A church of women?

Afternoon light bathed the spacious interior of the Church of Our Lady of X. A new batch of Eucharistic ministers stood before the altar, quietly waiting to be blessed by the parish priest and the mostly middle-class congregation.

As I gazed at them, stiff in crisp barongs, somnolent in the heat of the retiring day, I felt unsettled, not knowing why.

Then it hit me.  All of them were men.

One of the freshly minted Eucharistic ministers was a friend from college. At dinner with two other college friends, I asked him: “So why aren’t there any women Eucharistic ministers at Our Lady of X?”

He looked cornered, then recollected himself and produced what sounded like a schooled answer. Women already excel in service to the Church. The Church wants to give men a chance to excel too, so a ministry must be reserved for them. He flashed a conciliatory smile, relieved to have turned a precarious predicament into a gracious compliment.

Our two other friends, a gay man and a woman who is a gender sensitivity consultant, squinted at him.

“So we’re supposed to be flattered by that,” said the gender sensitivity consultant.

“So it’s affirmative action for men,” I said with a wry smirk.

Our Eucharistic minister added, perhaps as a justification, that the pope was bringing back some of the Church’s older traditions.

“Like that’s gonna make me go back to the Church,” retorted the gay man.

Our friend suddenly remembered that his wife awaited him at home.

I trust he has since forgiven us. We still meet amicably at monthly prayer sessions, except for the gay man, who lives in California.

Non-Catholics and desultory Catholics may wonder what the fuss was about. So what if only men can give out communion? Devout Catholics may understand the fuss, though they might not question the practice. The Eucharist is the central sacrament of the Catholic faith. To exclude women from assisting at this sacrament suggests they are unworthy to administer the body and blood of Christ. Even those who deem the Eucharist merely symbolic—I am not one of them—must appreciate the symbolic power of that exclusion.

It is condescending to both sexes to justify that exclusion by stating that men are such a threatened species in the Church that a place for them must be defended from women. It suggests Catholic men are so puerile they need a ministry all to themselves or they just won’t play. Surely they are more mature than that. And if not, shouldn’t the Church teach them to be? And if they must have their own space, why the Eucharist, that most vital and accessible of sacraments? Especially when the priesthood which turns bread and wine into spiritual food is already exclusively male?

Twenty years ago, the Second Plenary Council of the Philippines (PCP II), in its Conciliar Document, observed that Jesus’ relationship with women defied traditions of his day. He made them into disciples, empowering them “to announce the good news to others” (#489). “He even chose women to be the first witnesses to his resurrection” (#51).

PCP II boldly declared: “In a spirit of fidelity, the church must let go of cultural attitudes that prevent the liberating action of Jesus for women.  She must actively promote their participation in her internal structures, convinced that the God-created potentials of women will positively contribute to the life of the church” (#490).

This spirit of fidelity to Jesus requires the Church to stand with women as they strive to overcome obstacles to full participation in society.  “Our Second Plenary Council firmly opposes all  forms of discrimination and exploitation of women and foster[s] the growing awareness of their dignity and equality with men” (#387).

PCP II was crafted not by ultraliberal Catholics or fringe feminists, but by the Catholic bishops of the Philippines, in consultation with nearly 10,000 Catholics from all sectors of the Church.  The Conciliar Document was a mission statement for the Philippine Catholic Church of the 21st century.

The pastor at Our Lady of X knows his PCP II.  He takes to heart its call to create a “church of the poor,” striving to make the “gilidges”—the shantytowns nestled into small pockets of an otherwise prosperous neighborhood—as much part of the parish as the middle-class “villages” around them. He believes in an inclusive church.

How then explain the absence of women Eucharistic ministers at his parish? Perhaps he too feels the Church is already too much a church of women. Or perhaps the all-male Eucharistic ministry at his parish is a taken-for-granted tradition, or a diocesan policy.

At a sprawling informal settlement a few miles away is a parish that does not have to try to be a church of the poor, because it already is.  The Latin American missionary who pastors it has that PCP II spirit too. But perhaps his foreignness allows him more easily to discard traditions inconsistent with PCP II and the inclusive Church it heralds. I recently went to Sunday Mass at one of the parish’s small kapilyas.

Morning light bathed the crowded interior of the tiny chapel. At the entrance, rambunctious young altar servers pushed and pulled at each other, noisily waiting for a guest priest to line up behind them for the short processional through the working-class congregation.

As I gazed at them, radiant in their immaculate robes, reveling in the cool of the newly awakened day, I felt at home, and instantly knew why.

It had just hit me. All but one of them were girls.