On the Ethical Nature of Priesthood

This article argues that ministerial priesthood, rather than being ontologically comprehended, should be ethically articulated. The 'character' of priesthood is to be 'for-the-other.' Following a thought of Emmanuel Levinas on the 'liturgical orientation of work,' we argue that
(i) — Priesthood is essentially liturgical, in the sense of a movement out of oneself towards the other which never returns to the self. This movement is at one and the same time on orientation towards God, as divine other, and the other person. This 'liturgical' orientation of the self is seen and celebrated in the sacred liturgy of the Church with which the life and ministry of the priest is intimately associated. In this sense, the liturgy of the Church is not only an expression of what the Church is, but also, as an expression of the ethical subjectivity of the self which is 'the-Other-in-me,' a celebration of who I am.
(ii) — Priesthood is essentially eucharistic. In the commemoration of the passion, death and resurrection of Christ, the ethical and ecclesial structure of subjectivity, is recalled and realised in the words 'for you (hyper hymon)' and 'for all (hyper pollon).'
(iii) — Priesthood is self-sacrificial. If living eucharistically is living 'for you (hyper hymon)' and 'for all (hyper pollon),' then this finds its extreme expression in the sacrifice of oneself for-the-other in suffering and death. This involves substitution which, as Levinas says, 'is indispensable to the comprehension of subjectivity.'     

Honoring the duallium: disability,environmental ethics,and the implicit religion of gardening

In recent years, the pilgrimage shrine of La Sainte-Baume has attracted an increasing number of non-Catholic pilgrims influenced by the ‘New Age’ and the Neopagan movement. These pilgrims consider Mary Magdalene as a sort of female counterpart of Jesus and the mountain of La Sainte-Baume, where according to a Christian legend she spent the last part of her life, as a ‘power place’ charged with ‘healing energy’. Based on 3 years of field work among Mary Magdalene pilgrims and drawing on Tanya Luhrmann's idea of ‘interpretive drift’ (1989), the essay describes the way in which these pilgrims gradually shift from their previous Christian background towards what they generally identify as ‘spirituality’. The pilgrims reconceptualise La Sainte-Baume and its saint, and make their own a shrine they feel was misappropriated and unjustly monopolised by the ‘Church’.     

Priesthood and the Epistle to the Hebrews

Current controversies about the ordination of women have shown the need for a re-examination of what the Christian Church means by priesthood. This article looks at the Epistle to the Hebrews' contribution to our understanding. To that end it focuses on the institution of priesthood in its first-century Jewish context and shows the use made of it by the author of Hebrews in his presentation of Christian faith.
Section 1 emphasizes some all-important differences between the NT's use of the language of priesthood and ours. Not least, it nowhere uses "priest" to designate Christian ministers. All the more striking, therefore, is Hebrews' depiction of Jesus as "high priest".
Section 2 discusses Judaism' Day of Atonement ceremonies – Hebrews' dominant cultic model. In the comparison drawn between Christ's death and exaltation with these rites, he becomes not only the high priest but also the expiatory victim.
As far as Judaism' cultic institutions are concerned, however, Jesus was not and never could be a priest, since he was of the tribe of Judah rather than Levi. Hence Hebrews appeals to Melchizedek. How this non-Israelite model is used by Hebrews to subvert the whole notion of priesthood as caste is discussed in section 3.
Finally, in section 4 Isaacs concludes that for Hebrews there is no longer a role for an ongoing priesthood, since Jesus has definitively achieved access to God, which was its raison d'être . Melchizedekian high priesthood is unique to Christ; neither inherited nor transmitted. Hence, unlike other NT authors, for Hebrews even the church as a corporate body is not a priesthood. As its closing chapters show, in this Epistle the cultic model gives way to the more inclusive one of pilgrimage.     

Liberal vs Radical Feminism Revisited

ABSTRACT This essay considers the movement away from a feminism based upon liberal political principles, such as John Stuart Mill espoused, and towards a radical feminism which seeks to build upon more recent explorations of psychology, biology and sexuality. It argues that some of these moves are philosophically suspect and that liberal feminism can accommodate the more substantial elements in these radical lines of thought.     

On grounding superadded properties in Locke

ABSTRACT

Scholars have employed three interpretive strategies to explain how Locke understands the metaphysical relationship between a superadded property and the material body to which it is affixed. The first is the mechanist strategy advanced by Michael Ayers and Edwin McCann. It argues that the mechanical affections of a given body are causally responsible for the operation of superadded powers. The second is the extrinsic strategy found in Mathew Stuart. It argues that Locke, who rejects mechanism, does not intend to ground superadded properties in the mechanical affections of material bodies. The third is the essentialist strategy developed by Lisa Downing. It argues that Locke, who does not adhere to mechanism, nevertheless intends to ground superadded properties in the real constitutions of their bearers. However, according to Downing, what grounds superadded properties are the nonmechanical affections of material bodies. My aim in this paper is to expand and strengthen the case for the extrinsic reading. I argue that what is recommended by Locke's writings on this topic is a thoroughly extrinsic interpretation according to which superaddition pertains exclusively to those properties for which no possible arrangement of mechanical or nonmechanical affections is causally sufficient.     

Bartolomé Carranza de Miranda's ‘Little Treatise on how to attend Mass‘ (1555): A Translation

Abstract

Presented here is the first English and annotated translation of the Spanish sermon on congregational participation in the Mass delivered by the Dominican Friar, Bartolomé Carranza. It was originally preached at Whitehall, in the first week of Lent, 1555, before King Philip I and Queen Mary I of England. The text was subsequently written down by the preacher at the request of one of those present, the Duke of Medinaceli, and published in Salamanca and Antwerp. After a lengthy historical introduction, bolstered by quotations from Scripture, papal and conciliar documents, as well as from the writings of patristic and medieval theologians, the text is divided into three parts, which reflect the phases of the liturgy. The first covers the service from the entrance of the celebrating priest to the Preface of the Canon of the Mass; the second continues up to the recitation of the Lord's Prayer, and the third discusses the conclusion of the Mass. Then follows a short guide to help worshippers unfamiliar with Latin to participate as fully as possible in the service. Carranza rejects the medieval practice of bringing private prayer books to church for use during Mass, and instead urges full participation, as far as the rubrics of the liturgy permit, in the activity of the priest and his assistants at the altar. He also expresses a preference for frequent communion by the laity, which some Catholic reformers were advocating in the mid-sixteenth century. Although first preached in England, the published text was evidently as much directed at the Spanish market, where the writer evidently hoped that a reform of Catholic practice would help stave off Protestantism as well.     

Mary Magdalene: Lover of the Dying and Resurrecting God-Man

Like Isis, Ishtar, and Inanna, Mary Magdalene mourns the death of the god she loves, and when he resurrects, she celebrates his renewal. Through her intense feeling experience of personal and spiritual love, she represents the feminine side of the death and resurrection phenomenon that plays a realizing role in the humanization of the god-image and likewise of individuation.

Although the Judeo-Christian fathers excluded any sign in their orthodoxy that Yahweh and Christ may have had love partners, archeological evidence and Gnostic texts point to the possibility that they did. In our era, with the psychological perspective that C. G. Jung heralded, we can reconsider and integrate the role of the Eros principle that was split off from our god-image, concretized, and banned along with the “evil” of the flesh.

The emergence of Mary Magdalene in popular culture as the “Holy Grail” or vessel of Christ's child reflects the intense yearning in the psyche for the feminine principle to participate in the continuing incarnation of the god-image, and for the divine feminine–masculine partnership to realize itself in personal, human experience.     

Impacting Awareness of Child Abuse through a Spiritually Based Performing Arts Project

Using indigenous religious folklore images, a folk opera explored issues of child abuse, sexual assault and violence through a psychologically fictionalized character of Mary Magdalene. Befriended by an understanding Mary, Mary Magdalene is healed of her childhood ‘wounds through a religious conversion after almost refusing to encounter Jesus. Six hundred secondary students attended three daytime performances and 486 returned a Likert‐scaled questionnaire. The results indicated that most students perceived abuse as a personally relevant social problem, with this felt relevance increasing with age. Significant trends supported initial expectations that the play may help increase community and personal awareness of child abuse and sexual assault and that the play may also help increase a personal and community interest and effort toward helping others. Perplexing differences in school responses suggest that the schools in which prior discussion occurred may have led to students gaining more social insight and benefit from the play, although some of these same schools also tended to reject the personal relevance of the play. The latter may indicate community risk factors contributing to denial. More Hispanics responded positively to the sense of benefit, which may reflect the fact that there is a Hispanic Catholic majority in the community that sponsored the play itself. Overall, the findings suggest that performing arts can help increase awareness of child abuse as well as personal and community interest in helping and that this benefit increases with teacher discussion and age. In spite of procedural deprivations, the authors felt it was a relatively rare and useful effort to collect some data, hopefully to inspire more social scientists with more resources to consider collaborating with socially and spiritually meaningful fine arts productions in order to document scientifically the impact of the arts on human attitudes and behaviour. The reader's tolerance for the obvious limitations of investigation are requested and appreciated. A discussion of psychospiritual models of creativity and healing concludes the paper.     

The Priesthood of No Believer: On the Priesthood of Christ and his Church

This article seeks to begin to rebalance the relative neglect over the past fifty years of the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers, a doctrine which is central to non‐episcopal forms of Protestantism. However, in so doing, the article seeks to offer a corrective to traditional accounts of the doctrine. Critiquing the tendency for the priesthood of all believers to enter discussion in relation to ecclesial polity rather than more fundamental theological concerns, the article advocates that the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers needs to be considered theologically in terms of what it says about the nature of the church, not the polity of the patterns of its ministry. The article traces the evolution of the idea of priesthood through the Levitical priesthood and New Testament to the early church. It then considers the recovery of the idea of priesthood belonging to the whole church at the Reformation; but argues that even here the magisterial Reformers' ecclesial‐political setting determines that they largely treat the priesthood of all believers as a negative doctrine about church order, and, indeed, that the relation of the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers to issues of ecclesial polity and governance continues in contemporary ecclesiological discussion. This is to the detriment of the positive theological content that identifying the church as a priesthood might offer. Thus, the concluding section of this article sketches what positive theological content might be provided in speaking of the church as a priesthood.     

The Psychological Processes of Discerning the Vocation to the Catholic Priesthood: A Qualitative Study

This study explores the psychological process of discerning the vocation to the Catholic priesthood. Grounded theory, a qualitative research methodology, was used to uncover the meaning and essence of the psychological processes of discerning the vocation to the Catholic priesthood. Five themes emerged from the data paralleling other developmental theories. Presently, assessment work follows similar patterns used in vocational testing in relation to any career. Based on the findings of this research, another facet of psychological assessment in regards to developing a sense of self may be beneficial in understanding a man’s readiness to serve the Catholic Church as a priest.     

Topographies of Flesh: Women,Nonhuman Animals,and the Embodiment of Connection and Difference

Because of risks of essentialism and homogenization, feminist theorists frequently avoid making precise ontological claims, especially in regard to specifying bodily connections and differences among women. However well‐intentioned, this trend may actually run counter to the spirit of intersectionality by shifting feminists' attention away from embodiment, fostering oppressor‐centric theories, and obscuring privilege within feminism. What feminism needs is not to turn from ontological specificity altogether, but to engage a new kind of ontological project that can account for the material complexity of social space in the twenty‐first century. Taking inspiration from the phenomenological concept of flesh as well as ecofeminism and María Lugones's theory of the colonial/modern gender system, this essay argues that our own flesh is related to that of others through lines of intercorporeal relations that collectively form topographies of flesh. When we attend to those material relationships present in a particular locality at a point in time, we are able to recognize topographical aggregates of beings that can serve as a basis for this new feminist ontology. An example from Toni Morrison's Beloved involving a human woman and a nonhuman one is used as a paradigm for thinking ontological connection and difference at the same time.     

John Knox: Gynaecocracy, ‘The Monstrous Empire of Women’

Abstract

This paper aims at providing a critical reading of John Knox's views on female monarchs, based on his writings, correspondence and interviews with contemporary queens, namely Mary of Guise and her daughter, Mary Stewart, of Scotland, and Elizabeth I, of England, highlighting Knox's religious thought and the political implications of his antigynaecocratic doctrines. From Knox's reasonings with the British queens, one can to some extent perceive his putting into practice the theories of resistance to political authority he formulated during his exile in Geneva, as expressed in the tracts and correspondence addressed to his British friends and proselytes. By the analysis of Knox's antagonistic views on the regiment of women, solidly grounded on the Holy Scriptures, namely the Old Testament, and on long-established tradition—classical, canonical and patristic—, one is made aware of his unwavering faith and indefatigable struggle for the Reformation of the Church, both in Scotland and in England.     

TWO NEGLECTED CLASSICS OF COMPARATIVE ETHICS

Mary Douglas's Purity and Danger and Herbert Fingarette's Confucius: The Secular as Sacred have had a continuous impact on cultural anthropology and the study of ancient Chinese thought, respectively, but neither has typically been read as a contribution to comparative religious ethics. This paper argues that both books developed from profound dissatisfaction with the empiricist presuppositions that dominated their fields into the 1970s and that both should be associated with the revival of American pragmatism that is currently driving a reinterpretation of ethics as a social practice embedded in historically contingent discourse about agency, virtue, and social organization. This pragmatic turn results in a shift of comparative ethics away from issues of methods and metaethics in the direction of history and fieldwork as the preconditions for useful comparison.     

The Writing of the Kingdom: Thirty-Seven Aphorisms Towards an Eschatology of the Text

Starting from the question of the identities—in a given text—of author and reader, subsumed under the broader (Hegelian and post-Hegelian) question of "self" and "other" in exteriority, this essay attempts a theological response in three critical moments: the first follows the transcendental tradition of Western thought from the (Cartesian) turn towards transcendental subjectivity to the collapse of the dialectics of subjectivity in "postmodern" thought; the second moves the problem of exteriority from the realm of recognition that of promise and expectation (eschatology); and the third formulates a Trinitarian ontology of distance that accommodates this eschatology.     

Searching for a Priest ... or a Man? Using Gender as a Cultural Resource in an Episcopal Campus Chapel

This paper examines an Episcopal campus chapel's search process for a new priest. I argue that gender, at the group level, is a fluid cultural resource that search committee members use in contradictory ways to select a male priest. I illustrate my argument using data drawn from twenty‐eight in‐depth interviews and participant observation (1994–1995) of a search committee in an Episcopal campus ministry located on the grounds of a southeastern state university. My findings show that a patriarchal agenda can be upheld by a search committee without it ever being specified or codified. Well‐intentioned search committee members routinely do gender even as they claim and believe they act in gender‐free ways. The contribution this analysis makes to our understanding of congregational search processes and discrimination against female clergy is considered.     

God-language in Public and Private Prayer: A Place for Integrating Gender,Sexuality and Faith

Abstract

Drawing on feminist liturgical critiques of prayer, Audre Lorde's notion of the erotic and Carter Heyward's relational theology, amongst other feminist, Womanist, Black and queer sources, this article proposes that prayer via gendered and erotic images of God and Christ may be a site for the integration of gender, sexuality and faith — not only in the life of the individual but in the wider body politic. The notion of integration is problematized alongside heteropatriarchal practices of prayer, and an eschatological understanding of prayer and identity offered. The article argues for prayer which engages with a multiplicity of embodied, erotic and queer images of God (and particularly Christ), as necessary to the complex work of personal and political integration with which prayer is charged as well as gesturing towards the fullness and mystery of God who both inhabits and transcends the limitations of metaphorical discourse about the divine.     

The Ephesian Megabyzos Priesthood and Religious Diplomacy at the End of the Classical Period

One element consistently cited as evidence that the feminine deities of the poleis of Ionia are aspects of a single Great Mother Goddess of fertility is the Ephesian Megabyzos priest, whose eunuch status is paralleled with the Greco-Roman eunuch priests of Cybele, the Galli. The practice of eunuchism is usually regarded as a pre-Greek or primitive element in Ephesian worship, dating back to the earliest phases of religious activity at the site. This contention is, however, a construction of the evidence coloured by nineteenth-century thinking about the development of religions and the nature of so-called ‘primitive’ societies. The evidence itself makes no claim for any great antiquity for this priesthood but rather suggests an institution of brief duration in the latter portion of the classical period. This article re-examines the evidence for the Megabyzos priesthood in terms of the political changes in and around the city of Ephesos in the fourth century B.C.E. and finds a context for the Megabyzos in the religious diplomacy between Ephesos and the Persian satrapal capital, Sardis, during the shift from Persian to Macedonian control.     

Toward Community Beyond Gender Binaries: Gregory of Nyssa's Transgendering as Part of his Transformative Eschatology

Abstract

In this article Nausner explores the concept of gender transcendence which he rephrases in terms of transgendering in the theology of Gregory of Nyssa. Nausner argues that such destabilizing of gender was not confined to the sacraments but present throughout the Christian life in Gregory's thought. Gregory is presented as prefiguring the project of queer theory in rendering gender slippery and non-essential not least in his performance of his own masculinity.     

Finding God in the Heart-Genital Connection: Joe Kramer's Erotic Christianity

Abstract

This article is a celebration of the work of Joe Kramer, founder of the EroSpirit Research Institute and instructor of thousands of men in the practices of erotic spirituality. It is argued that Kramer's work in encouraging men to explore the potential of their erotic energy has been particularly helpful to those who have experienced an erotophobic Christian heritage. Although Kramer is not without his critics the author argues that he is engaged in a healing practice which constructs an ‘eschatological sexuality’ that dares to reach towards forms of sexual praxis located in a transformed future.     

The Market for Bodily Parts: Kant and duties to oneself

ABSTRACT The demand for bodily parts such as organs is increasing, and individuals in certain circumstances are responding by offering parts of their bodies for sale. Is there anything wrong in this? Kant had arguments to suggest that there is, namely that we have duties towards our own bodies, among which is the duty not to sell parts of them. Kant's reasons for holding this view are examined, and found to depend on a notion of what is intrinsically degrading. Rom Harré's recent revision of Kant's argument, in terms of an obligation to preserve the body's organic integrity, is considered. Harré's view does not rule out all acts of selling, but he too ultimately depends on a test of what is intrinsically degrading. Both his view and Kant's are rejected in favour of a view which argues that it does make sense to speak of duties towards our own bodies, grounded in the duty to promote the flourishing of human beings, including ourselves. This provides a reason for opposing the sale of bodily parts, and the current trend towards the market ethic in health care provision.