Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-7cvxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T07:55:57.440Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Mary Magdalene's Touch in a Family Church

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

William Eggen
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Recently, the anthropologist Mary Douglas has pleaded for a space within the Church's pastoral life, in which women’s contributions could be fully valued. Her article might appear to some as a make-do solution, because it advocates using the area which has not been claimed by the hierarchy so as to spell out a proper task for women. The misgivings of some feminists might actually be heightened even further by her last paragraph, on the caring role of women. For has this not been the age-old role pattern? Maybe it has. But as the article was printed in a special issue on the sacramental life of the Church, there is a strong case for its argument, looking at a much neglected side of the Eucharistic tradition. I wish to highlight this by reflecting on an insight of the Nigerian sister and exegete Teresa Okure, and especially on a most revealing, new definition of the Church which emerged from the African Synod (three years ago, April-May 1994), calling the Church ‘the Family of God'.

In keeping with the hope that African perspectives may also inspire the Church at large—as the papal exhortation Ecclesia in Africa expresses it—I venture to join the research on this concept. Although the papal text openly endorses this term at the outset of the third phase of the synodal process, it does not wish to advance any specific interpretation of it yet. It sees it clearly as a notion that is still to mature in the interchange between pastoral practice and reflection.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 78 , Issue 920 , October 1997 , pp. 429 - 438
Copyright
Copyright © 1997 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

Brown, R.E. 1971 The Gospel according to John. London.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cullmann, O 1969 Early Christian Worship, London.Google Scholar
Dodd, CM. 1971 The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Eggen, W.M.G. 1993 African Roads into the Theology of Earthly Reality.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
ImExchange, 22 (1993) 2 p. 91–169.Google Scholar
E.I.A. 1995 Ecclesia in Africa, Post‐synodal apostolic exhortation. Rome.Google Scholar
Evans, C.F. 1990 Saint Luke, London.Google Scholar
Howard Marshall, I. 1979 The Gospel of Luke, Granville.Google Scholar
Karris, R.J 1991 The Gospel according to Luke, In: Brown, R. a.o. (eds.) The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, London.Google Scholar
Okure, T. 1993 The role of women in the African Church In: SEDOS‐bulletin, Rome.Google Scholar
Vermes, G 1975 He is the Bread, Targum Neofiti Ex 16:15, In: Postbiblical Studies, Leyden.CrossRefGoogle Scholar