Not Only Transgressive

“We are compelled to be transgressive.” Seven more women in France have come forward to join Anne Soupa and apply for positions denied to them. However, La Croix International devotes more space to arguments for not challenging ordination to priesthood or diaconate, but working within the church.

What is transgressive? It’s a narrative that begins with Eve, of course. It goes through Mary Magdalene. If you love to learn theology from art, you could do no better than Christine Axen’s presentation for FutureChurch on the medieval transformation of the preaching Magdalene to the sinner. It’s stunning.

Then the transgressive is Joan of Arc, who speaks her truth as she is put to death for her leadership.

It’s a narrative that will not end with the present day, despite efforts to articulate what it is and what’s behind it, most notably last week by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on the floor of the House of Representatives.

It’s a narrative that continues to put women in “their proper place.” Just as we say in every US “Year of the Woman” election cycle, “Women Belong in the House.” And in college? What about in the College of Cardinals?

Jesuit James Keenan came out two years ago with a list of mostly-American candidates for women cardinals and this year again develops the arguments, prompted by the “musings” of several French prelates in response to the transgressive women. I particularly like Keenan’s conclusion about ordination: “When it comes to competency for leadership, the sacrament does not give to those what they do not have.” You may remember Keenan’s welcome to Pope Francis: “expand the role and place of women in the church.” While Phyllis Zagano is much less optimistic about women cardinals, saying “it seems even in this pontificate law can trump prophecy,” I love that this discussion is occurring about the group that elects the Pope.

Women with competence are not transgressive. They are the norm. The fact that they are denied roles does not mean that they cannot fill them.

Catholic women preach all the time. See FutureChurch, RCWP, and any number of “underground churches,” the first name for intentional Eucharistic communities. But we know that women preached from the beginning of the church.

In this space Ellie Harty has written about our trip to Israel and Jordan. What most impressed me was a Bedouin priest who said his church did not come through Rome – it came west from Jerusalem. And I find the same conclusion in Commonweal. Joseph Amar writes about the Syrian church, where “Christianity remained Semitic and Asian.” Amar writes about fourth-century Ephrem “the Syrian,” whose “devotionally inspired portrayals [reduce] a complex figure who challenged boundaries—and encouraged women to do the same—to a meek, compliant choirmaster.” Think Mary Magdalene.

Ephrem’s chronicler Jacob of Sarug presents a very different image of Ephrem’s “madrashê, the Aramaic equivalent of the Hebrew midrash”:

Look! An entirely new sight—women are proclaiming the word.

What is more, they are called teachers in our gatherings.

[Ephrem’s] teaching is the mark of an entirely new age;

For in the kingdom, men and women are equal.

But Amar goes on to explain: “Although enrollment in the covenant of Jesus eliminated impediments to the full participation of women, over time the Church found ways to reinforce the old gender hierarchy.” Through monastic patriarchy, calling on Eve, the Syrian church was changed. Ephrem evoked the Syro-Phoenician woman (Matthew 15:21–28) and the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4:4–16); later, others relied more on “the apostles, Jesus’s male followers, who took exception to the breaking of boundaries.”

Amar uses Ephrem to enter one of the current debates about women’s roles: “he never advocated for their ordination to the diaconate. He did something considerably more. He based their role on one Baptism, one Body, and one Blood, not on ordination. It was a vision that did not depend on the clerical institution that was already becoming top-heavy.”

This is not transgressive, but at the very core of Christian belief. It is where women belong, where women are claiming their right to be.