Got a few thoughts.... Sorry if they aren't well expressed - wanted to scratch them down before I forgot.
Okaaaay.....
If God is genderless (neither male or female) - which most theologians seem to agree about these days - how come Christ's maleness has become so important in our times (regarding the question of women ordinations for example)?
If a specific gender isn't needed for the salvation of all mankind - female and male - why is it suddenly extremely needed in order to say a few prayers over bread and wine or to handle the other sacraments. Doesn't the holy Spirit listen to womens' prayers? Since when?
If gender would be important for salvation - only men can be saved since Christ was a male. Or Christ would have needed to be incarnated twice - once as a man and once as a woman. But God became human - and that was fully enough.
And God created men and women alike and equal to reflect something of God together. Not only men or women. But together.
And God didn't give men and women different cultural or religious tasks depending on their gender. (They got only partly different biological functions.)
Men (mainly males!) constructed society with its roles - different in different cultures. There are also matriarchates... And what men decided about can be changed (contrary to what God created as biological functions which work automatically unless something is wrong).
If both women and men together mirror God in the way they're created - how come only men can mirror God fully and exclusively in the Church? That's the conclusion one has to draw when looking at today's rules. Men can do everything in the Church - while women can't. So what went wrong in the construction of woman? Is it a fatal error by God during the creation of human beings that made the Church officials of today think they have no power to ordain women? Because the copy of the God-part mistakenly got so incomplete in the woman, unlike in the man....?
And why even speak about being called to different Church tasks because of biology? I though Church life was still ruled by theology... Like in those days when women were in fact ordained.... In spite of a surrounding misogynist society (much worse than today). The Church was on the forefront here at that time.... Gave the world an example to follow. But instead finally capitulated - to get worldly advantages by mixing in better?
And if this was true - that biology is what matters most in ministry - it would have been said very clearly by Jesus - in words. He would have repeated them over and over again, as he usually did with important stuff. He would most probably also have given women special Church roles that have no equivalents among men. But there are no such different roles (no, making coffee or cleaning toilets doesn't count...), just a present lack of roles for woman ministry - contrary to male ministry.
It should rather be called human ministry.... Since things were meant to proceed as in the beginning....
A call is given personally to an individual, woman or man - not impersonally to men who eventually don't feel like getting married and are looking for some kind of career to get a better status than by just remaining bachelors. Church careers aren't the worst on the market. In spite of everything that has been revealed lately about what really happened under the perfect surface.
No matter how much one looks at this question from all possible angles - it always boils down to an essence of the necessity of a total equality in God - equality in Christ - not separation because of gender - but unity because of being human beings....
If God is genderless - isn't Christ humanness what matters most?
For salvation as well as for ministry.
Any comments...?Etiketter: Catholic Church, English, female, gender, male, men, women, women priests |
