Epoch III: the church feminized:
Glaser, John W
VARIATION ON A THEME BY KARL RAHNER Epoch III: the church feminized JOHN W. GLASER THE CHURCH STANDS at the beginning of a continental shift, a slow but colossal movement, the likes of which...
...How masculinized must consciousness be which can accept without "amusement or indignation the ironic construct "Mother General...
...The genius of Paul could not possibly have anticipated the enormous subtlety and richness of the European church whose development he helped author...
...Such is the thesis of Karl Rahner...
...European Christianity, indeed, taught all nations...
...and far, far beyond...
...Somewhere down this Epoch III road we will look back on the question of women's ordination much as we look back on the once burning question of Epoch I Church: Gentile circumcision...
...Rahner's thesis asserts this epoch is at an end...
...in proclamation, doctrine, morality...
...The vital forces of world cultures will nurture growth in the Christian community in root, trunk, branch, bloom...
...than the nineteen centuries of European actualization and elaboration...
...While this feminist expansion is merely the explication of a necessary moment of Rahner's major thesis, our present situation demands that it be spoken clearly and not merely be assumed silently...
...In this World-Church epoch, we can expect a further evolution of Christianity no less rich (though longer or shorter, who knows...
...those who develop, teach, and preach, the theology of God, church, penance, war, and marriage...
...This does not mean the replacement of male dominance by female dominance...
...We need to promote Epoch III...
...As Epoch III Church will become de-Europeanized, so will it become de-masculinized...
...Even if that's all they bring (and it certainly will not be), such influence will create the church anew...
...He suggests three unequal temporal epochs...
...vertically beyond the boundary of male culture...
...The bishop's role differs from that of the pastor or the Catholic Theological Society of America, but all of us can help to right wrongs and re-appropriate wasted wisdom...
...Now for a feminist expansion of this thesis...
...His popes, cardinals, bishops, and priests...
...Paul ventured out to begin a European Christianity...
...But he asserts without reservation and repeatedly that we are at the beginning of such a monumental leap into a new epoch of Christian history...
...Rahner makes it clear that such a beginning of World Church is stuttering, fumbling, and searching for its own self-definition...
...We need to do this on two counts: the injustices are grave...
...But I cannot resist a few modest remarks of a most formal and general kind...
...The reader can supply the feminist expansion of these words by Rahner where appropriate...
...Epoch I: Jewish Christianity which lasted less than half a century...
...He notices many forces that hinder and suppress this very development and direction...
...Jewish Christianity of Epoch I did not plan and author European Christianity...
...It is necessarily included because Epoch II Christianity is not only European, it is male...
...This was the period of history in which Christianity was proclaimed to Israel and in Israel...
...Rahner remarks about the world presence of European Christianity: "Despite the implied contradiction to its essence, the actual concrete activity of the church in its relation to the world outside of Europe was, in fact, (if you will pardon the expression), the activity of an export firm which exported European religion as a commodity it did not really want to change but sent throughout the world together with the rest of the culture and civilization it considered superior...
...God is He with a capital H. His divine community, His angelic and human hierarchies, His authors (from the Old Testament to the latest edition of Denzinger), the doctors and fathers of His Church and His Councils...
...those who design His liturgies, build His cathedrals, define His doctrine...
...Epoch II is virtually all of Christian history, and it began when Paul planted Christianity in the soil of paganism...
...The World Church itself...
...But they are present much as India, Africa, and the Orient are present in Epoch II: as recipients of exported goods from the superior culture...
...Right now we need an intense period of ecclesiastical affirmative action...
...we must dedicate energy and imagination to mechanisms of communication with and inclusion of women...
...To be sure, European Christianity was already "world Christianity" in that its thrust was to all corners of the world...
...I am only making the silent assumption speak...
...Nothing will be spared the creative touch of God's hand, mediated through these world cultures...
...We will wonder that it could blast the forge to such intensity...
...To become World Church, it must become the church of both sexes, female as well as male...
...It cannot become World Church without expanding beyond two boundaries: horizontally beyond the boundary of European culture...
...Vatican II was the first official appearance of the Becoming World Church of Epoch III...
...God knows...
...the very questions, and beyond that, the community of inquiry will be metamorphosed in fiber, weave, in texture and pattern...
...The same is true of the Church of Epoch III...
...This, then, is the issue: either the church sees and recognizes these essential differences of other cultures-for which she should become a World Church, and with Pauline boldness, draws the necessary consequences from this recognition, or she remains a Western church and so, in the final analysis, betrays the meaning of Vatican II...
...To elaborate his thesis of Wofld Church's beginning, Rahner offers a-revolutionary division of church history...
...Not only are they men, they are men who - with an intense theological grounding and passionate defense - are better able to witness to God's Being and foster life in the church by abstaining from committed intimacy with women...
...THE feminist expansion I'm suggesting is already implicit in Rahner's thesis...
...those who ordain, anoint, shrive, consecrate, transubstantiate - all are men...
...those who shape community, exercise sanctions, formulate law...
...the wisdom and humanity lost to our community are colossal...
...This means more than new answers to old questions...
...Even in those centers of female community and creativity - orders of religious women - we notice they consistently imported their liturgists, spiritual directors, confessors, retreat masters, the rule they obeyed and the Office they prayed, from the male church...
...Primarily the Spirit authors such history, but who will be the inner-worldly agent of this evolution...
...How will this female/male church look...
...Rahner's emphasis leads us to note that through the centuries of maturing, the church sang, disciplined, danced, dogmatized, governed, moralized, celebrated, painted, prayed, and pardoned - as European...
...For indeed, God is with us even to the end of Epoch II, III, and IV, to the pregnant, African pope - and far, far beyond...
...as colonies of the superpower...
...In the tangled skein of two millennia of Christian history, he discerns a pattern of divine guidance that generates hope, offers direction, and leads to imperatives for our time...
...All current centers of power and influence in the church have a role to play in this effort of feminist structural analysis, critique, and creativity...
...Such is my version of Rahner's thesis (I feel I have just played Beethoven's Ninth Symphony on a harmonica...
...World Church means no colonialism, no dominance by any culture, geographical or sexual...
...Clearly Epoch II Church includes women...
...There are various roles and tools...
...But such world presence was only a precursor to the World Church as Rahner describes it...
...I will conclude with a citation from Rahner's article and a statement of hope...
...in its self-realization as community, as law, as sacrament...
...I commend the concert hall to you: Theological Studies, December, 1979...
...World Church will happen as the common work, the full community of men and women...
...The word of hope is simply this: that even the possible "betrayal of the meaning of Vatican II" cannot ultimately succeed in holding off World Church/Church of Women and Men any more than the mentality and opposition of the "cir-cumcisers" was able to hold off the emergence of Epoch II...
...Even a running glance at Epoch II Church reveals its dominant hormones...
...but we will also recognize that women's ordination, like the question of Gentile circumcision was indeed a seminal question containing in micro much of the essence of the Epoch to come...
...The two millennia that we usually divide into the various epochs of Christian history are, in Rahner's fresh scheme, one theological quantum: its essence is the slow, bountiful development of a European/Western Christianity...
...Sometines the scalpel will work, sometimes only the bulldozer will do...
...nor will European Christianity plan and author World Christianity...
...that would only give us the same genus: half World Church, in a new species: women export firm...
...EPOCH in will move us beyond the narrowing assumptions and structures of our ecclesiological male culture, to Woman/Man Church...
...VARIATION ON A THEME BY KARL RAHNER Epoch III: the church feminized JOHN W. GLASER THE CHURCH STANDS at the beginning of a continental shift, a slow but colossal movement, the likes of which occurred only once before since the beginning of Christianity: the church has inexorably begun its self-realization as World Church...
...But not all phases of this development will have the same characteristics...
...I assume women will bring to the emergence of Epoch III Church an experience significantly different from men, at least in areas such as: community, ambiguity, body, power, symbol, violence, time, nurturance, sex, space, law, impotence, service...
Vol. 110 • January 1983 • No. 2
