Midnight Clear

“Peace on the earth, good will to all.” Is that what you are singing as this Christmas season comes to a close? My intentional Eucharistic community thought that we were so revolutionary to use “all” and then Judy Heffernan discovered that they made the same change, replacing “men,” in a Philadelphia parish church.

But our other change, “From heaven’s all gracious One,” which really does not rhyme with “sing,” was not made. It’s a lot harder to move inclusively towards God, as Meghan Murphy-Gill explores in an article in US Catholic online, and it’s not only a matter of the rhymes. 

I am delighted to see that the question of masculine pronouns is raised in a mainstream Catholic magazine like this, published by the Claretian order of priests and brothers in the US. Murphy-Gill situates the question in light of the sex abuse scandal; I prefer to think about it with women’s place in the church in mind. Her strongest paragraphs deal with limiting God and with limiting women:

If the church wants to change, we have to stop referring to God in only male pronouns and metaphors. King, lord, he, him, his, father. They are insufficient. Just as female pronouns are insufficient because God is God, ineffable mystery. No single way to talk about God will ever be enough because God is always more.

Murphy-Gill wanders around the question of how to speak about God, wondering whether “the gender-neutral they isn’t the best way.” Later she says, “We have to stop only calling God ‘him.” We’ve alternated “he” and “she” in various songs but have decided that just plain “God” is better. But then she says, “We can even still refer to Jesus as ‘Lord.’” Not acceptable, hence the “One” in the second paragraph, above, as awkward as that is.

Limiting God has real consequences for real people. Murphy-Gill herself recognizes the inadequacy of gender toss-up usage when she says, “to use terms such as mother or nurturer for God creates a false dichotomy between male and female, assigning roles to each gender that hurt.” Complementarity rears its ugly head, though not by name, and Murphy-Gill describes the consequences:

How does Christian language about God guide our reasoning about power, leadership, and gender dynamics? Even if we say God is neither male nor female, to call God ‘him’ guides our internal reasoning. And if God is male, then male is better than female. More powerful. And therefore entitled to that power.

Ordaining women is not only about power, but not ordaining them is.

Catherine Buck’s New Ways Ministry blog alerted me to this article, and Buck takes it further:

Using correct pronouns is an ongoing issue of importance in many LGBTQ circles.  The LGBT Resource Center at the University of Milwaukee notes: “You can’t always know what someone’s pronouns are by looking at them. Asking and correctly using someone’s pronouns is one of the most basic ways to show your respect for their gender identity.” This is particularly true for people who are transgender, non-binary, and gender non-conforming.

I wonder how many times this “leading Catholic publication,” as Buck describes US Catholic, has addressed respect for LGBTQ people, let alone language. The editor concludes the New Ways blog with a note:

readers may encounter the pronouns “they,” “them,” “their” to refer to a single person.  We do this because either those are the pronouns that the individual uses or because the gender identity of the person is unknown. English does not have a gender-neutral personal pronoun. For those who have not encountered such usage, it may be jarring or confusing to see these words.  We hope that you will recognize that our motivation in using these words is respect for the individual.

Every issue is more complicated than you think it’s going to be. We need to recognize the implications of a gender-neutral God. As we push to include women in the images and symbols of the church, we need to think about those we ourselves leave out. We need to acknowledge any discomfort we feel when we encounter “jarring or confusing” language, let alone people.

I love a clear winter night. I did not know all of the verses we sang at Christmas, and this one is so ironic in light of this post:

Yet with the woes of sin and strife,

The world has suffered long;

Beneath the angel-strain have rolled,

Two thousand years of wrong;

And man, at war with man, hears not,

The love song which they bring:

O hush the noise, ye men of strife,

And hear the angels sing.

Would that we could be midnight clear in our thinking and language.