Justice and Gender Issues in Church Ministry and Governance
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FINAL PROJECT LAY ECCLESIAL MINISTRY PROGRAM, Diocese of Las Vegas, NV, 2008 CATHOLIC SOCIAL JUSTICE JUSTICE AND GENDER ISSUES IN CHURCH MINISTRY AND GOVERNANCE Submitted By: Susan Provost Maggie Saunders Mary Wagner William McManus (Members of St. Thomas More Catholic Community) Justice and Gender Issues in Church Ministry and Governance TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ● 4 I. DISCOVERING HISTORICAL PRECEDENTS FOR WOMEN IN CHURCH MINISTRY AND GOVERNANCE ● 5 The deaconate of women is mentioned in many early sources The ordination rites of women deacons have been preserved in ten precious manuscripts (In addition, see all Appendices) II. DISCOVERING BIBLICAL EQUALITY ● 9 The need to interpret Sacred Scripture anew for every age (Dei Verbum) Genesis 1-3: Two Different Creation Stories The consequent, ‘true’, non-gender-specific image of God Images of God in Scripture Canonical Scriptural ‘evidence’ of women leaders in salvation history III. ANALYSIS OF THE ISSUE ● 21 A. What the Current Prohibition is About ● 22 B. Church’s Arguments against Women in Ordained Ministries ● 24 C. Addressing the Church’s Arguments against Women in Ordained Ministries ● 27 Because Jesus was male, the ordained person—as Christ’s representative—must also be male Jesus didn’t choose any female apostles The “husband is head of his wife, just as Christ is head of the church” [Eph 5:23] “As the church is subject to Christ, so also let the wives be subject to their husbands in everything.” [Eph 5:24] “…women should keep silent in the churches, for they are not allowed to speak” [1 Cor 14: 34] “I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man. She must be quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve.” [1 Tim. 2: 12-13] What Paul Really Said About Women Paul’s Ideas vs. Embedded Jewish, Greek and Roman Attitudes 2 IV. SOME ORGANIZATIONS WITHIN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH WORKING TO EDUCATE AND PROMOTE UNDERSTANDING OF THIS ISSUE ● 40 TABLE OF CONTENTS (cont’d) V. APPENDICES ● 45 Catholic Church Social Teaching Documents with Respect to this Issue ● 46 Brief History/ Events Significant to Women’s Ordained Ministry in the Church ● 48 List (w/ countries of origin) Female Deacon Epigraphs and Literary References ● 54 Women in Church History: 21 Stories for 21 Centuries ● 57 Ordained Women of Other Faiths ● 58 “Breaking Bread” Fresco from Catacombs of Priscilla ● 63 Mosaic “Episcopa Theodora et al” from Church of St. Praxedis in Rome ● 64 PowerPoint Slide Presentation (available upon request) VI. BIBLIOGRAPHY ● 65 VII. BIBLIOGRAPHY OF WEBSITES ● 68 3 LEMP Final Project -- Catholic Social Justice Issues Justice and Gender Issues in Church Ministry and Governance Opening Prayer (suggestion) from St Paul’s letter to the Romans (15:4-9) – Cycle A, Rdg II, 2nd Sun Advent— “For whatever was written previously was written for our instruction, that by endurance and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope. May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to think in harmony with one another, in keeping with Christ Jesus, that with one accord you may with one voice glorify the God of our Lord Jesus Christ. Welcome one another, then, as Christ welcomed you, for the glory of God. For I say that Christ became a minister of the circumcised to show God’s truthfulness, to confirm the promises to the patriarchs, but so that the Gentiles might also glorify God for God’s mercy.” INTRODUCTION Shifting US demographics coupled with priest shortage is leaving many Catholics without access to the sacraments and to a communal spiritual life. Of the more than 19,000 Catholic parishes in the United States, 2,000+ have a pastor who serves more than one parish 8,000 are served by one priest 3,238 have no priest at all (“the old and the cold” have been left behind) only 4,000 have more than one priest. Internationally, the situation is frequently the same. In the spring of 2007, the South American bishops of Brazil issued a document pointing out that 75 percent of their weekly celebrations were without a priest. "We must have the courage to change . Conservative tendencies must not stop the church from making prophetic gestures. The access of women to the ordained ministry is a pending debt." http://www.priestsunday.org/dialog_change.html Today, this decline of clericalism has meant that priests collaborate in ministry with a wide variety of specialized lay ecclesial ministers, most of them women, who serve as pastoral leaders, Directors of Faith Formation, youth ministers, pastoral associates, even chancellors and executive co-coordinator of the Canon Law Society of America. Richard Gaillardetz (The Church in the Making, 2007) in his useful review of the explosion of lay ministry since Vatican II noted that of the 20,000 lay ecclesial ministers engaged in full-time work in the United States currently, more than 80% are women—a statistic that both encourages and confounds. In addition to the decline of available priests, the Catholic Church is facing tremendous losses of membership. 4 “In the marketplace of American faith, Catholicism is the big loser. Catholics have lost more members to other faiths, or to no faith at all, than any other U.S. religion, according to the new survey released by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. The survey, based on interviews with 35,000 U.S. adults, found that 31 percent of Americans were raised Catholic, but only 24 percent still identify as Catholic. Perhaps more worrisome for church leaders, while 2.6 percent of Americans converted to Catholicism, four times as many -- 10.1 percent -- of cradle Catholics have left for another faith or no faith at all. Roughly 10 percent of all Americans are former Catholics, the study reported.” -- Trotter, NCR, March 7, 2008 “One of the most important challenges confronting the Church today is how to make its message more compelling and get its vision and teaching effectively translated into personal and institutional living..….First, the Church must respond to the insightful feminist critique that the anthropology upon which its social teaching is built is flawed. It defines women’s ‘nature’ and social roles in discredited, stereotypical Western cultural categories. It implicitly, perhaps unconsciously, treats the male experience as normatively human. It assumes a dualism (body/soul, flesh/spirit) that distorts its social judgments. Only by correcting this set of biases will Catholic social teaching become able to lay out a fully adequate and life-giving vision of social solidarity. Teaching intended for the universal Church needs to become more visibly the result of listening to the experience of all the local and regional churches.” -- DeBerri and Hug, pp. 38-39 The ministerial need, then is to investigate the role of women in ministry and leadership of the Church in the past and present and to promote, based on those often mostly unknown historical facts, the greater participation of women in leadership roles within the Church as a whole, particularly in parish and diocesan positions, up to and including the possibility of women being ordained as deacons (still officially an open question because it is an matter of discipline not doctrine). I. DISCOVERING HISTORICAL PRECEDENTS FOR WOMEN IN CHURCH MINISTRY AND GOVERNANCE (see also, all Appendices) Women in Early Church Tradition “We should remind ourselves from the start that our information about the first ten centuries of the Church is incomplete. Yes, the writings of the Fathers tell the story of the existence of women deacons in the eastern half of the Christian world during the first millennium, and so do ancient documents and archeological sites, and yet these reveal only glimpses of what must have been a very colorful and varied tale. Antioch in Syria, for instance, one of the principal centers of Christian life, lost its collection of patristic writing in 637 during the Islamic invasion. The same fate befell Alexandria in 642. 5 Constantinople’s libraries were sacked by the Crusaders in 1207 and by the Ottoman army in 1453. Moreover, the fragmentary sources preserved elsewhere do not contain full or systematic descriptions of church life. Much is taken for granted, since people at the time would not normally record things familiar to their contemporaries. A common practice is often mentioned only in passing. Add to this that most writing was done on flimsy papyrus, which is a perishable material.” -- [Wijngaards, Women Deacons in the Early Church, p. 11] As it is, the deaconate of women is mentioned in many early sources [ibid, p. 14ff]. 1. Pliny, procurator of Asia Minor, reports in a letter to the emperor that he has arrested a number of Christians, among them their leaders. “All the more it seemed necessary to me to find out the truth, even by applying torture, from these two slave women, who were called ‘ministrae’ (AD 111)” 2. St Clement of Alexandria (150-215) testifies to women deacons: “The apostles, giving themselves without respite to the work of evangelism as befitted their ministry, took with them women, not as wives but as sisters, so that they might serve as their co-ministers, serving women living at home – by their agency the teaching of the lord reached the women’s quarters without arousing suspicion. We are also aware of all the things Paul prescribed on the subject of women deacons in one of the two letters to Timothy.” 3. Origin (c. 185-254), a Christian scholar in Alexandra, comments on women’s deaconate as a valuable institution: “The text [1 Timothy 3:11] teaches with the authority of the Apostle that even women are established as deacons in the Church…this text teaches at the same time two things: that there are, as I have said, women deacons in the Church, and that women, who have given assistance to so many people and who by their good works deserve….to be accepted in the deaconate.” “If we could have visited a Christian community during the first century of the Church’s existence, we would have met three kinds of ministers: “overseers” (episcopoi), “elders” (presbyteroi), and “servants” (diakonoi).