How can the Church honor the feminine genius?

Over on Facebook, a reader wrote:

It would be nice if the church could find something visible and meaningful for the genius of women to be primarily responsible for in the church.

I replied, “The Incarnation was pretty good.”

This has sparked a really interesting conversation.  Some were a bit puzzled by what I meant.  Simply this:  The Incarnation is repeated in a minor key, every time a mother raises up a child to become a divinized saint in Christ Jesus.

That often gets heard as “Stay home and have babies and that’s it.”  And not without reason, the brilliant Rebecca Bratten Weiss expresses some of the frustration Catholic women feel about what the equally brilliant Simcha Fisher calls the “weirdness about women” that one often runs into in Catholic circles:

It’s curious to me, who have found Mary to be a great comforter and advocate of late, that male authorities so often use her to shut us up. Why is Mary being used against us, instead of for us? Why are we not invited to take the lead in exploring more fully the way in which Mary’s life and example resonates for us? If Mary is proof of the presence and glory of women in the church, talking about the complex experiences of motherhood, virginity, fertility, female friendship, female desire, maternal grief, female aging, ought to be our special prerogative. Conferences on women should be dominated by women speakers, but instead, so often, conferences on women in the church are fifty-fifty male and female. The Syracuse Catholic Women’s Conference has as its keynote speaker a man: Raymond Arroyo, not someone I am inclined to turn to, for deep wisdom about much of anything, let alone about my female vocation in the church. Imagine a Catholic Men’s Conference with a woman for a keynote speaker, women signing books. Burke and co would have conniptions, at this proof of the horrible feminization of the church. Most Catholic Men’s Conferences would not allow a woman to darken their manly, stalwart doors. The task of exploring Marian spirituality and devotion needs to be led by women. Otherwise, I don’t buy the whole “we have Mary” line. We don’t have Mary. The men have her, neatly fossilized in pink-and-white statues, silent, subdued.

I’m not saying women can’t live out Christ’s kingly office too. Women can be presidents, queens, abbesses, scientists, philosophers, sports heroes, authors, billionaires, etc. But if we are talking “feminine genius” here, there is only one thing women can do that men can’t: be mothers.   Conversely, there is only one thing that men can do that women cannot in the sacramental theology of the Church: be fathers, whether physically or sacerdotally.

But what of women who are convinced they have a calling to be priests?

It’s important to recognize that a “calling” comes to us *through* the Church: the body of Christ in union with the successors of the apostles and Peter. Paul doesn’t become an apostle because of an inner voice. He becomes one because the Church lays hands on him (Acts 13) and *sends* him. The popular idea that one can go to the Church and inform Her that you are *called* (and they damn well better acknowledge that) is, very simply, not Catholic. The People of God in union with the bishops and Peter discern our call, not Lone Ranger Me.

The Church has told us that she *cannot* ordain women to the sacerdotal priesthood. Therefore, it stands to reason that any “call” to the priesthood felt by a woman cannot be accurate because God cannot contradict himself.  But here’s the thing: since the priesthood is bound up in popular imagination with lots of other gifts which women may very well indeed have received from God, it is well to look carefully and see if there is still something crucial in that woman’s mission.  The whole point of the process of discernment of vocation is to discern:  to clarify just what the voice of God is saying to us.

For instance, I think it’s important to distinguish a *pastoral* calling from a priestly one. I’ve known many women who have obvious and huge pastoral gifts. Discernment, wisdom, counsel, savvy, brains, empathy and a gift of the gab that can heal hearts, put people back on God’s path, correct, rebuke in righteousness, and administrate complex organizations to beat the band. Priests do a lot of that work too, but it is not *priestly* work. It is *pastoral* work. (Indeed, I have known many priests whose properly priestly gifts of celebrating the sacraments in no way bestowed on them *pastoral* or administrative gifts.  They could not balance a budget, relate to wounded people, or exercise common sense if their life depended on it.)

Pastoral work is, properly speaking, a participation in the *kingly* office because it is ordered toward setting the world right and helping souls find their identity and place in God’s providential order. There is absolutely nothing to bar women from doing such work and there are a helluva lot of women who can do it just as well as, or better than, men.  It would be well if, in such discussions, we kept that in mind since many gifted women, who genuinely want to serve the Church get slapped down when God intends those gifts for our blessing and their fulfillment.