Much Ado About Women

In September, less than a week after the Episcopal Church elected Rev. Barbara C. Harris as its first woman bishop, Pope John Paul II issued yet another statement expressing his unequivocal opposition to the ordination of women as priests. While the ironic timing of the two events was completely coincidental, it highlights the intensity of opinion and the depth of division over the issue.

It would appear that nothing can rouse the ire of traditional church fathers like the acknowledgment and promotion of a church mother whose name is not Mary. The long-expected and, in many circles, dreaded, election of a woman bishop in the Episcopal Church has further entrenched many leaders in the Episcopal Church, the worldwide Anglican Communion, the Roman Catholic Church, and other denominations in their opposition to women's ordination.

Harris' election represents the opening of an important door for women in the church, but it remains to be seen whether she and others will be allowed to walk through it. Before she can be consecrated as bishop, a majority of the church's bishops and a majority of diocesan committees must approve Harris' election.

In light of the significant victory that Harris' election represents, the pope's latest apostolic letter is both tragic and revealing. The letter, ironically titled "The Dignity of Women," is notable not for the pope's repetition of a common theological argument against the ordination of women, but for his less widely reported statements about the very nature of women.

To support his argument against women priests, Pope John Paul invokes the actions of Jesus Christ. To refute those who say Jesus' apostles were all men only because of cultural pressure, the pope argues that, since Jesus so often contradicted his culture by honoring women, his decision to have only his 12 male apostles partake of the Last Supper was his way of saying that women have no place in the leadership of the church.

That self-serving and specious argument ignores the whole of Jesus' life and teaching, as well as the intrinsically liberating and reconciling message of the gospel. However, that was the 102-page letter's only reference to the role of women in the church.

The remainder of the letter was an effort by the pope to acknowledge and uphold the intrinsic, God-given dignity of women. But in circumscribing how that dignity is expressed and maintained, the pope exposes not only his own sexist and condescending attitudes toward women but also the foundational positions of his patriarchal church. What the pope has to say about women, in essence and in totality, is that for women virginity is best; motherhood is next; and femininity must not be "lost" or "distorted."

The pope's letter thus becomes the latest in a disheartening and often offensive series of denominational statements on the subject of women's ordination, all of which seem to follow the formula, "Discrimination against women is wrong, BUT...."

What follows the "but" varies from church to church, country to country, and parish to parish, but almost all of the statements justifying opposition to women deacons, preachers, priests, or bishops go something like this: "We love our women and value their important contributions to our church, BUT they cannot be ministers, priests, etc. because: (a) giving women spiritual authority over men would be unscriptural; (b) Jesus was a man and all his apostles were men; (c) a woman (Eve) was the first to sin; (d) clergy have always been male; (e) while we would like to ordain women, we can't because it would split the church; or (f) all of the above.

Many of the men - and women - who hold such views are very sincere in their beliefs, and their arguments should challenge those of us who support full and equal church membership for women to examine our own positions. Even as we work to break down the barriers of patriarchy, sexism, narrow-mindedness, and the manipulation and distortion of scripture within our own churches, we must be sure our own beliefs are firmly rooted in scripture. The struggle for women's ordination should not be one for personal status or power; nor should it be a reflection of changing cultural norms.

FOR ALL BUT THE most recent period in church history, women have been taught by male church leaders that they were somehow less valuable in God's eyes and, therefore, they were unworthy and unqualified to serve God's people as pastors. They had somehow been passed over when God dispensed the gifts of teaching, prophecy, scriptural understanding, leadership, and administration.

But, in spite of all this, women continued to faithfully and prayerfully read the Bible. And the more they read the Bible the more they knew that they, too, were fully gifted and fully called as children and servants of God.

So, women began knocking on the church door - not the back door, through which they had been quietly entering for centuries - but the front door. When doors remained closed, some women and men pushed their way through. In July 1974, 11 Episcopal women were "irregularly" ordained by three bishops in Philadelphia. Two years later the General Convention of the Episcopal Church granted that women, too, are linked to Christ through apostolic succession and approved the ordination of women as priests.

But women of all denominations still must struggle to gain admission to the altar, and now only some 8,000 women, or 6.2 percent of all U.S. clergy, serve in ordained ministry in the United States.

And to those opposed to women as pastors or priests, the consecration of women as bishops loomed as the ultimate heresy.

As a case in point, the Episcopal Church voted last summer to allow dioceses with women bishops to call in male "surrogate" bishops to perform the sacraments. In the name of "church unity, " therefore, disgruntled Boston churches will be able to make Barbara Harris something more than priest yet less than bishop by having a man fulfill her sacramental duties.

This same church unity argument was used a few weeks later at the 12th Lambeth Conference in England, where more than 500 male bishops representing the 28 independent churches of the worldwide Anglican Communion agreed to disagree about women's ordination. According to the Anglicans, women's spirituality is apparently not a fact but a matter of opinion.

Many are worried that the consecration of Barbara Harris has damaged both Anglican and Anglican-Roman Catholic relations, that church unity has been threatened. The pope assails women's ordination as a blow to church unity, but it is, in fact, the Vatican's intransigence on the question that threatens the unity and viability of the church.

On matters of obedience, the question is one of faithfulness rather than unity. May God speed the day when churches realize that not only can they ordain and consecrate women, but they must.

Vicki Kemper was news editor of Sojourners when this article appeared.