A Woman Addresses the Patriarchy (from “Chanting the Feminine Down”)
Colette dispensed with guidebooks and soothsayers and imagined a mock audience of priests, monks, nuncios and gentlemen-in-waiting to try out her script, her tall tale from the heavens and her running narrative about Trent and beyond. . .
“Welcome one and all! It is with great pleasure I give back to you — heart heavily burdened — the wonders of the Council of Trent and other blessed gatherings of note, and those sturdy books of rules and chastisements which have guided the Church for centuries.
“I give you back your joyless and emotionless Christ and embrace the holy man who surrounded himself with women who watched over him, even until death.
“I give you back the shepherd Christ, the infant in swaddling clothes and the manger scene, but will keep with your indulgence the mangled, tortured and grotesque Christ, for I have picked up his blessed body parts in my dreams.
“I give you back the anti-feminine doctrines that come from Aristotle, Augustine and Aquinas and also their tortured and punishing biology of women who were considered passive and inferior participants in the birth process and mere receptacles for male sperm.
“I give you back the pronouncement by Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, that virginity was the blessed property of the Catholic Church.
“I give you back your council jokes, confessional banter and backyard gossip about whether it is more sinful to have sex with a beautiful or ugly woman.
“I give you back virginity and priestly celibacy, the twin gods parked on your altar of repression and exalted for centuries above earthly, imperfect marital love.
“I give you back your bachelor theology and the proposition that married love is essentially unchaste and leads to the feminization of the human heart.
“I give you back the images richly praised at the councils and then flattened by doctrine so I can see with the eyes of mystic Marguerite Porete who was burned at the stake for imagining a feminine godhead.
“I give you back your Trinity because it is a fiction, because it is masculine and incomplete, excluding the essential giver of life, the Mother and the Feminine, known to the ancients as the birth-giver of the gods.
“I give you back your Maria Cross, the Feminine impulse you have mixed with your wretched, doctrinal virginity and nailed to that cross of repression and denial and your dark, priestly imaginings that punish the bodies of our children.”
Colette droned on: “I give you back, I give you back, and I give you back,” stopping by instinct at the magic number three, listening for the sounds from those assembled in her mind. Was that the nuncio from Bologna wearing a cloak with images of the Papal States who nodded approvingly at first then said as calmly as a wave of the hand that she had placed herself outside the congregation of souls? Will the bombast follow, sir? Will you bind me in the chains your dutiful servant nearby carries? Will you drown me? Will your God finally show himself?
An old man she had not invited to the gathering caught her attention. Colette was almost sure she had seen this man on the news, in some oversized book or in her dreams engaged in some popish pantomime. He had a white beard and moved with the aid of a cane. She thought prophet, she thought guide, she thought this man’s on my side. She mouthed the archetypal words, Wise Old Man, and waited for wisdom to pour forth. It was as if she were reading his mind:
“Dear Maiden, I have heard your litany of woes, your anxious giving back of gifts, your presumptions of soul. Remember what Petrarch said about the soul having endless depth and potential? You cannot fill the soul by proclamations and endless lists. The ‘I will give you back’ anthem sounds very much like ‘Thou Shall Not.’”
“But, Dear Sir,” she said, “the doctrine is soulless; it must be given back to the source. The doctrine must be imbued with soul. Christ must find His soul.”
“Gentle lady, honor to all gods, to all things. Even in the pagan pantheon, humility still resides. The soul had its birth in religion. With some help from Hermes, we will find our way back.”
“But Sir: what about the Council of Trent? What about the doctrine that has repressed the righteous for five hundred years? Sir, what about the burnings? What about the rapes implicit in the theology? Dear Sir: what about the women?”
“Women will assume their rightful place in the pantheon, in the ranks of the clergy and in the hearts of men.”
“But, dear Sir,” said Colette, “I have traveled through two thousand years of Church history and found more soul in my dreams and nightmares than I found in your doctrines and cathedrals.”
The man turned away and left as quickly as he appeared, before she could reveal what remained in her heart.
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