Joan Chittister talks about Holy Wisdom in her book “In Search of Belief.” Scripture, she says, describes “the feminine aspect of the Godhead,” using words such as “ruah, the breath of God, the mighty wind that hovered over the empty waters at the beginning of life in the process of Creation. [These are] all feminine images of a birthing, mothering God, of pregnant waiting and waters breaking and life coming forth. This Spirit, this living Wisdom that is God,” she says, “lifts us above ourselves, tunes [like a tuning fork] to the voice of the Creator around us and within us, comes upon us with gentle force or terrible consciousness, and cares for life, day in, day out, unrelenting in its urge for wholeness. The Spirit prods us, proves us, brings life in us to creative fullness… And yet,” she says, “having defined the Spirit as Wisdom, as ruah, as ‘she,’ this feminine force of life as feminine is promptly submerged, totally forgotten, completely ignored. The masculine images reappear, the genderless God is gendered, and the fullness of God, the fullness of life, is denied in the Church. The Church itself stays half whole.”
I’m reminded of her words as I reflect on the latest from Pope Francis. When the 900 or so leaders of congregations of women religious worldwide met with him this past Thursday they told him that women had served as deacons in the early church, so “why not construct an official commission that might study the question,” they asked? His response–“Yes, it would do good for the church to clarify this point. I will do something like this.”
That answer sent ripples of hope through certain segments of the church, but also immediate disclaimers from high-ranking officials saying this wasn’t a move toward ordaining women in any capacity. Federico Lombardi, Director of the Holy See’s Press office, was quick to rein in hope by stressing that Francis “did not say he intends to introduce the ordination of female deacons!” In fact, in his conversation with the Superiors of women’s congregations Francis made clear his understanding that women deacons in the early Church weren’t ordained. There is, however, ample evidence that they actually were ordained. There are Rites for the ordination of women deacons on a par with those of men dating back at least to the 6th and up through the 11th centuries in the Latin Rite, and both earlier and later in the East. The resistance to women deacons, let alone women priests, is less a theological conundrum than another example of what Francis himself recently termed male chauvinism within the hierarchical men’s club of the Church. (more…)
