No Gifts! No Gifts, Please!

By Joan Lenardon
This was the subject of two workshops I gave last June 25 as a participant in the Jubilee 2000 Conference called by the Diocese of Hamilton. The event gathered about 400 people: Laypersons, Religious and Clergy with Bishop Anthony Tonos in attendance all three days.

The title which was printed in theBrochure was considerably muted; "Women's Gifts to the Church: an overview of the contributions women have made in the life of the church, participants will be invited to consider how women's gifts have been received."

Once the participants start:ed to read what I had given out and answer the questions I had posed about what they had read, they hardly needed an invitatton to consider how women's gifts have been received. They spontaneously combusted into discussion!

My presentation included controversial questions about the likeness of women to God and the equality of women with men. I started with Genesis 1:23-31 and asked what qualities of God this Passage revealed. Were women created in God's own image as much as men? What qualities of God do women and men want to imitate?

You could see at a glance that the form I used proceeded from the fundamental and non?negotiable Revelation of the Judaeo?Christ.ian Tradition: God made Us (women and men) in God's own Image and. Likeness. No one, no matter where they are on the spectrum of "Right, Left, Centre'' in the Tradition or near or far from the Tradition can deny that this is WHAT THE PEOLE OF GOD BELIEVE ! The source is, of course, Genesis I.

I then used Paul's material in I Corinthians 12:1 - 311 to demonstrate the continuity in God's Revelation from the Old to the New Testament specifically about the capacity of women to receive the Spirit of God. I asked whether they believed that from the beginning God had created the woman to be subordinate to the man. "Does the human fetus come into existence more by the influence of mother or father? Are women weaker than men in resisting temptation to sin?"
The discussion showed very progressive attitudes.

I listed some God-imaging women who have gifted the church. Mary, Mother of God, Theotokos, is described significantly differently in the original version of the Apostles Creed. "…His only Son, Lord, who was born from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary…" gives an equivalence lacking in the present version. I added Mary of Magdala, who was not a sinner or prostitute., as well as Prisca/Priscilla and Lydia of the Acts of the Apostles. The participants added profusely to my list of God?Imaging Women. They were appalled that in contrast: to 144 men plus 3 male archangels (!), there are only 29 women celebrated in our Liturgical Calendar, and that only 17% of the people canonized by Rome are women.

Then the path turned to an examination in history as to how these gifts have been valued by the principal spokesMEN of the traditions of Christians. That the discussion was lively, is an understatement!

I quoted the infamous passages from St. Thomas Acquinas' Summa Thoeologica , "…in a secondary sense the image of God is found in man, and not in woman…" and "If it were not the case that woman was created to be man's helper specifically for the production of children, then why would she have been created as a 'helper? ' " St Thomas goes on to say that if Man had needed a helper for working the land, a man would be a better assistant; for companionship, "for company and conversation, how much more agreeable it is for two male friends to dwell together…" His conclusion is that "woman is defective and misbegotten, for the active force of the male seed tends to the production of a perfect likeness in the masculine sex, while the production of woman comes from defect in the active force or from some vaterial indisposition of even from some external influence…"

I was thrilled with this experience. I had not expected to be able to speak so freely in this context. I had "stereotypical, ideas about the "conservatism" of this Diocese. All I can say is that due to the calibre of the twenty?one speakers on the Program, the loyal dissent percolating in the many people whom I spoke with and the love for Christ and His Church they guilelessly professed, I came, saw, and was conquered by the awareness of being in the pnesence of Hagia Sophia, the Holy Wlsdom of God.

ENDNOTES

1) This reading is the well known one about the distribution of gifts: "concerning spiritual gifts…there are varieties, …but it is the same God working in all of them. To each person is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. To one the Spirit gives wisdom in discourse, o another the word of knowledge…faith…healingThe body is one even though it has many parts; all the parts, many though they are comprise a single body. And so it is with Christ. It was by one Spirit that all of us, whether we are Jews or Greeks, slaves or citizens, were baptized into one body…You, then are the body of Christ."