Recently the name of Hans Urs von Balthasar has been invoked to defend the concept of a more “feminine” Church. On reading some reports it seems that the invocation has now become a meme and the meme itself has morphed into attacks on the reservation of the priesthood to men, as if by the idea of a more feminine Church Balthasar meant the ordination of women.
As a matter of historical fact Balthasar was a staunch defender of the reservation of the priesthood to men. There is no possibility of a debate about this. He believed that the Church, as the Bride of Christ the Bridegroom, is feminine in her deepest corporate identity, and that bishops, and hence priests, cannot be in a spousal relationship with something masculine.
When he criticized what he called the “masculinization” of the Church Balthasar was in no way criticizing the reservation of the priesthood to men, but rather, the trend toward an excessive bureaucratization of the Church. When Balthasar speaks of a “masculine” church he means a church obsessed with its own governance structures, a church obsessed with committees and meetings and talk-fests. He called this the “photocopying Church.”
Paradoxically, it is precisely the increased bureaucratization of the Church that is a popular project for feminist activists. It is they who are, according to a Balthasarian analysis, seeking to masculinize the Church by setting up new boards and committees and angling to get themselves appointed to such bureaucratic structures.
My own close encounter with this phenomenon comes from my experience as a member of a body calling itself the Australian Catholic Women’s Commission. This body was established by the Australian Catholic Bishops’ Conference back in the year 2000. The members of the Commission (about a dozen of us) were appointed from different dioceses with a mission to fly all over Australia meeting other Catholic women to ask them what they thought the Church could be doing for them. There were four such meetings in far flung parts of the continent every year. The subject of the ordination of women would come up at almost every meeting. In every diocese there were those who supported the ordination of women, and those who were fiercely opposed to the idea. The same sociological types came along to the information gathering meetings in every location except, from memory, in Alice Springs, a town in the heart of the Australian “outback” not known for its middle-class concerns.
The idea of paying the airfares for a dozen people to fly in and out of dioceses to hear the same complaints from the same predictable types of people always seemed to me to be a waste of the Church’s resources. The money spent on airfares, hotel accommodation and the salaries of secretaries could have been spent on medical research into infertility, or breast and ovarian cancers, or on parish-based child-care facilities or accommodation for families in crisis, or on the purchase of diocesan beach houses for poor Catholic families who cannot afford to take their children on a summer holiday. There were any number of ways the money could have been used to assist real Catholic women, but instead it was spent on a bureaucratic project whose major purpose was to generate meetings and write reports on the meetings for bishops to read and digest.
It was a “case study” in what Balthasar called the “photocopying Church,” an attempt to treat issues of a pastoral nature using the techniques of corporate governance. Instead of conflicts being resolved by sound teaching and effective leadership, the idea was to “keep women happy” by inventing a quango and appointing female Catholic elites from both sides of the theological fence to its operations, and then keeping them occupied reading volumes of paper.
A similar drift towards the creation of a Church that looks more and more like a commercial company or political party began to gather speed in Germany in the 1970s. In Germany the Church is fabulously wealthy and the largest private employer in the country. In 2022 its income from the state-imposed Church tax (Kirchensteuer) was 6.85 billion euros. According to a National Catholic Register report in 2023 there are some 800,000 people employed by the Church in Germany. This means that about one in every 30 German Catholics is in an employer-employee relationship with the Church. It is unsurprising therefore that Catholic elites in this country often become obsessed with issues of corporate governance when so many are in a relationship with the Church that is both contractual as well as sacramental. Separating the contractual from the sacramental is no easy psychological exercise.
Balthasar and Ratzinger and other academics in their Communio journal study circles were acutely aware of the situation in Germany with its stark contrasts between the wealthy Church agencies or “Catholic Inc.” and the Church lived and understood as the Body and Bride of Christ. Catholic Inc. runs on secular corporate governance principles, the Body and Bride of Christ runs on a sacramental economy. The former is, in the idiom of both Balthasar and Ratzinger, “masculine,” while the latter is “feminine.”
There is some theological and scriptural backstory to the use of these descriptions. Balthasar suggested that the network of figures surrounding Christ during his life on earth were prototypical of future ecclesial leaders. There is thus the Petrine charism associated with St. Peter and hence with ecclesial governance, the Johannine charism associated with St. John the beloved apostle and hence with the contemplative life of the Church, the Jacobine charism associated with St. James and hence with guarding the tradition and teaching it to new generations uncorrupted, and the Pauline charism associated with St. Paul and hence with prophetic insight and in our own time with ecclesial renewal movements. Only one of these charisms, the Petrine, is focused on ecclesial governance, and only this one is exclusively masculine. There are plenty of contemplative women with the Johannine charism, plenty of scholarly women trying to teach the faith that was handed down from the apostles to new generations, and plenty of women involved in the new ecclesial movements that have mushroomed over the past century. So then, three out of four of these charisms are found equally in men and women.
Further, Balthasar spoke of the Marian charism. Its hallmark is its receptivity to divine will. It is a kind of overarching charism that all members of the Church, male and female, should exhibit. Receptivity to the divine will includes respect for Sacred Scripture, especially the teachings of Christ. With reference to the arguments of those who contend that Christ may have decided not to ordain women simply because the Jewish people of the time had psychological barriers to the acceptance of such a practice, Balthasar commented: “[E]ven though we might always assume that the Sovereign God could have acted differently from the way he actually deigned to act, we nevertheless are by no means licensed to relativize his logic – he being absolute Reason and Logos itself – by imagining other courses of action which he could have taken.”1 In other words, a high level of humility in the face of revelation is part of the Marian charism along with the gift of the Holy Spirit described as “Fear of the Lord” or reverence and awe before the divine majesty.
Another concept one finds in Balthasarian parlance is that of a symphony. One of his books was titled Truth is Symphonic. Within the life of the Church the varying charisms should work in harmony with each other. Problems arise when there is no harmony or when one or other charism is weak or completely overpowered by the others. For example, those whose charism it is to defend the faith from corruption have a significant role in the Church. Truth matters. Theology matters. Bad theology and sloppy thinking generate long-term pastoral disasters. We need scholars who have studied scripture and the dogmatic tradition and this includes people who understand how the component parts of the tradition relate to one another. If Catholic scholarship is dismissed as the pursuit of middle-class nerds, the barque of Peter can become a little unbalanced from its center of gravity. The idea that the only important thing is having charitable feelings is not Christian. Indeed, Ratzinger described the mentality that only feelings (not ideas or doctrines) matter as the “Hinduization of the faith.”
From Balthasar’s perspective each charism can at different ages in the life of the Church be weak or dysfunctional, and so, undermine the soundness of the entire structure, orchestra, body, or whatever is one’s favorite metaphor for the Church. For example, if we take Pope Francis’s favorite metaphor of a “field hospital,” we might say that the charism most closely associated with field hospital work is the Pauline. All kinds of new ecclesial movements have people on the front lines caring for the spiritually wounded. This is a good thing. However a Church cannot be only a field hospital, because needy human beings need more than bandages and blood transfusions. They often need surgery, and the surgeons are the spiritual masters, the Johannine types working in collaboration with the scholars, the Jacobine types. The work of the Petrine charism is one of assisting all the others in view of the whole sacramental economy of the Church. So those with the Pauline charism, working on the front lines in the field hospital, need the other charisms to be strongly at play if people are to be truly healed, and not left on the level of first-response triage, or relegated to palliative care, however valuable that might be.
When Balthasar talks about masculinizing the Church he therefore means something like a myopic focus on the Petrine charism and on governance structures to the neglect of the other charisms, a church obsessed with institutional maintenance. Thus, in his Elucidations, he wrote:
Since the Council [i.e., Vatican II] the Church has to a large extent put off its mystical characteristics; it has become a Church of permanent conversations, organizations, advisory commissions, congresses, synods, commissions, academies, parties, pressure groups, functions, structures and restructurings, sociological experiments, statistics: that is to say, it is more than ever a male Church, if perhaps one should not say a sexless entity, in which a woman may gain for herself a place to the extent that she is ready herself to become such an entity.2
Balthasar concluded that “the masses run away from such a Church.”
Similarly, in his Church, Ecumenism and Politics, Cardinal Ratzinger declared:
The Church is not some piece of machinery, is not just an institution, is not even one of the usual sociological entities. It is a person. It is a woman. It is a mother. It is living. The Marian understanding of the Church is the most decisive contrast to a purely organisational or bureaucratic concept of the Church. We cannot make the Church: we have to be it. And it is only to the extent that faith moulds our being beyond any question of making that we are the Church, that the Church is in us. It is only in being Marian that we become the Church.3
Ratzinger concluded that: “a Church which is nothing but a manager is nothing at all; she is no longer tradition, and, as an intellect that knows no tradition, she becomes pure nothingness, a monster of nothingness.”4
In summary, when Balthasar suggested the Church should be more feminine and less masculine, he did not mean that we needed women priests or more women on governance boards. To misuse his comments in that manner is to show a high-level of ignorance of his ecclesiology.
What we need now is an affirmation of the feminine dimension of the Church. For Balthasar this in some sense would entail a heightened interest in the operation of the Johannine, Pauline, and Jacobine charisms. Instead of a craze for committees and quangos there might be a focus on deep monasticism and consecrated virginity, on family ministry work, on Catholic scholarship and beautiful liturgy, including beautiful liturgical music. There might also be a heightened interest in fostering the sense of sacramentality, a deepening of the faithful’s understanding of the role that each of the sacrament’s play in the economy of our salvation. There would certainly be a heightened interest in the Eucharist.
My favorite quotation from Balthasar appears in his Theology of History. It reveals a lot about what he thinks or who he thinks are the most important members of the Church and they are not necessarily priests. He wrote:
Those who withdraw to the heights to fast and pray in silence are, as Reinhold Schneider made so vividly credible, the pillars bearing the spiritual weight of what happens in history. They share in the uniqueness of Christ, in the freedom of that nobility that is conferred from above, that serene untamed freedom which cannot be caged and put to use. Theirs in the first of all aristocracies, source and justification for all the others, and the last yet remaining to us in an unaristocratic age.5
Of all the charisms categorized by Balthasar the Marian is the most important. It takes priority even over the Petrine, because the Petrine itself must be Marian in the sense that it must be receptive to divine revelation. What really matters is receptivity to the divine will. This is what is most noble and thus aristocratic, where aristocratic is understood as an adjective meaning desiring only the highest and most excellent. In contrast, the fixation on structures and committees, and who sits on the committees, and who does the paperwork, is not aristocratic but gauchely petite–bourgeois!
(Note: This essay posted originally on April 16, 2024, at the What We Need Now Substack and is reprinted here with kind permission.)
Endnotes:
1 Hans Urs von Balthasar, “How Weighty is the argument from ‘Uninterrupted Tradition’ to Justify the Male Priesthood?” in The Church and Women: A Compendium, edited by Helmut Moll (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1988), 154; cf. 153–160.
2 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Elucidations (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1998), 70.
3 Joseph Ratzinger, Church, Ecumenism and Politics: New Essays in Ecclesiology (New York: Crossroad, 1988), 20.
4 Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology: Building Stones for a Fundamental Theology (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1987), 101.
5 Hans Urs von Balthasar, A Theology of History (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1994), 124.
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Since reference was made to the Church in Germany vis a vis the German State, I’d offer the following comment. The Church in Germany suffers from the same insidious corruption as does the Church in America – a too-cozy relationship with the secular world – especially governmental structures. The cure for such an insidious corruption – sever ALL contractual and financial arrangements with the State. The Church ought take NO money at all from the State. Better to have a poorer Church than one which does not have Christ at its Head.
You could extend that description to any Western nation … and, I’m afraid, to China, too.
The feminist heart is restless until it rests in our patriarchal God in accordance with the Kingship of God.
Since (original) Sin and knowledge are inseparably tied by God to give our current freedom where each one is lived up as gods with His active hiddenes, it is the holiness of us that decide how to use others wisdom; whether to discover and grow to the fullness of the Truth or spin the knowledge to our convenience and thus remain in Sin yet with a foolish notion of being in full grace by mistaking God’s Mercy.
Thus the facts such as physician heals, fertility research helps etc are God’s lessons to us that it is not our imperfectly imagined God who saved us thus far but the claimants (physicians, scientists) and hints us better not to hope for bodily everlasting life in Paradise with our current holiness and imagined God. Needless to say, the shallow desire of many who earnestly wanted to be known as pious but not in haste to be in His Kingdom is due to God’s vehemence to remove the death sentence upon finishing the opportunity for gaining everlasting life. May any knowledge lead us into further conversion and fetching everlasting life rather than end up creating a theory to justify how “my soul” may not suffer/perish.
Some years ago, I read that in the 1950s a study was made to determine which was the more perfect organization in the world. The conclusions of the study stated that the most perfect organizations worldwide were General Motors and the Catholic Church. My immediate reactions was, “No wonder we needed a Council!” Do we really want to be identified with something like General Motors?
Bureaucracy, respectability and complacency are the luxuries enjoyed by a dead church. Life will only come through a purging which will produce a humble, broken, repentant people-male and female- : expecting nothing giving everything. A new pentecost, which will not be organized or planned by a committee or produced by a study. It will come from above by the life-giving Holy Spirit. Even so come, Lord Jesus!
James, this ought to be sent off to every bishop – eapecially the Bishop of Rome. Well said, indeed!
We read: “Instead of a craze for committees and quangos there might be a focus on deep monasticism and consecrated virginity, on family ministry work, on Catholic scholarship and beautiful liturgy, including beautiful liturgical music.”
And, more broadly (pardon the pun!), a restored recognition of “other”ness—as in the difference and complementarity of the sexes. This, rather than anti-binary LGBTQ-ism and now unisex ordinations. Instead of such total domestication of the Church, where is our prior wisdom toward the infinitely “Other”? As Cardinal Grech has weakly clarified very late in the game, synodally is “walking together” with God (!) and not only with each other.
Synods: otherwise, only a super-committee town hall meeting? From Mass in the round, to synodal roundtables, to the roundabout illogic of Fiducia Supplicans and its non-blessing blessing of “couples” as such, and now to the charade of an Anglicanized and interchangeable priestesshood, or whatever.
But, hey, in tune with part of Balthasar, the modern committee thingy can still be symphonic and historical! Take the orchestrated and interlocking directorate of professional associations (all genuflect!) and their symphony of transgender bells and whistles…
But, what exactly is the ideological difference between today’s in-step surgical mutilations and yesterday’s foot binding? And, what then about Mass in high heels?
Trouble is, Obsess[ion] with committees and meetings and talk-fests is exactly the opposite of masculine. Real men who are pastors are wearied by endless chatting, so speaks from long experience Fr Stravinskas in ‘The role of the diocesan curia and the mission of the Church’.
Although Tracy Roland makes her point by experience in the Australian Catholic Women’s Commission. She indicts bureaucratic bishops, men who from this writer’s perspective were fulfilling their moral duty of giving women a voice, though a voice that remained contained. What then is a feminized Church? “It is a person. It is a woman. It is a mother” (Ratzinger). I’m sorry, the Mystical Body is the person Christ. Are we taking the piano tinkering musings of a great churchman too dogmatically? Contemplation is juxtaposed as feminine Johannine to the masculine Petrine. For Balthasar contemplation is that “serene untamed freedom which cannot be caged and put to use”. Is that theology or is it a display of rhetorical drama?
Urs von Balthasar developed his Ecclesial theology from the presumed mystic Adrienne von Speyr. Not a Christ revealed source of theology, rather a privately revealed source. Rowland’s issue is valid, of that there’s no question. Feminine as a pastoral, interior dynamic has a vital place in ecclesiology. Although essentially, we don’t want to ‘cage’ masculinity as if manliness is toxic, and give it ‘matronizing’ tolerance. As to spinning von Balthasar, if we take him too seriously we might spin the Church off its moorings.
At odds with the masculine feminine analogy because of the effeminacy that’s evident in the priesthood from presbyter to bishop, which appears to be behind the enormous corporate style bureaucracy, a rationale to obscure their disinterest in pastoral work, that Tracy Rowland correctly identifies, although associates it with ‘the masculine’. Masculine feminine, God given with all the features of spiritual coherence doesn’t meet what may better be described as the spiritual in contradistinction to the sensual.
As such what Rowland validly articulates from this writer’s vision are talents and predilections conducive to a more hands on pastoral Church that would be found in either sex man or women as it has through the centuries albeit within a male dominated ecclesial structure as instituted by Christ. It was largely the sensual driven revolt within clerical religious ranks that devastated both the presbyterate and the sisterhood. It is that spiritual, preeminently evangelical dimension that can reform the Church.
Yes indeed to the comments on Von B. Rowland mentions bad theology and theologizing yet Von B. fits the bill, e.g. his seriously flawed methodology of starting with Von Speyr’s “experiences” and also using such as the content. (Yes, Von B. was at the genius level and had a tremendous intellect, but that seems to be automatically equated with greatness in theological ideas and method.) Rowland has elsewhere dismissed this methodology as merely “unusual” or “odd,” if I remember correctly. Strange how those who lionize Von B. tend to be dismissive about such serious problems. (One highly doubts whether they would accept such flaws if they were criticizing some “progressive” theologian.) One also wonders if Von B.’s ideas on the particular nature of the feminine aspect of the Church were influenced by the strange relationship/interaction with Von Speyr, for example, his own description that she habitually rebuked and chastised him, one might say also humiliated him, like he was a child. (Not to say that this aspect in particular may have showed up.)
“Essentially, we don’t want to ‘cage’ masculinity as if manliness is toxic, and give it ‘matronizing’ tolerance”. Taken from my comment, which is what came through in von Balthasar and coincides with your description of Speyr’s scolding matronly relationship with him. Perhaps Adrienne von Speyr succeeded to some degree in feminizing him. Although I don’t think Balthasar can be dismissed since he has a notable following. Rather the von Speyr relationship may give us insight into some of his ‘odd’ thought.
Haven’t read past the first paragraph yet but it astounds me to hear calls for the feminization of the Church.
K. Read it. Think I now better understand masculinization and feminization of the Church as conceptualized by von Balthazar.
Thanks for this article by the impressively knowledgeable and articulate Tracey Rowland.
“Thanks for this article by the impressively knowledgeable and articulate Tracey Rowland.” I second that, dear Cleo, but also note that proper Catholic theologizing requires far more reference to what Peter, John, James, & Paul actually instructed.
Just two, out of many, examples: In 1 Corinthians 12 we are informed that The Holy Spirit bestows gifts on those who love & obey Christ, for the benefit of The Body of Christ – that is for all Catholics (female & male; young & old; clergy & lay).
Some Catholics are given divine wisdom, others inspired knowledge, strong faith, divine healing, miracle working, prophesy, discernment of spirits, angelic tongues, interpretation of tongues. These are all still present in The Church today.
Later, in the same Holy Spirit-inspired chapter, Paul provides the proper order of authority. Foremost are Apostles (those specifically commissioned by Christ to universalize His Good News & plant churches & ministries). Then Prophets, then Teachers, then Miracle Workers, then Divine Healers, then Ministers of Helps, ONLY then Administrators and those with Angelic Tongues!
Holy Spirit gifts & authorities are God-given not bureaucratic posts.
Am sure it cannot be only me who thinks that this has significant dissonance with the Balthasaric understanding of the church so nicely presented by dear Professor Tracey Rowland. Most obviously in the complete absence of any gender-specific allocation of the gifts and authorities bestowed by The Holy Spirit of The LORD.
Previous comments have questioned the relevance of deep & contentious theologizing for the ordinary Catholic. So many simply seeks to obey OUR LORD in every part of their lives, bearing in mind Jesus told Martha of Bethany: “only one thing is necessary”
Jesus also taught us that hidden in a certain unwanted field there is a Priceless Treasure that one would give everything to own. Jesus emphasized that truth in teaching that in a chaotic marketplace there is a hard-to-find Pearl of Great Value, that one would give everything to have.
Let an ordinary, everyday Catholic be sure: having Jesus Christ living in their heart (see 2 Corinthians 13:5) they own that Treasure, that Pearl, even Christ Himself. They should have a lively expectation for whatever gifts & authority His Holy Spirit may anoint them with.
Contentious speculations about feminist theology, masculine theology, and so on, and on, and on . . . are comparatively mere ‘skubalon’, to use a malodorous depicter given us by Saint Paul.
Obviously, as an academic, I’m not knocking theological endeavors (I admire the clarity & intent of Professor Rowland’s scholarly article). However, am sure she would agree that we need to do Catholic Christian theology in a way that manifestly stays embedded in the Good News of the 27 texts by 9 Apostolic authors (& hence the CCC).
The question is: “To what extent does Balthasar’s enormous corpus stray from that?”
Always seeking to hear & lovingly obey King Jesus Christ; blessings from marty
From my experience the Church was more than sufficiently “feminine” until the mid-century council essentially eradicated the rationale for faithful women religious. I recall a cousin — a Sister of Charity in New Jersey — recalling a retreat given for their local but thriving congregation by then “Father” Anthony Padovanno — still quite wet behind the ears — asserting to the assembly that there was no Scriptural justification for religious life.
I was in high school at the time with the same congregation as faculty. There weren’t too many Sisters of Charity left when I graduated.
Anyone familiar with Northern New Jersey, let alone the wider tri-state area knows that it was crawling — I’m not exaggerating — with a wide variety of apostolic sisters, and with nuns in contemplative life. These communities were deliberately undermined by men anxious to “reimagine” Roman Catholicism into their own image. One of their ilk presently occupies the Chair of Saint Peter. Is it a feminized Church he crafts of a faithless cult? Or both?
About clericalists reimagining the Church in their own image…
Is the subliminal message of Dignitas Infinita in that it does not reverse the previous and contortionist Fiducia Supplicans? These two side-by-side (or is it front to back?) documents are in direct conflict in the continued blessing of paired petitioners as “couples.” Non-sinful homosexual tendencies and sinful actions are first conflated, and now seem to be implied as a “circumstance” to be ass-imilated, in that “human dignity” is reaffirmed even as “irregular” pairings are then crypto-blessed as “couples.”
Nor can misuse of the term “infinite” be walked away. Critics say that this reference to an Angelus Address by St. John Paul II in Autumn 1980 is a curious mistranslation for the original “immense,” which is absolutely different. (Perhaps a reader can supply the text in English, rather than the original German.)
So, as a fetish of the moment, does old-hat feminism serve instead as camouflage for a fully anti-binary sorta post-Church churchiness?
Trusting this comment has relevance to the article and its excellent respondents.
It just occurred to me that busy theologians and church administrators can easily lose contact with The Body of grass-root believers and their heartfelt passion for GOD.
Here is a song by Matt Redman – “Praise GOD”, about when things are going our way and when they are not, involving a very diverse audience, at The Famous Franciscan Mission of San Juan Capistrano.
https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=matt+redman+new+songs&mid=917AAE1C584C8D03BFF5917AAE1C584C8D03BFF5&FORM=VIRE
Who could doubt praise & worship like this reaches GOD’s Heart.
Whilst, in all honesty, how much of our theology and church management does?
Obviously, The Church needs both.
Yet, if one had to choose, surely we’d choose wholehearted worship; recalling that, in our eternity with GOD, worship will be the air we all breathe, all the time.
It might be that instead of being infatuated with GOD & saturated by The Holy Spirit, many of today’s Catholic leaders & theologians are infatuated with themselves. The result is a mess of uncertainty and conflicting beliefs.
Wholehearted worship could bring us all to focus on what eternally counts, healing our divisions & restoring Catholic unity.
Just thinking . . .
It was a women who delivered Mercy itself to th world by her yes.
The greatest priest is possibly Mary, the Mother of God, who to this day continues to call all her children to “pray, pray, pray”.