Autor: Little, Joyce

Buch: The Church and the Culture War

Titel: The Church and the Culture War

Stichwort: Feminismus (Schussler Fiorenza us.), feministische Auffassung von Macht und Autorität -> Zweifel am Kanon und Magisterium

Kurzinhalt: In the feminist view of things, the only authority is power and the men exercising power in the past are going to be replaced by women exercising power in the future.

Textausschnitt: FEMINIST POWER

32a When we turn to the feminists, we discover that, while they use the word "authority", they understand authority to be power, whether they are talking about the authority of the Magisterium as that has always been exercised or about authority as they themselves would like to exercise it. The reasons are not difficult to discover, and they apply not only to authority but also to tradition and religion as the feminists understand them. (Fs) (notabene)

32b With regard to magisterial authority itself, the feminists clearly see it as nothing more than the self-generated power of patriarchal males bent on controlling everyone else, especially women. This is apparent in their view that if men got pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament, or that the pope, with the stroke of a pen, could permit the ordination of women and refuses to do so solely because he has no desire to share his power with them.1 These women suppose there are no givens or limits in the Christian faith which cannot be overcome by the Magisterium, if only they could get the right people into it. As Sr. Mary Ellen Sheehan puts it, "Feminist analysis uncovers the hitherto almost universally accepted power of patriarchy to define the nature and role of women."2 In other words, the pope and bishops do not represent Christ or the apostles, but only themselves, and thus their exercise of ecclesial authority is nothing more than the use of power to dominate other people.3 (Fs) (notabene)

33a The tradition fares no better than does the Magisterium. Feminists never tire of discussing the tradition as simply male patriarchy and chauvinism spread over time. As Sr. Sandra Schneiders, Professor of New Testament and Spirituality at the Jesuit School of Theology and the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, maintains, the feminist Catholic "sees more and more clearly that every aspect of it [the tradition] is not just tainted but perverted by the evil of patriarchy. It is not that the tradition has some problems; the tradition is the problem."4

33b Most disturbing is the feminist attitude toward the founding event of our faith and that apostolic witness of it which is regarded as normative for our faith. The feminists insist that we cannot trust the canon of Scripture, because it also is tainted by patriarchy. Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza claims: "Insofar as the writings collected and accepted in the New Testament canon were selected and codified by the patristic New Testament church, the canon is a record of the 'historical winners'."5 In other words, the canon we have is the result of nothing more than a power struggle in the early Church. She subtitles her book "A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins" precisely because, in her view, Christian origins (that is, Christ and those events by which he instituted the New Covenant) as they have been presented to us in Scripture were skewed at the very beginning and thus need to be "reconstructed".6 (Fs) (notabene)

34a As Carl J. Friedrich, editor and contributor to a book on authority for The American Society of Political and Legal Philosophy, points out, "It has been argued through the ages that there is only power based on some sort of constraint, and that authority is merely a make-belief, based upon religious faith at best."7 The feminists clearly fall in this camp, inasmuch as their every characterization of ecclesial authority reveals that they regard it as nothing more than the exercise of self-generated power by patriarchal males to keep themselves in power. (Fs)

35a Thus, it should not surprise us that when feminists speak of their own ambitions within the Church, what they have in mind is simply the replacement of patriarchal power by feminist power. What they seek is not the recovery of the truth of the founding event of our faith (supposing that truth to have been suppressed), but a reconstruction of our faith on the foundation of the feminist view of things. Carol P. Christ, in the introduction to Womanspirit Rising, makes this abundantly clear. "What would it mean for women's experience to shape theology and religion in the future? The word experience becomes a key term, a significant norm for feminists reconstructing tradition and creating new religious forms."8 And Schussler Fiorenza, in her reconstruction of Biblical texts, tells us that all Christian texts must be "assessed theologically in terms of a feminist scale of values".9 (Fs)

35b The activity most important to feminists is, as Christ points out, "a 'new naming' of self and world", a process which by allowing "women to name the world for themselves" will "upset the order that has been taken for granted throughout history" and will enable women to "call themselves and the world into new being".10 Or, as another feminist puts it, "Naming the sacred in our own experience is an important theological task for women. Finding the power to name is like being present at the creation of the world."11

35c This process of renaming reality is, as the above passages indicate, nothing more than the exercise of power to break with the past in order that feminist power might assert its claims in the present and the future. Sheila Collins, a contributor to Christ's book, notes that the replacement of history by feminist reconstructionism, or "her-story", will necessarily produce enormous ruptures between the past and the future, but asserts that this does not pose a problem for feminists. She states, "Since feminist women have least to lose from a break with the old system, we are more open to a radically discontinuous future."12

36a Letty Russell, Professor of Theology at Yale Divinity School, has written a book entitled Household of Freedom: Authority in Feminist Theology, and in her book we find all of the elements of power disguised as authority. Authority, she tells us, is "legitimated power".13 Feminist authority appeals not to a past founding event but "to the future as the source of authority" and is therefore based on what she calls "our memory of the future" in which the marginalized and the oppressed will enjoy a new society.14 As such "it challenges both the content and the thought structure of Christian theology as we know it."15 What we have been living in heretofore has been a "house of bondage" which feminists must "work to subvert".16 Feminists must do this by naming anew what authority means. "This power of naming has implications for a feminist understanding of power and authority in community. Power ... is the ability to accomplish desired ends, and the power to name our reality does just that."17 Furthermore, the subversion of the old structures, including those of authority, should be done wholesale and not piecemeal, because if one does it piecemeal, one runs the risk of not really destroying them at all. "It is", she says,

a little like trying to win at Monopoly when you just own Baltic Avenue, without any hotels! The only possibility of winning in such circumstances is by changing the rules of the game. If the rules say that property owners should collect rents and distribute them equally, then perhaps everyone would be able to continue in the game and there would be no more losers. In the same way our paradigm of authority needs to change.18

37a Let us grant that her analogy is deeply flawed, if only because only the certifiably insane would voluntarily spend an evening moving pieces around a Monopoly board to no other purpose than that there be no losers. On the other hand, this analogy does clearly reveal that the feminist view of authority is of a power which knows no limits. To the extent that one could ascribe to Monopoly or any other game the notion of authority, that authority would reside in the event by which the game was created, i.e., in the rules which make up the game. After all, games are in the final analysis nothing but the incarnation of a given set of rules. Authority requires us to submit to those rules. Power seeks to overcome all rules. (Fs)

37b Russell sums up the difference between traditional authority and feminist authority in this way:

The patriarchal mind-set decides the truth and draws the line, and suddenly those outside the line become heretics. We know, however, that theological lines are always moving in response to changes in human culture. There are very few clear lines, and it is perhaps better not to pose the question of authority that way. In the Christian faith there is a center (commitment to Jesus Christ) and a circle (a hermeneutical circle). Every theological interpretation affects every other, so that we continue to move around the circle trying to create metaphors and models that are faithful to the center of our commitment.19

37c Here we truly do have a self-generated power which views itself as free to define its own commitment to Christ and to create at will the metaphors and models for expressing it. Starhawk, the witch on staff at Matthew Fox's Creation Spirituality Center, has said, "It is uncomfortable to be one's own authority, but it is the only condition under which true personal power can develop."20 In the feminist view of things, the only authority is power and the men exercising power in the past are going to be replaced by women exercising power in the future. (Fs)