My theology class has had several guest speakers discussing their own vocational journeys. We've had a man working at my school but also volunteering closely with Karen House, a woman working in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, a St. Joe's sister, and a seminarian. The Karen House guy is really cool. He goes with us/is the director of the group that goes to Karen House on mondays. So it was rad to hear his story. The JVC woman was pretty good. She succeeded to get me thoroughly interested in the JVC. The core values of the program are simple living, spirituality, community, and social justice. I'll be looking into it more, but a friend in my class questioned the impact of the service being provided and if the volunteers are actually more of a drain on the programs they are serving in than a help. I would definitely want to work at a site where I would be very useful. With the sister's story, I began to understand religious life and ministry more as a ministering community like JVC, except it lasts one's whole life instead of a year. The seminarian took us through the whole process of becoming a priest, so that was informative.
Then when he asked for questions, the issues of women priests and married priests came up eventually. To sum up his responses, women will never be priests because that is not part of the role of womanhood and married priests are actually a possibility (slight). There are already married priests (converted protestant ministers) and some of the apostles were married. I personally would never want to have a family and a parish. So it seemed backwards to me that he was absolute on the women priest question and lenient on the married priest question. I don't like it when people or institutions feel like they have a monopoly on the truth. I know I'm struggling as a human to find the truth, and I believe that in our Human Condition, that is all we can do. One of the things that I struggle with is the existence of gender roles in society. I do believe that the majority of gender roles present (esp. those propagated by the Church) are constructs of humans and not divinely intended. If the role of the father of a parish is supposed to be similar or parallel to the father of a family, where is the mother of the parish? Husbands and wives make decisions together (today, in this (somewhat) less sexist society), but in the Church, we have only the hierarchy of fathers making decisions for the Church. When the seminarian tried to defend gender roles, his statement was "all things being equal, they still aren't equal." I've said this before, but I'll say it again: I realize men and women are different, but differences should never result in inequality (in my humble opinion).
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You know, Tom, I went through my 'enlightened' (my term) stage when I was part of a parish that didn't accept those gender roles "imposed" on what the enlightened thought was the "real church", namely them. It was an inner city parish filled with men who didn't want to act like men, a priest who had been moved within the diocese, received therapy for and was eventually booted from the priesthood because of molestation, mass that avoided the word "father" and knucklehead adults (prominent members in their church community who began their residential community as hippies and communists in the early 70s) who performed Mother Earth type apostacy-laden communion ceremonies at the 'parish' campout. They were adults who never grew up. They considered themselves enlightened. They "felt" closer to God. Were they? There was little focus on Jesus. I left them in disillusionment.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was part of that schismatic 'Catholic' community I embraced that mindset because it 'felt good' and made me 'one of them'. But the real reasons I so easily was mislead was that I hadn't any idea of how to be a man, had recently had that unformed manhood immasculated greatly through divorce, and had no male role model to help me understand what manhood meant. So I was easily mislead by those who were acting from their own malice against men, resulting from their own "issues" with men.
IF Jesus is the physical manifestation of the uncreated God
THEN we must conclude that all actions taken by Him were deliberate, and all consideration given to the roles that He 'engendered' in males and females by deliberately choosing their sex at conception. Nothing created is missing the deliberate hand of Jesus in its creation.
If our actions are not taken out of love for Jesus and for the unmatched, unmerited love He showed for us in coming out of heaven to literally save us, in a story so perfect that we could have never imagined it, then we are not acting out of Love. If we refuse to embrace His story, replete with a desire that we accept His Father as "Our Father" and His mother as the protectoress of His Church, a Church whose role He's given to us as His "Bride", then our "faith" is, as Paul says, a clanging gong and noisy cymbal. He gave us one story. Any adjustment or nuance we give to it is a misdirection, gleefully encouraged by d'evil one.
All parts of the body have equal importance, but different roles.
All members of the Church, male and female, have equal value but different roles.
In communicating with the transubstantiated Jesus, God 'gives us the mind of Jesus' along with the rest of His body.
When this Jesus becomes the focus of our prayer... not the historical Jesus, not the watered-down cafeteria Jesus... but this Jesus, the real Man, then we can love ourselves as He loves us and embrace our gender and the gifts specific to our gender as another great and beautiful gift from the Giver who just keeps 'em coming!
The road to Bethlehem called to Joseph, and he MANaged to lead, protect and get them there.
May your journey into manhood be filled with righteous examples of both genders... and may your Christmas season be filled with Christ's blessings.
Stan
Thanks again for your comments, Stan; they are very thought-provoking. I appreciate that you make sure I don't feel that I have a monopoly on the truth, either.
ReplyDeleteYou are right. I am still figuring out how to be a man. I do have good role models, but I can definitely see lots of room for improvement to become a better leader. I acknowledge and am thankful for God's deliberate choice in creating each one of us and the parts that he has designed for each one of us to play in his plan for salvation. As I understand it, these roles are defined in the bible broadly as men taking the lead and women being submissive. I know that I cannot understand the mind of God, so I can bear with this language used as being something possible and fruitful on an ideal level. It is my belief that these gender roles created by God have been perverted and completely abused throughout history to make women subservient and second class people. That is what I am protesting.