Correspondence On gender and religion, different takes
CORRESPONDENCE To the Editors Thanks for honesty I write with gratitude to John Shekleton and Commonweal for "Homosexuality and the Priesthood" [November 22,1996]. The gratitude is from a sense...
...AILEEN M. FITZKE Irvine, Calif...
...Why not accept that both women and men can serve in a variety of roles throughout the spectrum of church-based activities, whether those roles call for exercising authority or providing nurture...
...Which is easy, since American Protestantism has always been notoriously antihierarchical...
...Nowhere do I or Father Ong suggest that "only men can maintain authority and professional standards," or that only women can "act for the church in its nurturing role...
...Regarding women in the clergy, their numbers do not intimidate but instruct...
...I hope soon to read an update of the situation...
...Woodward approvingly cites Walter Ong's belief that an all-male clergy is a necessary countervailing force in a church that is "always and overwhelmingly feminine...
...The same is true of physicians...
...I do not see this "model" breaking down because I don't see that the model to which Ms...
...Feminist organizations, like other advocacy groups, may use female attorneys, but they had better be good lawyers first or they will not do the movement any good...
...After citing research that finds many women seminarians are middle-aged, divorced, or single mothers, he manages to suggest that these characteristics point to a lack of maturity in the students...
...my point, rather, is that the Protestant ministry is attracting a dangerously disproportionate number of people who are embracing it after failing in other dimensions of their lives...
...What I did do is cite evidence (especially from Rebecca Chopp) that shows the extent to which women entering the ministry dislike, avoid, and oppose the exercise of clerical authority, especially when it is tied to hierarchy...
...The editorial "Undermining the Peace" [October 11,1996] was yet another fine piece...
...American religion was essentially woman's domain long before the rise of contemporary feminism...
...Fitzke alludes exists in any significant way except in the particular form the Mormons have given it...
...it is only in the ministry that they tend to avoid the ladder altogether...
...Nowhere do I suggest that women who are middle-aged, divorced, or single mothers are immature (though most never-married single mothers are, in fact, adolescents...
...Defending that model, Woodward finds ways of attributing everything he perceives as a weakness in contemporary church life to the presence and influence of women...
...Maturity is a matter of character, competence, and commitment (as I mentioned in a piece in these pages some years ago), and the future of the Christian ministry is not bright when people-male or female-enter seminary in an effort to "find" themselves...
...On the other hand, women in business have shown that they can be as avid as men in embracing the corporate ladder...
...I am bothered by the implicit definitions of "masculine" and "feminine" that seem to be in play in Woodward's interpretation of Father Ong's work, suggesting (without quite saying) that only men can maintain authority and professional standards, and only women can act for the church in its nurturing role...
...The gratitude is from a sense of relief that someone could so eloquently move the discussion of homosexuality in the ordained priesthood off the "agenda of the rumor mill" and into the center of the mystery and grace of vocation itself, a call to "touch and change the lives of others...
...According to Woodward, women who enter other professions such as medicine and law are changed by the professions, but do not change the professions...
...Shoring up the peace Over the years I have appreciated Commonweal's fair portrayal of the situation in Israel /Palestine...
...Shekleton's honesty about sexual denial being part of what moved him into ordained priesthood, together with his refusal to allow his vocation to be explained away as merely that, gives me renewed hope that a truer story of the mystery of the God we love so imperfectly can still be told...
...November 22,1996], I think he is really talking about the breakdown of the patriarchal, hierarchical, dualistic model that has been the standard for most churches, Catholic and Protestant...
...In at least some cases, however, these same characteristics may be indicators of greater maturity born of experience...
...On the contrary, the evidence suggests that the men called to the pastoral ministry are likely to be those who have a strong capacity for and need to nurture...
...Advocates may call attention to things like breast cancer, but I find no evidence that women are better than men at treating breast cancer, only that for obvious reasons many women so afflicted prefer to be treated by physicians of the same sex...
...KENNETH L. WOODWARD...
...My point was that the homely facts of ordinary church life contradict the ideology that Ms...
...Fitzke invokes as an explanation for what I observe...
...ELLEN S. RYAN Saint Paul, Minn...
...That gay priests and lay Catholics have for so long served the church and the world while being told by the magisterium that their orientation, if not fundamentally disordered, is at least not anything they should talk about, sheds shameful light on the denial of how broken church teaching can be...
...Does he believe that the drastic changes over the past thirty years in the way the law now deals with rape victims, or how medicine deals with breast cancer, heart disease, or giving birth came about because some enlightened man or men declared, "Gee, maybe we should be more sensitive about women's issues...
...That's an inconvenient fact that feminist ideology refuses to acknowledge...
...CARRIE E. STAMBAUGH Boxford, Mass...
...Many heterosexual people as well should take pause to consider how cruel it is to gossip and conjecture about people who have been virtually forbidden to acknowledge their sexual orientation and what it means in terms of their vocation, even to their closest associates...
...Woodward off target When Kenneth L. Woodward speaks of the "feminization of American Christianity" ["Gender & Religion: Who's Really Running the Show...
...In fact, the changes in these professions occurred because women brought their own experiences into (Continued on page 29) CORRESPONDENCE (Continued from page 4) these fields, in the same way women are bringing their experiences into the pulpit...
...This way of defining is also confining...
...In short, a model can't break down if it doesn't exist in the first place...
...Woodward seems intimidated, for example, by the number of women entering seminary and by the fact (surprise, surprise) that they are having an influence there...
...Perhaps you could run a news story on the continuing land confiscation in Bethlehem and other Palestinian cities in the West Bank or about the often-ignored voices of the Israeli human rights and peace advocates (such as Gush Shalom, Peace Now, Religious Women for Peace, and Bat Shalom), who are constantly begging their government not to give in to the demands of a minority of settlers because that could only bring the loss of more lives...
...The author replies: Whenever I see the words "patriarchal, hierarchical, and dualistic" employed mantra-like in the same sentence I know I am in the presence of ideology...
...When it comes to clergy I am of the Mae West school: Not only is a good man hard to find but the opposite is also true...
...I stand by my remarks regarding the differences between the ministry and other professions...
Vol. 124 • January 1997 • No. 2
