Praying for Women

As I have indicated many times - I am not a real Catholic. I have journeyed a very circuitous route, via the Charismatic Movement, where we munched on "Love Buns" - to Liberation Theology, in the midst of which I once consecrated Coca-Cola.

It caused severe trauma amongst the theological students at what was then St Paul's College. They rushed out of the Mass, tears of Catholic righteousness streaming down their cheeks and badly in need of counselling.

The point I was making was a fairly simple one. The party drink in Jesus day was wine. The party drink in our day is probably, more universally, Coca-Cola. Wine, quickly came to symbolise blood in the Christian church. In our day, it is not difficult to see Coca-Cola, and all it stands for, as somewhat bloody.

In my defence, I tried to explain that in huge swathes of the Christian Church, alchohol is not used, and where it is and grapes are not available, other means are used, such as rice wine, or pineapple wine etc etc. But I was dealing with delicate theological minds, who could not see past the dog-collars they were so desperately begging for.

So, after being hauled before bishops, archbishops and the entire court of heaven, I was ecclestastically slapped on the wrist. Needless to say, I have never lived the matter down. The church has an exceedingly long memory, for certain things (and an exceedingly short one, for others!)

Now I mention this, because it was about this kind of time that the "debate" about whether or not you needed to have a penis to consecrate bread and wine became fierce within the Anglican Church. And it was about then, that I met feminism, both theologically and otherwise, for the first time.

My encounter with feminism was much the same experience as meeting Black Consciousness, for the first time, when I, along with another white colleague, was forcibly removed from a meeting. It was a damn good lesson - and one for which I will be forever grateful. The message was pretty unambiguous. It was this: "Just shut up! If you want to learn anything - then just shut up!"

And the feminists told me much the same. "Don't call yourself a feminist", they said, "You are a man - so just shut up".

Now this morning I was sitting quietly in church. It was this rather peculiar Feast of the church called the "Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary". I won't go into the details of what that all means - (even if I thought I knew) - but obviously, Mary was very high on the agenda of the worship. And during the prayers, the man leading them gave thanks to God for "women", for their "ministry" - for things like their love and their care and their this and their that. I found it galling.

This is, after all, a church which never has had and (chances are good), probably never will have, a woman as a priest. Women seem not to be allowed as servers, or sub-deacons or anything else up front, except in the chior. I note also that women are allowed to bring up the collection and elements of bread and wine.

So, when we pray for them, it is basically in their role as tea-makers and equivalent. Not in their role as leaders of nations; of Bishops and Archbishops; of surgeons and nuclear physicists, no! The tone of our prayer relegates them to what is quite simply a second-rate place. Then what we do is, we cloud that all in mystery and glory and wonder in our adoration of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

But it is a hoax!It is a complete hoax. What we are doing is patronising them - and calling it adoration. It is a clever thing we do, us men.

If I were a woman, sitting in that service this morning, I would have been profoundly irritated - no, I would have been disturbed and I would have been angry.

I am extremely glad I am not a woman, much the same as I am extremely glad I wasn't born black. Because life, really, would be a whole different ball game, if I were. That is one of the things I know for sure...

Incidently, I find what happens on "Women's day" - our South African nod in the direction of women generally as a nation, on 09 August each year, to suffer from much of the same problems. The difference between "celebrating" women, once a year and having women as equal in all respects to men - is vast.

Journeying for Justice - Stories of an ongoing faith-based struggle

Journeying for Justice – Stories of an ongoing faith-based struggle”, compiled by the PACSA 30th anniversary Collective, Cluster Publications and Jive Media, Pietermaritzburg, 2009, 144pp
It is undoubtedly the case that the Pietermaritzburg Agency for Christian Social Awareness (PACSA) was, and perhaps still is, a highly significant organisation, in the life of Pietermaritzburg and the surrounding areas of that city. The book correctly locates the beginnings of the organisation within the context of a developing Black Consciousness ideology in the 1970s. The major premise on which it was formed was to start a white organisation, which would set about “converting” white people – or rather to win them over to a more democratic frame of political consciousness.

Now, whether it actually ever really did that, is difficult to tell. The book does not deal with the question directly, but rather suggests that although that may have been the impetus for its beginnings as an organisation, it soon found itself pulled into the whirlpool of broader political involvement in the late 1970’s and 1980’s.

At the same time, the book (and I would understand here that the book comes from the organisation itself) also seems to give the impression that the issue of white “conversion” was so vast and so impossible a task, that perhaps it would be true to say that not even PACSA itself believed that achieving this was ever a real possibility – certainly not to the extent which would have been needed to change the outcome of a whites only election.

What happened, and what is engagingly documented in the book, is a range of information dissemination - “Factsheets” - which provided white people (and indeed anyone else) with the kind of information they would not get easily elsewhere (because of draconian government restrictions at the time, on the media).

Another way in which PACSA sought to create solidarity around the cause of liberation was through “Agape” (fellowship) meals. These were Ecumenical quasi-Eucharistic events in which like-minded people could come together to affirm each other and to share bread and drink in a meal of fellowship. These, apparently died away after a while – but their significance in creating a committed community of like-minded and mutually supported individuals seems hard to overestimate.

Having lived in Pietermaritzburg during the 1980’s and early 1990’s, I knew many of the personalities featured in this book. I never involved myself very directly in the work of PACSA, because I was, in fact, working underground for the African National Congress. And this was the problem: For me to have been an active member of PACSA would have unnecessarily exposed the work I was doing elsewhere to the security police, so I could not. Pietermaritzburg was, however, an extremely small place and whites involved in the struggle at any level were few and far between – so we all knew each other fairly well – and I am sure the security police knew all of us too!

This is one of the features of the organisation which the book does not deal with adequately, in my opinion. I suppose it is understandable in what amounts to a commemorative publication. But the fact is, PACSA also had its problems. It was a small organisation. Its connection to the liberation movements was somewhat idiosyncratic at times. It was, or at least appeared to be, a church organisation, but it seemed to operate almost like a political organisation – taking orders from no-one. This made it fairly unpredictable on the one hand and on the other, sometimes much too close to some of the highly problematic positions taken by the Heads of Churches , at the time.

Let me say immediately that Peter Kerchhoff, founder and major driver of PACSA between 1978-99, was a man I admire greatly. I have said so elsewhere and I have no hesitation in saying so again now. But he did not function politically. He functioned, 99% of the time, from his heart. And that could be extremely difficult, every now and again, from a political perspective.

This aspect, the book does not deal with. It is, of course, part of the bigger issue of the relationship between the Church as a whole and the struggle for liberation. That there was a relationship, is obvious. That the Liberation movements needed the Church, is also obvious. What is not so obvious is how timid the Liberation movements were in the presence of the churches, on the one hand, and how difficult it was, from within the Liberation movements to work with them, because of their almost total lack of strategy and accountability. PACSA seems to me to have fallen, frequently, between these two stools of church accountability and political responsibility.

Bar that point – and I would say it is a fairly significant point – the book is well worth having, if one is either interested in the period, of if you lived through it. It certainly brings us now, to a point of anamnēsis - “remembering”. A remembering beyond nostalgia. A remembering which takes the lessons of the past to be used in the present, in order to change the future. PACSA certainly did that when I was living in Pietermaritzburg. I understand that it continued to do so on a range of issues, including Land and Gender, after I had left. I have no doubt it will continue into the future.

The question for me is always going to be – to what extent is an organisation an extension of the Church, sometimes at its most difficult and its most reactionary and to what extent is PACSA prophetic to both Church and society. Because I am fairly certain the latter is what the organisation wants to be.

Which makes me wonder why such an important issue was, seemingly, avoided in this book.