Autor: Little, Joyce

Buch: The Church and the Culture War

Titel: The Church and the Culture War

Stichwort: Maria - feministische Theologie; Mary Daly (extreme Postion), Ruther (Offenbarung "hinter" d. O.); feminist.. Anthropologie: nur zufällige Differentierung d. Geschlechter -> Folgen für Christologie und Ekklesiologie und Mariologie (3)

Kurzinhalt: This anthropological belief in sexual nondifferentiation, of course, has important christological and ecclesial implications. If male and female are accidental qualities, then the maleness of Christ must also be accidental, in which case the female ...

Textausschnitt: MARY IN FEMINIST THEOLOGY

126b If systematic theologians and laity alike often find the Marian teachings of the Church peripheral to their primary concerns, feminists by and large find those teachings outright pernicious. The following remark by Mary Daly represents an extreme feminist characterization of them:

The immaculate conception is the ultimate depiction of (prenatal) woman-battering, a mythic model of incestuous assault. It is the primal rape of the Arch-Image. Within the mad ill-logic of dogmatic constructs, it is logically prior to the rape of the Virgin that takes place at "The Annunciation," when the adolescent Mary is told by the angel Gabriel that she is to be the mother-of-god and gives her fictitious assent. To put it in other words, as a consequence of her initial rape ("grace"), Mary has been totaled, made totally unable to resist divine aggression/lust/rape. At "The Annunciation," then, the already raped Mary "consents" to further rape.1

127a While Daly no longer claims to be Catholic, Rosemary Radford Ruether, a feminist theologian who continues to avow her own Catholicity, maintains in her book Mary—The Feminine Face of the Church, first published in 1979, that "the culturally dominant Mariology has been one which has sanctified the image of the female as the principle of passive receptivity in relation to the transcendent activity of the male gods and their agents, the clergy."2
127b Why do the feminists take such a negative view of Church teachings regarding Mary, when in point of fact the Catholic Church has shown so much reverence toward her as to be thought guilty by many Christians of engaging in mariolatry or worship of Mary? Why would the feminists attack that one figure in Catholicism, above all others, who would seem to embody and affirm the full value and dignity of the female? The answers to these questions, of course, are rooted in the ideology of feminism itself. (Fs)

127c The feminist view of Mary originates in the feminist attitude toward sexual differentiation and in the feminist repudiation of the Church's faith regarding that differentiation. Catholicism has traditionally understood human sexuality to be of enormous importance, particularly with regard to the differentiation of the human race into male and female. The significance which the Church attaches to this differentiation can be seen most strikingly in the importance which the Church gives to sexual morality. But at a much deeper level, the vision of the Church regarding human sexuality is grounded as we have already seen, first, in the revelation given in Genesis that our imaging of God is realized precisely in our creation as male and female (Gen 1:26-27), and second, in the revelation given in Ephesians 5 of the Christ/Church relationship, which is the covenantal and marital union of Christ the bridegroom with his bride, the Church. Indeed, the sacramental character of human marriage is rooted in the fact that human marriage images not only the Trinity but also the union of Christ and the Church. (Fs)

128a Feminism, of course and as already noted, explicidy challenges this traditional view of human sexuality. According to feminism there is no fundamental differentiation between male and female. This anthropological belief in sexual nondifferentiation, of course, has important christological and ecclesial implications. If male and female are accidental qualities, then the maleness of Christ must also be accidental, in which case the female character of the Church is without ultimate significance as well. The marital union of Christ and the Church, under these circumstances, cannot be understood as real or significant in any sense whatsoever. In fact, it must be regarded as a distorted view of both Christ and the Church. (Fs) (notabene)

128b If we try to trace the implications of feminism from this point, we find that, like the rock thrown into the pond, the ripples spread in all directions. On the one hand, the sacramental character of marriage and indeed the whole range of Church teachings with regard to human sexuality and sexual morality are called into question. On the other hand, the integrity of the Church and her teaching office or Magisterium can no longer be taken seriously either. For Christ, no longer understood as maritally united with the Church, is no longer in a position to protect her from error. The Church is relegated to the realm of purely human institutions and therefore must be understood as subject to all of the evils which plague any purely human institution. By this method of reckoning, we are not only a sinful people, we are also members of a sinful Church. The reformation and indeed even revolutionizing of the Church obviously must head the list of theological priorities within such a view of things. (Fs) (notabene)

128c Ruether gives us some insight as to how this process of reform works. Speaking of the radical break which "takes place when the institutional structures that transmit tradition are perceived to have become corrupt", she concludes: "It seems necessary to go behind later historical tradition and institutionalized authorities and 'return to' the original revelation.... The original revelation itself, and the foundational stages of its formulation are not challenged but held as all the more authoritative to set them as normative against later traditions."3 In other words, we are to recover from the earliest stages of the Church's history some purer form of the revelation which can then be employed as a weapon against current distortions and corruptions of the Church herself. Instead of a home, the Church becomes a house divided against herself. It is no accident that Ruether cites the Protestant Reformation as a precedent for conducting this feminist purification of the Church.4 (Fs)

129a The Mariological implications of this theology are at once obvious. The identification of Mary in her femininity with the Church as female no longer bears any ultimate significance, given the accidental character of sexual differentiation. Beyond that there is of course no possibility of linking the basic Marian doctrines with the Church now understood as corrupt institution. Mary's personal sinlessness finds no correlate in a sinful Church. Her virginal, bridal character finds no counterpart in a Church which enjoys no marital union with Christ. Her motherhood can find no room in a house divided against itself. (Fs)

129b In this situation three alternatives for dealing with Mary offer themselves. First, one can see her as the victim of a vicious, rapacious male chauvinism which understand women to be, as Mary Daly puts it, nothing more than "vehicles that incarnate the male presence".5 Second, one can seek to "rehabilitate" Mary in terms which are compatible with the feminist program. This can be done by applying to the traditional Marian doctrines radical new interpretations drawn from sources outside the Church. Elizabeth Johnson offers a telling example of how this method can be applied to Mary's virginity when she argues that Mary's virginity need not refer to bodily integrity or sexual abstinence, as we have long supposed, but rather can be interpreted within the framework of pagan goddess cults, where female deities, despite their many lovers, were characterized as virgins, because "virginity symbolized their autonomy, their ability to refuse men or accept them because as female deities they were powerful, independent, self-directed". Johnson concludes, "Whatever the actual historicity of the infancy narratives, the image of Mary as a virgin has significance as the image of a woman from whose personal center power wells up, a woman who symbolizes the independence of the identity of woman."6 The third possibility is simply to ignore Mary. This is the path trod not only by many feminists but also, as noted earlier, by many systematic theologians as well. (Fs)