It’s amazing what you get used to … um … I mean in a good way!

It’s amazing what you get used to … um … I mean in a good way!

For a while now, maybe a long, long while for all I know, we have been challenged to see God in feminine as well as masculine terms. We experimented with using “She” as a pronoun for God and then progressed to using gender neutral terms. At least, the “progressive progressers” did.

I like to think of myself as progressive, but I remember being disoriented at first, a bit uncomfortable; something was just not right. I’m happy to say that” just not right” turned into “just unfamiliar”. I needed to hear old stories, wisdom, ideas, metaphors expressed with more inclusive vocabulary over and over and over before I developed a new way of listening. I also needed, openly or silently, to begin every “Lord’s Prayer” with “Our Father/Mother” before the idea of the sacred feminine could permeate and become a critical part of my life.

For a while the progressive Catholic Church I attend cooperated with this transformation. We did become used to hearing all masculine pronouns for God in prayers and hymns and readings and sometimes even homilies either eliminated or turned into repeating God in place of “Him” instead. It sounded awkward at first; a certain flow of language was sacrificed. People would forget and stammer. Others would point out Lord and Kingdom and other words had to change, and even the word, God, let’s face it, was masculine. We tried to work around it all, and had many models within the church reform community to inspire us, but, I’m sorry to say, we failed in persistence as new priests came and went. Pretty soon many of us who cared came and went, too.

Some of us, however, went to a small Eucharistic community as well as, or instead of, the traditional church. There, not only words changed, but a whole new way of celebrating Eucharist. We had decided to champion the idea of “the priesthood of all believers”.

As we work to envision a renewed church, the concept above is another aspect to consider. What if, for example, whatever gender is leading the worship in the future said words like these at Communion:

Here are our lives, ourselves the bread that we bring. This much is ready now. Knead us as your own. Wine of our joys, our dreams, our lifetimes, we are ready now. Pour us as your own…

We know you in the breaking of the bread, and we know each other in the breaking of the bread, and we are not alone any more. We seek to know with greater clarity your inclusive and welcoming message based on love, clear and transformative. So please say to us what you said to your other friends around another table:

Share with me…This is my body….This is my blood.

Now we are your body and blood.

May we who have a voice speak out for the voiceless, and let us speak out clearly and boldly. May we live compassionately with a keen awareness of the interdependence of all, all part of one another.

May we walk in solidarity in the struggle for peace, justice, and equality…

I wish I had composed those words; even more, I wish I knew who did so that I could give her/him credit. (Please write in and take a well-deserved bow if it was you.) These words and the people of different genders who say them – or other consecrations just as meaningful – each week are now familiar. We’re used to the full inclusion. It has become part of us.

At the traditional church, we often cringe at the vocabulary, but not at the community, which is more diverse in age, race, ethnicity, and economic means than the one at the small Eucharistic community can, by size constraint alone, be. Yet we want to experience full inclusion both places. It’s the sacred thing to do. It’s what a renewed church could do. How amazing it would be if full inclusion were simply something we’ve grown used to and won’t give up.

As an excellent resource for inclusion, you can now download the Lenten portion of the new inclusive Comprehensive Catholic Lectionary from our homepage!

4 Responses

  1. Luke says:

    I recognize this line from the postscript of Dorothy Day’s “The Long Loneliness”:
    “We know you in the breaking of the bread, and we know each other in the breaking of the bread, and we are not alone any more.”
    http://www.catholicworker.org/dorothyday/articles/867.html

    The rest, I don’t know.

  2. The word “analogy” appears 139 times in the Theology of the Body. The proper and improper use of analogies is clearly explained, specifically with regard to the bridegroom-bride analogy of Ephesians 5 (see, for example, TOB 33:3). Surely, the body of Christ is more than just a woman with a male head. See also the Catechism of the Catholic Church, 239, 370, 2779.

    In terms of human languages, see this:

    How Gender Shapes the World
    Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald
    Oxford University Press, 2016
    https://global.oup.com/academic/product/how-gender-shapes-the-world-9780198723752

    This is my personal meditation on this issue:

    http://pelicanweb.org/CCC.TOB.html#PGT&TOB

  3. Violet writes says:

    You wrote this article on God’s pronouns and never got around to mentioning ITS correct pronoun? I am astonished.
    “God” is not a masculine word, except in certain cases while lower case (“a person and especially a man who is greatly loved or admired”). Also, a “goddess” is a female “god.” See dictionary at https://www.merriam-webster.com/
    Something Catholics might want to know, the Vatican Catechism, #239, addresses the motherhood of God:
    http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P17.HTM
    quote: “239 By calling God “Father”, the language of faith indicates two main things: that God is the first origin of everything and transcendent authority; and that he is at the same time goodness and loving care for all his children. God’s parental tenderness can also be expressed by the image of motherhood, which emphasizes God’s immanence, the intimacy between Creator and creature. the language of faith thus draws on the human experience of parents, who are in a way the first representatives of God for man. But this experience also tells us that human parents are fallible and can disfigure the face of fatherhood and motherhood. We ought therefore to recall that God transcends the human distinction between the sexes. He is neither man nor woman: he is God. He also transcends human fatherhood and motherhood, although he is their origin and standard: no one is father as God is Father.” end quote
    Also, you may be interested to know there is an LDS page where a preacher tells his women listeners that it is not correct to pray to our Heavenly Mother, quote: “‘Logic and reason would certainly suggest that if we have a Father in Heaven, we have a Mother in Heaven. That doctrine rests well with me. However, in light of the instruction we have received from the Lord Himself, I regard it as inappropriate for anyone in the Church to pray to our Mother in Heaven. . . . . . The fact that we do not pray to our Mother in Heaven in no way belittles or denigrates her. . . . . . none of us can add to or diminish the glory of her of whom we have no revealed knowledge.” end quote. Link to talk to Daughters of God, Mormon Church

    http://www.lds.org/general-conference/1991/10/daughters-of-god?lang=eng
    .

  4. Ihr Wegg Methode von Erklärung alles Absatz iist
    angenehm, jeder kann in der Lage einfach bewusst sdin es , Dank
    viel.

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