Autor: Little, Joyce

Buch: The Church and the Culture War

Titel: The Church and the Culture War

Stichwort: Maria - feministische Theologie; heutige Situation bez. feminist. Th.; griechisch-orthdodoxe Siche (Thomas Hopko, Deborah Belonick), Ausblick: neues Bild der Frau im Licht Marias

Kurzinhalt: Feminism and Catholicism are mutually exclusive and indeed mutually antagonistic views of reality. As has already been noted, either the feminists are right and the Church is wrong, or the Church is right and the feminists are wrong.

Textausschnitt: 130a Before proceeding any further, I would like to note four primary features of the situation in which we find ourselves today vis a vis feminist theology. The first of these has to do with the relationship between feminist theology and traditional Christian faith. Deborah Belonick, a Greek Orthodox theologian, has summed it up well:

The theology that buttresses the female priesthood is at times little more than philosophy extracted from the woman's movement, which was adopted and accepted by some as "theology" to support the ordination of women. Moreover, this underlying "feminist theology" cannot be identified as being within the Judeo-Christian tradition, understood as the tradition of the people who have their roots in the Bible and the councils of the Church. This feminist theology is in fact so opposed to the Bible and tradition of the Christian Church that one may say that two different world views, two visions of God and humanity are present.1 (Fs)

130b Feminism does not provide us with simply one among many alternative ways of understanding our faith. Feminism and Catholicism are mutually exclusive and indeed mutually antagonistic views of reality. As has already been noted, either the feminists are right and the Church is wrong, or the Church is right and the feminists are wrong. (Fs)

130c If the first error of feminist theology lies in its vision of reality, the second lies in the resources upon which it draws. Feminists derive their insights not from the revelation as mediated to us through tradition, Scripture and the Magisterium but from the contemporary experience of women seeking secular liberation from political, economic and social discrimination. This appeal to a secular norm, while compatible enough with the feminist view that the Church herself, not to mention Scripture and tradition, is corrupt and sinful, finds no home in a genuinely Christian understanding of reality. Furthermore, as Thomas Hopko, another Greek Orthodox theologian, has pointed out, "It is truly ironic, in my view, that this age, which most Christians of Roman Catholic, evangelical Protestant and Eastern Orthodox traditions consider to be one of history's most unhappy, insane and disordered, would be raised up by theologians as providing the pattern for the Church's own being and life."2

131a If the first two features of the current situation point to the errors and failures of feminism, the third feature points to the insufficiencies of all theology heretofore done with regard to sexual differentiation. To cite Hopko once again,

Just as the Church knew the Father, Son and Holy Spirit to be equally divine and praiseworthy, but required centuries to forge out the proper and convincing formulation of the dogma of the suprasubstantial Trinity, so, it seems to me, the Church knows what she believes and practices concerning men and women in the life of the Church, including the priesthood, but it appears certain that it will take years of theological labor for her to arrive at a fitting dogmatic statement to explain and defend it.3

131b That Hopko is right is, I think, beyond doubt. And this brings us to the fourth and most explicitly mariological feature of the current situation, aptly expressed by the Catholic theologian and Mariologist Andre Feuillet: "Women will always have the feeling of having been and of still being very unjustly deprived by the Church of a strict right until the specific and irreplaceable role of woman in the Christian economy has been fully brought to light and properly understood in the light of Scripture, and principally in the light of the extraordinary role played by the Virgin Mary in the Church."4

131c I would only add that this theological task which must address the significance of women within a specifically Marian context will in all likelihood have to be done primarily by women theologians if the results are to be accepted by the women (and perhaps even the men) of the Church as a whole. Where are we to go from here? And how does Mary point the way for us? In this chapter and the following one, I would like to suggest some answers to those questions. (Fs)