The Noble Factotum in the Church

This is a commentary to the article of Ms Asuncion Maramba where she described the religious women in the Philippines as "dakilang alalay" (noble factotum) to the priests, the bishops, and the Pope. She wrote:

Oh, yes, women are all over the Church from the Vatican bureaucracies down to parish offices, outreach projects, charity work, etc. Women keep them humming and running. Dubbed “dakilang alalay” (noble factotum), they are superior as Church workers, flocking around “Father, Father.” But no woman can call the shots. Try breaking the “purple ceiling.”

I am for the democratization of power in the Church which implies greater participation of the laity, in terms of decision-making, in the life and mission of the Church. I share Hans Kung's assessment, putting himself in the shoes of the laity, that "for as long as I can contribute advice and work, but am excluded from decision-making, I remain, no matter how many fine things are said about my status, a second-class member of this community: I am more an object which is utilized than a subject who is actively responsible. The person who can advise and collaborate, but not participate in decision-making in a manner befitting that person's status, is not really the Church, but only belongs to the Church." In this sense, I am in favor of Ms. Maramba's assessment.

However, there are facts that cannot be changed, like Jesus called his God as Abba, that Jesus was a male, and the twelve disciples were all males. Prophet Isaiah, King David, Joshua, Moses, Jacob, Isaac, and Abraham were all males. Of course, along with them, Sarah, Rebecca, Esther and other women in the Bible were present. Then, there was Adam, and from him, Eve. Perhaps, at the center is Mary of Nazareth. Needless to say, Jesus was a product of his time. And the books in the Bible were written with patriarchal cultural background. (I will write on the Munus Sacerdotale [priestly function of Christ] in a separate article)

There are female ministers, for instance, in the UCCP, who may be more pastoral than their male counterparts. Conversely, male pastors can be more caring than their female counterparts. After all, it’s not a contest in gender superiority, but on how these pastors deeply care for the people under their pastoral care and how they inspired them to live good Christian lives. Whether you are a male priest/pastor or a female priest/pastor, a cleric or a lay person, the bottom line is Christian witnessing.

Ms Maramba threw stones at the androcentric culture of the patriarchal Catholic church. I think she's right in stoning the Pope and the bishops in order for them to break the authoritarian structure of power and embrace the ethic of participation as envisioned by Vatican II. Is this method effective? Can we expect radical change to take place from above, from the top of the Church's pyramid in the near future? This is the implication of the insistence of Ms Maramba on the ordination of women in the Church as the crucial way for the women religious to take part in the decision-making of the Church. If women religious will be ordained, the door to have women bishops, cardinals, and even a Pope is no longer an impossible dream. In short, the religious women take part in the decision-making in the life and mission of the Church. Is ordination of women to the priesthood the key?

Or do we need to enable the religious women to actively involve themselves in the life and mission of the Church, particularly in decision-making? 

Bishop Claver proposed another path different from Ms Maramba's suggestion: “If the idea of participation is then taken  as a summation of all of Vatican II, it is from a pastoral bias which looks always to what actually happens to people because of ideas or events or the action of other people. Hence, the question: What happens when the Institutional Church begins to participate more fully in the life of the people and –-the other side of the same coin—when the people likewise begins to participate just as fully in the life of the Church.” This ethic of participation is an ethical demand as an outcome of the transition from the Institutional Church to Church as People of God as envisioned by Vatican II. Its direct implication lies in the change in leadership style-- from directing to evoking, from ordering to enabling, from prohibiting to confirming, from affecting to mediating leadership. However, Bishop Claver put more weigh on the role of the laity in affirming their responsibility of decision-making: “…for leadership to be truly participative and effective, it must arise from the people—and from the people of one’s own kind… Where the principle is operative, conflict with traditional patterns of leadership and role behavior will ensue almost as a matter of course.”

This pastoral stand of Bishop Claver reminded me of Paulo Freire assessment of the oppressor-oppressed relationship. According to Freire, the change in the relationship cannot be initiated by the oppressors. For authentic freedom from this crippling relationship to take place, it must starts from the oppressed. Thus, he focused his education to the awakening of consciousness. Jean-Paul Sartre stressed that the process of emancipation is not simply role reversal. Thus, the radical change is always institutional or systemic that maintains such a master-slave/oppressor-oppressed relationship. And this is possible by concrete action of the slave/oppressed to reject the action of the master/oppressor. For Gandhi, this is active non-violence resistance. Of course, as Christians, the metanoia or change of heart is also important. Bishop Labayen said, “the heart of the revolution is the revolution of the heart.”

Thus, it is alarming, if not frustrating, to witness feminists who equally failed to educate women to break their silence and become visible. There is none in the articles of Ms. Maramba that delve on the education of women. As an educator, she may have been involved in the on-going education to feminism (in contrast to education to femininity), but her article failed to demonstrate such a noble advocacy.

She's a senior citizen now, but Ms. Maramba can still get herself involved in the parish wherein she could actively pursue her advocacy. Is she doing this? Does she get involve in women empowerment, not merely in teaching but in praxis, at the parish level? Am I asking too much from her to walk her talk in her old age? I don't think so. It would have been more interesting if she retold her experiences dealing with the male leaders of the Catholic church and how she fight them in the name of all women in the church.

The religious women involved in the Church's ministry at the parish level are not merely "dakilang alalay" to the parish priests. If there are nuns who continue to do so (as it reminded me how the sisters in the convent giggled when a young priest came over to celebrate the mass), to be subservient to their priests, to continue to please "Father, Father", I think it is not much because the parish priests are reluctant to share their decision making power but, primarily due to the inability of the nuns to break the invisible chain of subservience. In other words, the nuns failed to assert their voices when it comes to major decision-making in the ministry in the parish. In fact, in a mature parish, where there are greater participation of the laity, along with the pastoral team of priests, the nuns have active voices in the decision-making in the life and mission of the local Church. Perhaps, Ms. Maramba dismissed this case as an exemption of the general practice in the local Churches in the Philippines. But then, in such a case, in fact, an ideal in relation to the ethic of participation of Vatican-II and PCP-II, the religious women break their silence.

I really don’t know what level of awareness among the nuns for them to seriously fight for their role in the ministerial priesthood in the Church, particularly in the celebration of the Eucharist. Among the ministerial functions of priesthood, I think, it is in facilitating the Eucharistic celebration that is more revealing that distinguishes the priests from the nuns and the laity. In some parishes, nuns play an important role in preparation, not as “dakilang alalay” but agent of change, for a meaningful Eucharistic celebration in the community of believers. Aside from the Eucharistic celebration, the nuns are actively involved in the real life-sharing celebration among the people, especially the poor. The nuns are actively involved in the liberating praxis through various liturgical celebrations in the community. I don’t think that by not being ordained as priests, the religious women cannot become effective witnesses of their priestly vocation as Christians in the Church. 

Lastly, Ms. Maramba elevated Leila de Lima as an icon of a liberated woman when in fact she’s the perfect image of a lapdog of BS Aquino; she will always do what she is told to do.  Dakila din naman si Leila de Lima, isang dakilang alalay ni Noynoy.