A Countercultural View About Women in the Church

Perhaps no presidential election since that of 1928 has politicized the Catholic Church in America as much as the one that concluded last month.  Not only was the personal faith of one of the major candidates put under intense scrutiny, but so, too, was the position of the Church on certain major issues, most of which revolved around the position and rights of women.

For better or worse, the Church was alternatively portrayed as a defender of traditional values and as an oppressive force with respect to women.  The latter view largely stems from the Church’s stance on reproductive rights and women’s ordination to the priesthood.  In light of the current culture and the prominence of these issues within the Catholic debate, it could appear that the orthodox Catholic view is one of subordination of women.  But as incredulous as it may sound, the true Catholic stance for the majority of the Church’s history has been one of vigorous support of the advancement of women within society and a recognition of their dignity.

The Church’s treatment of women over the ages has by no means been perfect and does not represent an un-smudged reflection Christ’s love.  To a certain degree, the charges of misogyny leveled against the Church result in large part from its embrace of non-Christian ideas and concepts, or the gradual incorporation of societal norms from non-Catholic cultures.

But stripped of these influences, the core of the canon has stood solidly behind women.  Perhaps more importantly in the current context, speaking of or advancing these rights is not anathema to the Catholic heritage, but a vital part of its mission, and a point that should not be forgotten in these divisive times.

A countercultural force

While Christianity today is often identified with what are deeded traditional and conservative values, in its infancy, the Church was entirely countercultural as is made clear by myriad historians.  Two particularly interesting accounts of the Church’s history are provided in Tom Holland’s, Dominion, How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, and Fr. William Slattery’s Heroism and Genius, How Catholic Priests Built – and Can Help Rebuild Western Civilization.

Building on primary sources, these works make clear that the Church of antiquity stood entirely against the values and societal norms of the day.  The authorities of the time considered its position to be subversive, immoral, unpatriotic and against natural law.  Within the Greco-Roman world, law and order were highly prized and the foundations of society were religious observance and the familia, or household structure. The early Church went against these seemingly respectable values and remade society, especially the place of women within it, starting from birth.

In Greco-Roman culture, infanticide, particularly of baby girls, was common practice, such that by certain accounts, the population of the Roman Empire was skewed as much as thirty percent toward males.  The taking of child brides was socially acceptable, and adultery on the part of the husband was considered entirely conventional, particularly with male and female slaves.  Women had limited property rights and were largely excluded from any commercial or government activities.

The Church immediately set about changing these practices wherever it could.  Based on its reading and understanding of Christ’s teachings and its interpretation of the still forming canon of scripture, the Church took to heart three principal positions that made its view on women so radical.

First, it stated that humanity, created in the image of its Maker, is holy and that therefore, all lives are sacred.  Second, it viewed marriage as a representation of the bond between Christ and the Church and therefore as a sacred institution.  Third, in keeping with the admonishments of St. Paul, the Church took the stance that there was no difference between Jew and Greek, or male and female, in the eyes of God who had created all.

Given these principles, the Church began to change society wherever it went, even while it was still a persecuted and almost irrelevant sect.  It railed against infanticide and insisted that its members abandon this practice.  It required the consent of both parties for a valid marriage and took the view that children were not competent to enter into such a covenant.  As such, Christian women did not enter into marriage until they were much older than their pagan counterparts.

As for the household and family, the Church forbade adultery on the part of either husband or wife and exacted humiliating penances from philandering husbands, often at great risk to itself.  Perhaps most importantly, the Church invested women with much fuller property rights and made them equal in the household and the running of its affairs.

In light of eighteen hundred years of perspective, these may seem tame and timid measures that barely measure up to the minimum of decency, but as Holland and Slattery make clear, at the time, these were absolutely unheard-of beliefs that flew in the face of nature and society as it was understood.  It made the Church no only revolutionary, but downright dangerous.

Women’s gifts flourish

As Slattery argues, the Church spent four hundred years changing views about women in the Roman and barbarian world and another five hundred years expanding and cementing these changes in place.  While the Dark Ages may have seen a crumbling of the old order and a breakdown of society, they represented a period of breathtaking advances for women, particularly in Charlemagne’s Frankish kingdom with the help of the newly Christianized Irish.

In seeking to make his empire truly effective and Catholic, Charlemagne and his advisor Alcuin set about revolutionizing the Frankish realm under the aegis of the Church.  Parish, convent and monastery schools were established across the empire where rudimentary education was provided to all children, boys and girls alike.  It seems that the convents were particularly active in providing education, and surviving records indicate that many boys and young men were enrolled in convent schools.

The convents were bolstered in no small part by the contribution of learned Irish nuns and abbesses, who were brought to the Frankish kingdom in Charlemagne’s search for the best minds in the known world.  Ancient Ireland was one of the few societies that ascribed power to women; as such, the Catholic ethos dovetailed quite well with this societal structure, and women became accomplished scholars who ran their own institutions on the island.  Given their depth, Charlemagne sought them out so that they could contribute their knowledge to his own subjects.

By the time of the Middle Ages, women were empowered in Catholic Europe to a degree that would have been unheard of in most other societies of the time.  Abbesses administered large regions across western Europe where they acted as secular and religious authorities, often having male-run parishes and monasteries under their jurisdiction.  Women religious ran businesses, were accomplished scholars, accountants, jurists and artists.  Academics consider the first true play to be written in the Latin West after the fall of Rome to be the work of a nun!  And let’s not forget that Joan of Arc, a teenager, was made commander-in-chief of the entire French army in France’s battle for its survival against the England.

A truly democratic institution

So impressive was the upward mobility for men and women in the Church that Woodrow Wilson, as quoted by Slattery, stated that it was a truly democratic institution.  He recognized that any man or woman, from the meanest of beginnings, could rise through its ranks on the basis of intelligence and work.  The Church, Slattery argues, engendered nascent democracy in the secular world on a level not seen again until the twentieth century.  Women voted, along with men, for local officials positions in medieval France.  Women would not gain the vote in the US until 1920.

This record is often overshadowed by seemingly patriarchal tendencies in Catholic societies and the Church.  Slattery, in particular, lays much of the blame at the feet of Aristotle and Plato whose views of women cast a long shadow over the Church.  Aristotle’s argument that women were an inferior type of man were rejected by the Church, but his position that women were weaker and more prone to temptation sunk in and took root, especially because of the account of Eve given in Genesis and St. Augustine’s views on sex.

While Christianity and Catholicism would be radically poorer were it not for Aristotle, as the Church later learned, not all of his ideas, including a geocentric universe, had to be embraced, including his ideas about women. For better or worse, Aristotle’s views on women, along with the prevailing reading of Genesis with respect to Eve’s culpability in terms of sin entering the world, and Augustine’s ideas about sex that were informed by his own herculean struggle with the lust of his youth, proved to be a potent mix.  These ideas certainly informed the Medieval Catholic cultural view of women as weak and over-sexed, and therefore needing of protection and not fit for the affairs of government; yet as stated, it did not prevent women from assuming leading roles in society or the Church.

Negative tendencies and attitudes

Apart from the influence of Aristotle, certain other negative attitudes toward women seeped into Catholic society from other cultures.  A prime example is the machismo of Latin societies that is often attributed to Catholicism, but that scholars largely agree originated with Islam.  The seven hundred years of Arab occupation of the Iberian Peninsula left an indelible mark on Spanish and Portuguese culture, which seems to have included certain attitudes toward women.  As with Aristotle, it appears that while Islamic civilization offered much to the Catholic world, Christian society also assumed some elements that would have better been left alone.

In the contemporary debate about the role of women in society, the household code in Ephesians (5:21-33) has become much more of the focal point than it was in ancient or medieval times.  This passage, when read literally, seems to call for a subservient role for women in Christianity and society.  Yet as numerous Catholic clergy have stated (among them Pope Pius XI and Msgr. Josemarίa Escrivá), an orthodox understanding of these passages is that the husband represents the head and that the wife represents the heart.  Together, they govern the one flesh that they have become in Christ and the family that they build.

Given that these passages from Ephesians contradict others in which Paul makes clear that women were prominent members and leaders in the early Church and that he relied on their help for his own ministry, it seems clear that Paul’s intent was not to create divisions within the Church.  Further, numerous Catholic and Protestant scholars have concluded that Paul’s statements in Ephesians may have been a proverbial tip of the hat to Greco-Roman cultural norms.

The current situation

So where does all of this history this leave the Church at the end of 2020?  In the American context, seemingly on the wrong side of women’s issues, which have been defined in the Catholic context almost exclusively in terms of reproductive rights and ordination.  In the United States, these issues can seem all-consuming, but in the broader context, there are arguably larger realities affect women in the United States and around the globe on a daily basis.  On these issues, the Church remains forceful, consistent and on the right side of history.

Statistics show that women face an everyday reality in the United States that is far less than the Catholic ideal and its demand for true equality.  Women in the United States earn 19 percent less than men despite the fact that the majority of college graduates are women.  70 percent of the nation’s poor are women and children, and women are 35 percent more likely than men to be poor.  Almost one in three American women have been physically or sexually assaulted.  Less than one quarter of members of Congress are women and less than five percent of major corporations are led by women.  Global statistics effectively mirror those of the US, with the added and grim reality that 70 percent of the world’s poorest billion people are women and girls who own less than one percent of world property.

On these issues, Church teaching is clear and unambiguous, as have been the positions of both conservative and liberal popes.  The Catechism states unequivocally that men and women are equal in the eyes of God and of the Church and that discrimination and violence against the innocent are an abomination to God.  Pope Francis has stated that unequal pay for women in nothing short of a scandal and that the Church should and does support true equality for women.  Perhaps Pope Benedict XVI put the matter most eloquently, stating that:

The Church has the duty to contribute to the recognition and liberation of women, …Giving women opportunities to make their voice heard and to express their talents through initiatives which reinforce their worth, their self-esteem and their uniqueness would enable them to occupy a place in society equal to that of men…Bishops should encourage and promote the formation of women so that they may assume “their proper share of responsibility and participation in the community life of society and …of the Church.”

What do these words mean on the ground in the twenty first century?  While hard statistics are not available, the anecdotal evidence seems to indicate that means quite a lot in many areas, especially where women are most vulnerable.  In many parts of the Third World, the Church is one of the leading providers of education to poor girls and defenders of women in society.  It should be noted that some of the most strident and fearless workers in this struggle are nuns, risking life and limb for the girls and women who they teach and protect.

The Church is by no means perfect, but in many ways, these failings stemmed from beliefs that were taken on by the Church or its members and not from the core of its teachings.  There are undoubtedly difficult passages in scripture about women, but their correct reading, as taught by the Church, has never been meant to denigrate females, despite their often-unfortunate use to this end.

In the current moment in the US, the Church can and should look to the past both in terms of how it could have done better and in order to find strength and guidance.  There is much for which it needs to make amends, but a much deeper and stronger vein of fearless and bold struggle to realize God’s plan for humanity, which means true equality for all.