefit of what he now SEES! His eyes are open to spiritual as well as physical reality. He sees who Jesus is, sees he is a prophet, is of God. His eyes are healed. His life is transformed. He moves from the margins—the scrap-heap of his world—to its center. He becomes a teacher of those he now realizes are the truly blind.
The authorities, the truly blind, don’t like this at all and throw him out. Jesus affirms the man’s faith, stands by him, and says: “I came into the world to make all distinctions clear, so those who have been blind will see, and those who have made a great pretense of seeing will be exposed as blind.”
The parable of the man born blind is an apt mirror for much of what is happening in many conservative Churches, mosques, synagogues and Temples today when it comes to unequal and oppressive treatment of women. What is most threatening to the paradigm of male dominance within these ecclesial structures is that the eyes of women have been opened. Many of us now see the faulty theological arguments whose only real purpose is subjugation of the feminine face of God and patriarchal dominance.
The Catholic woman priest movement is one tiny piece of God’s liberating action in our time. Our eyes are open. Those who pretend to see God’s “will” to be the exclusion of women from priestly ministry are being exposed as blind through careful biblical scholarship and archeological evidence.
When the hierarchy—bishops, cardinals and even the pope—claims to have no power to ordain women because Jesus ‘only’ called men as apostles, we know from research that the ‘twelve apostles’ were simply symbolic of the twelve tribes of Israel in Jesus’ time. We also know Jesus ordained no one.
We know an ‘apostle’ is ‘one sent to carry the message of good news’ as well as ‘an eyewitness’ of the resurrection. Mary Magdalene was called ‘the apostle to the apostles’ by St. Augustine in the 4th century because of the role given her by Jesus after his resurrection. Yet never is she given the respect shown to every other apostle or leader in the early church by male authorities then or now.
When the hierarchy claims there have never been women priests we know from archeological evidence this is not true. There were women priests and bishops in the early church. We have the research of Dr. Dorothy Irvin and Gary Macy, among others, to support this claim. [The Hidden History of Women’s Ordination: Female Clergy in the Medieval West, © 2007]
We also have the work of Giorgio Otranto, director of the Institute of Classical and Christian Studies at the University of Bari, Italy. He sees evidence of women priests in an epistle of Pope Gelasius I (late 5th century) sent to three regions in southern Italy.One of the decrees in the letter states, “Nevertheless we have heard to our annoyance that divine affairs have come to such a low state that women are encouraged to officiate at the sacred altars, and to take part in all matters imputed to the offices of the male sex, to which they do not belong.”
He harshly condemns the conduct of bishops who go against church canons by conferring priestly ordination on some women. These laws probably emerged from four church councils that took place within a 100 year span beginning in the second half of the 4th century: Nicaea, Laodicea, Nimes and the 1st Council of Orange (441). All of them prohibited women from participating in the liturgy in any way, or from being members of the clergy.
Professor Otranto says, “If the church councils banned the ordination of women as priests or deacons that must imply they really were ordained. A law is only created to prohibit a practice if that practice is actually taking place—if only in a few communities.”
We needn’t look back 2000 years to find church blindness around women’s ordination. After the communist take-over of Czechoslovakia in 1948, there was heavy persecution of Catholics who made up 60% of the population. Thousands of people were imprisoned for practicing their religion. A vibrant underground church arose, and was alive and well for decades. When a need for sacramental ministry for women in prison emerged as a serious concern, it was clear that a male priesthood could not answer it.
Bishop Felix Davidek called a secret Synod composed of bishops, priests and laity to consider the ordination of women. After a heated debate the decision was made to proceed and, on December 28, 1970 Ludmila Javorova was ordained a priest. She served as Vicar General of the underground diocese for 20 years. In 1991, Cardinal Miloslav Vlk of Prague confirmed that up to 5 or 6 women were ordained as priests.
Ultimately, under John Paul II, the ordinations of these women and men who served the underground diocese were declared invalid by the Vatican, and all were forbidden to function. Single men, however, were allowed to be re-ordained in the Latin Rite, and married men re-ordained into the Eastern Rite where marriage is allowed. The women were given no such options. And to this day Rome maintains, “there have NEVER been women priests.”
In Paul’s letter to the Galatians (3:28)—a letter all scholars agree was actually authored by Paul—he says, “there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Jesus’ actions throughout his life bear witness to his own recognition of gender equality at a time and in a place male dominance was the only known social construct. This alone could be the foundational stone for anyone claiming to be ‘Christian.’ Yet, sadly, institutional structures have tended to follow the lines of their Roman imperialist forebears rather than the radical inclusivity of the Jesus they purport to follow.
The man born blind is a role model for anyone whose eyes are opened to the call of wholeness and authenticity. He isn’t afraid to speak his own truth to those in power, though they can—and will—throw him out into the street. His courage is born of knowing, in the depths of his being, that his experience is genuine and trustworthy. When questioned he answers simply with what he knows to be true. He doesn’t claim to speak TRUTH with a capital ‘T’. He only knows what he knows and offers what he knows to those threatened by his SEEING. His experience threatens the power-over dynamic of the authorities and, not surprisingly, they lash out with ridicule and abuse.
The sin of misogyny at the root of an exclusive male priesthood and authority structure continues to blind the institutional Catholic Church among others. As a Roman Catholic priest, all I can do is offer my Church the truth of my calling and my experience as a woman within both the institution and society at large. I continue to serve the women and men whose eyes have been opened by the healing touch of a man who made no gender distinctions in his ministry. This Jesus had a profound ability to call women to lead, to teach and to speak their truth at a time such things were as unheard of as was that of giving sight to a person born blind.
There are many versions of the Baptist minister in Arizona who see Scripture through the blinders of patriarchal dominance and misogyny. But there are also the Jimmy Carters of the world, men healed of history’s stubborn blindness concerning women, speaking and working for an end to violence against women in all its many forms. And there are the women called to priesthood and ministry. Following this call is countercultural, and there is risk. Yet like the blind man, like Samuel, we continue living into God’s calling – one by one by one.
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