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Neither Idolatry nor Iconoclasm: A Critical Essentialism for Catholic Feminist Theology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 September 2014

Nancy A. Dallavalle
Nancy A. Dallavalle*
Affiliation:
Fairfield University
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Abstract

Following the work of gender theorists who find the terms “male” and “female” to be socially constructed, feminist theology has tended to repudiate essentialism. The position that results is one of agnosticism about biological sexuality, a position that is only reinforced by the essentialist excesses that ground the discussion of the “psycho-physical structure” of women found in official Catholic teaching. This article suggests that the polarity of feminist theology and official Catholic teaching on questions of sex and gender can be overcome by using the framework of a “critical essentialism,” a position that retrieves the Catholic theological tradition of reflection on “male” and “female” while allowing its claims to be appropriately winnowed by the insights of gender theorists.

Type
Articles
Information
Horizons , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , Spring 1998 , pp. 23 - 42
Copyright
Copyright © The College Theology Society 1998

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References

1 A very preliminary draft of this article was originally given as a paper to the Roman Catholic Studies Group at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion in November 1995, under the title “Feminism, Christology and Catholic Identity.”

2 For example, Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraphs 369-73

3 For a short history of the interpretation of Gen 1 27, one that takes to task the notion that this is a statement of a fundamental equality between men and women, see Ruether, Rosemary Radford, “Imago Dei, Christian Tradition and Feminist Hermeneutics” in Børresen, Kari Elisabeth, ed, The Image of God Gender Models in Judaeo-Christian Tradition (Minneapolis Fortress, 1991), 267–91Google Scholar

4 For example, in Mulieris dignitatem 6, John Paul II opens his discussion of “The Image and Likeness of God” with Gen 1 27, praising it as “a concise passage [which] contains fundamental anthropological truths” In contrast, his discussion of Gen 2 18-25 begins more equivocally “In a sense the language is less precise, and, one might say, more descriptive and metaphorical, closer to the language of the myths known at the time” (the English translation of Mulieris dignitatem used herein is from Origins 18 [1988] 262–83Google Scholar)

5 Johnson, Elizabeth A, She Who Is The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse (New YorkCrossroad, 1993)Google Scholar

6 Ibid., 17-18.

7 Ibid., 32.

8 Ibid., 155.

9 Ibid.

10 Ibid., 156. See also Johnson, Elizabeth, “The Maleness of Christ” in Carr, Anne and Fiorenza, Elisabeth Schüssler, eds., The Special Nature of Women? (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1991), 108–16.Google Scholar

11 Johnson, , She Who Is, 35.Google Scholar

12 “… [A]s Sophia incarnate Jesus, even in his human maleness, can be thought to be revelatory of the graciousness of God imaged as female. Likewise, divine Sophia incarnate in Jesus addresses all persons in her call to be friends of God, and can be truly represented by any human being called in her Spirit, women as well as men” (ibid., 165).

13 “Not incidentally, the typical stereotypes of masculine and feminine are subverted as female Sophia represents creative transcendence, primordial passion for justice, and knowledge of the truth while Jesus incarnates these divine characteristics in an immanent way relative to bodiliness and the earth” (ibid.).

14 Ibid.

15 Ibid., 56.

16 Fulkerson, Mary McClintock, Changing the Subject: Women's Discourses and Feminist Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994).Google Scholar

17 Ibid., 65.

18 Ibid., 74.

19 Ibid., 62, 117. McClintock Fulkerson argues (388) that academic work is dominated by the Wissenschaft of the professional managerial class, which seeks the proper formation of a discipline, control over its questions, and clear movement toward solutions, in a word, “closure.” She writes, “[t]he civility of our ideal—making intellectual wholes—should make us nervous.”

20 Ibid., 355.

21 Ibid., 357.

22 Ibid., 335.

23 Ibid., 386 (emphasis added). McClintock Fulkerson also calls for a “theo/acentric iconoclasm,” extending her agnosticism about humanity to its discourse about God.

24 Ibid., 384.

25 There are some similarities between the goals of this terminology and that of those who propose a “critical realism” (see the discussion as this characterizes critical moderns in ibid, 309-15, and, in a postmodern sensibility, Albert Borgmann's “focal realism” in his Crossing the Postmodern Divide [Chicago University of Chicago Press, 1992], 116–22Google Scholar) At this time I see more possibility for dialogue with the Catholic tradition via an engagement with the framework of ontology rather than the analytical stance of critical realism, thus my option for the language of “essentialism”

26 In a major review essay, “‘Women's Experience’ Between a Rock and a Hard Place Feminist, Womanist and Mujerista Theologies in North America,” Religious Studies Review 21 (1995): 171CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Serene Jones opens her discussion of “women's experience” as this is treated in nine recent studies (Elizabeth A. Johnson, Catherine Mowry LaCugna, Rita Nakashima Brock, Catherine Keller, Delores Williams, Sallie McFague, Kathryn Tanner, Ada María Isasi-Díaz, and Rebecca S. Chopp) by observing that all these theologians have in common an “affirmation of the non-essential nature of women.”

27 Graham, Eileen L., “Gender, Personhood and Theology,” Scottish Journal of Theology 48 (1995): 341–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28 Ibid., 345. Graham gives a detailed analysis of gender bias in anthropology, biology, and psychoanalysis in her Making the Difference: Gender, Personhood and Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), 59–119.Google Scholar

29 Graham, , “Gender, Personhood and Theology,” 354.Google Scholar

30 Ibid., 356. Barbara Ehrenreich and Janet McIntosh caution, however, that postmodern critiques of gender, class, and racial biases in the sciences has resulted in a pervasive and troubling antibiologism in academic circles (“The New Creationism: Biology under Attack,” The Nation 264 [06 9, 1997], 11–16Google Scholar). For example, assertions based on studies of DNA are met not with critiques of the cultural values presupposed by the studies conducted, but with disbelief about the existence of DNA itself. Ehrenreich and McIntosh call this perspective a secular creationism as it sunders reflective, culture-creating human beings from their biological existence by claiming, not unlike religious creationism, “that humans occupy a status utterly different from and clearly ‘above’ that of all other living beings” (12). Such a perspective of constructive multiplicity without any universal basis, Ehrenreich and McIntosh continue, denies the possibility of any grounds for common human action or communication.

31 Graham, , “Gender, Personhood and Theology,” 353.Google Scholar Graham makes a brief reference to trinitarian theology to support the notion that gendered social relations might find some metaphysical ground in the mutual self-gift of the trinitarian life. But this works in her study only as generalized relations of difference, not gendered relations.

32 Ibid., 356 (emphasis added).

33 Porter, Lawrence B., “Gender in Theology: The Example of John Paul II's Mulieris Dignitatem,” Gregorianum 77 (1996): 97–131.Google Scholar Porter's article, it must be emphasized, is a careful and systematic account of John Paul II's treatment of gender in the context of his theology. Particularly helpful is Porter's unflinching delineation of the implciations of this approach. My argument against the positions Porter puts forward is that he is happy to draw favorable parallels between John Paul's thought and the work of radical/romantic feminism, but that he never uses the latter as a critical tool for the examination of the implications he details.

34 Ibid., 103.

35 Ibid., 112.

36 Mulieris dignitatem 4, cited in Porter, , “Gender in Theology,” 113.Google Scholar

37 Sulpician priest Gerald Brown, president of the Conference of Major Superiors of Men, observed this lacuna during the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women. “From the perspective of men,” he noted in a formal statement in response to John Paul It's “Letter of the Holy Father to Women,” a letter which is something of a summary of Mulieris dignitatem, “at least one would hope that maleness would be more than the remainder of what is left over after all the dimensions of emininity have been articulated. Some of that remainder in contemporary discourse is singularly unflattering” (Origins 25 [1995]: 144Google ScholarPubMed).

38 Porter, , “Gender in Theology,” 114.Google Scholar

39 For example, this assertion seems to suggest that baptism is not enough to overcome the deficiency of maleness; we will now have to ordain men in order to save them! Porter later adds “thus argument for women's ordination which cites women's native or natural capacity for this role—that a woman can be as much maybe even more prepared for ordination psychologically and educationally as any man—is beside the point” (ibid., 124). Porter argues that the Eucharist is an eschatological sign, and the “male's lack of innate capacity for this” allows for the sign to be “sacramentally reinforced.”

40 Porter does recognize the problem of absentee fathers, but sees the notion that fatherhood is foreign to “being male” as a statement of fact, not as a problematic cultural message. In the current climate, Porter argues, “the witness of a male assuming a responsible role vis-à-vis the family or community is perhaps more significative of grace than ever before” (ibid., 125). Considering the strong claims about women's psycho-physical structure he upholds, Porter's anthropological model seems to be one in which women are called to conform to nature while men are called to reject it.

41 Porter cites the work of Nancy Chodorow and Wendy Hollway (ibid., 121-23).

42 Ibid., 125.

43 Graham, (“Gender, Personhood and Theology,” 356)Google Scholar correctly notes that “it has been the rule that embodiment is regarded as an exclusively female quality, and that the female gender is marked with the signs of carnality, non-rationality and biological determinism.”

44 Porter, , “Gender in Theology,” 130.Google Scholar

45 Origins 25 (1995): 236.Google ScholarPubMed

46 Ibid., quoting from John Paul II, “Letter to Women,” paragraph 11. The text of the pope's letter appears in Origins 25 (1995): 137–43.Google Scholar

47 See, e.g., the exposition of personhood in LaCugna's, Catherine MowryGod for Us: The Trinity and Christian Life (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991), 243–305.Google Scholar For an example of a gendered approach which claims to reject a rigid sex polarity yet continues to pose a “marital structure of reality,” see Allen, Prudence, “Integral Sex Complementarity and the Theology of Communion,” Communio 17 (1990): 523–44.Google Scholar

48 See, in this regard, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza's critique of interpretation of Gal 3:28 in “Justified by All Her Children: Struggle, Memory, and Vision” in Concilium Foundation and Hillyer, Philip, eds., On the Threshold of the Third Millennium (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1990), 27–32.Google Scholar

49 Porter observes that John Paul II's phenomenological approach finds that “sexual differentiation conditions the person's freedom from the beginning and always” (“Gender in Theology,” 126). This observation is compatible with the position of critical essentialism.

50 Another article would be required to discuss why critical essentialism would not, a priori, imply complementarity. Two points will have to suffice. First, on theological grounds, one must reject the implicit presupposition that androgyny conveys a fuller “image of God” than maleness or femaleness alone, a sort of “federalist” approach to mystery. While the tradition holds that humanity as male and as female is a fact of revelation, it makes no sense theologically to say that male-and-female-together constitute “more” revelation. Secondly, on epistemological grounds, one must reject the claim that any knowledge of “female” and “male” immediately requires a theory of complementarity, as the terms themselves are inherently relational. While it is true that, with regard to knowledge, any specificity comes into relief only in the presence of difference, the fact that all knowing is relational does not entail that complementary relationality characterizes every particular instance of knowing.

51 For example, Mulieris dignitatem 26: “The Eucharist … is the Sacrament of the Bridegroom and the Bride … Christ is united with this ‘body’ as the bridegroom with the bride. Since Christ, in instituting the Eucharist, linked it in such an explicit way to the priestly service of the Apostles, it is legitimate to conclude that he thereby wished to express the relationship between man and woman, between what is ‘feminine’ and what is ‘masculine.’ … It is the Eucharist above all that expresses the redemptive act of Christ the Bridegroom towards the Church the Bride. This is clear and unambiguous when the sacramental ministry of the Eucharist, in which the priest acts ‘in persona Christi,’ is performed by a man.” A full theological exposition and discussion of this spousal metaphor is beyond the scope of this article. (Ashley, Benedict summarizes the traditional discussion in “Gender and the Priesthood of Christ: A Theological Reflection,” Thomist 57 [1993]: 343–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar) Yet to appear, however, is a discussion of this metaphor that adequately accounts for the role of lay men in the church, other than to suggest as their model the faithfully laboring but somehow superfluous St. Joseph (for a positive reading, see the essay by Baumann, Paul, “Saint Joseph: A Family Man” in Elie, Paul, ed., A Tremor of Bliss: Contemporary Writers on the Saints [New York: Harcourt Brace, 1994], 199–222).Google Scholar

52 “[T]he notion of textuality serves as a metaphor for cultural and social realities as well as written texts. When everything is textualized, so to speak, we can explain the relation of the community and social formation encompassing the reading of a text as an intertextual relation. An intertextual economy allows that the production of meaning is ‘inter’ (between) rather than ‘intra’ (within) or ‘extra’ (outside of) written texts and subject positions” (Fulkerson, McClintock, Changing the Subject, 165Google Scholar).

53 The scope of this article precludes a full treatment of this claim, though I recognize the necessity of such an exploration to show the relevance of “critical essentialism” to the feminist project. For a somewhat similar perspective, see McLaughlin, Eleanor, “Christology in Dialogue with Feminist Ideology—Bodies and Boundaries” in Berkey, Robert F. and Edwards, Sarah A., eds., Christology in Dialogue (Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press, 1993), 308–39;Google Scholar and the discussion of theological anthropology in O'Neill, Mary Aquin, “The Nature of Women and the Method of Theology,” Theological Studies 56 (1995): 730–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar (though I reject O'Neill's suggestion that such an anthropological perspective “would mean that Jesus alone could not accomplish the redemption of all humanity” [736]).

54 Fulkerson, McClintock, Changing the Subject, ix.Google Scholar

55 Johnson, , She Who Is, 168.Google Scholar

56 I thank my colleagues John Thiel and Paul Lakeland, and an anonymous reader at Horizons for numerous helpful comments.