Simcha Fischer at the NCR says a thing or three that’s needed saying out loud for a long time, primarily because it’s never been said that way before. Actually, she’s referring to what someone else said—and not even that, but what someone said about what someone said.
(“Wondering why we need a theology of women in the Church? Look no further than the comments after Pia de Solenni’s article, ‘Theology of Women in the Church’ Only Beginning to Be Revealed.”)
When I became a Christian, I visited the First Baptist Church of New Orleans because I’d been Baptist as a child, having come from a family of Georgia Baptists. I should be clear, however, that I did not convert from Baptist to Catholic, but from non-Christian to Christian, and my conversion involved deep forgiveness of wrongs done to me as well as wrongs I’d done. Hence, the visit to the local Baptist Church.
I did not stay. That was not my intention. I’m a grown-up. I was about forty years old and even if I’d wanted to, I could not behave as a cute-and-sweet simpering six-year-old, the way the women did in that church. After I became Catholic, I thought that perhaps they behave that way because they have no feminine role models in Protestantism. They have no Mother of God, no St. Teresa of Avila, no St. Joan of Arc, etc. Unlike the Catholics, Protestantism is totally masculine, historically. Nowadays, in the aftermath of equal rights and other politically correct adjustments, they hire women pastors who preach and do all the things that men do—just as secularism teaches, demands, legislates and litigates. Know what? They’re still dominated by men (just as secularism is); it’s just that “The Man” now wears a woman’s body (often, in more ways than one.)
In short, nothing has changed. Not in that church, not anywhere else. Except—and why is this a surprise?—in the Holy Roman Catholic Church. Pope John Paul II began a theology of women, and it appears that Pope Francis may continue it—but, although I didn’t read the article Fisher refers to, it may be originating now with moral theologian Pia de Sonni, who was awarded the Pontifical Academies Award by John Paul II. (The only person of either gender to understand women.)
It’s entirely appropriate that it should begin with her, with “a” her, and not with a him, no matter who he is. When I was a Southern child in the ‘50s, and Little Rock, Arkansas, happened (contrary to much contemporary yadda-yadda, de-segregation began under Eisenhower, not Kennedy), a black woman said, “No white man can free the black man. If they could, it would have already happened.” Exactly. The self-righteous posturing of New England South-hating Puritan abolitionists accomplished nothing except death and destruction. It took a black man to free the black man. That’s how freedom works. It isn’t granted by the oppressor; it’s claimed by the oppressed. As Gandhi knew, what is given can be taken back. What is claimed as one’s own cannot. That’s why Martin Luther King, Jr., succeeded where Lincoln failed. Freedom is an interior condition, not an exterior circumstance. One of King’s best remarks, I think, is “The great thing is that we straightened our backs. Can’t nobody ride your back unless it’s bent.”
The self-respect he brought to African-Americans should not be misconstrued, however, as self-understanding. There was, after King, a lot of appeasement going on, on the part of both races, actually. In fact, that’s still going on, and it’s still not entirely understood. A lot of current black racism is an expression of deeply-felt deprivation, as though white people have taken something from them that was once rightfully theirs—anger. And a lot of protracted white guilt is not understood as what it really is—the protraction of racism, a still-unacknowledged conviction of supremacy. (One wants to slap them and say, “Get over it. You’re not really all that important, you know.”)
Just so, with women. Men can’t free women from any kind of oppression. Neither can laws, whether they originate in guilty men or angry women. As Fisher says, “Many of us have, like de Solenni, rejected the radical feminism that the secular world offers. We are horrified that the feminist movement devolved into a parody of itself, and almost instantly turned from its sorely needed goal of promoting respect and justice for women, and became ugly and strident, rejecting fertility, scorning self-sacrifice, devaluing men and damaging women and children.”
Radical feminism is child-killing, family-destroying, anti-nature gender suicide. At its best, it’s a dirty joke. And we do not escape it by reverting to simpering little girls. The importation from protestant churches is unacceptable to grown-up Catholic women. It’s worth quoting Fisher here entirely:
“[Most of the Catholic women I know are just as disgusted with the sissifcation of the Church. We have no desire to replace the sacraments with weaving classes and yoga. This is stupid stuff. This doesn’t tell you what woman can offer, any more than a stroll down the porn and firearms aisle of your local porn and firearms store tells you what men have to offer…. I do not want to be a man, and I do not want to be like a man. I also do not want to turn the Church into a hand-holding, feelings-sharing warm bath of emotion. That’s a parody of womanhood, and it’s just as offensive to women of faith as it is to men of faith.”
A real beginning will have nothing to do with guilt or anger, both of which have only one real cause: power, which is the meaning of life for some people, especially those who have it or those who desire it. For example, people (of both genders) who think women should be “empowered” as priests understand neither women nor the priesthood. (Do they really think men become priests because they want power? Good grief.) It’s time we stopped letting the ignorant do all the talking.
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