A ‘frozen’ idea of the feminine
THE TABLET
Querida Amazonia
Pope Francis
poses with a group of women during a general audience in St Peter’s
Square
Photo: PA/IPA MilestoneMedia
Photo: PA/IPA MilestoneMedia
Pope Francis has
responded to last year’s Synod on the Amazon with an eloquent reflection
on the future of our planet and exploitation of its poorest peoples.
But, as a leading feminist and theologian argues, it is marred by a
blindness to the role of women as partners in ecological conversion
Pope Francis’ post-synodal apostolic exhortation Querida Amazonia (“Beloved Amazonia”) has caused consternation in the Catholic media, including social media. Conservatives are crowing that liberals have had their come-uppance: he makes no mention of married priests or of women deacons. Liberals are wringing their hands about a missed opportunity to institute some overdue reforms. And in my Catholic women’s networks, many are angry and hurt. This is the last straw. They can no longer be in a Church so obstinately determined to keep them in their place. They feel excluded even from the dialogue; barely even noticed.
Why has this passionate and lyrical vision for a future world free from corporate domination, living in harmony with nature, and inspired by the cultures and values of the indigenous peoples of Amazonia provoked such widely divergent reactions? I want to reflect on why some women feel such distress, but first let me make a few general observations.
There are two recurring motifs in Francis’ theology. One is that no change can happen without honest dialogue, directed towards achieving unity not through the elimination of difference but through a “reconciled diversity”. This way of dealing with disagreements and disputes within the Church has characterised his papacy from the beginning. It’s the key to understanding his thinking and his leadership style. In Querida Amazonia, as in Amoris Laetitia, he has listened to the passionately-held convictions of bishops and theologians and lay people on each side, and he has resisted their pleas to impose a premature resolution that would leave one side feeling they had secured a victory and the other side feeling embittered. Rather than come down on one side or the other on the issues of ordaining married men and creating women deacons, he urges us all to study carefully the final document of the synod and entrusts to the bishops the authority to work through the challenges and find solutions appropriate to their contexts and cultures.
Francis does not give either side an obvious victory – and so creates frustration all round. But this is synodality in action. It was a key theme at the Second Vatican Council, but only now are we seeing it being realised. The dialogue, sometimes difficult and painful, continues; the door to the ordination of married men is not closed. Women deacons may be a different matter – more about that later.
The other recurring motif in Francis’ thinking is that the ecological
crisis calls for an anthropological transformation. If we are to change
our way of being in the world we must change our way of speaking about
the world. The environmentalist Mary Colwell cites the language of love
and wonder in Laudato Si’, and she pleads, “Please, please,
environmental world, can you only use words that are used in poems,
because actually, love of the Earth is all about love”. Science has a
vital contribution to make, but it cannot awaken the desire and wonder
that slumber in the human soul and that animate our capacity for
creative transformation.
This is traditional Catholic teaching but, as Francis observes, it has been repressed by the “technocratic paradigm” of late modernity with its rationalising abstractions, its “excessive anthropocentrism”, its exploitation of nature and its cruel economic regimes. If, as Heidegger claims, we inhabit the house of language, then Francis recognises that we must care for “our common home” by rebuilding our linguistic home around poetic and incarnate expressions of desire, beauty, love and awe. Nowhere is this eloquent and lyrical reclamation of the poetics of faith so evident as in Querida Amazonia. Suffusing all Francis’ writings is a profound sense of the mystery of God whispering words of love through all the diversity of the natural world, and the joyful imperative of the kerygma – the preaching of the good news of Jesus Christ. The Church is not, Francis reminds us, just another NGO. She is called to incarnate Christ in all the cultures of the world, and in so doing she must allow herself to be shaped by those cultures in her sacramental and devotional forms of expression.
I wish I could stop there. I wish I could say that everyone who cares about the future of our planet and the suffering and exploitation of its poorest peoples should read this wonderful document and allow it to speak to the deepest level of their being, and to awaken them to both the crisis and the promise of our times. But let me explain briefly, from my own theological and “maternal feminine” perspective, what I think some of the problems with Querida Amazonia are.
The section on women has the title “The strength and gift of women”. Here Francis circumscribes the authority of the bishops to inculturate the Gospel. The enormous contribution of women to the Church in Amazonia must be given official recognition, but on condition that their “ecclesial services … do not entail Holy Orders” – so is it a “No” to women deacons? Francis goes on, women’s roles must be suited to the particular characteristics of “womanhood”, which would be “diminished” if women were to become “clericalised”. Women’s power, Francis says, is directed towards keeping communities together and caring for them – but not, apparently, in the role of the priest.
Yet Francis also calls for an inclusive and welcoming priesthood, in a maternal Church that shows God’s mercy in pastoral outreach and in an inculturated ecclesiology which manifests Mary’s “warm maternal love”. If, as he repeatedly insists, clericalism is the scourge of a dysfunctional priesthood, what better way to challenge that than to ordain women?
Yet the problem goes deeper. Francis uses nuptial theology to describe the relationship between the male priest and the bridal Church. The face of Christ, he claims, is revealed through “two human faces”: Jesus Christ as man and Mary as woman. Earlier on, he has identified the only two functions that a priest cannot delegate: to preside at the Eucharist and to hear Confessions. The power of the priest is not hierarchical, Francis says, but derives from the fact that “only the priest can say, ‘This is my body’.”
Every time I read these words, I become more disturbed. As Francis
acknowledges, Christ is “divine” and Mary is “a creature”. So to say
that women image Mary and men image Christ, and to suggest that a woman
cannot say “This is my body”, is to exclude the female flesh from the
body of Christ. That cannot possibly be what Francis intends. Like his
two papal predecessors, when he is called upon to give an account of why
women cannot be priests, Francis’ theology becomes mired in
contradictions and inconsistencies.
Moreover, gender roles and our concepts of masculinity and femininity are as culturally diverse as every other aspect of language and socialisation. The values Francis projects on to women as fixed and timeless belong within a particular era of Western culture. These ideals of maternal femininity are not divinely ordained, and reflect the romantic ruminations of Hans Urs von Balthasar and Pope John Paul II rather than Catholic tradition as a whole, which harbours a vast range of gendered roles and relationships.
Concepts of gender also need to be opened up to inculturation, and oppressive cultural models challenged by affirming in women the dignity, equality and freedom that Christ offers to all who are made in the image of God and incorporated by Baptism into His body beyond all divisions of gender, race and class (see Galatians 3:26). Francis’ concept of “woman” is mired in a sentimental fantasy. While in the real world, gender roles and identities are agile and malleable, he imagines “woman” as an archetype frozen in time, its function being to “soften” male culture with a feminine tenderness and receptivity.
This implicit association of man with divinity and woman with
creatureliness is not only a theological infelicity, it has profound
ecological implications. For all its virtues, Francis’ vision is
impoverished by its lack of any engagement with the work of
ecofeminists. Almost everything he says in Laudato Si’ and in Querida
Amazonia can be found in the work of feminist scholars over the last 30
years, including, notably, his critique of modern anthropocentrism –
which might more correctly be described as “androcentrism”. If only
Francis could overcome the deeply-rooted prejudice that prevents the
clerical class from seeing women as their co-equal partners in the task
of theological reflection, doctrinal development and church leadership,
his passionate call for the healing and honouring of “Mother Earth”
would have far greater credibility.
He could learn, for example, from Sarah Jane Boss’ Empress and Handmaid, published in 2000, which traces the ways in which Western attitudes towards nature are reflected in representations of the Virgin Mary. Boss shows how, from the invention of the plough to the rise of the culture of domination, history is carved into the image of the Virgin, who has gradually lost the awesome maternal potency of medieval Romanesque sculptures to become the sweet-faced young virgin of modern Catholic devotion.
Like Mary, Mother Nature has mutated from being a commanding figure of authority over human life to being a docile and – in Francis’ theology – vulnerable and suffering victim in need of men’s protection and care. Yet like women, Mother Nature is a power to be reckoned with, and she does not willingly submit to exploitation and abuse without finding ways to fight back to preserve herself.
Every NGO and institution concerned with sustainable development now
recognises that women are essential partners in the project of
ecological conversion – not as subordinate feminine helpmates but as
robust, courageous and determined leaders of communities suffering the
worst effects of climate change and economic exploitation. Francis faces
vicious hostility from those opposed to his reforms. Women could be his
most loyal supporters and allies. He should let us into the dialogue
before it is too late for all of us – and for Mother Earth.
Tina Beattie is professor of Catholic studies at Roehampton University, London.
Pope Francis’ post-synodal apostolic exhortation Querida Amazonia (“Beloved Amazonia”) has caused consternation in the Catholic media, including social media. Conservatives are crowing that liberals have had their come-uppance: he makes no mention of married priests or of women deacons. Liberals are wringing their hands about a missed opportunity to institute some overdue reforms. And in my Catholic women’s networks, many are angry and hurt. This is the last straw. They can no longer be in a Church so obstinately determined to keep them in their place. They feel excluded even from the dialogue; barely even noticed.
Why has this passionate and lyrical vision for a future world free from corporate domination, living in harmony with nature, and inspired by the cultures and values of the indigenous peoples of Amazonia provoked such widely divergent reactions? I want to reflect on why some women feel such distress, but first let me make a few general observations.
There are two recurring motifs in Francis’ theology. One is that no change can happen without honest dialogue, directed towards achieving unity not through the elimination of difference but through a “reconciled diversity”. This way of dealing with disagreements and disputes within the Church has characterised his papacy from the beginning. It’s the key to understanding his thinking and his leadership style. In Querida Amazonia, as in Amoris Laetitia, he has listened to the passionately-held convictions of bishops and theologians and lay people on each side, and he has resisted their pleas to impose a premature resolution that would leave one side feeling they had secured a victory and the other side feeling embittered. Rather than come down on one side or the other on the issues of ordaining married men and creating women deacons, he urges us all to study carefully the final document of the synod and entrusts to the bishops the authority to work through the challenges and find solutions appropriate to their contexts and cultures.
Francis does not give either side an obvious victory – and so creates frustration all round. But this is synodality in action. It was a key theme at the Second Vatican Council, but only now are we seeing it being realised. The dialogue, sometimes difficult and painful, continues; the door to the ordination of married men is not closed. Women deacons may be a different matter – more about that later.
This is traditional Catholic teaching but, as Francis observes, it has been repressed by the “technocratic paradigm” of late modernity with its rationalising abstractions, its “excessive anthropocentrism”, its exploitation of nature and its cruel economic regimes. If, as Heidegger claims, we inhabit the house of language, then Francis recognises that we must care for “our common home” by rebuilding our linguistic home around poetic and incarnate expressions of desire, beauty, love and awe. Nowhere is this eloquent and lyrical reclamation of the poetics of faith so evident as in Querida Amazonia. Suffusing all Francis’ writings is a profound sense of the mystery of God whispering words of love through all the diversity of the natural world, and the joyful imperative of the kerygma – the preaching of the good news of Jesus Christ. The Church is not, Francis reminds us, just another NGO. She is called to incarnate Christ in all the cultures of the world, and in so doing she must allow herself to be shaped by those cultures in her sacramental and devotional forms of expression.
I wish I could stop there. I wish I could say that everyone who cares about the future of our planet and the suffering and exploitation of its poorest peoples should read this wonderful document and allow it to speak to the deepest level of their being, and to awaken them to both the crisis and the promise of our times. But let me explain briefly, from my own theological and “maternal feminine” perspective, what I think some of the problems with Querida Amazonia are.
The section on women has the title “The strength and gift of women”. Here Francis circumscribes the authority of the bishops to inculturate the Gospel. The enormous contribution of women to the Church in Amazonia must be given official recognition, but on condition that their “ecclesial services … do not entail Holy Orders” – so is it a “No” to women deacons? Francis goes on, women’s roles must be suited to the particular characteristics of “womanhood”, which would be “diminished” if women were to become “clericalised”. Women’s power, Francis says, is directed towards keeping communities together and caring for them – but not, apparently, in the role of the priest.
Yet Francis also calls for an inclusive and welcoming priesthood, in a maternal Church that shows God’s mercy in pastoral outreach and in an inculturated ecclesiology which manifests Mary’s “warm maternal love”. If, as he repeatedly insists, clericalism is the scourge of a dysfunctional priesthood, what better way to challenge that than to ordain women?
Yet the problem goes deeper. Francis uses nuptial theology to describe the relationship between the male priest and the bridal Church. The face of Christ, he claims, is revealed through “two human faces”: Jesus Christ as man and Mary as woman. Earlier on, he has identified the only two functions that a priest cannot delegate: to preside at the Eucharist and to hear Confessions. The power of the priest is not hierarchical, Francis says, but derives from the fact that “only the priest can say, ‘This is my body’.”
Moreover, gender roles and our concepts of masculinity and femininity are as culturally diverse as every other aspect of language and socialisation. The values Francis projects on to women as fixed and timeless belong within a particular era of Western culture. These ideals of maternal femininity are not divinely ordained, and reflect the romantic ruminations of Hans Urs von Balthasar and Pope John Paul II rather than Catholic tradition as a whole, which harbours a vast range of gendered roles and relationships.
Concepts of gender also need to be opened up to inculturation, and oppressive cultural models challenged by affirming in women the dignity, equality and freedom that Christ offers to all who are made in the image of God and incorporated by Baptism into His body beyond all divisions of gender, race and class (see Galatians 3:26). Francis’ concept of “woman” is mired in a sentimental fantasy. While in the real world, gender roles and identities are agile and malleable, he imagines “woman” as an archetype frozen in time, its function being to “soften” male culture with a feminine tenderness and receptivity.
He could learn, for example, from Sarah Jane Boss’ Empress and Handmaid, published in 2000, which traces the ways in which Western attitudes towards nature are reflected in representations of the Virgin Mary. Boss shows how, from the invention of the plough to the rise of the culture of domination, history is carved into the image of the Virgin, who has gradually lost the awesome maternal potency of medieval Romanesque sculptures to become the sweet-faced young virgin of modern Catholic devotion.
Like Mary, Mother Nature has mutated from being a commanding figure of authority over human life to being a docile and – in Francis’ theology – vulnerable and suffering victim in need of men’s protection and care. Yet like women, Mother Nature is a power to be reckoned with, and she does not willingly submit to exploitation and abuse without finding ways to fight back to preserve herself.
Tina Beattie is professor of Catholic studies at Roehampton University, London.
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