Women’s blood represents life

Clifford Longley’s description of the crucifixion as to why women can’t be priests (12 September) draws on some of the most disturbing aspects of Eucharistic sacrificial theology, informed by an androcentric tradition that understands the shedding of blood only in the context of violence.

Male blood is only shed through wounding. Female blood, by contrast, is natural and primarily associated with fertility and childbirth. Medieval mystics and artists recognised the Eucharistic significance of this when they represented the crucifixion in the imagery of birth as well as death, even if this was never fully incorporated into sacramental theology.

If a woman priest brings to men’s minds sadistic pornographic fantasies of a naked female body on the cross being tortured by “brutal men”, that is all the more reason to expand our Eucharistic theology to a more incarnational sacramentality. Birth is as much a part of Christ’s story as death, not only in his nativity from Mary, but also in his offering on the cross.

The incarnation begins with Mary’s conception of Christ, when he becomes our redeemer by becoming fully human as well as fully divine. That is why the early Christians insisted that Mary is the Mother of God. Jesus would have been God, even if the crucifixion had never happened.

Medieval theologians would have disagreed with Longley that Christ’s flesh is specifically male. They believed that because he had no human father, his flesh was entirely that of his mother.

When a woman priest says, “This is my Body, this is my Blood”, the immediate association is surely not crucifixion but childbirth? That is when female blood is poured out that others might live. The blood and water that flow from Christ’s body in John’s Gospel are the fluids of childbirth, not death.

Not only that, but in feeding us with his own body and blood, Christ performs a uniquely maternal function through the sacraments of Holy Mother Church. Longley refers to Christ’s words to his disciples at the Last Supper, but in John’s Gospel he specifically invokes the imagery of childbirth.

(PROF.) TINA BEATTIE
CAMBER, EAST SUSSEX

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