Turning metaphors into laws

What's a meta phor? Sometimes just to bewitch, bother and bewilder.
Paz y Bien, Rolando, SFO.

As a pastor who is, therefore, a bridegroom, I have often found the church to be a pretty poor bride. Especially when I stir in those old codgers in the hierarchy. A parish as my bride? Sometimes like marrying a sack full of cats.

I’m not familiar with this Cardinal Francis George person, however we might recommend to him, with his penchant for religious metaphors to check out my grand daddy patron, St. Justin, Martyr, Father of the Church who was assassinated about 130 years after the death of Jesus. Although I can’t name chapter and verse, for years I have carried about with me in my mind this beautiful little metaphor of his about our Holy Mother Church. He called the Church, “The Great Prostitute of Christ” because even at that time the struggle for power was beginning to divide her attention from the reason for the existence of Jesus: The governance of his Abbá Father “on earth as it is in heaven”, the building of that “other possible society”, that “other possible world” sooo different from the world we have built for ourselves today where every 4 seconds one of our sisters or brothers dies of hunger as we nonchalantly continue destroying our very own Mother Earth by our consumer greed.

Justiniano de Managua

The biblical metaphors are not the reason Rome doesn't accept women's ordination and you know it. I happen to support women's ordination, but I know full well that the argument is based on tradition, not symbolism. Our cause is not advanced by silly distractions like yours.

I am a female in her mid sixties. Here is my meditation on the bridegroom/bride metaphor.

I think Cardinal George lives out of images of centuries ago when young, powerless 14 year old girls, barely educated, most likely virginal, were given away by their fathers to someone considerably older that they had never met before. The young girls were expected to be humble, obedient, too stupid or inept to handle money or property, and were expected to bear children until they died.

I have the same reaction to that obnoxious the-church-is-the-bridegroom-and-the-people-are-the-brides story as I do to fingernail's scratching a chalk board. Does Cardinal George really envision the people of the church as powerless, uneducated, inept children?

Educate and train a woman to be a priest, put her in the vestments, and she can do the job. She can be a symbol - a stand-in - for God because God is both male and female. More importantly, a modern women will not envision the people of her church as a barely grown-up, uneducated, powerless child who has to be handed from her father to her husband because she is presumed to be too stupid or inept to make it in the world.

I grew up, Daddy. Now get out of my way and let me live life as fully as my brother.

Only psychosexually stunted, emotionally barren people can peddle this trite baloney in public anymore and keep a straight face.
http://www.catholicnewworld.com/cnwonline/2011/0619/cardinal.aspx?a=print
Any and all advice this Cardinal -and so many like him, who have obviously NEVER fallen in love with another human being- has for people on the church's PELVIC THEOLOGY is a waste of time. He should put his energy toward something more productive, like writing "A User's Guide on How to Ride a Bicycle" for FISH!

Memo to Cardinal George:
Taking your cue from last year's Vatican equation of ordaining a woman with the abomination of clerical child rape, you have offered us a further hyperbole now equating women's ordination with same sex marriage.
Said fallacious excursion -and the mental gymnastics it entails- from natural to natural moral to natural sacramental LAW in the above-cited article notwithstanding, you must eventually face reality and realize that since you missed the boat on numerous occasions in the past to speak with any MORAL authority on human sexuality and those priests who ABUSE it, you should no longer actually believe anyone with half a brain is listening to you now. You yourself have become a LIVING METAPHOR of the inner decay of the institutional church, and all of your "official pronouncements" (clearly issued ex cathedra from the seat of your own little cerebral cathedral) should henceforth be exegeted as such.
http://search.bishop-accountability.org/search?q=george+chicago&ie=&site...

I think that cardinal George doesn't go far enough with his metaphor. He should have taken the second step , too:

Men shouldn't be allowed to be part of the church, because we as men can't possibly represent the church, the bride of Christ, who is a woman.

I could agree with cardinal George's argument, if only he would take it seriously himself and would also defend the other consequence:

It should be forbidden for men to be part of our church, because we men can't possibly represent the church who as the bride of Christ, is a woman.

I wholehartedly agree with the argument of cardinal George, I just wish he would also say something about the other consequence of this use of the metaphor:

It should be forbidden for men to become part of the Church, because we as men can't represent the church who, being the bride of Christ, is a woman.

If Cardinal George is so enthralled by metaphors, he should meditate on Jesus' words about false shepherds. Given his record on sexual predation, he has certainly proven that he is one. He clearly is unwilling to inconvenience himself for the Lord's sheep, much less give up his life for them. He is a living metaphor for everything that is wrong with the church's hierarchical structure.

I think I see where George is going with this metaphor. If you think about it, it makes the sex abuse problem practically sacramental. No wonder the bishops didn't do anything to stop it.

Don't (just) shoot the messenger, go for the source. If anyone has even scaned the May 31,2004 "Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the collaboration of men and women in the church and in the world", one would see how Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, eminent theologian, "Grand Inquisitor", brain behind Pope John Paul II and now Pope Benedict XVI revived and extended this potentially meaningful metaphor of poetry/piety into a twisted and sexually devient theology (Long sentence but had to be done). This is the power source that people like Cardinal George pander to, "up-and-comer sychophants will ape and who few, if any sane hierarchs will take issue with. He was then head of the "Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith". Imagine.

When die-hard, narrow-minded, short-sighted pietists deride so-called "paganism" and its mythical or even real orgiastic deviences do they have the sense or the courage to reflect on the sensual, perceptual and intellectual - if not overtly physical - implications of the "unbrideled" (pun not intended) application of this "bride/bridegroom" theology?

George worries that same-sex marriage will be followed by polygamy? I would suggest that it is a lesser evil than the practical applications of this unfettered theological construct.

Give me a break!! I lose patience when silly metaphors about brides and bridegrooms are used as ballast against ordination of women. I must reflect on how Jesus would address this issue in THESE times. Jesus was totally inclusive of males, females, young, old, Jews, non-Jews, etc. He was the complete iconoclast . . . and I venture that he STILL IS as he sits at the right hand of the Father! After all, we believe that Jesus is God, the eternal Word, and that God is CHANGELESS. So we have a wonderfully creative Creator who is totally in love with his creation - females included. Given that Christology, is it even possible to frame a theological argument against the ordination of women who are, like men, God's beloved - made by God in God's own image? Where is the biblical evidence? OK, the RC church hasn't ordained women very frequently since the days of the early church. (Yes, there have been exceptions!) Hanging the argument against women't ordination on "Tradition" is as tenable as maintaining that humans shouldn't fly because they don't have wings!! Let's face it - the reality is that the old boys' club doesn't want to admit girls because they don't trust that the girls will go along with their agendas. Most of all, these old boys have little or no understanding of women who are not their mothers or sisters. They don't trust women because they don't have adult, non-related women among their most trusted friends and colleagues. Therein lies the flaw in the celibacy requirement for RC clergy. Mandatory celibacy for all clergy fosters segregation of God's people in MALE and FEMALE and encourages the erroneous notion that God is LIKE males and UNLIKE females; thus, females are made to seem like lesser beings - NOT "priest material"! What an un-Christlike mess!!! Come Holy Spirit, come!!!!

Heavens!! If we allowed women priests, then we would be letting all those wearing long dresses in the sanctuary. How feminine could we get.

This seems like an overly simple response to a complex question but here it is anyway:
In the metaphor of Bridegroom vs. Bride, if the priest as bridegroom requires the priest to have male genitalia, doesn't the metaphor of Shepherd vs. Flock require those in the flock to have four legs, a body covered in wool, and maintain a vegetarian diet???

If ordained men represent the male Christ as
bridegroom, why do they dress up in fancy
women's clothes?

The particular metaphors being implied relate to a model of marriage, that where the man is the head of his wife rather than an equal partner, that no longer exists (and to the extent it does, it shouldn't). Christ as groom does not work when bride and groom are equal.

This is not a metaphor. It is an ontological reality that reaches back to the way God has chosen to reveal Himself to us since the days of Abraham. Folks get over it...no sacramental marriage for gays nor will there ever be priestesses in the Church.

Stign,
The priest marries the Church which is the Bride. The priest does not marry Christ the bridegroom. A religious women marries, Christ, the bridegroom. Therein, with both these metaphors the teachings work.

The priest, being a man, can represent the bridegroom whom sacrifices his life for his bride the Church. Therein, the metaphor or imagery works.

When the priest says, "this is my body, this is my blood" the imagery works. A woman saying the words of consecration cannot image the bridegroom. She would look like a standin, not in persona Christ.

A woman cannot marry the Church like a male can when he becomes a priest. If she did, it would look like Lesbianism. A female marrying a female image.

We could go on and on.

Metaphors are necessary as Christ used them to convey truth. Our secular modern language cannot convey the depth of the spiritual relaties that underly the visible actions of the people of God in the Church.

Simply put, there is no logical argument left for the hierarchy to defend its policy of forbidding women to receive Holy Orders. Their dogmatic view of human sexuality is twisted and they speak with no moral credibility. They have nothing left but metaphors at this point.

I have come to the conclusion that Cardinal George and the other bishops don't make any sense most of the time.

I, too, have heard the Cardinal use this metaphor quite often. I am either a coward, or too attached to my livelihood, to ask him to take the metaphor further: If only men can be priests because the church is the bride, then if men can be part of the 'bride', then men can marry men.

Mr McClory,
Your first paragraph stated...
"Since troublesome issues like gay marriage and the ordination of women have become almost daily fodder for media commentators and bloggers, Chicago’s Cardinal Francis George frequently seizes the opportunity to weigh in with the definitive position of the Catholic Church."
...but yet nowhere in the rest of the article did you show where Cardinal George weighed in with the definitive position of the Catholic Church on "same-sex or homosexual marriage".

As I've often written, here and elsewhere, the issue of women being ordained priests will continue to be discussed, quite extensively and intensively, for years, decades, even centuries to come -- no matter how much any given Pope says the topic is closed for discussion.

Part of the reason is that the arguments advanced against it are extremely weak, given the gravity of precluding, on a permanent basis, half of the human race from Holy Orders.

My intuition is that the prohibition will not be permanent, and when it changes, the Church will once again have to apologize for its heavy-handed authoritarian approach which does not, and never has, served it well.

The point that keeps being missed is that the Church cannot ordain women: that's cannot, not will not. If a bishop tried to ordain a woman as a priest (which apparently has happened), it wouldn't work; she would not be a priest even if the rite was done perfectly.

It would be the same if a priest said the words of consecration over potato chips and beer. Notwithstanding any demands we might make, those elements would not become the Body and Blood of Christ.

The mistake being made by those who are seeking ordination of women is, in fact, that they are literalizing a metaphor of their own, and it is one that Christ never gave us. They are using a political metaphor through which they see the issue as a matter of enfranchisement and access to institutional power. Seen in that light, it's obvious that women should be ordained. Women should have the right to vote, and they should have the right to hold any political office. Why not the political office of priest or bishop?

But the political metaphor is inapt when applied to Holy Orders. The offices of bishop, priest, and deacon are not offices that were agreed to at some constitutional convention, subject to modification by amendment. Holy Orders are more akin to organic realities than political or institutional ones.

The question, then, is not like this one: "Why shouldn't a woman become President?" Instead, it is more like this one: "Why shouldn't a man give birth?" If I suggested that an unfair distinction was being made as to the ability to bear children, anyone would rightly consider me ridiculous. Biological truths of that kind aren't proper objects of such criticism.

Having said all this, I'll admit that the priest being a representative of Christ argument doesn't do it for me either. Taking that argument to an extreme, we should insist that only Jewish males can become priests. Actually, I think there is a problem with insisting that we can arrive at a rational basis that can be humanly explained at all.

Why did God order things so that only females bear children? Why are we creatures that require sleep? Why are we made so that we can't survive in outer space? Why can't we fly? Why can't we breathe underwater? I don't know the answer to these things.

Why did Christ set up his Church so that only men would receive Holy Orders? I don't know, but he did. Since he did it, I'll abstain from wishing for something else.

Sometime in the 1960s a priest in Australia told a group of Catholic Sisters that they were the brides of Pope Paul VI. This led to great merriment among the sisters.Some people just cannot handle metaphors.

We do not offer Christ to the Father. Jesus and the Father are One. We offer our individuality, and represent the whole community gathered,, as One Body. Gender and ego should not be functioning at all... in relation to God, we are ALL receptacles of grace and all responding through our female function. As an Independent Catholic (female) priest, that is what I do, what every priest should be doing.

Yet Jesus in viewing Jerusalem describes himself as the mother hen wishing so often to draw all of her chicks beneath her wings . . .

I do not find Jesus calling himself the host at a dinner party, usually as the one left outside, but most clearly at the Last Supper as the servant of all, not the host at all, as the Last.

Metaphors are used for poetic force. They provide sensory imagery or a cognitive burst of insight. To treat them as solid facts is either loony or deviously disingenuous.

If we say that the orange moon is a pumpkin hanging in the late October sky, we don't mean that the moon is sort of hollow and full of seeds and stringy stuff. But that's what the arguments for male-only priesthood are doing.

I've noticed I've covered both the loony and lunar in this comment. So I'll conclude by reminding everyone that Jesus was not from Chicago; he didn't say "I am divine and you are da branches." And that's just a metaphor, too, and means something like "no wine-ing."

Symbolic methaphors often are beautiful and meaningful to us, and powerful on an unconscious level. Symbolic/metaphorical priesthood is powerful.

But what's gender got to do with it? Human men and human women are not completely distinct species. Equating biological reproductive abilities with ontological conditions is no longer believable - or acceptable reasoning. Our humanity includes our biology, but it is not limited to biology, any more than women are faceless & interchangeable.

Honest people recognize that each us have characteristics of the other gender, no matter how deeply we ascribe to rigid gender roles. The anima/animus within our unconscious is as powerful as an unrecognized need for justice or meaning.

Surely NONE of God's children are automatically rejected as disqualified for priesthood based upon Ratzinger's interpretation of the spiritual meaning of biological difference.

The RCC hierarchy isn't capable of acknowledging the full humanity of women. Beauty of metaphors aside, the rest is just noise & rationalization. Their arguments have no basis in human reality as most of it experience it in current social conditions. Moreover, their arguments serve their own biases. They have no credibility.

Oh, and Jack, women are a whole lot more than "potato chips and beer." Your analogy says a whole lot about how you view us.

Oh, and those of you who place your argument sternly upon the Last Word of scripture & authority, you refuse to acknowledge that your interpretation of scripture & authority is not universally accepted as God's Absolute intention. I know you like things written in stone, but the appeal to authority is not an argument, any more than it was a believable argument for so many other authoritarian biases that have been discredited.