Once Upon A Time

I thought October 3, the 27^th Sunday of Ordinary Time, should have been renamed Misogynistic Sunday, the 27^th Sunday of “Extraordinary” Time. What a choice of readings! I was transported back to childhood listening to fairy tales, surely not written nor inspired by God, but by men. “Once upon a time” we had listened, so wrapped in dogma and “tradition” we were enraptured – or enfeebled – or benumbed by these readings. Since then we have used our reason, our insight, our wisdom, and our strength to see and see through the power these narratives once had to keep us humbled and subservient. But here they still are, alive and well and living in a Catholic Church near you. Once upon a time is as present in our lives as it ever was.

All the scriptures are familiar and have been quoted perpetually in support of – or challenge to – the ancient prescriptions for women’s lives and positions in the world. I guess because I had been busy challenging for so long, I found it particularly startling to hear them read, one after the other so relentlessly, that Sunday. 

The first reading took us to the Garden of Eden. Adam is busy naming the animals – dominion over them thus assured when the “Lord God”, that mighty masculine figure, recognized it was not good for “His” lesser but still masculine figure, Adam, to be alone. “His” gift of animal company and power over them had still left something lacking. Animals and plants were too separate from Adam; he would need, it seemed, something more self-affirming. And so – we know the story well – God plucked out a rib from Adam and crafted a “fe…male”. Here’s the actual wording from Sunday’s lectionary: 

When he brought her to the man, the man said:
    "This one, at last, is bone of my bones
        and flesh of my flesh;
    this one shall be called 'woman, '
        for out of 'her man’ this one has been taken."

That is what we had actually been hearing all those years. That was the narrative for our lives.

The day’s Psalm was no better. Here are the first two lines: 

Blessed are you who fear the LORD,
    who walk in his ways!
For you shall eat the fruit of your handiwork;
    blessed shall you be, and favored.
R. May the Lord bless us all the days of our lives.
Your wife shall be like a fruitful vine
    in the recesses of your home;
your children like olive plants
    around your table.

Oh, my sisters (and those who identify as genders other than male), thousands of years of this. We should be ecstatic at the progress we have made!

Paul’s letter to the Hebrews, needless to say, did not help. Referring to Jesus, he ends with: “He who consecrates and those who are being consecrated all have one origin. Therefore, he is not ashamed to call them brothers.” No wonder we talk about women – and others – erased.

Finally, however, with a halleluiah, we could look to Jesus’ Gospel for mitigation. Or could we? There was some, but of the cold comfort variety. The Pharisees challenged Jesus by asking if it was lawful for a man to divorce his wife. Jesus referred them back to the law of Moses which the Pharisees said confirmed a husband was permitted to write a bill of divorce. Then it grew confusing (at least to me). Jesus told them Moses wrote this commandment for them because of the hardness of their hearts, and they had been missing the crucial spiritual message all along. When married, husbands and wives become one flesh, and because it is God who has joined them, no man can separate them. In fact, if either husband or wife divorces and remarries, that person commits adultery. Finally he affirmed the equality of both genders – well – at least in sin.

At our small Eucharistic community, where the leader purposely kept the traditional language to provoke discussion (and reaction!), someone described a more charitable interpretation he had heard. With this teaching, Jesus was actually protecting women. In those days (and long before and after), men could divorce at will for often petty reasons. The women lost everything in the divorce and were often left destitute or even pariahs. By encouraging all to see marriage as both sacred and binding, women were kept safer, physically and spiritually. 

Hmmm. Does that go far enough in protecting women, a thought paternalistic and condescending in itself? As I wish for the Catholic Church hierarchy, I wished for Jesus at this point to have stressed alternatives other than the protection of marriage for women’s safety and security. Affirming their powers and prestige and possibilities perhaps?

I did a quick survey of that day’s homilies from traditional Catholic clergy and groups. Many stressed the idea that Paul and Jesus were really using “the image of marriage to speak about Christ and his Church. Just as Christ cannot be separated from the Church, we cannot separate ourselves from Christ.” Others ignored the controversial bulk of the readings to concentrate only on the short passage at the end of the Gospel in which Jesus welcomes the little child and calls us to accept the Kingdom of God as a child would. 

Tempting and wise, I thought. Have I been too secular in my reading of the Readings? Have I been guilty of my usual overthinking? But life narratives are being transmitted here, once upon a time and into the future, including to those little children. They were fortunate to experience acceptance and affirmation and inclusion as their first memory of Jesus. Let’s keep that part of the story and – erase! – the rest.