While there has been abundant confusion emerging from the Vatican in recent years—whether directly from the Holy Father or from others employed therein—the last “scandalous” quotes concerning the nature of Holy Mother Church were not so much scandalous as they were lacking in precision. In addressing the International Theological Commission, the pope was quoted as saying:
The Church is woman. And if we do not know what a woman is, what the theology of a woman is, we will never understand what the Church is. One of the great sins we have had is to “masculinize” the Church. And this is not solved by the ministerial path; that is something else. It is resolved in the mystical way, the real way. Balthasar’s thought has brought me so much light: Petrine principle and Marian principle. This can be debated, but the two principles are there. The Marian is more important than the Petrine, because there is the bride Church, the woman Church, without being masculine.[1]
In western culture awash in androgyny and sexual confusion, this might readily be received as a green light run with depraved notions of the evils of obscuring the Fatherhood of God (and the rich gift of fatherhood itself) or to amplify the misguided call to ordain women, but in the proper context it is an open invitation to revisit the nuptial realities underpinning all of creation.
The Church as Virgin, Bride, and Mother
In Scripture, the Church was clearly understood to the be the bride of Christ—foreshadowed in the Old Testament as created wisdom (always female), Daughter Zion, Jerusalem, and even the Holy Scriptures themselves,[2] —and ultimately borne from Our Lord’s lacerated side as he hung from the Cross, mirroring the creation of Eve from the side of the sleeping Adam. Just as Eve was called “the mother of the living,” Holy Mother Church gives birth to children of the New Covenant, receiving the “seed” of her Bridegroom, which we call grace—His very life. This theme was ubiquitous in the Early Church, with Augustine clearly noting that “all the Church in fact is the spouse of Christ and its principle and first fruit is the flesh of Christ.”[3]
The Holy Father speaks truth when referring to the Petrine Church and the Marian Church, the former encompassing the clergy, who manifest the reality of Christ as Bridegroom and make up the visible hierarchy. As such, they are called to wield institutional authority and to love the Church as a bride entrusted to their fatherly care. The latter is the understanding that the Church is a spiritual reality called to mother the children created by the Word of God, planted as a seed (semen) in the rich soil of the world.[4] These two images of the Church do not contradict, but live in harmony—both true, both profound sources of meditation, and both when combined illustrating the layers of God’s revelation that sweeps all of creation into the divine embrace.
Restoring What Has Been Lost
With the grievous revolt against Church authority by the Protestants, most of these life-giving sacraments and the accompanying devotions were rejected, with one distinct consequence being that the indissoluble nature of marriage eventually became lost. More importantly for women, though, was fact that much of their great spiritual potential was squandered or stifled. Not only was the consecrated life eclipsed as a fruitful way of life, but the paradigm of the Church as virgin, bride, and mother was obscured. With Mary as the first fruit and most perfect image of the Church, every woman is offered a distinct and beautiful template in which to live her femininity, taking to heart the incarnational realities of the sacraments, the four marks of the Church, and other concrete manifestations of spousal love.[5] When that icon of motherhood is lost, men and women each suffer in distinct ways, and the children become malformed and disoriented.
If theologians take to heart Pope Francis’ admonition, and study the world through this magnificent nuptial prism, three things would happen. The first would the restoration of an authentic understanding of the words of Scripture: “So God made man in his own image, made him in the image of God. Man and woman both, he created them” (Gen 1:27). To claim, as he has, that “the Church is woman” requires that these theologians would commit to recognising what authentic femininity, which would be a stable point of reference amidst the current preternatural confusion all around us. Then distinguishing the Petrine image of the Church from the Marian would cause the theologians to revisit the truth about marriage and the heart of family life, which could be of tremendous enlightenment for much of the world. Certainly, there is no room for androgyny in a Church that respects the gifts of women as distinct from those of men.
The second result would be the understanding that the relationship between bride and bridegroom provides a model for the clergy, so that they might operate more for the good of the family and less like bachelors seeking odd forms of diversion or consolation. As St John Chrysostom wrote, “The love of husband and wife is the force that welds society together.”[6] He continues, expounding on the words of Saint Paul concerning wifely obedience (cf. Eph 5:23):
For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the Church, His Body, and is Himself its Savior. As the Church is subject to Christ, so let wives also be subject in everything to their husbands.” Notice that after saying “the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the Church,” he immediately says that the Church is His Body, and he is himself its savior. It is the head that upholds the well-being of the body.[7]
To revisit God’s plan for the family, the theologians might benefit by remembering that men and women are not interchangeable, that motherhood and fatherhood (unlike “parenthood”) have distinct characteristics both of which are essential to the good of the community, and that subservience to Christ is a defining characteristic of the Church—not only for the women who imitate her motherhood, but for the clergy who carry forth Christ’s oblation of self in reverence to the Father from Whom all receive their very name. Obedience to Christ would end the cavalier reinterpretation of tradition and contempt for the very dogmas that provide clarity and structure for the household of God.
The third point of clarity emanating from this field of study would a restoration of sacramental grace which is the life of Christians and the hope of the world. More faithful priests dedicated to the salvific work of Our Lord, more fruitful marriages founded on the nuptial love of Christ and his Church, and thus more children reared in the truth about the imago dei and how to retore it in its fullness would be a net good for the world awash in ignorance and rebellion. It is from these families that new priests—ordered to the true Bridegroom would come—and the decline of the Church might be arrested and reversed.
Precedence is Distinct from Importance
As a point of clarification, although the Holy Father was quoted as saying, “The Marian is more important than the Petrine, because there is the bride Church, the woman Church, without being masculine,” both are essential. As Pope Saint John Paul wrote in Mulieris Dignitatem,
The passage from the Letter to the Ephesians which we have been considering enables us to think of a special kind of “prophetism” that belongs to women in their femininity. The analogy of the Bridegroom and the Bride speaks of the love with which every human being – man and woman – is loved by God in Christ. But in the context of the biblical analogy and the text’s interior logic, it is precisely the woman – the bride – who manifests this truth to everyone.[8]
This prophetic quality of women, which he coined “the feminine genius,” was never understood apart from the salvific work of Christ, the necessary hierarchical nature of the Petrine Church, or the masculine gifts of men on whom their motherhood depended—both spiritual and physical. The only reason that John Paul II suggested that the Marian Church preceded the Petrine Church was because woman, as bride, comes first in the order of love, and that was because of her influence with those entrusted to her care. This very entrustment was ordered entirely to the structure of the hierarchical Church that would point them to the Source of all life and nourish them therein—but that in no way suggests that one is more important than the other, nor did John Paul II indicate that anywhere in his writings.
This is no pearl-clutching moment for concerned Catholics, but a welcome opportunity to shout from the rooftops the beauty of our faith, to suggest to well-meaning Protestants the deficiencies of their creeds, and to offer an entirely fresh explanation (ever ancient and yet ever new!) of the richness of sexual complementarity—devoid of stereotypes, stripped of tedious tensions, and shot through with the invigorating truth that far surpasses our world’s tawdry effort at playing God.
For more information on this topic, see Genevieve’s annotated study guide for Mulieris Dignitatem found here.
[1] https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2023-11/pope-calls-for-reflection-on-feminine-dimension-of-church.html
[2] The lovely (recently violently disfigured) Jewish feast of Simcha Torah occasioned the annual reverence given to the Sacred Scriptures by the faithful. The men in the congregation are each invited to dance with the Holy Scrolls, which are adorned with jewels and wrapped in rich fabrics, underscoring the nuptial life-giving reality at the root of the community.
[3] Augustine, In espistulam Joannis ad Parthos tractatus, 2.2.
[4] Interestingly, this live-giving seed is impossible with female clergy, an attempted same-sex union, which is naturally sterile.
[5] The limited options for women in the protestant world were a constant theme in 19th century English literature, replete with frustrated governesses, disparaging references to “old maids,” and limited outlets for women’s natural inclination to charity.
[6] “On Marriage and Family Life,” homily 20.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Mulieris Dignitatem, 29.f
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