Eileen McCafferty DiFranco’s Homily

CTA-Philadelphia Fall Conference, 10/28/06

I realized as I was preparing this homily for today that all of our lectionary readings for this past month came from Chapter 10 of Mark’s gospel. It’s almost as if we are being forced to confront the three biggest beams that block the collective vision of the world: unequal gender relations, wealth, and class. If anyone seeks to concoct a potent brew for injustice, sprinkle any one of them into the caldron of the world and the specter of injustice will materialize without any magical incantation. Jesus tried during his ministry to pry these beams loose by saying, “It shall not be this way with you,” meaning you and me and us and them. But oppression comes in the masquerade of respectability and authority and even reconciliation, which is a disguise for, “Be like us, or else.” Like all evil, oppression appears so downright ordinary. Under the mask of respectability, as Jesus said, there is nothing but a bunch of rotten bones.

In today’s gospel, the blind man Bartimeus calls out to Jesus for healing. As he called and called upon the holy name of Jesus, “others” in the crowd rebuked him. In other words, these unknown people ordered Bartimeus to “shut up,” and probably to continue to put up with his condition, why, we don’t know. Were these others part of Jesus’ traveling party who had just been told that they were to foreswear all of their human pettiness and become the servant of all? Did they think that drinking the same cup as Jesus gave them special privileges, even after being told otherwise?

Finally, Jesus heard the voice of Bartimeus in the midst of all the silencers and ordered the censuring others to call him. “Take courage,” they say. “Get up. Jesus is calling you.”

Take courage. Get up. Jesus is calling you.

What does it take for the rebuking others to change their tune? And indeed, some of us have been rebuked. Many of us have had our names submitted to Rome for consideration for excommunication. We’ve been labeled public scandals which made me feel like ecclesiastical public enemy number whatever. Recently, one of our members learned from the diocesan newspaper that she had been placed under interdict, which is basically the same thing as excommunication. The line of reasoning pursued by the Archdiocese , which didn’t even have the courtesy of sending her a letter, is that her “illicit and invalid” ordination automatically placed her under interdict, so no further action from Rome or anywhere else is required. The interdict is retroactive to July 31. What a seemingly neat and painless – for them – solution to a complex problem! By masquerading an excommunication as an interdict, they effectively removed the emotion- laden connotations for the theologically uninitiated.

It also absolves Rome from being a bad guy. Benedict offered a carrot on a stick to women by going on record as saying that women play fundamental roles in the church and should be given the opportunity to thrive. Women, he said, have the strength and the spiritual power to know their space. He states that the church has a juridical problem in that canon law reserves decision making capabilities to those with holy orders, that is, to men, but the “female element,” as he labels women, thus removing the language of relationship from the discussion, will find the place best suited to them. Implied in this statement is that women are not suited for the altar.

Well, you know, the United States of America used to have a juridical problem with women and with all people of color. They were denied the right to vote because they had the wrong anatomy or wrong skin color! Therefore, all decision making was reserved to white men of wealth who decided who belonged and who didn’t, who mattered and who didn’t. This arrangement all seemed normal and natural and ordained by God. Just look around and what do you see? White guys in the house, in the senate, in the counting house, in the pulpits, at the dais, holding the stethoscope. The female element - it reminds me of SNL and the “female unit”_ and people of color were free in their limited way to find their own space, far away from the halls of government, institutions of higher learning, and the ballot box preferably in the scullery and on the plantation. The white guys calling the shots fully expected women and people of color to “thrive” and even be happy within the restrictions of their assigned spheres.

It is because of these assigned spheres or special dignities or essential natures that the clergy like to fixate upon, that I think women should be ordained. Women need to debunk the myth that has beset humanity for millennia that some people, especially men, are more equal, more favored by God who can, then, serve as an icon of Jesus Christ because of their gender. While the church hierarchy would fight against that description by saying that the roles of men and women are equal but different, we know from the American experience that alleged innate differences are used to masquerade the perpetuation of inequality. If women are prevented from holding certain positions because of their gender, then the prohibition is simply unjust and sinful. The secular world has recognized the immorality of gender discrimination. It’s the reason why there are no help wanted ads anymore that give a preference to gender. Gender discrimination is against the law. The only institutions in America that have a virtual “male only” hanging above their doors are religious institutions like the Roman Catholic seminaries and some few conservative protestant seminaries who plead freedom of religion aka freedom to discriminate. As I have said on a number of occasions, if seminaries banned people of color or ethnic minorities from enrolling, there would be mass demonstrations. But apparently it is perfectly normal, legal, just, and moral to ban women.

I think that women need to be priests at this time for the same reason that they needed to be able to become doctors, lawyers, teachers. For the same reason that they need to become elected officials: presidents, prime ministers, speaker of the House of Representatives. They need to be able to do this first of all because they are smart and capable. More importantly, they need to do this in order to break the stranglehold of female subjugation that has made the world’s women the poorest of the poor, the most oppressed of the oppressed, the most vulnerable of the vulnerable, the most persecuted of the persecuted. Economic injustice is the twin of sexism.

I firmly believe that if the world’s religions viewed women as equal partners in life’s journey, this situation would end. Again, history comes to our aid. Prior to the civil rights era, no person of color could ever hope to have a fair trial. Disenfranchisement meant that juries, judges, and the police were all white. Prior to the women’s rights era, no rape victim could hope to present her case to male cops, male lawyers, and male judges. Both groups were guilty by virtue of their skin color and gender. While things are far from perfect, they are better. A change in the racial/gender makeup of the juries, the police force, the bar association made a real difference in real people’s lives. I firmly believe that there would be a paradigm shift in the theological world if men have to confess their sin of domestic violence or rape to a woman or if the person leading the discussion about salvation is a woman.

The church hierarchy is dead set against women priests for reasons that border on weirdness. I had lunch with a recent graduate of St. Charles Seminary. The man was in his 40’s and becoming a priest was a second career for him. He introduced himself to me as Father Whatever and proceeded to call me “Eileen.” He was one of the smart ones. The cardinal was sending him to Rome to study theology. He told me quite seriously that priests needed to be called “father” because Jesus called God, “Father, “ and priests image Jesus. Consequently, there needed to be this gender resemblance – God, Jesus, and priests, all guys in the band of brothers. No room for Mother God in that trinity. While he was quick to say that God wasn’t a man, this little analogy conveniently left every girl out of the picture. Priesthood is just a guy thing. I needed to get the picture and move on with my life.

Then, there’s the weird story that Cardinal George is bandying about Jesus acting as a bridegroom to the church during the sacrifice of the Mass. This story eliminates both women and gay men from the priesthood. To make this “marriage” work, the priest must be a guy because Holy Mother Church is a female, even though the church is comprised of both men and women. Now maybe there is something wrong with me, but I thought that the Mass commemorated Jesus’ death as a ransom for many, not a wedding ceremony. The only wedding ceremonies that I know that required the death of either the bride or groom were pagan and primitive. And to be biologically correct, it is the virgin bride who sheds blood at the marriage, not the bridegroom.

So, I don’t expect people who subscribe to the Father God or bridegroom images to accept women as priests.

On the other hands, quite a few people who support equal rights for women have taken issue with our ordination for many different reasons. Some have wondered about the necessity for an ordained priesthood when scripture tells us that God is present when two or more are gathered in God’s name. If the church is a discipleship of equals, why do we need priests? Others have offered the very real criticism that the ordained priesthood as it now exists is bankrupt.

All of these criticisms are completely valid. I hardly think that any priest, any human being, has a monopoly on God. No human being can profess to be God’s handler. God is way too almighty for that.

I would also agree that the current model of priesthood is bankrupt. Ordination should equal servanthood. As our gospel said last week, “You know that those who are recognized as rulers over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones make their authority over them felt. But it shall not be so among you.” If Jesus rejected the power paradigm forever, how did we get what we got? How did we get from Jesus Christ the servant who gave his life for the life of the world to interdiction? How can one set of human beings think that they have the power to deny the bread of life to another group of God’s children? It’s pretty amazing that so few of Jesus’ followers ever understood their founder’s complete and utter rejection of power and domination when they were so quick to jump on his “no divorce” command.

The mission statement of Southeastern Pennsylvania Women’s Ordination Conference reads: As women and men rooted in faith, we call for justice, equality, and full partnership in ministry. We are committed to church renewal and to the transformation of a structure which uses gender rather than gifts as its criterion for ministry.

Likewise, the mission of Roman Catholic Women Priests is to bring about the full equality of women in the Roman Catholic Church, while simultaneously forming a new model of ministry.

In other words, the women who have chosen to pursue ordination in the RC church hope to flatten completely the authority gradient. We chose to reform, not reject the ordained priesthood because of the reasons I mentioned earlier in the homily. I don’t think that priesthood itself is problematic. The problem is with what William Stringfellow called “the Constantinian Arrangement” did to warp the priesthood. We hope to model what a discipleship of equals could look like. To paraphrase Hebrews: Now, if perfection had been attainable through the all-male priesthood, what further need would there have been to speak of another priesthood arising from the needs of the people of God? For when there is a change in the priesthood, there is necessarily a change in the law as well. It is obvious that when another priesthood arises, one who has become a priest, not through a legal requirement concerning physical nature, e.g. gender, but through the power of God who sees and understands the wishes of the heart. There is, on the one hand, the abrogation of an earlier commandment because it was weak and ineffectual, for the law made nothing perfect); there is, on the other hand, the introduction of hope through which we approach God.

The hope is that we women priests have met the power paradigm and we know it could be us. And so, we reject it. We have no titles. We take no vow of obedience to other frail human beings who have also fallen short of the glory of God. Although we live our lives for God, as does every other person sitting here, we do not rely upon the church for our financial welfare so they can’t do anything to us but throw us out of their churches and call us names like public scandal. Hopefully our jobs in the world will free us from the clerical mindset. As equal partners with the people of God, together we are growing new communities where all really are welcome regardless of what condition their condition is in.

Last week I was watching a PBS program about the collision of two jumbo jets in the Canary Islands 30 years ago. While there were many extenuating circumstances leading to the crash: the weather was bad, the airport overcrowded, and the air traffic controllers, inexperienced, the main reason for the crash was one pilot’s failure to ask permission for take off. The pilot was a seasoned pilot, but he had a fatal flaw – pride. When the co-pilot asked if the captain had asked for permission for take-off, the pilot merely said, “Take off.” They did and almost 600 people perished.

The commentator said that the rules of aviation are different now. To prevent such catastrophic loss of life in the future, the subordinates were given the power to question the authority of the captains. In other words, the crew in charge of protecting the lives of the people could talk about what was best for everyone.

And so it should be with the People of God.

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