The Rib Uncaged

One of the sprightly surprises of Roman Catholicism's renewal movement is the fact that women, as well as men, are calling for further church reform. Since the end of the Second Vatican Council, the church in the U.S. has been subject to a paper barrage of theological journalism produced by young, concerned, college-educated Catholic laywomen. Invading the traditional masculine province of theology, these teachers, writers, editors (and housewives) have challenged existing attitudes toward contraception, divorce and, more recently, wider questions involving other doctrines of the church. Three of these lively damsels-errant have recently produced books that suggest the range and style of Catholicism's feminine critique.

Rosemary Ruether, 31, challenges the reactionary character of institutional Christianity in The Church Against Itself (Herder and Herder; $5.50). Married and the mother of three, Mrs. Ruether has a doctorate in religion from California's Claremont Graduate School and is a lecturer at Howard University in Washington. She gained early notoriety as a Catholic controversialist with a 1964 article in the Saturday Evening Post called "Why I Believe in Birth Control," in which she argued that the church's ban on contraception was injurious to a healthy marriage. More recently, she has argued with equal vigor in favor of relaxing the church's ban on divorce and remarriage.

Mrs. Ruether starts with the premise that Christianity has a built-in tension. Jesus' original proclamation was an eschatological vision looking ahead to the end of the world; yet any church inevitably takes on cultural forms and thus looks backward into history. She concedes that the church as an institution is necessary; but the more it becomes a prisoner of tradition the less able it is to keep alive the prophetic spirit that gives it meaning. The ideal state of the church, she argues, is not a formalized organization of worshipers but a community, an event, a human happening. This means that Christianity must exist in a continual state of concern and self-renewal. "The church can retain its continuity only by not clinging to what it has become," she concludes. "Stone cathedrals, jewelled monstrances and infallible doctrines are false reflections of the value and fidelity of God."

Mary Daly, 39, attacks Catholicism's built-in prejudice against women in a lively polemic called The Church and the Second Sex, (Harper & Row; $4.95). Unmarried, and the only female theology professor at Jesuit-run Boston College, she has three doctorates in religion and philosophy and is an avowed suffragette for female rights within the church. Her book accuses Christianity of contradicting its moral teachings by harboring "oppressive, misogynistic ideas" about women. The roots of such prejudice, contends Dr. Daly, lie in the Old Testament. Eve in Genesis is pictured as created from Adam's rib and as responsible for his fall from grace and innocence; the effect is to cast woman as a subordinate being to man and a sinful temptress. Catholic theologians have argued that the church's devotion to the Virgin Mary enhances the stature of women. Miss Daly answers that Christ's mother in fact is "glorified only in accepting the subordinate role assigned to her" in God's plan of salvation.

Although recent papal statements and the declarations of Vatican II acknowledge the idea of female equality, Miss Daly insists that the church continues to treat women as second-class human beings. Even reputable Biblical scholars take it for granted that God is masculine (he is sexless, she answers). Catholic marriage manuals--without any real biological basis--emphasize the "passive" qualities of women, their supposedly natural instinct to subordinate themselves to men. Miss Daly concludes that the church must "exorcise the demon of sexual prejudice" by, among other things, admitting women to the priesthood.

Sidney Cornelia Callahan, 35, argues for Christian acceptance of the positive value of eroticism in Beyond Birth Control (Sheed & Ward). The wife of Commonweal's Executive Editor Daniel Callahan and the mother of six, Mrs. Callahan is also the author of The Illusion of Eve (1964), which was both a defense of traditional femininity and a plea for the right of women to find creative expression outside the home. In her new book, she proposes that the church should not only approve contraception as a positive good for marriage, but also abandon its puritanical and repressive attitude toward sexuality, at least within the marriage framework.

She sees signs of modern man's understanding of erotic virtue in "the new honesty, openness, companionship and sensitivity in marriage. Strong sexual desire is not immoral but totally human and natural. Thou shalt not be tepid is a basic marital commandment." She also believes that there is a potential good in contemporary society's greater concern with sex. "Hopefully, life will become more erotic though less focused on genital sexuality," she writes. "Sex will merge with the rest of life as an integral activity. Along with eroticism, the ideals of commitment, love, even of chastity and romance, may stage a comeback. Tender concern could flourish; the playboy could become a man." Nevertheless, Mrs. Callahan suggests that some kind of erotic restraint is socially necessary--and that monogamous marriage is perhaps the most constructive form of human union.

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