religious gender elitism

[sophiaserpentia]

About 100 men and women gathered outside Atlanta's Roman Catholic cathedral Thursday to protest the archbishop's exclusion of women from the Holy Thursday foot-washing ritual.

Contrary to the order from Archbishop John Donoghue, the protesters said the rite should include everyone. Donoghue did not address the protest during Mass Thursday night. He and his staff have refused to comment on the issue.

... In a letter last month to Atlanta priests, Donoghue said they should select 12 men from each parish to represent the apostles who had their feet washed by Jesus at the Last Supper.

from Faithful Decry Foot-Washing Ban of Women

It takes a special closed-ness of mind, and a special hatred of flesh, to think that the "fact" (disputed by some scholars and some non-canonical accounts) that Jesus' disciples were male sets a precedent that only people with penises deserve to participate in the remembrance of this event.

Jesus' message here was about humility, service, and compassion -- and this archbishop (and many before him) has turned it into something exclusionary.

Any mindset that reads the gospels and sees "people with penises" vs. "people without penises" instead of, just, people, is one that dehumanizes and closes the doors of the heart and soul.

Edit. It's difficult not to contrast the foot-washing scene in John, wherein Jesus washes the disciples' feet, with the foot-washing scene in Luke, where a woman (tradition says Mary Magdalene) washes Jesus' feet. If you restrict the remembrance of the scene in John to only male recipients, you are sending the subliminal message, intentionally or not, that it is fine for priests, who follow in the tradition of Jesus, to be served *by* women, but not to give service *to* women.

Comments

I don't want to start another row within the fold, but...

[publius-aelius.livejournal.com]

You, and the others looking in from the outside, are missing one very significant bit in all this. It is a discipline in the Church to pick 12 men to stand for the Apostles in this Rite. This is our discipline, this is our Rite, the meaning is ours and the liturgical unity is ours.

This is the CATHOLIC Church we are talking about, not some cult, some breakaway "sect." To speak of the way the Catholic Church organizes and governs itself and enacts or performs what we call the "one, true faith" as being of nobody else's business but ours is a denial of what we claim to be. People like sopiaserpentia and ladybabalon have EVERY RIGHT to point out the obvious (see below).

They are men only because they stand for the 12 apostles. That they are men is not the point. This is not a gender issue, and those who make it such have long since lost the meaning of the practice. That people are protesting this *is* a condemnation of that diocese, but not over gender. It is a condemnation that the diocese has failed to teach these people the meaning of what is going on.

In some ways, I agree with this statement: the diocese has failed to teach the people of its parishes that men and women are equal sharers in the Kingdom. The diocese has failed to foster "community," but part of the way it has failed to foster community was to fail to show the people how to grasp and subdue and discipline the POWER that inheres, unfortunately, in EVERY human community, and then to USE it for the equal benefit and interest of ALL. The way that badsede speaks of the "diocese" (the ecclesiastical polity) "teaching" the "people" the way he does makes ME think that, at heart, he is still living, as are, unfortunately, the remnants of the Catholic faithful who still go to church (most don't) in the top-down phallocracy of the pre-Vatican II Church. Many of the Church's critics must understand that, in their hearts, most of the "faithful" (i.e."conservative" Catholics) justifying EVERYTHING the ossified, reactionary hierarchy is doing or saying nowadays, NEVER ACCEPTED THE DIRECTIONS VATICAN II THREATENED TO TAKE THE CHURCH IN. They've won, however; we "liberal" Catholics are thrown out, and rejected. I love that lonely old nun, though; she's a holy woman, who refuses to see her Church commandeered by the power-mad ecclesiastical bureaucrats of its hierarchy.

Re: I don't want to start another row within the fold, but...

[publius-aelius.livejournal.com]

(cont'd)
It is not about men and women, it is not about the 12 men. It puts our priesthood in context. It defines their relation, in imitating the actions of Christ, they proclaim their servanthood.

I agree that the sacerdotal role is one of "servanthood." And I even agree that it may be best that it be reserved for men, to honor the gender of Christ. Even if we do know that Gospels were tampered with by an ecclesiastical polity early in the Church's history, bent on giving the upper hand in the Church to Gentile, generally celibate males, denying the key roles of women in the circles around Christ, I would say that it is still best for men to sacramentally enact the stages and passages of Christ's redemptive life. And this is what things like consecrating the Eucharist and washing feet, etc., are all about. No one would make an issue of such things if POWER (which exists, unfortunately) were shared in a way that reflected the equality, before God, of men and women. It is very easy for badsede to jump in here, and speak of this "washing issue" as somehow impertinent on the part of the protestors. He's right; the poor souls are "bad-mannered"--sort of like screaming lepers or Samaritans. But let him answer THIS question: The office of cardinal-elector of the Pope is not a sacerdotal one; it is one purely of the ecclesiastical polity; boy-princes and laymen have occupied the position and fulfilled its responsibilities. As a Jesuit cardinal is reputed to have bluntly demanded of the reigning Pope (to be responded with by nothing but spluttering fury): WHAT IS THE THEOLOGICAL IMPEDIMENT TO A WOMAN HOLDING THIS POSITION IN THE HIERARCHY? WHY MAY NOT WOMEN BE PERMITTED TO HELP CHOOSE THE POPE, SO LONG AS THEY DON'T CHOOSE ONE ANOTHER? I know of no question that has more explicitly bared the anti-feminist bias among the ecclesiastical careerists who've highjacked our Churh in recent years, and steered her back to the fear and reaction of "Syllabus of Error" days and against the course of Vatican II. They will not give women an equal place at the table, which DOES NOT mean usurping Christ's sacramental position, just putting her right back at Jesus's side--the canonical Gospels to the contrary notwithstanding. What they are doing is destroying the saving role in the world of my Church, making her a mockery and a redundancy, and now they have her all to themselves, after they've invited us "liberals" to leave, and so many have.

Re: I don't want to start another row within the fold, but...

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

And I even agree that it may be best that it be reserved for men, to honor the gender of Christ.

Do you believe that it would be a dishonor (or less of an honor) for a woman to "to sacramentally enact the stages and passages of Christ's redemptive life"? I simply don't understand what being male or female in itself has to do with redemption.

I'm willing to admit that being born into one gender or another tends to give one certain aptitudes and certain, um, "dis-aptitudes," but it has been noted that we can often observe more variance between members of one gender than we find between the averages of male and female. That is, the "bell curves" overlap so much that aptitudes vary more on a purely human scale than they do by gender.

So, to conclude that men are better suited to handle the sacraments, simply because Jesus was a man, seems to imply that there is some "essence" possessed by males that females either lack or are deficient in.

Let me take a second tack on this. Paul noted that "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven." While this may or may not reflect a certain dualistic disdain for flesh, I find Paul's words to be incompatible with the suggestion that gender makes any difference with regard to sacrament, redemption, or grace.

Re: I don't want to start another row within the fold, but...

[publius-aelius.livejournal.com]

Briefly, I myself actually don't, but I've heard the argument made that some want to reserve it to a male out of love and honour for Jesus's person, which, as a compromiser, generally (which badsede, ariston, et. al. would NEVER concede), I'd like to honour, as the sentiment of others who make such a big issue of this "theology of the body" (which I wholly buy into, until it starts leaving out androgynous or "queer" bodies--which I like to think Jesus didn't at all, when he was talking about "born eunuchs." So, no, Miss Serpentia: just as a "mercy" to the "conservatives." But I'd just as soon the ladies' feet get washed, too, myself.

Re: I don't want to start another row within the fold, but...

[azaz-al.livejournal.com]

"People like sopiaserpentia and ladybabalon have EVERY RIGHT to point out the obvious"

Perhaps, perhaps not... I was raised Pentecostal, not Catholic. But most of the rest of my extended family was Catholic, and they seemed to share the same basic ideals, with a few theological differences. (Such as the one I was musing over this morning, of remembering always trying to come up with something silly to say when I was asked "What are you giving up for Lent?")