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<\/a>Sr. Joan Chittister, the author of the \u201cFrom Where I Stand\u201d columns at National Catholic Reporter<\/span><\/a>, published an article<\/a> last year on the plight of women in patriarchal religion. To illustrate her case, she points to Katie Couric\u2019s rise in journalism and its stark contrast to the inevitable second-class citizenship of Japan\u2019s Princess Kiko. Princess Kiko, despite her royal ties, will never be empress in a country where the emperor traditionally holds a position that the gods reserve only for males. But on the other hand, Couric rises to the top of American journalism with the aid of laws that prevent such sexual discrimination.<\/p>\nSo what in the world does the contrasting of these two women (or \u2018girls\u2019 as Chittister calls them) teach the contemporary Catholic woman? Though Chittister does not explicitly reveal the signified object of her signs and metaphors, she is clearly pointing to a perceived problem in the Catholic Church and the \u2018exclusion\u2019 of women from the priesthood, which bequeaths the notion that God does not express His divinity through \u2018girls\u2019. And, of course, the situation in the United States that outlaws such \u2018sexism\u2019 has shown us that a woman can hold a position that was once only held by males, and that this woman can be as effective, if not more so, than her male anchoring counterpart. Extending this analogy, what Couric represents for Chittister is that which a Catholic woman could be (\u2018hard-working, talented, competent and effective\u2019) in a Church that removes all barriers to the full equality of, and ministerial opportunity for, women. Consider her own words:<\/p>\n
The basic problem seems to be that being a Katie Couric simply means that you must be a hard-working, talented, competent and effective woman in a country that has legislated against sex discrimination.
\nGetting to be ruler of Japan, a once divine position, on the other hand, means you have to have some established relation to God. And God, we are led to believe, does not express divinity in girls. There\u2019s just something about girls that seems to lack what it takes to be divine.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nWhat\u2019s a Catholic woman to do? Whom shall she blame?<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not God\u2019s fault, of course. It\u2019s not anybody\u2019s fault really. Things just are what they are. It\u2019s just that it can\u2019t be done because girls are not as good as boys for some reason that no one can discover. Or if they have discovered it, they don\u2019t want to say it because when you say it out loud it sounds so silly. I mean, the answer is that girls are not as good as boys because they\u2019re girls. See what I mean? Silly.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Here is where Chittister is stretching credulity. She introduces a notion of \u2018inferiority\u2019 where ever there is no divine expression. Let\u2019s examine this line of reasoning. Let\u2019s imagine that God chooses to reveal himself only through men and never <\/span>through women. Does this mean that men possess some better quality than women or that God is indicating that there is some extra good in men that is not found in women? Now imagine that God reveals Himself through\u2026I don\u2019t know\u2026say, a burning bush or a piece of bread? Are humans suddenly \u2018not as good\u2019 as bushes and bread? But my point here is not relevant within the bigger scope of this topic. Consider these words of Chittister:<\/p>\n
Jesus became \u201cman\u201d we are now supposed to say \u2014 despite the fact that for centuries we said, \u201cAnd the Word became \u201cflesh\u201d \u2014 as in human. Now, we mean what we mean. The Word became man. Male. No argument about that one. They tell us that they mean \u201cwoman,\u201d too, when they say \u201cman,\u201d of course. Except not always.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Who exactly are \u2018they\u2019? The idea Chittister expresses here, that to say \u2018Jesus became man\u2019 excludes or ignores women in some cases, sounds more idiosyncratic than like an honest evaluation of popular Catholic or even Catholic hierarchical consciousness, the latter of which is no doubt Chittister\u2019s \u2018they\u2019. Has Chittister considered the fact that the predicate \u2018man\u2019 is a reference to the \u2018man\u2019 of Genesis 1:27, which declares (and does not merely adumbrate) that \u2018man\u2019 refers to \u2018male and female\u2019 together? And is Chittister not aware that the Latin word used (no doubt the favorite language of \u2018they\u2019) for \u2018man\u2019 is homo <\/span>(human being) and not vir<\/span> (man)? Perhaps Chittister should stop imitating Katie Couric in saying \u2018they say\u2019 when what she really means is \u2018I think\u2019.<\/p>\n
Once all the tests are in and there\u2019s not one piece of data to prove that women are less fully human than men, it\u2019s a straight shot to just about anything: scientist, president, corporation executive, heiress, policewoman, doctor, lawyer, whatever. It boggles the imagination what might happen, what happened.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Maybe they can even be priests. Or bishops! So here Chittister has shifted back to the Japan\/U.S. narrative (no one ever said a column has to be seamless!). Japan, which is the model for the Catholic Church, is backwards and archaic in its structures of authority, while the U.S. is the model for a Church that responds to the times ([science and technology]\/[equality of the sexes and women clerics]).<\/p>\n
In the middle of the Rhine River, on the St. Lawrence Seaway, on a boat on a river in Pittsburgh, women who feel called by God to serve the people of God are being ordained beyond legitimate diocesan boundaries. Why? Because they have no other choice. There\u2019s nothing they can do about it. They have no authority to open the theological discussion of whether or not Jesus became \u201cman\u201d \u2014 meaning male \u2014 or Jesus became \u201cflesh\u201d \u2014 meaning human \u2014 and the implications of that answer for the life and structures of the church itself.<\/p>\n
They have no right to change what God has made immutable.<\/p>\n
So that\u2019s that. It\u2019s not their fault.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s still sexist.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Was priesthood really the only option for these women to \u2018serve the people of God\u2019? Is service to the people so univocal and monolithic that no one but clerics are doing real service for the Church?<\/p>\n
Was Jesus not male? Was he an androgen? It seems that Chittister\u2019s assertion that \u2018they\u2019 exclude women from the priesthood because \u2018they\u2019 say Jesus was male would also mean that \u2018they\u2019 must also say that women are excluded from salvation altogether since it was achieved by a \u2018male\u2019. Of course, this is nonsense, as is Chittister\u2019s entire portrayal of what \u2018they\u2019 (I still don\u2019t know who \u2018they\u2019 are) say.<\/p>\n