The Divine Feminine & clerical incompetence

Walter Brueggemann has made the connection of ecological wasting (sin against the God/ Land/ Human Covenant) and the exploitation of women:

“…Adam, that is, mankind, has a partner and mate, adamah, land. Humankind and land are thus linked in a covenantal relationship, analogous to the covenantal relationship between man and woman …unfortunately, in our society we have terribly distorted relationships between man and woman, between adam and adamah, distortions that combine promiscuity and domination.… Likely, we shall not correct one of these deadly distortions unless we correct them both. We shall not have a new land ethic until we have a new sexual ethic, free of both promiscuity and domination. Applied to land, we shall not have fertility until we have justice toward the land and toward those who depend on the land for life, which means all the brothers and sisters…It is clear that a land ethic that uses, abuses, and discards is a practice of pollution and fickleness. It creates a fundamental cleavage between a Creator who wills life and a creation that squanders and finally rejects life…” [THEOLOGY OF THE LAND, Bernard F. Evans and Gregory D. Cusack, editors, 1987, The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Mn. ISBN 0-8146-1554-6]

I have given a lot of thought to women, "ordination" and ecological wasting. My reflections on the life of Mother Theresa of Calcutta have affected my thinking on the connection of these themes. I've now come to the point of view that John Paul II (perhaps inadvertently and not intentionally) acknowledged the male defect of ordination as practiced in the Roman Catholic Church and the lack of clerical competence to “ordain” women. Because institutional Catholicism is cultured in male sexism, the exclusivist male hierarchy does in fact lack competence in “ordering” women; when Pope Benedict XVI observed that "women will find their way (in Church)", he was speaking in awareness of male incompetence.It is not for males to tell females their way with respect to "ordination" and their roles in life, in Church; with respect to priesthood; with respect to anything. It's for women to determine the forms their "ordination" and priesthood must take, and they need on their own to define these roles without coercion from male dominion. Women can do better than contort intuition to conform to the unenlightened, exclusionary male model.

Women are life witness to the fact that femininity is the "groundstate" of ecological sustainability.Female conscience is sensitively different than male. Females come to it in personally original ways. As nurturer, female conscience is inclined naturally to be more “green” than male. I think no pope is likely to be so rash and irrational as to excommunicate women en masse for the conscionable, global work of forming, informing and reforming of faith.

The present experience in Church of the steep decline of males choosing priesthood as a way of life is creating the need for women to come forward. The sex scandals of hierarchy are speeding the process and deepening the need. It can be expected that local communities will more and more seek out female priests to serve precisely because of the demonstrated incompetence of male clerics. I REALLY EXPECT AND HOPE TO SEE IN MY LIFETIME women moving ahead on their own self-initiative as to priestly roles they need to assume within the Church and not be frightened off by the cultured wizardry of males. Only by so doing will their voices acquire an equal standing and bring healing to Church — to civilizations.

Church is destined to function ineffectively so long as it stymies feminine authenticity and essential female expression within the human family. I grieve over the lifelong suffering of Mother Theresa from male clerical super-arrogation and the suffering of the People of God and nature from sexist alienation.