If you are at all familiar with the teachings of Blessed John Paul II, you have likely heard the term spiritual motherhood. But I think it was Katrina Zeno who, through a deep knowledge of our late pope’s Theology of the Body (TOB), coined the term “spiritual priesthood” regarding men.
In a nutshell, she states that all men are called to spiritual priesthood, and some to the ordained priesthood. On the other hand, all women are called to spiritual motherhood, and some to physical motherhood.
Katrina was one of the guests on my past Theology of the Body series radio show on the former Michigan Catholic Radio, WCAR 1090 in the Detroit area. The program, which was broadcast from about 2007 through 2009, included the Ascension Press series “Introduction to the Theology of the Body” with Christopher West, “Theology of the Body for Teens” with a special youth panel from the Detroit Archdiocese, as well as interviews with scholars well versed in TOB. (Contact me at my email kluttinen@intergusa.com if you want more info on these past programs.)
When I heard Katrina use the term spiritual priesthood, I was amazed. It was a wonderful way to describe the special role of men as the spiritual leaders in the domestic church of the home, and in the universal Church and in the world. (Click here for a link to an article written by Katrina on this subject and more.)
Her explanation only confirmed what I had learned from reading John Paul II’s teachings on the role of women in these same arenas of Church and the world. Thanks to the wonderful Regnum Christi apostolate of Familia, I was introduced to John Paul II’s Letter to Women, his encyclical On the Dignity of Women, and his beautiful work, Mother of the Redeemer.
Like many women who assume the role of mother, Mary received little acclaim or recognition during her life on earth for the incredible role she played in salvation history. The gospel passages Luke 11:27 and Luke 8: 19-21 confirm this. Not until Revelation 12 do we see the “Woman clothed with the sun,” with a “crown of twelve stars on her head.” Church tradition holds Mary, assumed body and soul into Heaven, is now the Queen of Heaven and Earth.
Our Blessed Mother — the living tabernacle of God, the “seat of wisdom,” the “mystical rose,” the “queen of all saints,” the most “blessed among women” – is the role model for all women. She mouthed the famous words in praise to God, the Magnificat — “My soul magnifies the Lord!” (See Luke 1: 46-55.) The definition of the word “magnify” from Webster’s Dictionary is “to extol, laud; to increase in significance; intensify; to exaggerate; to enlarge in fact or appearance.”
How can Mary’s humble soul magnify the immense, omnipotent, omnipresent God, who is the source of all Being?
Our understanding of God is that He is a Trinity – three distinct persons in one God. John Paul II called the Trinity an “eternal exchange of love.” God the Father loves God the Son, and God the Son loves the Father, and their love is so real it is a third person, the Holy Spirit.
John Paul II also said all human persons are the image of God, not just as rational beings, but in their communion with another.* This is why He made them “male and female” and called them to become “one flesh” – a union so real that it becomes another person. Do you see here an analogy to the human family?
Father, mother and child are an image of the eternal exchange of love which is the Trinity. In this familial exchange, women image God differently than men, but that image is no less important. In fact, it is crucial! In fact, some theologians have pointed out that woman, who was created after man, is in fact the pinnacle of creation – God’s masterpiece.
I know some in our Church today believe that the Church’s tradition of having only men in the ordained priesthood is a holdover from the past and should be abolished. They site the scripture passage Galatians 3:28. And there is a strong movement in every arena in our world today, especially in the field of psychology, to remove gender identity as an issue of any consequence. Women can and should be anything they want to be! (And men as well, for that matter.)
Except that men can never bring a child into the world. Motherhood is the sole province of women.
Many women, often legitimately, have rebelled against their role as mother, and even their own fertility, seeing it as “curse.” To understand, we must go back to Genesis 3:16 to read the prophetic words of God that, as a result of original sin, childbirth will bring woman pain, and men will dominate her. This was never God’s will, but the consequence of sin.
In response to historical male domination, many today would have women be “free” to assume all the roles of men, including the role of the ordained priest. They would also have her neuter herself with a pill or other device so she can become like a man, having sexual relations without the danger of pregnancy.
To use the words of Christ from Matthew 19:8 — words that John Paul II was so fond of quoting — this was never God’s plan for woman from the beginning. Woman was never called to allow herself to be used and dominated by men, and to become a user herself. But Jesus Christ came to restore us to our beginnings. He chose to be incarnated in the physical body of a man, a body that shows he is (as all men should be) the initiator the gift of love. Woman’s body, an image of the Church (see Ephesians 5) is receptive to that gift of love and life, and on a larger scale, she shows men how to be open to and respond to the gift of God.
Women are called to accept the gift of life that brings motherhood, spiritually and/or physically, as our Blessed Mother did when she gave her fiat to God with perfect resignation. Yes, until our world and all sin come to an end, this will bring women suffering. But we are called to stand at the foot of the cross alongside the strongest role model next to Christ that ever lived, our Blessed Mother Mary.
If we do not, men will never know how to carry their own cross, and to be “crucified” in their sacrificial roles as spiritual priests (Please reflect on Romans 12:1-2.) Male domination of women, woman’s rejection of true femininity, and the inevitable culture of death, will only continue unchecked.
A very wise women, Dale O’Leary, who wrote The Gender Agenda: Redefining Equality, said during an interview broadcast on the Women of Grace program on EWTN, that all men, from shepherds to Kings, including St. Joseph (and the priests and bishops of our Church) bow to mother and child in that manger in Bethlehem. Man’s role is to support and protect the role of woman, who is to give life through her receptivity to the God of life and love.
Mary, the most blessed of all women, pray for our world to value motherhood.
*Pope John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body, Pauline Books & Media, Boston, Mass, 2006, pg. 163
