Consequently, it is clear that, by conceding women this faculty for administering baptism, [the Fathers of the Church] considered them worthy of that office, and that they forbade them to administer the other sacraments simply to maintain the scope of men's authority for all time, either because they themselves were male or, rightly or wrongly, in order to maintain peace between the two sexes by the incapacity and repression of one of them.--Marie Le Jars De Gournay ("The Equality of Men and Women" translated by D.M. Clarke, p. 69)
In the quoted passage, De Gournay (1565-1645), who wrote a generation (or two) before Hobbes and Spinoza, interprets church teachings and practice politically. By using 'politically' I have three or four things in mind: (1) most obviously, church practice has political consequences: (a) this practice creates "the repression" of women, and (b) it ensures this repression in perpetuity by creating circumstances in which women remain incapable of equality. (2) She attributes to the church political motives: (i) male solidarity; (ii) the desire to solve a pre-existing political problem. (3) She presupposes that prior to the political establishment of Christianity, there is a natural battle between the sexes; (4) this battle is settled by the political imposition of Christian mores. According to De Gournay, it's because the church is political (in the senses described) that it ignores it's own understanding of the equal worth of men and women. In context she implies that Christianity has been regressive political force for women because prior to the establishment Christianity "all nations used to admit women and men without distinction to the priesthood." (69)*
As mentioned a few weeks ago De Gournay returns to the natural battle of the sexes near the end of her argument. When she addresses the need to foster "peace within marriages." (73) Ideally, men and women “should” use “rational discussions” and not force (73). The reader is left to wonder if this is also true for settling political authority generally. In context she implies that rational agreement is not to be expected “because” of “the common frailty of human minds.” (73) However, as we have seen above, she had already argued that woman's incapacity is due not to some innate defects, but rather due to their political and marital oppression. So, she strongly implies that women would be capable of more rational participation under an alternative institutional framework with a better political theology (in context she is critical of Scriptures' advocacy that "the husband is the head of his wife." Ephesians 5.21-2)* She is explicit about this by citing the 'divine' Plato approvingly for his assigning "to women the same rights, faculties, and offices in their republics and everywhere else." (56)
It follows, too, that she thinks that Christianity has also been oppressive in a sense to men. For, men have chosen to let themselves be ruled by "superiority of...strength" (73) and not their rational faculty. In fact, she argues that in so doing men have committed "serious blasphemy" because men have elevated themselves above women. For, women are "worthy of being made in the image of the Creator, of benefiting from the most holy Eucharist and the mysteries of redemption and of paradise, and of the vision--indeed, the possession--of God." (73) Man's political decision to deny women "the advantages or privileges of man" is, thus, a way to make an idol of himself.
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