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

[badsede.livejournal.com]

how do you address the idea that, as a man, espousing essentialism, in a tradition that, eloquent apologetics aside, has in practice been rather sexist (I'm a girl, raised Catholic. I have the baggage), you are...doing something rather cruel?

If by sexist you mean that it distinguishes between genders, then it is. If by sexist you mean that it denigrates one sex, then it is not .. at least not inherently so, even if it has been unfortunately effectively so. I would say that the cruelty is our culture which continuously bombards us with the notion that there should be no differences between the genders, that we must be the same in order to be equal. Such a notion is utterly foreign to Catholicism and I see this notion as the cruelty.

So. When the experience of women in the Church is, in so many ways, one of cruelty, one of being banned and barred and excluded, how can you give your explanation of the choice of men only with such apparent simplicity and ease?

Since I disagree about the source of the cruelty, there is no way to answer this question. But when I look to make sense of it, my mind is always drawn to the simple reality of motherhood. Men are incapable of motherhood, incapable of bearing children and that intimate nurturing which to women comes as a natural course of biology.

What steps do you take to ensure that your answer holds also compassion, not merely tidy explanation?

Through engendering through my actions and my attitudes the respect and honor that all vocations deserve. But also through not attributing to some vocations more exclusive attributes than they possess. Though only women can be mothers, that does not mean that only they can be nurturing or loving. Though only men can be priests, that does not mean that only they can be religious leaders or only they can be theologians or that only they are responsible for establishing the direction that our Church will go.

I know that I often fail at this goal of compassion, but I try, and as in all goals, I won't let my failures change the goal to one easier to attain.

cold if any comfort to the women of Africa who have AIDS because of their husbands, &c, &c, &c

I do not understand this sort of critique. This trajedy is the result of deviation from the Catholic ideal, not the embracing of it.