Women must have greater role if theology is to reach its full scope

THE introduction of new procedures in the churches, such as the Women's Forum, seems to recognise that women in Ireland have been unjustly excluded from much that has formed our religious culture.

Now women are participating more in liturgical celebration, represented on church bodies and diocesan advisory groups, involved in processes leading to decision making. Irish women now constitute a good percentage of those studying theology in our institutes and colleges.

All of this is good. There is, however, a further necessary step to be taken by those who control theological education in Ireland. If theology is truly to reflect Christian understanding, women must be engaged in academic theology, teaching and researching as full members of faculty, pursuing the meaning of the very basis of faith and its implications for how we live as a society.

There are instances of women already so doing, but too few. If theology is to be genuinely the reflection on faith in the light of our culture in Ireland today, we must have women, lay and religious, at the centre of this activity alongside men.

What difference might it make to have more women teaching theology? No area of theology would remain untouched by this widening of the horizon. How we do theology would change. If women's experience has been pushed to the edge in the process by which we as a community give our assent to particular truth, it is right that women should bring it to the centre.

The interpretation of scripture and dogma has been done by men. Surely it would be enriched by including the perspective of women, who astheologians share the privilege and the burden of interpretation and communication in fidelity?

Consider language about God and images of God: traditionally God is Trinity, hierarchical and male. Because God is named Father, Son and Spirit, the doctrine has reinforced solely masculine images. Their exclusive use in worship and in theology contributed to an overwhelming sense of God as male.

This has major implications, for example in moral theology, where perhaps we most need women to teach and research. Here the patriarchical nature of the Christian tradition makes the most significant difference in people's daily lives. Moral theology has systematically excluded half of the people whose lives it claims to reflect. Major decisions have been made pertaining to women's life and death choices without consultation with women.

The question of method is at issue here. Beginning from first principles can obscure the morally relevant circumstances of our diverse realities. (This is by no means limited to sexual ethics). The argument is for a more inductive approach - for reflection on real women's real experiences and the consideration of woman as moral agent.

THEOLOGY of sin and redemption is another are where women's voices are needed. What was assumed to be sin for all, pride and self assertion, may be of less concern to women. Sin for women might be described more as passivity and failure to assert self.

Theories of redemption involving sacrifice and atonement need to be broadened to include discussion of anger and the question of sacrifice as an abstract norm for Christian life, The encouragement to women to "offer it up" rather than take action in the face of injustice reinforced passivity as the expected response.

Christ's suffering seen as a free and active choice in the face of evil, rather than as passive victimisation, is essential for women and all who suffer unjustly.

A theology of marriage, however positively based on the love of Christ for the church, needs now to be taught by women too. There is need to challenge the latent or blatant acceptance of inequality between the partners that can lurk in the imaging of the unity of marriage along the lines of Christ and the church.

The positive retrieval of the theological significance of sexual loving in marriage needs to be balanced by a look at the theological significance of married conflict and the question of love and justice, especially for women, in marriage.

There is the question of the full participation of women in the church - increasingly problematic as our perspective changes and we take cognisance of the distortions deeply embedded in our tradition.

It makes little sense to many women to hear they have equal dignity with men when some are faced with the reality of a male priesthood and a church and theology which talk the language of justice and equality while exhibiting behaviour patterns of power and exclusion.

Will more women teaching theology automatically bring about what is needed? An undesirable elitism can evolve as easily here as elsewhere. Could the churches provide serious funding for the study of theology at diploma and degree level, ensuring that women from as wide a range of backgrounds as possible have access to them?

The Department of Education has taken a welcome initiative in proposing religious education as a Leaving Cert subject. May we hope for the next logical step: that, as in many countries in Europe and elsewhere, faculties of theology be instituted in the NUI colleges?