Women Excluded
Wherever offices of power and authority in the Church traditionally open only to men become open to women, it is not women, simpliciter, that come into view. It is not the Christian women, who sit, like Mary of Bethany, at the feet of Christ; it is not my solid, sensible Christian goodwife or the daughters she bore me in her image, that such liberations have in view, but a very different kind of woman, even if they do not explicitly seek to offend.
“Women” in general are always claimed to be the beneficiaries of this advancement, but that is manifest nonsense: it is only a particular kind of woman for whom such rule-changes open doors—the kind who are interested in having these doors opened for them, the kind who believe the power and authority once exclusively male will now become available to them as a matter of justice so that they may rule where once they served, the kind who believe these things are their right as the equals of men in all things that pertain to the offices of ministry. In grasping this equality, they leave behind all women who do not share their ambition to speak with the authority once viewed as peculiar to called-out men, putting them in the class of the not-fully-women, just as their secular counterparts do.
S. M. Hutchens is a Touchstone senior editor.
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more on Feminism from the online archives
33.1—January/February 2020
on the Consequences of One Birth Before Roe v. Wade by Craig Kellogg Galer
14.6—July/August 2001
Three Bad Ideas for Women & What to Do About Them by Frederica Mathewes-Green
more from the online archives
21.10—December 2008
Early Christian Teaching on the Incarnation & Redemption by Patrick Henry Reardon
24.1—January/February 2011
Ruminations on the Monstrous Envy of the Soul-Devouring State by Anthony Esolen
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