Volume > Issue > A Humble Proposal

A Humble Proposal

GUEST COLUMN

By Sheldon Vanauken | January/February 1996
Sheldon Vanauken is a writer in Virginia whose books include A Severe Mercy, an award-winning bestseller.

Open Letter to the Holy Father:

Preface: We are all too aware of the tiresome clamour of feminist women and their male fellow travellers for priestesses in the Church. Clearly what they want is power and prominence in the Church and in the Mass. And no less clearly they do not, or will not, understand why the priest — in persona Christi — MUST be male, nor understand that the Church, the bride and spouse of Christ, is female.

And yet this must be allowed to them: The relationship of Christ to his bride and spouse — that the Church is female — is not made clear in the Mass. If I understand correctly, the priest in persona Christi consecrates the elements that become the Body and Blood, and then he, representing the female Church, partakes.

Proposal: I humbly propose that a girl or woman, distinctively gowned (perhaps all in white), representing Holy Church (conceivably in persona Maria), be standing or kneeling by the altar during the consecration, and that she be the first to communicate.

Enjoyed reading this?

READ MORE! REGISTER TODAY

SUBSCRIBE

You May Also Enjoy

Letter to the Editor: December 2003

That Anonymous Mother of the Year... Hang in There, You Orthodox Catholics!... From King Henry VIII to The Universal Life Church ... Changing the Rosary too?... The Mass That Will Not Die...

Briefly Reviewed

Target Africa: Ideological Neocolonialism in the Twenty-First Century

Letters to the Editor: July-August 1986

Terminology... Intellectually Shabby, Untruthful, Spiritually Tacky, Etc... The Ugly Side of Buddhism... A Case of Courage... For Capital Punishment... The Man Behind The Articles... Inspiring Professor... No Smelly Ideologies... and more