I enjoyed attending this by remote tonight, my first chance to hear the controversial theologian Sr. Elizabeth, who belongs to the Josephite order (one of the fast-expiring liberal feminist ones) that taught me in high school. She was a lively, scholarly, and thought-provoking speaker, but as always I stumble on the narrow political interpretations and the sense of festering grievance and even smugness. Is the takeaway from Mary Magdalene being the first to see the risen Lord and told to go tell the others--that mysterious, glorious passage of brokenness healed and wonder rekindled--really just fuel for a gripe about the position of women in the Church today? Am I crazy that the Scriptural woman stories that the Sister Elizabeths read as feminist directives (to promote women to more worldly ministerial importance) seem more like directives for men to embrace the female charisms of humility, service, and tenderness? In a touching irony, it is precisely the female religious orders that exemplify these gifts that are growing, not dying off...
Posted on: Fri, 19 Sep 2014 00:26:30 +0000
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