A very insightful question appears today, In Today's News: "Guadium et Spes 29 states that it is contrary to God's will to deny a woman a state of life based on gender alone.
Why was it a sin in the 1950's or 1960's to tell a woman qualified to be a doctor that she can be a nurse instead, since only men should be doctors, but it is not a sin today to tell a woman she can be nun, but not a priest?"
This is a good question, and though part of a long controversy, and so rife with potential misconstrual, it is worthy of consideration.
All of us should be very careful when discussing sin. I'm sure that the Catechism has an informed opinion about this which may be more full than mine at the moment, but sin has two components that should cause us to tremble, especially when we are engaged is a discussion about it. Sin is the state of offence against God; and sin is an intention. These two aspects of sin are what make it important; one because it effects a relationship with God, and the other because it suggests our ability to choose, to wish, to intend in the context of that relationship.
An action or an attitude may be sinful. Sin may be what was once commonly known as an occasion of sin. Such an action, or attitude may be simply wrong, hateful, hurtful, destructive. The people involved (inmatrixed) in the action / attitude may be its victims, not merely its perpretrators. An individual may reject sin, but still be surrounded by it. Sin happens, and in this vein you or I can easily find ourselves enmeshed in sin, or overcome by sin. Another thing about sin is that is does not participate in that virtue we call TRUTH.
We not only exist in a matrix of sin, its victims, we also on occasion actively commit sin, intend an untruth, a harm against someone or our selves.
This is a great mystery. I lack the depth of intellect and spirit to probe it.
When Joe asks was it a sin to tell a woman on the 1950's that she should become a nurse, because women cannot become Doctors. My answer is yes, it was sin. Women can become Doctors, so women who are qualified to try, should be allowed, encouraged to try to become Doctors. Society believed that it was not seemly, not profitable, not acceptable, and therefore not possible for women to become Doctors. That widely held assumption, that common sense point of view seemed true, but was not TRUE. The world was caught up in the lie that women cannot become Doctors. Hundreds of thousands of people of very good heart lived that lie, spread that lie, because they thought that it was TRUE. In a certain practical sense it was true, because we allowed a lie to masquerade as TRUTH. It is exactly here that an offense against God occurs. When we allow a lie to stand as a truth we participate in an offence against God, who is TRUTH itself.
It was a sin to discourage women from becoming Doctors in the past. The sin was individual, but it was also diffuse, part of the accepted matrix in which people lived out their lives. They did not know this discouragement to be SIN. Many may have intended only good for their daughters, sisters, wives, when they reminded them of the commonplace reality that women cannot be Doctors.
Bernard Lonergan speaks at great length about this when he describes the corruptive power of the big lie, or what he calls the scotoma, or social surd. Something has become part of our common sense world, and we accept something as TRUE that is NOT true.
This brings us to the great moral and intellectual challenge of our time (every time, really). We have to have the courage to revisit the matrix of our social and interior existence and ask what is true and what is not. What acknowledges God, and what rejects God; what seeks truth and what despises truth. The Truth is there for us to find, but we will have to do a great deal of hard work to discover it.
Can a woman be a Doctor? Yes! Can a woman be a Priest? Maybe. We have to have the courage to ask the question. But asking the question is not enough! And, the answer that we want is not enough. Only the TRUTH will do. Lonergan teaches us that we have to have the courage and commitment to examine the matrix of our lives in order to discover the TRUE, that is there. And, to build an ever new matrix with the TRUE. We have to be prepared to put aside what is untrue, and to accept what is. We may to have to put aside the comfortable and embrace the challenging.
In this context, it may be TRUE that a woman can be a Priest, but it may also be that a woman cannot. The truth, here, is what matters, not the priesting of either men or women.
We need to approach this question carefully. Because we first began these present musings in the context of the question of sin. When you begin to look for sin, you will be rapidly surprised at just how pervasive it may be. Remember, practical people, loving people, good people trapped in the lie that Women cannot become Doctors, discouraged their daughters, wives, sisters from Medical School.
We must seek the Truth.
