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Though the matter of “woman’s place” is far from settled in the minds of many churchpeople, we live in a world where women are theoretically free to compete with men in every realm and to follow whatever calling may present itself to them. The major exception to this rule, however, is that women are not even theoretically free to exercise a sacerdotal ministry in a number of the world’s Christian denominations. In this chapter we will look at some of the possible reasons for this exclusion that have to do with the way we think about priesthood. In the next chapter we will look for some possible explanations that have to do with the way we think about women.
We will not consider here the biblical and theological reasons offered for excluding women from priesthood, but rather inquire into some of the assumptions churchpeople make about priests and about women which tend to color their theological inquiry without their even realizing it. In order to look objectively at the traditional arguments, we must first become aware of the part that unarticulated feelings may play when the question of women in the priesthood is considered.
We might expect that those who oppose ordination of women to the priesthood on the grounds that women are admonished by Paul to be silent and submissive would be out crusading to get women out of the work force and back home. Doubtless, some opponents of women in priesthood accept women working outside the home as a necessary evil. But many people who oppose women in the priesthood encourage and respect women in other professions. Many acknowledge as well the tremendous contribution of lay professional church workers who are women, and revere for their skill and dedication the women deacons and nuns who serve the church.
Somehow the priesthood is “different.” There are in fact among the opponents of the ordination of women priests a number of professional women. They would not think of denying qualified women access to their own professions, yet they maintain that priesthood is for men only. Many Christians feel that in this realm alone the freedom of women to pursue diverse vocations should not apply.
That priesthood is not “just another profession” is a widely held view among Christians. For this reason, many people- have no difficulty drawing the line and asserting that, although they are firmly committed to women in work and professions, things are going too far when we start tampering with the sacred. Women are fine (or at least all right) everywhere else, but please, not here.
Some people accept as axiomatic the idea that priesthood is a vocation to which God simply does not call women. Thus, when women claim to have priestly vocations, many are offended and decide that the claimants are confused, blasphemously mistaken, or deliberately using the priesthood to further the aims of the women’s liberation movement. Their angry response is that priesthood is sacred and therefore totally removed from whatever one might feel about woman’s place in the world.
What is it about priesthood that makes it a separate case from other professions? In this chapter we deal with three facets of people’s feelings about priesthood that make them see it as “different.” The first is a deep-seated reverence for male priests as “keepers of the mysteries,” the second is nostalgia for the Victorian church, and the third is adherence to patriarchy as the proper way to organize society.
Magic and Woman: A Bad Combination
Magic, or mystery, is a basic component in most religious belief. This is especially so among catholic Christians, who see in the central sacrament of the Eucharist a mystical communion among the people and between the people and God. The central figure in this mystery is of course the celebrant. At the moment of consecration, the celebrant is the pivotal figure, mediating among the believers of all times and places and between the believers and God. Whatever rite: St. John Chrysostom, Prayer Book 1928, or Green Book 1970; whatever vestments: cope and mitre or sports clothes; at that moment the priest represents all of the people to each other, all of the people to God, and God to all of the people.
Exactly how this can be is one of the central mysteries of the faith, and the person of the priest is caught up in the mystery. From the days when their neighbors had their own magical rites which involved female gods and female mediators of those gods, the people of both the Old and New Israel have been wary of having women involved in their mysteries.
Certain primitive tribes fear that women are a source of “bad mana,” or malevolent magic, and exclude them from religious ceremonials. The ancient Hebrews were of this persuasion, and their spiritual descendants have kept the tradition that associates women with bad magic alive into the present day. This tradition is seen in the exhaustive proscriptions of Leviticus, and is found in other parts of the Bible as well. Among the Apocryphal writings, Ecclesiasticus suggests that woman is associated with evil propensities by her very nature: “From a woman sin had its beginning and because of her we all die” (25:24). “For from garments comes the moth, and from a woman comes wickedness. Better is the wickedness of a man than a woman who does good; and it is woman who brings shame and disgrace” (42:13-14).
That women still meant bad magic in Jesus’ time is seen by the proscriptions that surrounded their public life. The disciples were horrified to discover Jesus talking with a woman (John 4:27) because rabbis were forbidden to speak even with their wives in public, lest they be defiled. In a society where men were warned against teaching their daughters to read the Torah, Jesus defended the right of Mary of Bethany to learn from him. In a society where women were not accepted as legal or religious witnesses, women discovered the empty tomb.
It would appear that Jesus was trying to discourage the ancient association of women with bad magic, but that part of his ministry has yet to be fulfilled. How fully Christians have appropriated the ancient tribal prohibitions can be seen in a quotation attributed to St. John Chrysostom:
It is not good to marry. What else is woman but a foe to friendship, an inescapable punishment, a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, a delectable detriment, an evil of nature, painted with fair colors.
This passage was quoted by the authors of Malleus Maleficarum, a fifteenth-century handbook for witch-hunters commissioned by Pope Innocent VIII and endorsed by the faculty of the University of Cologne.(1) Perhaps no more poignant and cruel illustration of the power of the association of women with bad magic exists than the history of witchcraft and the men who rooted it out, from the middle ages through the eighteenth century. Nowhere will we find more virulent fantasies about the wicked powers of women than in the proceedings of the witch trials.
Even in our own overrational age, the medium of the allmale priesthood continues to convey the ancient message that women and mystery are a dangerous combination. Though not as boldly stated as in past generations, the notion that women are bearers of bad magic and therefore dangerous persists. That bad magic is associated with woman’s sexual functions can be seen in such traditions as that which forbids woman’s entrance to the sanctuary in some churches because she might be menstruating and therefore “unclean.”
While deploring such superstitious proscriptions, some Christians have their own way of protecting the sacrament from the possible danger of woman’s evil aura-namely, restriction of the priesthood to the male sex. It is interesting to note in this regard that every other office in the Episcopal Church, including the diaconate, is technically open to women. It is also interesting to observe that churches in which the sacraments and ritual are less emphasized have been much quicker to admit women to full liturgical participation than the more catholic churches. It is only the sacred and mysterious priesthood that is considered unfit for women. We cannot help but wonder if this attitude reaches back to a long-standing fear of the potentially evil power of women.
The Church and the Good Old Days
A second and more peculiarly Anglican reason why people tend to react negatively to the priesting of women is rooted in the way they view the place of religious ceremony in their lives. In addition to being a means for them to participate in mysteries that have a deep meaning historically and psychically, for most people church has a deep nostalgic significance as well. They feel part of the communion of saints at the Eucharist, but they also take comfort from their attendance at church in the thought that, here at least, all is not changed. Though the world and peoples’ lives are changing at an obscenely accelerated rate, at least the church, with its familiar rituals, recalls happier days. The traditions they’ve known and loved from childhood are a great comfort in a world their grandparents would not recognize.
Nostalgia differs from love of tradition in that what churchpeople are nostalgic for and label “traditional” is not the church as it has been through the ages. (See Chapter 7 for a fuller discussion of tradition.) Indeed, the tradition of the church has been so widely divergent at different times and places that it is hard to imagine how twentieth-century Christians could recapture the Tradition, or even be eager to do so. How could people worship in a church in which the liturgy was in a language and form they could not comprehend?
Nostalgia is rather for the church Christians knew as children, or the church their parents and grandparents told them they knew and about which they read in nineteenthand twentieth-century novels. Thus, though the Victorians are long gone, it is the Victorian church for which people long.
Episcopalians are especially prone to this sort of nostalgia, probably because the Victorian era was the golden age for the Episcopal Church, both in England and, more especially, in this country. Many Episcopalians still worship in (and struggle to maintain and heat) the great edifices that their Victorian grandfathers sacrificed to build. Many vestments, hymns, and prayers are Victorian in style and language (their origins are, of course, in most cases much more ancient, but the form in which we receive them is nineteenth century)
The image of the ideal priest is also affected by this nostalgia. Episcopalians hear of the great Phillips Brooks and his illustrious contemporaries and are sad that the church seems no longer to produce such giants. On the more parochial level, many people are familiar with parish legends of great priests of another day: “I still remember the days when Father Soand-so was here. Now there was a priest. He never stood for any nonsense from the children. You can be sure they were quiet when he was preaching.”
The ideal Victorian priest they long for resembles Bishop Brooks in many important ways. He is a strong but gentle father figure, learned but compassionate, a gentleman in the very best sense of the word. He doesn’t stand for nonsense, and indeed his presence is so commanding that the question of “nonsense” seldom, if ever, arises. He is a good preacher, a competent administrator, has a beautiful speaking voice, and is always available for pastoral or social calls.
Reason tells us, unfortunately, that such a paragon could only flourish in a calmer and more gracious age than this one. Still, in their hearts, Episcopalians keep hoping and want their church to restore as much as possible those happily remembered days. Those days were not as blissful as they recall, but memory is kind and nostalgia is the kindest of memories.
Perhaps it is nostalgia that produces a hint of annoyance in the work of so many opponents of the ordination of women to the priesthood. English scholars especially often seem irritated-even as they discuss the question-that all this modern nonsense about women should have crept into the church at all. How much more seemly it would be if churchwomen could behave like Victorian ladies. With the exception of a few malcontents like Florence Nightingale, those women never dreamed of questioning their timehonored role in church life. Had we not in the nineteenth century rediscovered the beauties of medieval monasticism and the ancient order of deaconesses? Either of these should certainly be vocation enough for a woman.
At a time when the Victorian attitude toward women is virtually dead in society, there are those in the church who strive to preserve it. They do so not out of malice, but because they long to preserve in the church at least the gentler virtues of another age. And so they resist changes in the priesthood, because such changes would signal finally the end of that age.
A Mans Home is His Castle
A third reason people see the priesthood as “different” from other professions and therefore properly closed to women is related to the other two. Because of the uneasy feeling that women mean bad magic and the identification with Victorian life, the church has come to be the prime defender of the patriarchal family pattern. Though contemporary society is experimenting with a variety of domestic patterns, churchpeople seem locked in the notion that the patriarchal pattern inherited from Ancient Israel is, with nineteenth-century adjustments, the only way to live.
Opponents of the ordination of women often point out that Christ is the head of the church in the same way that father is the head of the family. Therefore, they argue, since priests represent Christ in the church and are on earth the heads of their congregations, a woman can no more be a priest than a woman can head a Christian household.
That women do head Christian households is no answer to this line of thought. Such households are seen as regrettable exceptions to the general rule that homes, like churches, are rightly headed by men. The pattern of the patriarchal nuclear family has been lifted over a period of years to the position of a basic tenet of the Christian faith. Though Christians in other times and places have ordered their domestic lives in a wide variety of ways, people persist in thinking that the “ideal Christian family” must conform to a patriarchal pattern. The pattern includes a strong, firm father whose authority is unquestioned by the rest of the family. His wife is a gentle and compassionate mother who lives to serve her family and support her husband in his vocation in the world. The children in this family are happy, obedient, and well loved and understood by their parents.
The way to set a standard is to live it. Therefore the church attempts to approximate the “ideal” family both in its own internal organization and in the domestic life of its clergy. But, in this streamlined age, it isn’t easily done. The bishop, rather than being the strong father in God to his people and clergy, becomes the harassed bureaucrat who is impossible to see due to his heavy schedule. . The parish priest finds himself caught in the same dilemma and discovers that he cannot function as the strong wise father in his own family, not to mention his parish family. The patriarch could handle a nomadic tribe, but he has trouble keeping tabs on the comings and goings of all his dependents in a pluralistic society.
If the church should be a model of the ideal domestic arrangement for the faithful, and if that arrangement is patriarchal, then women should not be priests. Women in the priesthood would be a powerful symbolic blow to the ideal of patriarchy. They would be a direct attack on the pattern in a way that women in professions, and even in leadership roles and authority positions in the world, cannot begin to approach. If patriarchy is the Christian pattern, the priesthood must remain “different” from other areas of life by continuing as a male preserve. Raising the question of women in the priesthood allows us to examine some assumptions about what the church, and specifically the priesthood, should be. Let us now consider some assumptions about women.
1. H. R. Hays, The Dangerous Sex: The Myth of Feminine Evil (New York: Pocket Books, 1972), p. 142.
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