Searching for God # 65

A couple of posts back, I opened the subject of the unconscious, and while the issue is fraught with cultural radioactivity, it warrants much more reflection.

First, there is a level of mystery to whatever might be buried from past memories, traumas, embarrassments, shame-inducing moments, deep and profound losses. Also, there is another quite paradoxical aspect of the unconscious, as Jung considered it. For males, there is a complementary female anima, a gestalt of feminine traits of which most men are either totally unfamiliar or repulsively denying. And, for women, there is a complementary male animus, a gestalt of masculine traits, with which most women are both open and comfortable.

Given the rise of feminism and its implications for the Christian church, not only the Roman Catholic church, after two centuries of a theology that is/was male-written, male-debated, male-creed-attendant, and male-seeded throughout the world, the question of a “reverse-engineered” conscious/unconscious gender identity might warrant at least a formal introduction into what have become vitriolic conflicts between many women and men, both in general as well as in specific relationships.

The question of  by whom and how power is deployed, manipulated, exercised and organized has historically rested on the premise, in the West, that men occupied positions of authority and responsibility in all organizations, especially in the Christian church. Except for a small number of female rebels, (think Béguinists in the Middle Ages and following in Europe) women were given two options: join a nunnery, remain single and live a life of worship of God or marry, have and raise children and manage the affairs of the home for their marriage partner.

In he twentieth century, women had what appeared to be three options for a career: teacher, nurse, secretary. And the question of marriage was still used against some women given their perceived unreliability, demonstrated that they might and likely would leave to have a family. For some women, being married also disqualified them from holding some nursing positions which had been reserved for single women. In the church, the business world and in academia, still, women were a significant minority, or were excluded completely, having no access to ordination in the church. Only the occasionally female academic (Madame Curie comes to mind), rose to prominence, although names or others are slowly surfacing as more research digs up strong, somewhat individualistic and highly intelligent woman in various fields.

In the 21^st century, occupational constrictions have virtually disappeared, while the political rhetoric of ‘equality and equity of the genders’ continues to rage. After more than one ‘wave’ of feminist theory, intensity of anger and measureable degrees of inclusion in the ranks of corporate, military, academic, legal, medical and even ecclesial arenas, the question of WOKE (ridicule of the liberal tolerant and civil positions of diversity, equity and inclusion) raised its hateful head, arms, bigotry in venomous animosity.

Radical most white supremacist males, most of who detest the LGBTQ+ community, and seek to reverse any gains made under what has become know as the DEI movement, aligned too often with angry alpha male wannabe tyrants, and a conscious and unconscious battalion of angry, and vengeful men who consider themselves to have been victimized by women are actively engage in a gender war of global dimensions. Women, and minority leaders of  a more balanced appreciation of both masculinity and femininity struggle even to open the discussion with the radicals on both sides.

The church, both caught in the vortex of this cultural maelstrom and an active historical participant in its origins, has some reflection on its threshold. First, it can acknowledge the history of alienation, separation and dismissal of women from roles held exclusively by men. Then, it has to confront the politically correct response of a generation of male ecclesial leaders, outside the Roman Catholic church, who bent over as sycophants in what can only be discerned, on reflection as deference to the errors of both commission and omission from their part. Men, mostly embedded in apologies, and attempts at over-compensation, practically lay down, reverentially of course, to the tidal wave of women seeking positions of ordination, executive and leadership in the church.

Women, were, paradoxically, put in the position of being ‘protected’ from stereotype males who could and would take advantage of them, by males who considered their campaign of protection of women as both necessary and ethical. Making haste slowly, was not either written or read in the memo on which most ecclesial leaders operated. Preference to female candidates, at a time when there was little if any preparation for the differences in both attitudes, perceptions, needs and aspirations of men and women, left a field flooded with female candidates, primarily because they were women.

Consistent with the protection movement, (and thereby the weaker gender archetype), the programs of prohibiting relationships between male clergy and female laity were written, engendered, propagated and enforced. Having historically commandeered as its special and exclusive field of morality and ethics, the field of human sexuality as ‘sacred’ and defined by marriage within the church, and declared all other sexual encounters as ‘evil, sinful, abhorrent and worthy of dismissal, the church was already ‘in over its head’ on matters of male-female sexuality.

Having declared its ‘protective’ ‘alpha-male’ role, the ecclesial hierarchy found itself impaled on a two-headed monster: it abandoned males as, predictably poisonous and dangerous sexually, while it denied that women were perfectly capable, even more than capable, of looking after themselves in encounters of all varieties with men. Over-compensating weak men attempting to atone for centuries of obvious exclusion, abuse and denigration of women were both unprepared and psychologically incapable of discerning, with women (many of whom were yelling rather than attempting to negotiate, that time had long since past), a path of transition that would and could have prevented literally thousands of casualties, most of them male, as the imbalance was attempted to be set right.

In all of those debates, prior to and exclusive of the other debates over homosexuality and gender diversity, the matter of a female animus and a male anima rarely, if ever surfaced. Whether that omission resulted from cognitive ignorance, cognitive dissonance given the history of the church’s theology of gender and sexuality or deliberate conscious avoidance remains open for researchers seeking graduate degrees in years to come.

We all know, sadly even tragically, that the work of both Jung and Hillman has been consciously, deliberately and politically refused entry into the curricula of Noth American academe. Science, empiricism, literalism, positivism have come to reign in academic, corporate, political, legal, medical and even clinical psychology fields. Sadly, a similar pattern has overtaken the churches.

Of course this scribe is not anticipating a sudden surge of interest in Jung’s or Hillman’s work in the academy, nor in the theological schools. However, that such an impetus seems warranted, as the church attempts to redress the imbalance of the oscillating syndrome that swung the political, rhetorical, cultural pendulum too far to the disadvantage of both men and women.

First, letting go of its inappropriate and exclusive claim of dominance in matters of human sexuality followed by serious considerations of the human individual and collective unconscious, especially in the light of God’s openness to the ‘whole human story’ including especially all of our ‘in extremis’ moments, and the potential of various archetypes that might be wielding considerable influence, without our conscious awareness, would be a worthy beginning.

The notion of privatized sin, defined in literal, behavioral terms, is another sacred ‘cow’ long overdue for release from the lexicon of God-searching dogma, curricula and preaching. The acknowledgment of an organizational, even cultural unconscious, (including the ecclesial institution itself) would also release the tight, constrictive bindings that restrict the flow of oxygen, both literally and metaphorically from many if not all theological discussions and reflections.

The secrecy and imposed layer of authority of the of the church that has wounded many otherwise ‘highly functioning’ and highly ethical and moral men and women, not withstanding the reprehensible acts, attitudes and abuse of many men and women need not be the foundational premise of human relationships. And the concept of original sin, fomented as ‘de-rigeur’ within the church, including the church’s myopic, unnatural and unbridled attempt to reign sex into a corral into which it never can or will be fenced.

There are other applications of the original sin to human lives, especially to our attempt at relationships, that the church’s notion of a separate God, and a ‘converted’ (saved) individual, neither fit, nor even foster. Those warrant more space and time.

To be continued……