Francis foreshadows new theology on The Woman
It might be drawing a long bow to take a couple of answers to journalists' questions on the flight home from Rio as 'foreshadowing a new theology', if it were not for the fact that Pope Francis seems to be not the the sort of person who carelessly throws around ideas that he doesn't really mean. Week by week he seems to be pointing to different ways of thinking about church matters, and I suspect it is very deliberate, this tactic of nudging the minds and hearts of his flock.
So I thought I might play a little “What if...?” game with what Francis said on that flight. The questions and his replies are reproduced LINK for anyone to read. I'm going to tease them apart a little and re-shuffle the content, and see what we come up with.
The first questioner asked what roles did Francis think women could have in the church. The second asked: “What do you think of the ordination of women? What should our [womens'] position in the Church be?” In both replies Francis strongly insisted that womens' roles can not be limited to serving mass, doing a reading, [even] being president of Caritas. There is more. Much more! Profoundly more. Even mystically more! “The woman's role in the church is not only as mother, as worker, limited. No! It's something else!... We have to make a profound theology of woman.”
What about the present situation? “The Popes... Paul VI wrote something very beautiful about women, but I believe that we must go further in order to explain the role and charism of woman.”
“With reference to the ordination of women, the Church has spoken and says: 'No.' John Paul II said it with a definitive formulation That door is closed, but I'd like to say something about this...”
In each response Francis closed his remarks with a call for a new theology of woman. In fact, he intimated that such a new theology would involve re-thinking the theology of the Church. “The Madonna, Mary, was more important than the Apostles, than bishops and deacons and priests. The woman, in the Church, is more important than bishops and priests; How? That's what we've got to try and explain better, because I believe that we don't have a theological explanation for this.”
In this age of the laity, not being a scholarly theologian should not hold anyone back from thinking about this. So I thought it might be interesting to sketch some sort of outline of this new theology, using as starting point the one that Francis indicated, and following some of the leads he gave. Whether this is an appropriate starting point, and whether the items Francis mentioned are significant or not, is what real theologians will work through in their own way. This small excursion into the area is merely dipping a toe in the water...
Having told the assembled bishops that “a Church without women loses fecundity”, i.e., tends to become sterile, Francis explains his meaning by likening such a church to the Apostolic College without Mary. He takes us back to that prototypal image of the Church in Acts: “All these devoted themselves with one accord to prayer, together with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers.” In this cameo Luke presents the new-born Church, (nanoseconds after the big bang, as it were), already complete in its essential composition, but before any structures, roles, even the sacramental system have been developed. The community is engaged in its primary function of “prayer”. It consists of the apostles, some women, Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers.
Let's stop for a moment with that image, and try to imagine what it would be 'without Mary': just the apostles, the women and the brothers of Jesus. Does this look like the church in its essential composition? The eleven, some women and some other men. You might like to say to P Francis that the women are still there, so what exactly is his point. We will come to that in a moment. You might also wonder whether it is valid to see this initial gathering as The Church complete with its essential components. In Luke's account this gathering is presented as a core element; in the next verse he says there were 120 gathered together and it is from this group that a successor of Judas is chosen. Perhaps our whole excursion should stop at this point, except that Pope Francis did seem confident that he can perceive the essential church already in this community.
In passing, I wonder whether these 'brothers' were blood-relatives, siblings of Jesus of Nazareth, or did Luke mean to include a particular group of men to balance the all the women? Did he deliberately enclose the women and Mary within the two groups of men? As we proceed we will see that Francis asserts a special relationship between the women and Mary mother of Jesus, which view might be supported by this other, that Luke himself framed the women between two groups of men.
What does Francis see as the place of women in this 'essential' church? He insists it is not like the roles that women are given in today's church (see # 1 above) “The role of women in the Church is stronger than motherhood, being mother of the family: it is, in fact, the icon of the Virgin, of the Madonna: the one who helps the Church to grow.”
The icon of the Virgin: the Virgin as a symbol whose meaning needs to be read, whose mystical content has to be interpreted. If a new theology were to take this image of church as its starting point there would be a rich lode of traditional teaching to investigate afresh and re-arrange, first about Mary, then about the church, and finally about the place of women in the church and the role that is rightly theirs(1). It might be necessary at this point to sound a word of warning: some of what follows may not gel with the modern expectations of equality for women.
We have to tease out a little what Francis might have in mind when he says: “The role of women in the Church is ...the icon of the Virgin, of the Madonna: the one who helps the Church to grow.” What does the Virgin Madonna as an icon mean?
First, Mary's being virgin mother is not about biology. In this she is a symbol of dependence for her fruitfulness on the Almighty. What is born of her is not of man, but of the power of the Holy Spirit which overshadows her, as Luke had explained in the first chapter of his gospel.
Second, the icon of the Virgin Madonna represents the Church as a fruitful woman by God's power, not man's. Somehow in this essential community which can already be called 'church' the women are linked to the mother of Jesus in such a way that what is said of Mary's role applies also to the women, by affinity as it were, before it applies to the apostles or to the men.
Third, the Virgin-Mother's role is to help the Church to grow. It may be here that we begin to see how Mary's active role is assimilated first by the women in the group before it touches the apostles or the brothers. Remember the little parable: The kingdom of God is like seed that a man scatters in his field. While he goes about his business, the seed sprouts, and grows, and bears fruit – not by any power of man. By the power of life, if you like. By the power that god has put into the seed and into the earth. The growth of the kingdom, of the church is not a product of men's labour. But according to this scenario, the women's role is to help the church to grow. There is much to be explicitated at this point, but it probably belongs to the women themselves to penetrate this mystery and develop its ramifications, and I would gladly leave it to them.
Think about this, the pope says: “The Madonna is more important than the Apostles! She is more important! The Church is female: church-spouse-mother.” At first blush this looked like theology on the run, but perhaps not. It may turn out to be a theological re-adjustment of the kind people are calling for, a shift from the institutional model of church to the family model, from the one in which fidelity to dogma, tradition and authority are paramount, to the one in which people come first, people 'brought to birth in Christ', educated, nourished, cared for, to the point where they are free to walk as adults along their particular path to enlightenment, to full communion in god.. Educating and nourishing are more important than organising, defining and faithfully maintaining tradition. The Woman whose primary role is in this is more important than the bishops and priests.
In this scenario, the typical gathering of the church community would be as a family coming together in harmony for mutual nourishment in sharing the Word of God and the Bread of Life. Mothers would naturally prepare and welcome such gatherings, as the Jewish mother prepares the sabbath meal, and presides. Bishops (whether male or female) and their ordained helpers would be occupied with practical matters, organisational affairs, personnel, finances, providing those things necessary for the communities to function as a whole, as well as making available what is needed to nourish the flock, not least on-going educational programs. In this structural framework the community would always be aware that in their distinct role the women are more important than the bishops, for to them belongs by some mystical order of priority the proper activity of the church which is nourishing the people of god, helping the church to grow. With Mary the Mother, the Woman would bring to birth the word made flesh in the human community until the end of time.
Think about this, Pope Francis said.
(1) For example, one might like to investigate whether Luke may have had in mind the cult of the virgin goddess in Greece and Rome, consciously referencing that pervasive Mediterranean culture in placing Mary, virgin mother of Jesus, within the college of the apostles as its heart.