Posted on 09/09/2006 12:32:24 PM PDT by madprof98
The day Katie Couric became the first woman anchorperson of a prime time news broadcast, Princess Kiko of Japan gave birth to a baby boy. If you think the two items are unrelated, youre right. If you think the two items are related, youre right, too. The question is, Why.
Heres the problem: If youre a girl, we have a little good news, a little bad news for you.
The good news is that you, too, can grow up to be Katie Couric. The bad news is that you cannot yet grow up to be empress of Japan.
The question is not whether or not you want to be either. The question is why it is even an issue. And this is where life gets a little sticky.
The basic problem seems to be that being a Katie Couric simply means that you must be a hard-working, talented, competent and effective woman in a country that has legislated against sex discrimination.
Getting to be ruler of Japan, a once divine position, on the other hand, means you have to have some established relation to God. And God, we are led to believe, does not express divinity in girls. Theres just something about girls that seems to lack what it takes to be divine.
Its not Gods fault, of course. Its not anybodys fault really. Things just are what they are. Its just that it cant be done because girls are not as good as boys for some reason that no one can discover. Or if they have discovered it, they dont want to say it because when you say it out loud it sounds so silly. I mean, the answer is that girls are not as good as boys because theyre girls. See what I mean? Silly.
The difficulty comes in when you realize that this problem is not peculiar to the Japanese. We have a bit of the same problem ourselves -- Katie Couric or no Katie Couric -- in case you havent noticed.
Jesus became man we are now supposed to say -- despite the fact that for centuries we said, And the Word became flesh -- as in human. Now, we mean what we mean. The Word became man. Male. No argument about that one. They tell us that they mean woman, too, when they say man, of course. Except not always.
And in Japan, too, since the emperor was a god and the gods were male, well, what else could you have for over 2,500 years but male emperors -- with the exception of six women who ascended to the throne under special circumstances, a few of them twice. But only when it suited the men in the system. As widows or regents or rulers in exile, they were put in the position simply in order to save it for male relatives and so eventually abdicated in their favor. They were, if anything, only the exception that proved the rule. Like pastoral administrators of otherwise empty parishes, for instance.
Katie Couric, on the other hand, is not an empress. She is only an anchorperson. Not a descendant of the gods. So she can be anything she wants to be and get away with it. Once all the tests are in and theres not one piece of data to prove that women are less fully human than men, its a straight shot to just about anything: scientist, president, corporation executive, heiress, policewoman, doctor, lawyer, whatever. It boggles the imagination what might happen, what has happened.
But emperor in the only recently demoted divine line of emperors? Now, thats another story.
It looked for awhile there, given the lack of male heirs since 1965, that the Japanese were going to have decide whether they wanted an hereditary emperor or just any male they could find.
So, conservatives came up with amazing ideas for how to avoid the constitutional conflict. One idea was simply to hire concubines -- an age-old remedy for the reckless propagation of girl-children -- until someone finally got it right. So much for marriage or children or family life, let alone the dignity of women. What we need here is simply sexual service for the sake of the realm.
Or, others said, Japan should create a new aristocracy in order to widen the pool of possible heirs. That way there might be at least one male second-cousin-once-removed somewhere who could simply step in, as they once did in Europe, to preserve the line from getting messed up with female genes.
Fortunately, Japan was saved from having to make the choice. Princess Kiko, wife of the emperors second son, has just given birth to a boy. Whew. Close. Now we wont have to worry that Aiko, the four year old daughter of the Crown Prince, will someday ascend to the throne. There is a boy standing by. The throne is saved. The country is safe. The imperial family is intact. The heavens are pleased.
Whether or not Japan will now go on to amend the Imperial House Laws to open the throne to women in the future is unclear. (My bet: unlikely,) More than 70 percent of the Japanese say they are ready for a woman emperor and that there is no reason that a female heir ought not to ascend to the throne but why take this equality thing too far if its not necessary.
Furthermore, you can be sure there will be fierce conservative opposition to the very thought of abandoning the male imperial line. There will be even greater resistance to allowing the idea to be debated in parliament. It has always been this way, is a powerful argument. Its tradition. Its the will of God.
We, on the other hand, dont have an imperial line to protect, of course, so it all seems quite irrelevant to us. Quaint even. After all, its 2006. Its the 21st century. Who can possibly let a little thing like a chromosome stand between a woman and her desire to lay down her life for her friends, to serve the tradition as its legitimate heir?
Well, Katie Couric may succeed or fail on her competency. But dont think for a minute that the case is closed or that we ourselves are immune to its implications.
In the middle of the Rhine River, on the St. Lawrence Seaway, on a boat on a river in Pittsburgh, women who feel called by God to serve the people of God are being ordained beyond legitimate diocesan boundaries. Why? Because they have no other choice. Theres nothing they can do about it. They have no authority to open the theological discussion of whether or not Jesus became man -- meaning male -- or Jesus became flesh -- meaning human -- and the implications of that answer for the life and structures of the church itself.
They have no right to change what God has made immutable.
So thats that. Its not their fault.
But its still sexist.
From where I stand, the answer is clear. Its not only what sexism says about women thats wrong. Its what sexism says about God that is the problem. Sexism says that femaleness is the only thing in creation before which God is powerless. It says that the God who parted the Red Sea, drew water from a rock and raised the dead to life goes impotent before a woman. It says that the only substance on earth that God cannot or will not work through is a female. Poor God.
Lucky for us, we dont have an emperor.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Comments or questions about this column may be sent to: Sr. Joan Chittister, c/o NCR web coordinator at the address below. To receive an e-mail alerting you to when Joan Chittister's latest column has been posted to NCRonline.org, visit the following Web page and follow instructions: http://www.nationalcatholicreporter.org/fwis/signup.php
This is for CBS...
Okay, I'm convinced. I'll offer up the opportunity for women to become Emperor of Japan if you'll let me correct the mistake we made when we gave the women the right to vote here in the U.S.
That's so unfair! I have several sons who would be great Emperors!
Way Good!!!!!!!
Thanks Boazo!!
What a willful refusal to understand a word in its context. When I was in the military we would use the phrase "officers and men." We were smart enough to know that no one was implying that the officers were not male human beings.
How about the mistake we made when we allowed civilian men to use firearms? After all, 99% of firearm crimes are committed by males. Oh, gosh, never mind. I came off as really, really stupid when I wrote that.
She could have just typed instead of that stupid little screed and saved a lot of ink.
The last empress of Japan was so very awful (nearly brought down the whole system through a combination of bad political judgement and ill-advised affairs) she ruined it for royal women for hundreds of years. At the same time, Japanese society was matriachical (sons marrying into the wive's family and taking her family name), so one needn't look for consistency.
Why this nattering shame to Catholic religious has not been censured by the Congregation for The Doctrine of Faith is a mystery to me.
Well I guess it's back to penning the old resume after all.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.