Be Not Afraid

If you were at “Radicals and The Rule,” you may know what I am going to write about. And no, it’s not Joan Chittister’s challenge to confront “the wholly owned subsidiary of pious males” about inclusive language, for God and for people. The most trenchant comment I heard after the session was “Forty years later and we’re still talking about pronouns!” Chittister’s church is the whole corporation, not the subsidiary, and she calls women to assert their proper control as major shareholders.  Say “the Jesus story is my story.” Do not “cultivate your own invisibility. It matters.”

(By the way, “forty years” refers to Theresa Kane’s conquest of invisibility in front of Pope John Paul II when she suggested that all ministries in the church be opened to women. Last Friday Marge Cooper and I were sitting with a sister who had been in formation at age 24 and stood up in the basilica with 50 other nuns on that occasion. She wondered how many others were in the audience with us this night.)

The WOC email to members said “Sr. Teresa Forcades invited us to a deeper and more complex understanding of God and gender.” Jesse Remedios in NCR quoted Chittister, “It’s basic biology, as far as I’m concerned.” Forcades, a medical doctor as well as a theologian, went far beyond the basic.

I was writing very fast, so this is only my understanding of Forcades’ discussion of sexual imagery for God. Rather than the rational God of the Greek logos, she finds in Justin Martyr the welcoming God of the colpos, usually translated “womb” but which she translates by the more scientific “vagina.” Forcades’ “welcoming cavity” adapts to welcome another, so at the Last Supper, the beloved disciple John is at the colpos of Jesus, she said. To me, this is Jesus as female.

Forcades goes on to discuss Gertrude of Helfda, a 12^th century Benedictine nun, Gertrude the Great, who turns sexual imagery upside down when she “penetrates Jesus’ heart.” Even Wikipedia gets to some of this in its account of some of her writings:

Gertrude had a vision on the feast of John the Evangelist. She was resting her head near the wound in the Savior’s side and hearing the beating of the Divine Heart. She asked John if on the night of the Last Supper, he had felt these pulsations, why he had never spoken of the fact. John replied that this revelation had been reserved for subsequent ages when the world, having grown cold, would have need of it to rekindle its love.

I have to confess that I’ve never been much for medieval spirituality and the citation for this is a Knights of Columbus website, but I am in awe of Forcades for opening up a whole new field of inquiry about the possible images of God for and as woman. I can’t wait to get to the transcript and see if I’m correct.

Second and third wave feminism were on display. Second wave feminism is often characterized as much more political, and Chittister kept coming back to the need to work to change the church. Third wave feminism, in contrast, is characterized by its much more explicit sexuality and search for personal meaning. When Chittister talked about science, she said the official church doesn’t pay enough attention, but it was clear to me that she was not going to pay attention to what Forcades was saying. Of course, it was hard to take in on the spot, or even to write about afterwards, but being open – like a colpos – to new thoughts about sexuality and spirituality were what Forcades was calling us to.