With the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity just past, it is timely to rejoice that relations between the two major denominations in Britain have never been better, marked at the top by the sincere friendship between Pope Francis and the Archbishop of Canterbury. It is no less a feature of relations between the diocesan bishops of the two Churches. They know each other, and work together on common causes. This ecumenical goodwill is too valuable a prize to be put at risk by a difference of doctrine regarding women’s ordination.
Hence the absence of any Catholic representation at the consecration this week of the first woman bishop in the Church of England must not become a habit. Sooner than they probably expect, many Catholic bishops are going to find that their Anglican opposite number is one of the gifted Anglican women whose promotion had been held back by internal disagreements in their own Church. There have been women bishops elsewhere in the Anglican Communion for some while, even on the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission.
However, the progress of women clergy on the Anglican career ladder should not obscure the fact that, like the Catholic Church, Anglicanism still has a “woman problem”. In both Churches, there is a tendency to stereotype women as more suitable for some roles than others, and those roles are often less prestigious. There is resistance in some Catholic quarters, for instance, to allowing girls to be altar servers, as it can be seen as usurping a traditional male role. It is not surprising there is a lack of women in leadership roles in the Church. In general, women are more likely to be in church on Sundays; boys quickly pick up on that. A recent survey found that men are more likely than women to have no religious belief. So this is a self-perpetuating sexist stereotype.
While suffering from gender stereotyping in this way, Churches can also promote it, often as “complementarity”. This says that the genders are equal but different, women and men each contributing what the other lacks. Thus the preliminary paper for the conference being hosted by the Pontifical Council for Culture in the Vatican next week on “women’s cultures” argues that “there is a women’s ‘perspective’ on the world and all that surrounds us, on life and on experience”. This is a normal part of all cultures and societies, it claims – in the family and in work, in politics and the economy, in art and sport, even – ignoring all evidence to the contrary – in fashion and cuisine.
This promotes the stereotypical assumption that some human attributes are innately masculine and some innately feminine. This reinforces the conditioning that it is deviant and unmanly for a male to show qualities that are labelled by the culture as belonging mainly to females, and vice versa. The irony is that many of those allegedly feminine qualities – empathetic intuition, gentleness, compassion, nurturing – are not gender-specific, but Christ-like. Christianity can be its own worst enemy.
29 January 2015, The Tablet
Christian qualities are blind to gender
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User Comments (5)
How tragic and mean-spirited that the Roman Catholic hierarchy could not find even one representative to attend the installation of the Church of England's first female bishop. How tragic that they cannot see the bigger pastoral picture and how tragic that they are so out-of touch with, I suspect, the majority of lay Catholics who would delight in the appointment of female priests, female bishops and, yes, even the first female pope. If we had had female leadership in the past few decades, many of the pastorally-insensitive and homophobically-inspired statements from Rome with regard to gay people and the disgraceful covering-up of child abuse by male bishops might never have happened. I, like so many others, applaud the Church of England. As for Archbishop Longley's statement that it is a further obstacle to unity, why should unity only be on Roman Catholic terms?
I used teach University Humanities and reminded students that the RC Church has always promoted women as equals or men; many were founders of monasteries and abbeys- Bridget of Ireland headed a double male-female monastery and was spiritual director to famous male saints there, and friend of Patrick. Every age brought advances from servile domestic to PH D heads of Universities and Health Care executives. Male dominance of the entire culture and Jansenism blighted all of societal and Church history. We are slowly climbing out of that dark pit. Massive barrier today is to declare that Women and Men are equal that is glossed over as SAME and women as priests and bishops is considered a mark of progress. Not correct- Jesus broke Jewish Law by asking Magdalene to be a sole female witness to His resurrection and talked as a man alone at the well and was around women to heal, despite the female blood taboos.No Magdalene priest - the old chestnut about not ordaining His mother is irrelevant, she was Mother to John as symbol of the Church; enough of a ministry for her. Elevate the entire status of women -used to promote abortion as a right to have males avoid responsibility and birth prevention at the cost of their femininity and other ways they can be equal ministers of Gospel values in Christ's Body the Church and shed male priestly chauvinism and elitism.
"It is not surprising there is a lack of women in leadership roles in the Church. In general, women are more likely to be in church on Sundays; boys quickly pick up on that. A recent survey found that men are more likely than women to have no religious belief. So this is a self-perpetuating sexist stereotype."
The logical inconsistencies in this passage are extra-ordinary. If there is a lack of female leadership in the church why are there more women than men in church on Sunday? And would not the boys in church notice the all male clergy and pick up on that?
And what is this lazy, ill thought out, metropolitan chattering class identity politics doing in a Catholic newspaper?
"However, the progress of women clergy on the Anglican career ladder"
This encapsulates the entire problem. Pope Francis decries careerism, but this article presents this issue as one of career and opportunity; the Church of England as nothing more than another employment route, with insufficient females on the board of directors.
Congratulations on this excellent editorial. Based on the Catechism of the Catholic Church and John Paul II's Theology of the Body, my understanding is that the ordination of women to the priesthood would be in perfect continuity with apostolic tradition:
Ordination of Women in the Sacramental Churches
http://www.pelicanweb.org/solisustv11n02supp6.html#section9
Feedback would be appreciated.
Prayers,
Luis