Women’s Miscellany

A couple of weeks ago, a man at liturgy in our small faith community suggested that women would never use violent tactics. In my inimitable fashion, I immediately shot back that no man can limit the tactics women choose to use, and that such distinctions – about women being better, more peaceful, more dialogic, than men – were false. Something like that.

I came home to pick up the NCR to see the headline, “How would foreign policy change under women?” Oh, no! Chris Herlinger, a male Chris, writes about the meetings of the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), which some of my friends attended. How can I critique that? The headline writer picked up one question Herlinger asks; another is much more to my liking, “What if a more expressly feminist approach influenced foreign relations?”

Feminism is an ideology that I have taught and identified with for a very long time. I would love to see a “more expressly feminist approach” to anything. While more often articulated by women, feminism as a movement includes women and men, lesbian, gay and straight, and, eventually, people who identify as genderqueer or non-binary. I see feminism as continually becoming more inclusive because at base it is about equality. I like the Wikipedia definition because it’s broad as well as narrow:

 Feminism is a range of political movements, ideologies, and social movements that share a common goal: to define, establish, and achieve political, economic, personal, and social equality of sexes.^[1][2] This includes seeking to establish educational and professional opportunities for women that are equal to those for men.

The last sentence is narrow and I think alludes to the history of American feminism, especially, and suggests its priorities.  The first sentence is broad because it includes politics and culture, ideology and activism – and it says, now, “equality of sexes.” See above for genderqueer and non-binary; trans and bi people are here, too.

The various people quoted in the article – remember? – are mostly sisters, and are more focused on peace than on feminism, entirely appropriate at this meeting. They are convinced that women’s experience should be brought to foreign relations, because it’s different than men’s. I would say that, as society changes, it may become less different, but these comments articulate issues that emphasize women’s experience in families, with poverty, and as a result of wars they generally don’t fight. The gender lens is important to them.

A similar concern is the focus of the current issue of The Nation: “Needed: A New Foreign Policy: Time for a Citizen Intervention.” These writers may be a bit edgier than the nuns in NCR, but the ideas are not that different, especially in critiquing war. Both men and women write the articles and don’t use a gender lens to explain their positions.

Now to the “Miscellany” part of the blog to consider briefly another but related set of issues. I am glad to see women represented at various church tables, just as I like seeing men’s comments on this Table. But we know from feminism that no one woman can represent all women, and we would be deluded to believe that they do.

For example, three European laywomen theologians have been appointed as consultors to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Two priests with similar academic and Vatican  backgrounds were also appointed. I have no doubt that laywomen bring different experiences than two priests, so it’s a start. But I wonder what impact they had on the recent statement about women’s ordination.

More diversity in the women – and really, men – who get important Vatican jobs would be assured if there were greater transparency in the hiring process. Voices of Faith, which sponsored Mary MacAleese in the spring in Rome, has just issued a media release recommending “sustainable human resource policies, rather than continue in placing single handpicked women in a reportedly hostile environment.” My guess is that they will be doing the kind of evaluations of progress in hiring women that they recommend to the Vatican.

For another miscellany, there is a lot of fluttering about ordaining women deacons and what that might mean. The most recent is a statement by the chair of the papal commission studying deacons – the same Cardinal Luis Ladaria who chairs the CDF – that they don’t plan to issue any recommendations on allowing women deacons now; they will only investigate the history.  Ladaria said

that there are questions over whether women deacons had the same role as male deacons of the time and over whether their role was dependent on local needs.

“We know that in the early church there were these so-called deaconesses,” the cardinal-designate continued.

“What does it mean to say this?” he asked. “Was it the same as male deacons? Or was it not the same? Was it a very diffused thing, or was it a local thing?”

Oh, please. “So-called deaconesses”? Who is afraid to call them what they were, soon-to-be cardinal?

That commission does include six men and six women, and one is American academic Phyllis Zagano, who has advocated for women deacons for a long time. She is an example of feminist activism, bringing women’s experience of exclusion, finally, formally, to the Vatican. Phyllis, you have your job cut out for you.

My final miscellany is some information I didn’t find last week when I wrote about the Amazon synod. The initial communiqué calling for the synod was issued by the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, which included 22 cardinals and bishops and 15 women who “joined them for the meeting.” Pope Francis suggested the theme of this plenary: “Women, building block of the church and society in Latin America,” which is better than many of his other statements about women’s role. The communiqué after the meeting was published in the official Vatican newspaper, and said this “isn’t a concession to cultural or media pressure, but the result of a realization that the lack of women in decision-making roles is a defect, an ecclesiological gap and the negative effect of a clerical and macho conception.” Oh, my. Do you think the inclusion of women (at the invitation and with the support of the Pope, it should be noted) made a difference?

Maybe having women involved would change foreign policy.