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Women's Issues: An Agenda for the Church?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 September 2014
Abstract
What does church membership mean for women? Texts like Galatians 3:27-28 imply equality; experience contradicts this. Underlying the controversy are assumptions about women's nature as women. Baptismal practice suggests women's equality but experience denies it. Part I examines experience: in lay ministry, in marriage, and as economically marginalized. Turning from experience to theoretical analysis, there are two answers to the question of women's nature: women are inferior, or women are equal. Part II studies the two models at work in the dialogue held between representatives of the Women's Ordination Conference and the U.S. National Conference of Catholic Bishops as participants addressed the question: “What is woman?” Finally the two models are operative in the testimony given in the national hearings for the bishops' pastoral on women. Part III analyzes the reports of the national hearings, uncovering the correlation between model, methodology, and whether a group's feminism leads it to social or issue critique.
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- Copyright © The College Theology Society 1987
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1 This essay was prepared for presentation to the Moral Theology Seminar of the Catholic Theological Society of America, June 12, 1986; it is part of a larger ongoing project.
2 I maintain that such equality is an underlying theme of the New Testament, and not simply an issue addressed by isolated texts. Space forbids a review of all the scriptural passages and related literature. The key recent work is Fiorenza, Elizabeth Schüssler, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Reconstruction of Christian Origins (New York: Crossroad, 1983).Google Scholar
3 The effects of baptism are spelled out in the anointing formula: “God, the Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ, has freed you from all sin, given you a new birth by water and the Holy Spirit, and welcomed you into his holy people. He now anoints you with the chrism of salvation. As Christ was anointed priest, prophet, and king so may you live always as a member of his body sharing everlasting life.”
4 The goal of the Dialogue was “to discover, understand and promote the full potential of woman as person in the life of the Church” (Origins 11 [1981], 83).Google Scholar For reports, see “Dialogue on Women in the Church: Interim Report,” Origins 11 (1981), 81–91;Google Scholar and “Report on a Dialogue: The Future of Women in the Church,” Origins 12 (1982), 1–9.Google Scholar
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6 Hoffman, Lawrence A. uses the “higher-lower” criticism distinction this way in “Blessings and Their Translation in Current Jewish Liturgies,” Worship 60 (1986), 140.Google Scholar
7 See Lumen Gentium, nn. 39-42.
8 See Kemper, Vicki, “Poor and Getting Poorer,” Sojourners 13 (March, 1986), 15–18.Google Scholar
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10 Selected from a longer list quoted in ibid., p. 17.
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23 Catholic Daughters of America, National Council of Catholic Women, Women for Faith and Family, and Consortium Perfectae Caritatis.
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26 Ibid.
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36 Ibid., p. 653. The best recent study is that of the Conference of Major Superiors of Men, CMSM Documentation #37, April 8, 1983.
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42 Whether this town is in fact the Emmaus of the New Testament is simply not known.