The nuptial body

...In the end, when we extol gender differences as divinely sanctioned and distinctly different ways of being a human person, we narrow, over-sexualize, and seriously distort the gospel's good news...

...Each dance through life produces a plenitude of incredibly intricate interweaving patterns and steps...

...I only come across the phrase in the writing of churchmen who resist women's ordination...

...In Scripture, nuptial imagery is but one good symbol of our embodied human experiences...

...If nuptially coupled bodies are the best example of the "gender-alive dimension of our faith," will Michael row the boat ashore and require that only married priests serve at the altar...

...Well, who among us, married laypersons or not, doesn't want to affirm the goodness of heterosexuality...

...Certainly many in the church have struggled long and hard to get the Vatican to accept non-abortificient contraception, just because they believe mutual sexual giving is so important for marital unity...

...Yes, in Scripture Christ is referred to as bridegroom, but also by a host of other images: vine, light, mother hen, lamb of God, physician...

...In a recent Commonweal essay against women's ordination [January 26], Michael Novak writes that the church teaches that "our bodies are nuptial, made for the union of male and female...

...These tenets are especially needed in a church that in the past has suffered from misogynist claims of women's sexual inferiority, usually because of those weak, impure, bleeding, birthing, generally unclean bodies inherited from Eve...

...Hence, as embodied beings in time, we are oriented to and interact with many diverse persons and collectivities...

...Not likely...

...But females, who are basically receptive, cannot be priests because they must be active in a distinctly feminine way...

...Feminist theologians also want to be sure that feminine bodies don't get dismissed or ignored...

...Gender identity is so central and important that only males can hold priestly office in the church...

...Even in the arias and wonderful duets within a marriage-and especially in a long, long marriage-gender becomes trumped by a multitude of other embodied dimensions and relationships...

...Think of the appearance of genetic anomalies, hermaphrodites, or the development of homosexualities...

...To overemphasize the nuptial, adult male-female relationship scants the corporate unity and relationships of individuals with both the human species, the rest of social and physical creation, and with the whole body of the church...

...There is more to dancing than having two to tango...

...Must we now follow the biblical command and go into the ark two-by-two in order to more fully image God...

...Skepticism makes me wonder whether this kind of talk is only a last-ditch effort to maintain the status quo by maximizing and mystifying gender differences...

...First, the ideal of a gendered "nuptial body" ignores our current understandings of the way actual human bodies develop and have evolved in our evolutionary past...

...Thinkers in this school, including the present pope, assert that gender differences are intended and created by God for important reasons and that only by maintaining these equal but different modes can the church affirm the sacramentality of all bodies and the goodness of human sexuality...

...The beauty of the nuptial body business for conservatives is that it can be used to invalidate homosexual unions as well as women priests...

...For Martin, gendered "nuptial bodies" are sacramental symbols of persons...

...We disciples enter into the corporate body of Christ by faith, hope, and charity...

...What makes a human body a body...

...Human sexual, gendered, and personal identities emerge in incredibly complex and varied genetic, gonadal, hormonal, psy-chosocial, and cognitive interactions...

...Or at least procreative hetero-sexuality...

...True, family life is a collective experience of mutual giving, but differences in age, health, individual personalities, and character become far more important than distinctive gender differences...

...Exaggerated, overblown interpretations of the importance of gender differences and nuptial bodily orientations might make sense if Catholicism were a pagan fertility cult in which a divine couple created the world by sexual intercourse...

...Human beings can only exist as members of a species: indeed, we have all been wounded and been redeemed together in Christ...

...How so...

...Because Martin unques-tioningly assumes that masculine is active and feminine is receptive...

...But moving right along to the crux of the question, who would not affirm the critical importance of embodiment and sacra-mentality in our Catholic faith...

...But in Christianity, God creates by the Word, Mary cooperates by fiat, and Christ obeys God's will...

...Male-female identities are only one good but limited theme running through the oratorio of life...

...More troubling reflections can be found in Francis Martin's scholarly The Feminist Question (Eerdmans, 1994...

...It is in their nuptial union especially that the full image of God is shown forth...

...A rigidly proclaimed normative dichotomous ideal of what "ought" to be the case can hardly ignore or simply dismiss scientific perspectives or common social experience...

...Oh really...

...Why single out and privilege bodily imagery that refers to adult sexual unions...

...Is not this truly reflective of actual human embodiment which is a complex dynamic process of development...

...Christ's embodiment is shown forth by feeding, footwashing, healing, and releasing human beings from disease, blindness, bondage, and death...

...This very bisexuality bespeaks the necessity of being mutual gift to each other...

...On the other hand, perhaps these thinkers are onto something that I'm missing...

...While both sexes can be active and receptive, only males can symbolize Christ's activity within the church...

...The argument gets more than a bit convoluted and confused, but the bedrock claim is "that there are two utterly distinct and original ways of being a human person...

...Males can also imitate Christ's receptivity in the Trinity and in his acceptance of death...

...Think of the testimony of scientists and ordinary persons who do not find that in their experience human nature comes in two distinct forms...

...Mind, body, brain, spirit, species relationships are still too little understood to confidently extol one narrow definition or one symbol of embodiment...

...But to correct past gender disparagements and dualistic gnostic hatreds of embodied flesh, we should not lurch to the opposite error...

...The basic sacramental action is to eat a ritual sacred meal together as a corporate body, and thereby become transformed into Christ as a new creation...

...In my own limited life experience- forty years married and having borne and reared five grown sons and a daughter-the idea of a nuptial body and complementarity makes little sense...

...They take women's physical embodiment seriously and stress interpersonal relations...