Dear Joan Chittister

Conversations with Women in the Church

Joan Chittister, Jessie Bazan

• Publisher: Twenty-Third Publications/Bayard
• Year: 2019
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781627855013
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

On standing up to the patriarchy

Here’s how we know that patriarchy is not over: Nobody talks about it in past tense.

Better yet, sit and watch television cameras pan the parliaments of the world, the synods of the churches. That’s patriarchy. That’s where the decisions come from, the rulers are named, the ideas are confirmed, and the population is male. Oh, there are now a smattering of women in some of those places, of course, as in “add women and stir.” Nothing serious.

Worse, what we do have is secular. The state, in fact, does a much better job with the gospel than the church.

The church once said a distant, reluctant, careful yes to altar girls. Then they began immediately to limit the possibilities when it would be allowed—as in as long as there were no boys present. Patriarchy spoke quite openly about who was allowed to read the gospel, for instance, and when. Or measured where women could stand on the altar during a service. One priest I heard of even drew boxes around the altar to make sure that women really “did not cross the line.”

Patriarchy’s point is clear: Men are in charge. Men give the orders. Men make the rules. Men are preferred to women at all times. Men rule the world, including every woman’s world.

To speak truth to a patriarchal world is akin to talking about colors to people who are blind or regional accents to people who are deaf or running marathons to people who are crippled. Many men have no experience of being “other” in terms of gender. Until, of course, a woman calls them to include in their pantheon of possibilities what it is to be without a voice, without power, without the experience of inclusion. What men have they have by law; and in the church, according to them, it is by virtue of the will of God that they rule the world.

To pierce that kind of exclusiveness takes courage. Takes endurance. Takes persistence. Most of all, it takes refusing to accept the kind of sweet manipulation women were taught to affect in order to get what they needed from the men who had the power to keep it from them. To confront the patriarchy in every woman’s life too often comes out of desperation. Then, things get to be so bad that taking it any longer is more impossible than being divorced, derided, or threatened with the verdict of madness.

My heart raced like a metronome gone haywire the first time I took a stand.

Most mornings I join a monastic community for Morning Prayer. Reading Scripture is a normal part of the ritual. This particular morning started out as any other. We made the sign of the cross and asked God to come to our assistance. We chanted a few psalms. Then the words of Peter the Apostle boomed through the church: “Women are the weaker sex.”

I froze. Did such an insult really just enter this sacred space?

When the reader finished the passage, he bowed to the altar and took his seat. A period of silence began—and I knew I had to make a decision. I spent most of my life self-­conscious about my body’s location. At a gangly six-feet tall, I tend to draw unwanted attention walking down the street. But the questions of place run deeper. Am I wanted around this table? Have I overstayed my welcome? Do I belong here? These questions became part of the rhythm of my life, ticking away at my confidence and jamming me into the least obtrusive position. In this case, least obtrusive meant staying seated in the choir stalls.

But I could not not move. I needed to stand up.

Joan, you told me language matters. You said language can render people invisible. I knew if I stayed seated, my body would send the message that I was comfortable enough with the words just proclaimed. The prayer would go on. I would sing the Canticle of Zechariah, ask God to hear our prayer, and recite the Our Father as if Peter’s words were acceptable—or, worse, true.

But I have a different truth to tell.

I believe all people are created in the image of God and deserve to be treated as such. I reject the notion that women are the “weaker sex.” I long for freedom for females everywhere, freedom to be who we are called to be and to do what we are called to do. In the moment of silence at Morning Prayer, I knew the ramifications of staying seated and allowing Peter’s words to be the unopposed truth were far more harmful than any feeling of self-consciousness that may arise from stepping out of place.

So with hands shaking and a metronome heart racing, I closed the prayer book, folded up my seat, and walked alone to the door. I went to my office and, with a warm cup of coffee in hand, finished Morning Prayer with a new Scripture passage: “You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world. Let your light shine before others…”

It turns out others were bothered by the 1 Peter passage. The experience prompted conversations on patriarchy, prayer, and social position in the days that followed. I’m hopeful that, together, praying communities can stand up for a better, more inclusive beat. Scripture is filled with masculine language and troubling statements about women. How might we handle this in parishes?

Peace,

Jessie

Dear Jessie,

Nothing will ever replace the value of the maturation process your letter describes. The first truth is that women everywhere are born into patriarchal systems that suppress their development, limit their opportunities, and sacrifice their abilities, ideas, insights, and talents to the worship of god-the-mighty-male. No matter how heretical that very notion can possibly be.

But the next truth is that in this era, education and sisterhood is awakening women to the genuine sinfulness of any system that raises itself to power on the backs of the powerless. The ability to keep women ignorant, enchained, and unaware of their own power and the gift of their very existence is over now. We are growing up.

At the moment of our own enlightenment, consciousness becomes the Holy Grail to which we commit ourselves for women everywhere. Consciousness commits. Once aware of the power and meaning of our own creation, there is no going back to the acceptance of inequality.

Which is where this letter touches the issue that is at the cutting edge of male-female equality. When we become conscious of the language that creates the reality around us, we can begin to hope for real change. As you did, Jessie, when you actually heard the sexism that holds the gospel at bay.

“Women are the weaker sex,” the writers quote Peter as saying. Various commentators interpret the meaning differently—as conservative, as cultural, as metaphorical, as feminist. But frankly, that’s not the problem. The problem is the language itself and what it means to many in our own day and age. It is the kind of thing that translators deal with daily—and routinely solve with synonyms or interpolations. The problem is that the church of our age doesn’t even see a need to deal with it at all.

As a result, women are left out of the very pronouns of the church, the gospel, the homilies of the age. We say “he” when we say we mean both men AND women. But every day that kind of language is less and less amenable to personal translation. If you think the words really mean both men and women, then say so.

Language is the weapon the church uses against women—and says it doesn’t really mean anything and we should all just ignore it. But since it doesn’t mean anything let’s take “Jesus came to save all men”—which we’ve been saying for almost two thousand years, whatever it really meant—and, since they say it doesn’t mean anything, from now on say, “Jesus came to save all women.” And tell them they should “just ignore it.” (After all, at least the word “women” includes the word “men”—which is better than we’re doing right now.)

But we know what men—especially male clerics, theologians, h...

Table of contents

• CONTRIBUTORS
• INTRODUCTION
• On sisterhood
• On speaking our truths
• On standing up to the patriarchy
• CONCLUSION