Standing in for Jesus

...God as Father is more difficult: a father does not have the same obvious biological continuity with a child, nor as clear a place in the child's early emotional universe...

...If a change comes about eventually, it should not come about, as it did in the Episcopal church, by a majority vote...

...In any case, while the community does need to set some people aside to preside over the celebration of the sacraments, and they should be of good and generous character, the Christian vocation is one that comes with baptism, not holy orders...

...It is not for nothing that we speak of Mother Earth...

...This is met with the argument that Jesus was a Jew who died at the age of thirty-three, and therefore aging Gentiles can't play the part...

...The reasons advanced for this position often sound thin and unconvincing...

...The father is in some sense connected and at the same time an outsider...

...I do not believe it is the most important issue facing Christians...

...The bishop could follow this with a bill of particulars, drawn from Fox\ work...

...The symbolic nature of gender matters in ritual...

...What of those who believe that they have been "called" to the priesthood, and because of gender cannot answer the call...

...If the biblical language regarding God is merely a socially conditioned reflection of a patriarchal culture, then there is nothing particularly wrong with trying to change it...

...It isn't any of my business, but why silence him...

...It will seem from the above that I oppose women's ordination...

...A male priesthood is usually defended as if the latter were true...

...and can't be called Catholic...

...OF SEVERAL MINDS John Garvey STANDING IN FOR JESUS GENDER & RELIGIOUS SYMBOLS There are lots of reasons not to write about the ordination of women: it has been done to death, people have hardened opinions on both sides of the question, and you can lose friends (though no one loses a good friend over a subject like this) by taking a position either way...

...The question for people in both of these very traditional churches is whether the ordination of women is a matter of church discipline, which could conceivably be changed (in Orthodoxy, a parallel would be the institution of a married episcopacy, or in Roman Catholicism, a married priesthood), or something deeper than that, something with almost the status of doctrine or dogma...

...I expect that what I say here will irritate a lot of people on both sides of the question, but, as Martin Luther apparently did not say, "Here I stand, I can do no other...

...another counter is that this makes gender too central to being Christlike, and consigns women to a second-class role within the church...

...It is too easy to see this as a question of men trying to preserve power over women (especially in those matrilineal pueblo societies where a woman holds the primary property rights, and divorces her husband by putting his belongings outside the door...

...it is not the priest, but the Holy Spirit-the "least gendered" member of the Trinity-who transforms bread and wine...

...For some years now he has boon serving up versions of mysticism so diluted as to be positively homeopathic, and he is arguably as unorthodox as his critics say he is...

...Only if they exist primarily as limitations, not as signs that might lead us somewhere...

...If the only point of male priesthood involves genitalia-if that is all the symbol of maleness means-it is certainly a limited, and limiting, and oppressive thing...

...To the extent that it is, it is un-Christian...

...I do think the symbolism of gender is more than merely genital, and that our age is so tone-deaf to symbols of any sort, and so willing to put its faith in an essentially political interpretation of areas of understanding that do not necessarily yield their deepest treasures to that kind of forced entry, that ours is perhaps not the age to institute the change...

...The symbols are not simply interchangeable...

...Reading such titles as, On Becoming a Musical Mystical Bear and Whee...

...That isn't quite right...

...JOHN GARVEY Since this is my week for swimming against the tide, I might us well go all the way and give my views on Matthew Fox...

...J. G...

...The earliest monks resisted ordination as something that would interfere with their life of prayer, and were often chosen as priests and bishops against their will...

...Perhaps the saddest thing about the silencing of Matthew Fox is that some people may be led to take him seriously...

...I would suggest, very tentatively, that a male priesthood involves the same symbolism that is involved in the biblical view of God as Father...

...In the early church the "vocation" was a call from the local community or the bishop, and had nothing to do with any divine urging...

...Silencing Fox places him in good company, something he was too quick to notice himself, and makes his work look impressively subversive, rather than silly...

...The defense points to the fact that Jesus was a male and, as important as women plainly were in the life of the earliest Christian communities, the priestly roles were confined to men, and have remained that way ever since...

...It could be that ours isn't the age to make lasting decisions in this area...

...The existence of people like this is a much greater problem for the church than the question of whether or not women should be ordained...

...in recent years this has dimmed down into a kind of whine that asks only that priests be treated as "professionals," like doctors or lawyers...

...Too many priests and ministers I have met have a need to be needed, a disease that can seem to those afflicted with it like a selfless desire to serve others...

...What about the charge that an exclusively male priesthood makes women second-class citizens in the church...

...Let his local bishop say, "He may be a nice fellow and his work is no doubt interesting to people raised on television, but what he is saying departs radically from the tradition it is my job to hand on...

...It could be that to speak of God as Mother is to speak of a God whose universe has no beginning or end, but is recurrent, a God whose relationship with creation is one of unbroken continuity, with creation something like heat rising from fire, or mist from a plain...

...That argument has in fact been advanced by some defenders of an exclusively male priesthood...

...whether or not it is limited to men, it should never be seen as a form of power...

...There are, however, some important issues the question touches, and they go beyond the question itself...

...Our work is to see that priesthood is a limited, if essential, service to the church...

...I do not believe that an exclusively male priesthood is only a product of those factors, but it certainly has been affected by them...

...One implication is that the priest somehow stands in for Jesus, plays his part during the liturgy, and that this is the major reason for the male priesthood...

...So is the argument that people who feel a strong call to ministry should, on that account, be ordained...

...Whee All the Way Home would be a difficult chore for the bishop or the unfortunate person assigned to the task, but sometimes one must suffer for the faith...

...Nor do I deny that many Christian traditions have been based on, or at least profoundly affected by, oppressive cultural factors...

...and the flawed thinking here involves male as well as female ministry...

...and this is not mere patriarchy-or maybe I should say that patriarchy is not mere, not simply a matter of politics and oppression, but involves symbols and resonances about which our age is tone-deaf, and which other ages have abused...

...Let me mention only a couple of differences that come to mind in calling God Father or Mother...

...Here an important questions rises: isn't it the job of Christianity to break through precisely those symbolic limitations...

...For years too many priests expected a certain honor to be shown them...

...But if there is an important symbolic difference between calling God "Father" and calling God "Mother" or '' Parent," it should at least be noted...

...Anyone who feels called to the priesthood, male or female, should examine himself or herself deeply, and go have a good long talk with a wise old monk (preferably one who has not been ordained) or nun...

...The metaphors surrounding God as Mother are those of fecundity-like the earth giving birth to manifold forms of life-and recurrence, cyclical return, and shared physical nature...

...The argument that aging Gentiles cannot be priests is, of course, a light way to suggest that gender is overemphasized by defenders of a male priesthood...

...There is also the fact that in otherwise matriarchal societies, some priestly roles have been reserved to men...

...The abuse of important signs and symbols is a symptom of the Fall, but it is not a reason to jettison them, in order to replace them with another culturally limited set of symbols that will then be abused in entirely new ways...

...If it were only a superficial physical resemblance that made male priesthood a symbol that matters, the argument that an overweight Irishman of seventy is an inappropriate celebrant would hold water...

...One way to know it is a disease: they resent it when they are not, in fact, needed...

...To the extent that priests act as if the priesthood were a form of power, they should be forgiven...

...The idea of the priest as a kind of consecrated actor is theologically problematic...

...Neither of these arguments should be dismissed as easily as they have been by some who oppose the ordination ofwomen.On the other hand, both are, I think, insufficient...

...The belief in God as Father, however, may be more consistent with the belief that God created the universe from nothing, that the nature of God is radically other...

...Instead, why not let bishops be bishops...

...Neither the Orthodox church, to which I belong, nor the Roman Catholic church ordains women...

...Ancient tradition should not be dealt with so politically...

...First-class citizenship in the church is an obscene notion, and to the extent that priesthood is a form of status or power, no one should be ordained, male or female...