Thoughts on the Influence of Old Prejudice

Deacon Douglas McManaman

One day I was driving a fair distance to a York Regional Forest Trail to walk my dog and forgot my phone, so my only other option besides silence was to listen to AM talk radio. I tuned into a talk show about Vache Canadienne (Canadienne Cattle), and they had as a guest a French scientist from the University of Montreal, where I studied theology. She spoke of a number of her French colleagues and all that they are involved in regarding the latest research on the Vache Canadienne, and of course she spoke with a strong Quebecoise accent. 

I was raised on the West Island of Montreal and I studied for my Masters in Theology at the University of Montreal, an all French university. I love Montreal and Quebecoise culture, not to mention the accent. But as a young boy raised on the Anglophone West Island, I was exposed to a rather pervasive anti-Quebecoise prejudice, and as an ignorant and impressionable young boy I acquired a good dose of it myself: I saw the French as dumb and somewhat backward. By the time I was an adult, married for only a few years, I like to think I was completely over this, but my priest-friend from Washington D.C., on a few occasions, expressed a certain dismay at my rather cynical remarks about the French. So it took a bit more time for me to fully appreciate the irrationality of the prejudice that took root in my childhood. I like to think I have arrived, and I do believe so. However, during this radio talk show on the Vache Canadienne, I became aware of a layer buried deep within me, like an early layer of soil underneath multiple layers formed centuries later; this was an old layer of prejudice that, when allowed to speak without the censorship of a conscious and enlightened mind, quietly suggested that these people are not really scientists in the true sense of the word, but “pretend” scientists, at best secondary scientists, trying to emulate the English ones. Now, this is a completely irrational thought which has no place in my conscious assemblage of convictions, but I was intrigued to sit back in silence and watch it spontaneously rear its ugly head. I was amazed at how enduring are the childhood prejudices picked up from the adults in one’s young life. 

Perhaps that is why many people believe we are a rather long way away from the ordination of women to the diaconate–and centuries from ordination to the priesthood. In other words, perhaps it has everything to do with ancient prejudice and that the “Roman system” is fundamentally misogynistic. Many women feel they are viewed and treated as second class–after all, they are not permitted to read the gospel at Mass, they cannot preach a homily–but can in certain circumstances give a reflection, which must however be preceded by a short homily by the priest followed by an explanation that what follows is only a reflection. Women do ministry work, but they cannot receive the sacramental graces in order to carry out that ministry as effectively as they would had they received those graces through ordination–otherwise, what does ordination and sacramental grace really mean in the end? And we typically don’t see women on the sanctuary, and all this because those in question are female. 

The best arguments put forth to preserve the status quo can indeed sound more like theological rationalizations than sound theology rooted in Scripture. For example, the Marian vs. Petrine Principles employed to keep women from Holy Orders appear to some as a theological instance of the fallacy of begging the question (the Petrine principle represents the male hierarchical/governmental aspect while the Marian principle represents the Church’s spousal, maternal, and receptive nature). However, Mary is a person, yet somehow she became a principle; so too Peter, a person who has somehow been made into a principle. But is the principle anything other than a “construct”? One woman asked an interesting question regarding the use of this principle to keep women out of Holy Orders: “If the concept of the Petrine is used to close off authority and governance to women, what does the Marian close off to men? …Is von Balthasar and, through its use of his theology, the hierarchy, saying that men are excluded from love and receptivity? That they may not be receptive? Is that why the Church (being male/Petrine governed) is struggling with synodality which seems to require receptivity?”  

This is a very interesting series of questions. I am inclined to wonder that if it is true that the Marian principle has a bearing on me (a male) –not to mention every other member of the Church, cleric or otherwise–, could not the Petrine principle have a bearing on women? 

Another puzzling anomaly is that a baby is baptized and anointed with sacred chrism, anointed priest, prophet and king, and gender is entirely irrelevant–we don’t just anoint male babies priest, prophet and king, but female babies as well. A baptized woman exercises a real priesthood, the royal priesthood of the faithful, and gender is clearly not a factor. Certainly Christ is the bridegroom, and the Church is bride and mother, and yet, in the evening prayer for Thursday within the octave of Easter, the Church prays: “Almighty God, ever-living mystery of unity and Trinity, you gave life to the new Israel by birth from water and the Spirit, and made it a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a people set apart as your eternal possession. May all those you have called to walk in the splendor of the new light render you fitting service and adoration.” The entire Church is a “chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, to proclaim the virtues of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light” (1 Pt 2, 9). 

Hence, the Church as a whole is a priestly people and at the same time bride and mother (female); for it is the entire congregation that offers gifts to be consecrated. The entire congregation is not simply a group of passive observers, but active agents, priests offering their gifts, their labors, their sufferings and toil, their bread and wine, placed at the foot of the altar; the ministerial priest offers it on behalf of the entire congregation, of which he too is a part. Christ receives those gifts and changes them into himself, and returns them to us as our food. The priest can be seen both as our own representative (representing the bride of Christ) and as Christ’s representative (representing the bridegroom). However, the priest may also represent Christ the mother who feeds us–providing food and drink is woman’s work, and Yahweh takes on that role. As women fetch water for their families, i.e., Gn 21, 19; 24, 11; Ex 2, 16ff, etc., so too the Lord supplies water in the desert for the people, and Jesus offers us the living water (Jn 7, 37-39). Mothers feed their household, as we read in Proverbs 31, 14-15, or Genesis 18, 6; 27, 9; or 2 Sam 13, 7-10, so, Yahweh prepares manna and quail for the children of Israel (P. Trible), and of course Jesus is the Bread of Life who feeds us.

Jesus is the new Moses (see Mt 5, 1ff), and yet Moses addresses a series of questions to the Lord: “Did I conceive all this people? Did I bring them forth, that you should say to me, “Carry them in your bosom, as a nurse carries the sucking child, to the land which you swore to give their fathers”? (Num 11, 12). The implications here are interesting. Yahweh was certainly a mother and nurse of the wandering children in the desert. Or consider Nehemiah 9, 21: “Forty years you sustained them in the desert, and they lacked nothing; their clothes did not wear out and their feet did not swell”. The Lord takes on the role of dressmaker, as we see also in Gn 3, 21. As a woman clothes her family (Proverbs 31, 21ff), so too the Lord clothes us. Or consider Isaiah: “Now I will cry out like a woman in labor, I will gasp and pant”, or: “Can a mother forget her infant, be without tenderness for the child of her womb? Even should she forget, I will never forget you” (Is 49, 15). Or, “Shall I bring a mother to the point of birth, and yet not let her child be born? says the Lord. Or shall I who bring to birth yet close her womb? says your God” (Is, 66, 9). Or, “As one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you (Is, 66, 13). Christ came for the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Mt 15, 24), and in Luke he is compared to a woman searching for her lost coin: “What woman having ten coins and losing one would not light a lamp and sweep the house, searching carefully until she finds it? And when she does find it, she calls together her friends and neighbors and says to them, ‘Rejoice with me because I have found the coin that I lost’” (Lk 15, 8-9). But for some historical reason, the ministerial priesthood, which is a sign of Christ, is reserved for males. 

Scripture scholar Phyllis Trible writes: 

Although the Old Testament often pictures Yahweh as a man, it also uses gynomorphic language for the Deity. At the same time, Israel repudiated the idea of sexuality in God. Unlike fertility gods, Yahweh is neither male nor female; neither he nor she. Consequently, modern assertions that God is masculine, even when they are qualified, are misleading and detrimental, if not altogether inaccurate. Cultural and grammatical limitations (the use of masculine pronouns for God) need not limit theological understanding. As Creator and Lord, Yahweh embraces and transcends both sexes. To translate for our immediate concern: the nature of the God of Israel defies sexism (“Depatriarchalizing in Biblical Interpretation”, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Mar., 1973, Vol. 41, No. 1, Mar., 1973, p. 34).

And so I am compelled to wonder: Could it be that those in the Church who are not misogynists have made a special effort to rise above an ancient layer of prejudice that centuries of misogyny have established? And are they few and far between?