by Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza

Keynote address at the CTA National Conference Oct. 31, 1998 in Milwaukee. (Slightly abridged for space reasons)

During the past six months with its succession of depressing news stories coming out of the Vatican, I always had the words of Scripture in my mind: "Comfort, O comfort my people." The comfort I have to offer today is the comfort in struggle. It is the proud conviction that we are the people of G*d,¹ made in her image. We are church. I want to explore with you our calling as the people of G*d, and what it means to say "We are church."

Every one of us is created in G*d's very own image. G*d who created people in the divine image has gifted and called every individual differently. The divine image is neither male nor female, white or black, rich or poor but multicolored and multi-gendered and more. We, the people are G*d's visible representatives. Created in the Divine image, we are equal.

We are church. We are equal not only on grounds of creation but also on grounds of baptism. We are G*d's people, called and elect, holy in body and soul, gifted with the Divine Spirit-Wisdom. This call to be G*d's people is not exclusive but inclusive, for there are many different religious ways of being G*d's people. In the words of 1 Peter, we "are a chosen race, a royal priesthood a holy nation, G*d's very own people." These words are echoed by the Second Vatican Council: "... those who are reborn in Christ... through the word of the living God, not from flesh but from water and the Holy Spirit, are finally established as a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a purchased people."(Lumen Gentium, 9)

As a purchased and freed people we are equal. As a pilgrim people we may fail again and again, yet we continue the struggle to live and realize our calling to the discipleship of equals. As the discipleship of equals we are church, the ekklesia of wo/men.

What do I mean when I speak of the ekklesia of wo/men as a discipleship of equals? First of all, I do not mean a feminine/female or a wo/men's church that excludes men, and extols femininity, the ideology of the white lady. I also do not mean to argue for wo/men' s co-optation into the hierarchic structures of the Roman church. Rather, by naming the discipleship of equals as the "ekklesia of wo/men" I seek to articulate a radical democratic ethos. By adding wo/men to ekklesia I want to lift into consciousness that malestream church and society have been and still are exclusive of wo/men in positions of leadership and power.

To understand ekklesia as a discipleship of equals means to incarnate the vision and to realize the promise of the basileia, the commonweal or as Ada Maria Isasi Diaz calls it, the kindom of G*d. It means to articulate a vision of radical equality for creating a world of justice and well-being. It means to make real the vision of justice and salvation which Jesus, the prophet and incarnation of Divine Wisdom, has proclaimed. As the daughters and sons of Divine Wisdom we are made in Her image. We are equal.

As Her image we are ekklesia, the assembly of free adult citizens who have the right and duty to decide our own and our children's religious future. Ekklesia as the decision-making assembly of full citizens insists on the ancient Roman and medieval maxim: That which affects all should be determined by every one. (Or in Latin: quod omnes tangit, ab omnibus judicetur.) As the women's movement in the last century insisted: Without representation, no taxation! In and through our struggles for change and liberation the vision of the ekklesia of G*d's life-giving and transforming power becomes experiential reality in the midst of structural sin, in the midst of the death-dealing powers of oppression and dehumanization. As messengers and prophets of Divine Wisdom, we in the discipleship of equals are called to proclaim the good news of G*d's alternative world of justice and love. We do so by gathering around the Eucharistic table, and by inviting everyone without exception to it. The ekklesia of wo/men as the discipleship of equals realizes this vision of G*d's renewed creation by feeding the hungry, welcoming the stranger, healing the sick, cherishing the earth, and being in solidarity with those who are wronged by racism, nationalism, poverty, neo-colonialism, and hetero-sexism. The ekklesia of wo/men must be lived as a discipleship of equals.

What does the Greek word "ekklesia" actually mean? Ekklesia can be translated as assembly, gathering or congress of full citizens. In the Pauline literature the expression "ekklesia" is the very name for the Christian community. Hence, the best translation of "ekklesia" is not "church." Rather it must be understood in terms of the political notions of "public assembly" or "democratic congress of full decision- making citizens." The word "synagogue" has the same valence and means the "congregation of the people of God." The very self-description of the early Christian messianic communities gathered in the name of Jesus was a democratic one. Only when one realizes how fundamental this radical democratic spirit was to the self-understanding of the early Christian churches can one appreciate the break in Christian self-understanding that took place when the church adopted the administrative organizational structures of the Roman empire which were monarchical- hierarchical, when the church became Roman.

Ekklesia means democratic
It is ironic that in defense of these Roman imperial structures which crucified Jesus, the hierarchy has insisted, and still does, that the church is not a democratic community. Whereas in the last century the hierarchy defended monarchy as the governmental form willed by G*d for society, in this century papal encyclicals have advocated human rights and democratic freedoms in society but insisted that these do not apply to the church. For instance Pope Leo XIII at the end of the last century rejected all "modern liberties, " the freedom to worship, the separation of church and state, freedom of speech and the press, the liberty of teaching and the freedom of conscience because the people were, as he said, the "untutored multitude." While pope Leo recognized that there is true equality insofar as we are all children of God, he denied that there is any equality in society and culture. "The inequality of rights and of power proceeds from the very Author of nature, Ôfrom whom all paternity in heaven and earth is named.'" Leo pointed out that "the abilities of all are not equal, as one differs from another in the powers of mind or body, and there is much dissimilarity of manner, disposition and character." Hence, he argues, "it is most repugnant to reason to endeavor to confine all within the same measure and to extend complete equality to the institutions of civil life." Here difference is not understood as giftedness but construed as inequality. The difference between hierarchy and people, secular and religious, clergy and laity, is not a difference of gifts and leadership but a difference of status and subordination.

Although the word ekklesia is usually translated in English as "church," the English word "church" derives from the Greek word kyriake, i.e. belonging to the lord/ master/ father, not from the Greek term ekklesia. The translation process, which has transformed "ekklesia/congress" into "kyriake/ church," indicates an historical development that has privileged the monarchic form of church. This "Church" is characterized by hierarchical structures, represented by men, and divided into a sacred two-class system of the ordained and the laity. Hence, it cannot sufficiently be stressed that the expression laity/lay is not derived from the Greek laos -- the people, but from laikos, which characterizes someone as subordinate to the clergy. It means those who are uneducated and belong to the secular realm, those who have no power and status in the church, those who are not religious. Because of their gender wo/men are always laity. "Laywo/man" is a pejorative and derogatory term connoting second class citizenship. Hence we should refuse to use it without qualification. We must change our language habits. Who is the Church when we ask: what does the Church teach about women or about the laity?

Thus, the translation of the word ekklesia as church promotes two contradictory meanings. One derives from the patriarchal model of household and state in antiquity, which were governed by the lord/master/father of the house, to whom freeborn wo/men, freeborn dependents, clients, and workers as well as slaves, both women and men, were subordinated. The other meaning derives from the classical institution of democracy that promised in theory freedom and equality to all its citizens, but in practice granted citizen rights only to elite, propertied, educated male heads of household. Hence, the ekklesia of wo/men, understood as radical democratic community, has never been fully realized in history because neither the French nor the American democratic revolutions fought for wo/men and disenfranchised men to become fully empowered decision-making citizens. The struggles of the disenfranchised for full citizenship and civil rights in the past 300 years have sought to correct this injustice and to realize the vision of radical democratic equality.

Because of the elite male embodiment of ancient and modern democracies, one needs always to qualify ekklesia with wo/men if one wants to speak of radical democracy in church and society. This seeks to lift into consciousness that church, society, and religion are governed by elite men who have been exclusive of wo/men and other servant-people for centuries. Thus the notion of the "ekklesia of wo/men" is an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms. It seeks to enunciate a vision that connects wo/men's struggles in biblical religions with global, societal and political movements for justice, freedom, and equality.

The goal in qualifying and circumscribing "ekklesia" with the term "wo/men" is precisely to raise into public consciousness the fact that neither church nor society are what they claim to be: ekklesia, that is, the democratic congress of equal decision-making citizens who are women.

In the past decades Catholic wo/men have taken this vision of the discipleship of equals very seriously. We have consistently maintained that we must be acknowledged as human and ekklesial subjects with equal rights and dignity rather than remain objects of patriarchal theology and clerical governance. Nevertheless our call to conversion from ecclesiastical and societal patriarchy has generally been met with outright rejection or subtle co-optation. We have denounced the structural and personal sin of patriarchal sexism and have claimed our ekklesial dignity, rights and responsibilities. Yet those who advocate patriarchal restoration of church and theology continue to insist either on wo/men's exclusion from decision-making powers in the church or on our obedience to patriarchal teachings. The church understood as clerical-patriarchal hierarchy not only is exclusive of wo/men in leadership, but also requires a Lord/Master/Father- centered symbol system and language for legitimization.

The ethos of the ekklesia of wo/men has empowered Catholic women to resist the forces of domination, to continue our commitment to bring about not only a different church but also a different truly cosmopolitan society. We are well aware that those of us who do not live on the bottom of the capitalist pyramid of graduated oppressions are not only exploited by but also benefit from the structures of domination and servitude. Those of us who are privileged either by virtue of ordination, education, wealth, nationality, race, health, gender, sexual orientation or age have to use our privileges for bringing about change. A radical democratic spirituality requires a political-religious commitment not only to the struggle against sexism in church and society but also to those against racism, poverty, ageism, and capitalist colonialism, because they are structures of wo/men's oppression. They are structural sin.

Use of the term "wo/men"
You have listened patiently up to this point, but I am sure that some of you have silently accused me of feminist chauvinism and exclusivism because I seem to have restricted church and democracy to wo/men. Hence, I must hasten to explain how I use the term "wo/men". Whenever I mention "wo/men," I use it in the generic sense so as to include men, the word she as including he and female as including male. But you have all been socialized into a different language system. Whenever I say "wo/men," you do not hear it as an inclusive, generic term, because that goes against the linguistic grain of Western societies. It is well known that grammatically masculine language systems such as English (but also Greek and Latin) understand male terms as both generic and as gender specific. Wo/men therefore must always think at least twice, if not three times, in order to adjudicate whether we are meant or not by so-called "generic terms," such as "mankind," "brotherhood of man" or "the government of men."

By using the term "wo/men" as inclusive of men, I want to invite men to "think twice" and to adjudicate whether they are meant. This invites men to experience what it means not to be addressed explicitly. Since wo/men always must arbitrate whether they are meant or not, I consider it a good spiritual exercise --at least for the next hundred years or so -- for men to become as sophisticated as women and to learn how to engage in the same hermeneutical process! Changing language patterns is a very important step toward the realization of the new consciousness of radical equality, for the limits of our language are the limits of our world. If that is the case, then it is not surprising that the Vatican has torpedoed the inclusive translation of the lectionary and the catechism. Yet if the rules of the universal catechism are only addressed to the brethren, wo/men should insist that we are not bound by them. Hence wo/men are free to envision a different church based on those texts and traditions that do not exclude us.

The qualification of ekklesia with wo/men must also not be misunderstood in the sense that all wo/men are the same or have an essence in common that makes them different from men. Wo/men do not have a feminine essence in common; we are not just determined by gender, but also by race, class, ethnicity, culture, age, sexual preference, and religion. Identity is not stable, but changes over the course of time and in different situations. Hence, it becomes important to ask which wo/men come to mind when you hear me speaking about the ekklesia of wo/men. Are they right wing or feminist, black or white, native or foreign? Wo/men as much as men are socialized into the mindsets and world-views of the dominant culture. We are not able to envision a different future just because we are "wo/men." Hence the "ekklesia of wo/men" must not be misunderstood in the cultural terms of femininity as promoting the ideal of the White Lady.

Not only the notion of wo/men but also that of equality must be redefined. Equality is often understood in the sense in which Pope Leo XIII understood it. It is defined as sameness rather than as equal standing or equal citizenship. According to the common sense notion of equality for wo/men to become equal means that they have to become like men. Just as for blacks to become equal means they have to become like whites, or for the laity to become equal means that they have to become like clergymen. In this vision maleness, whiteness and clergy status are the standards of being human and Christian. As long as structures of domination and subordination exists, equality is only possible for those who are in the dominant position. The vision of the ekklesia of wo/men understood as a radical discipleship of equals compels us to question and change such structures of domination and to define equality differently.

Equality, not uniformity
One does not have to understand equality as sameness and uniformity. Rather equality can also mean status equivalence, equitability and parity on grounds of having diverse gifts and experiences. Diversity and difference do not diminish equality, but enhance it. In this understanding equality is closely aligned with justice. In a radical democratic vision equality means equal access, equal respect, equal rights, and equal well-being. It must be realized as political, economic, social, cultural, religious, ekklesial equality. It does not spell sameness but difference and heterogeneity, inclusivity and partnership, self-determination and alternating leadership rooted in different gifts of the Spirit.

In classic as well as modern patriarchal democracies, equality was restricted to elite, propertied, educated men who were heads of household. Modern democracy like its counterpart in antiquity excluded propertied and other freeborn wo/men as well as immigrant, poor, slave and indigenous wo/men and men from democratic rights and privileges. Property and elite male status by birth and education, not simply biological-cultural masculinity, entitled one to participate in the government of the few over the many. Modern emancipatory struggles for equal rights have tended to focus on voting rights and civil rights, but often did not question patriarchal stratifications that continue to determine modern democracies. Consequently, they have often only made the democratic circle coextensive with the patriarchal pyramid, thereby reinforcing the contradiction between democratic vision and practices of domination and exploitation. The same thing has happened in our church.

This political, philosophical and religious rhetoric of domination and natural differences has served to exclude those "other" than white, elite, propertied, Euro-centric Man from democratic government, active citizenship and equal rights. White elite privileged men have not only defined elite white wo/men as the Other but also subordinated peoples, classes and races, exploiting them under the guise of modern Western civilization. This ultimately anti-democratic Western ethos of domination and exploitation found its way into Christian Scriptures and Theology and is reproduced in modern political science. This ethos of control and domination founds the Vatican's rejection of democratic practices in the church and its fear of wo/men's ordination. The Vatican bureaucracy continues to cling to such monarchical anti-democratic notions of church that insist on sacred male status hierarchies.

Insofar as Vatican II elaborated the collegial and familial kinship (brotherhood) dimension of the church, it sought to transform this antidemocratic monarchical model of the Vatican I church. In accordance with the Scriptures the Council stressed the priesthood of all believers and stated with reference to Gal 3:28 in Lumen Gentium 32:

By divine institution Holy Church is structured and governed with a wonderful diversity... There is in Christ and in the church no inequality on the basis of race or nationality, social condition or sex.... And if by the will of Christ some are made teachers, dispensers of mysteries, and shepherds on behalf of others, yet all share a true equality with regard to the dignity and activity common to all the faithful for the building up of the Body of Christ... For the distinction which the Lord made between sacred ministers and the rest of the people of God entails a unifying purpose, since pastors and the other faithful are bound to each other by a mutual need...This very diversity of graces, ministries and works gathers the children of God into one, because "all these things are the work of one and the same Spirit"(1 Cor 12:11).

This vision of a pluralistic, multivoiced church was an outcome of heated debate. In the words of Avery Dulles, Lumen Gentium was "hammered into shape on the anvil of vigorous controversy..." Nevertheless, the Council proposed its teachings without anathema and condemnation, oriented the church's mission towards the needs of the world, and emphasized that the church is the pilgrim people of G*d "made up of sinful people [men (sic)]" in constant need of purification and renewal.

Instead of beginning with the hierarchy and the structures of governance, the Council started with the notion of the church as the people of G*d. It asserted that other Christian churches with different institutional structures are "ecclesial" communities. It defined the function of ecclesial office as service rather than as domination and authoritarian governance. It sought to redefine church leadership by using the expression "ecclesiastical ministry" rather than hierarchy. Whereas the Council of Trent taught that ecclesial ministry consists of the hierarchy of bishops, priests and deacons, Vatican II teaches that ecclesial ministry is exercised in these different orders. This implies that it also can be, and is, exercised otherwise.

Structural reform unfinished
Yet the Council fathers did not engage in a serious historical and institutional analysis and critique of church structures. The lack of such a critical institutional analysis should prove to be one of the most detrimental legacies and unfinished businesses of the Council. As O'Wedel and other Protestant respondents to the Council documents very early on have observed: "A Protestant misses here a stronger emphasis on a share (of the so-called laity) in the actual government of the church. This may be an area where the Catholic Church will have to gradually make some changes." This is our struggle today.

The present backlash is impelled by the refusal of the Vatican either to initiate or to endorse such structural changes. As Patrick Carey has pointed out: "Even with the communal and collegial theology of the post-Vatican II era, the Catholic Church has failed to provide instruments that must take the lay voice seriously in parish and diocesan decision making. The laity's voice is purely consultative and contributes effectively only when the clergy and bishops are open to such consultation." No longer anything about the need for such consultation.

Despite the lack of structural institutional changes, Catholic churches all around the world have sought to translate the vision of Vatican II into ekklesial praxis. In many parts of the world the Roman Catholic Church has become in the past 30 years no longer Roman. It has become a force for social justice, radical democracy and global peace. It has moved from a form of Eurocentric, Roman-imperial Catholicism to a pluralistic actualization of World Catholicism that seeks to utilize the gifts and talents of all its people. Yet these developments have not been welcomed and nurtured by the bureaucratic center of the Roman church, the Vatican, and the well-financed troops of the Catholic Right. Rather, they are feared and perceived as spinning "out of control." In the past decade or so leading theologians, bishops and sisters have been silenced and have lost their ecclesial standing because they acted in the spirit of the Council. The late Penny Lernoux has aptly summed up this struggle over the self-understanding of church in Roman Catholicism: "At stake are two different visions of faith: the church of Caesar, powerful and rich, and the church of Christ, loving, poor, and spiritually rich."

The Council interrupted and was believed to have ended for good the regime of silencing and condemnation. The intellectual freedom promised by Vatican II is summed up in the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World. After having expressed the hope that many of the so-called laity would be schooled in the sacred sciences, the document insists: "In order that such persons may fulfill their proper functions, let it be recognized that all the faithful, clerical and lay, possess a lawful freedom of inquiry and of thought, and the freedom to express their minds humbly and courageously about those matters in which they enjoy competence."

This spirit of open inquiry and freedom of speech, which was praised and advocated by the Council, promised that all totalitarian measures of silencing and inquisition were a matter of the past -- or so we thought at the time. Yet, almost 40 years later, we seem to have come full circle. To illustrate my point: in 1984 when I had to make the decision to move from a professorship at a Roman Catholic university to a Protestant Divinity School, a Catholic colleague encouraged me to do so. He argued that in the foreseeable future, "good" -- that is, intellectually creditable and responsible -- Catholic theology could be done only at non-Catholic institutions. Unfortunately, Rome has proven him right again and again in the past decade.

The Vatican's criteria for "faithful submission of will and intellect" increasingly center on the ordination of wo/men and the legitimization of male office only. Although the Council documents are full of androcentric language, Catholic wo/men have taken its vision very seriously and have read its texts in a generic way as applying to ourselves. While we have denounced the structural and personal sin of patriarchal sexism and have claimed our ekklesial gifts and rights, those who advocate restoration of the pre-Vatican II model of church have appealed to the maleness of Christ, to essential gender differences, and to the Scriptural texts of subordination. They have done so in order to legitimate church practices and structures that exclude from sacramental, doctrinal, and governing power all wo/men and those men who are associated with wo/men. For the clerical-patriarchal hierarchy not only is exclusive of wo/men in leadership positions but also establishes itself as a "woman-free" zone through mandatory celibacy.

Under threat of heavy censure and punishment the recent Papal letter "Ad Tuendam Fidem" of June 30, 1998 seeks to eliminate the remnants of "the lawful freedom of inquiry and of thought and the freedom to express it" that still exist in Catholic institutions. Examples given for the authoritative teachings of the Magisterium, which may not be questioned, are the prohibition of euthanasia and of prostitution, and especially the exclusion of wo/men from ordination. It is obvious that this most recent papal decree attempts to silence wo/men's claim to full membership in the church once and for all. This reminds one of Dostoyevski's Grand Inquisitor who must silence Jesus because of his own fear and lack of faith. This politics of silencing rather than dialogue is a far cry from the confidence and vision of Pope John XXIII who initiated Vatican II in order to call the church to aggiornamento -- engagement and dialogue.

The language of the Inquisition threatening penalization and expulsion from the church which was rejected by Vatican II is at work again in this "Apostolic Letter" and elsewhere. While the pope apologizes for the killing of witches several hundred years ago, the Vatican uses the same measures of silencing and exclusion against wo/men today. Luckily, the Vatican State no longer has the power to burn us as witches and heretics at the stake! We must not forget, however, that we hold the power of the people. If we refuse consent to dominative teachings, the Vatican bureaucracy loses its power of control. Since the ecclesiastical leadership has no longer the power of the state, but only the power of persuasion in the Spirit, it has only as much power and authority as we, the faithful, grant to it. Without obedience rules have no force. Without us, the people of G*d, there is no church.

Both models of church, that of submission and subordination characteristic of Roman imperialism and that of the pilgrim people of G*d richly gifted in the power of Spirit-Sophia, are inscribed in Scripture and embedded in tradition. In this struggle over the future of the Catholic church understood either as a discipleship of equals or as the embodiment of the "Grand Inquisition," we the people have an important role to play.

We the people must continue to exercise our responsibility as the people of G*d by calling the malestream church to conversion. Like the early Christians we must continue to fashion and build ekklesial communities that are not governed by control and subordination and obedience but realize the freedom of the children of G*d. We must celebrate and appreciate all the gifts of the Spirit that are given to us for the building up of the community. We must learn not to pay too much attention to those who would treat us as wayward children when we speak and act in the freedom and equality of the children of G*d. We must have compassion with the Grand Inquisitors who are driven by fear rather than by faith.

If our diverse struggles for equality, dignity, and well-being in society and church continue, this radical democratic Catholic tradition, the ekklesia of wo/men as a discipleship of equals, becomes an ever-expanding reality. Struggle is indeed a name for hope. We are not alone in our struggles for a radical democratic church and world. A "great cloud of witnesses" surrounds us and has preceded us throughout the centuries in the discipleship of equals.

Divine Wisdom has brought us to this time and place. She has accompanied us in times when we were tempted to give up the struggle in despair. She has sustained us in the face of repression. This radical egalitarian spiritual vision and hope for a different society and church of justice, equality, and well-being does not turn us into idealistic dreamers, but gathers the ekklesia of wo/men as a discipleship of equals, -- a movement of those who have come together to make the dream of a radical democratic church come true.


FOOTNOTES
¹ Schüssler Fiorenza explains this spelling: "In this way I seek to indicate the brokenness, ambiguity and indeterminacy of human G*d language."


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