Bishop Jane Kryzanoswski, Roman Catholic Women Priests Canada, Regina, SK

My original intention for this message was to share some thoughts on Advent as we have now entered into this Sacred Season. Last night I was astounded to read the latest interview with Pope Francis which was published in America Magazine in which he attempts to justify the exclusion of women from ordained ministry. My focus shifted. I could hardly believe what I was reading.

By appealing to a dichotomy between the “Petrine principle” and “Marian principle” a fictious segregation of men and women is created. The Petrine principle upholds the long-stated position that only men can serve as priests. The Marian principle, which Pope Francis admits is still in need of a developed theology, places women in a subordinate role. The appeal to medieval spousal imagery of an active-receptive relationship disregards the fundamental message of the Gospel and contradicts our baptismal oneness in Christ. “. . . there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28) Baptism rests on faith, not on gender, nor nationality, nor other forms of discrimination.

It was my hope, like that of many others, that the invitation to participate in the Synod process would provide the opportunity to explore together the visions and viewpoints of all those seeking a big tent church, where all would be welcomed and accepted in the fullness of the gifts they have been given. This attempt to justify the exclusion of women from ordination and pigeonholing them again by the men of the church is disheartening.

Would that Pope Francis meet with women who are called to ordination. If he needs to develop a theology of women and their role in the church, who better to help him?

Coming back to Advent

In cosmology, the deepening darkness of the Autumn days invites us to intensify our attentiveness and awareness of longing for the turning of the solstice, the tipping point where days no longer shorten and nights lengthen, but ever so, almost imperceptibly, days begin to lengthen, holding out the promise of the dawning of a new day.

We are invited to use this time of waiting as a time to clear the lens of our cultural and religious conditioning and know Christ through the eyes of enlightened hearts – as more than a gendered person in history, but a present reality, a living experience in our everyday lives.

As a current-day prophet, Ilia Delio calls us out of the wilderness: “Christ is more than Jesus. Christ is the communion of divine personal love expressed in every created form of reality – every star, leaf, bird, fish, tree, rabbit, and every human person. Everything is Christified because everything expresses divine love incarnate.

“… We cannot know this mystery of Christ as a doctrine or an idea; it is the root reality of all existence. Hence we must travel inward, into the interior depth of the soul where the field of divine love is expressed in the ‘thisness’ of our own, particular lives.
Each of us is a little word of the Word of God, a mini-incarnation of divine love. The journey inward requires . . . surrender of our partial lives to become whole in the love of God. . . . [T]hen we can open our eyes to see that the Christ in me is the Christ in you.” (Center for Christogenesis blogpost, October 16, 2017)

This is my Advent prayer. Would that this be part of the foundational theology of priesthood.+Jane

[Jane Kryzanowski, Regina, SK is bishop for RCWP Canada]