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O'Malley's Best

The "Masculine" Christian

I wrote a letter once (uselessly) to William Safire who writes the "On Language" column every Sunday in the Times. I asked for an article condemning anyone who uses the words "sex" and "gender" interchangeably. Sex--male/female--is a matter of objective fact; lift the diaper, there's your answer. But gender--masculine/ feminine--is a judgment call. Sex is physical--either/or; gender is psychological--more/less. Donald Trump and Tom Hanks are objectively virile males, but The Donald's sensibilities at least seem more undilutedly "masculine"--assertive, tough-minded, macho; Hanks's are more "feminine"--yielding, inclusive, empathic. On the other hand, Margaret Thatcher and Laura Bush are both females, but Thatcher seems forged by a blacksmithl and Laura seems assembled by fashion designers and cosmeticians. Sex and gender are a lot more complex than Doctor Kinsey and Hugh Hefner lead us to believe.

We're grateful the women's movement's shown us it's okay for a girl to be good at math and belt a baseball, and it's okay for a boy to like poetry and feel emotions other than anger. However, I'm also grateful to the women psychiatrists I've read who say that, once a woman's taken possession of her "masculine" side (what Jung called her Animus: decisiveness, assertiveness, confidence), she has to go back and fuse those "masculine" qualities with the "feminine" qualities she has: inclusiveness, intuition, the ability to see problems in context rather than in cold analytic isolation. Bette Midler's and Madonna's attitudes changed radically once they'd become mothers. In the same way, the new men's movement--the guys with the tom-toms--say that, once a male's taken possession of his "feminine" side (what Jung called his Anima: sensitivity, empathy, the freedom to weep), he has to go back and fuse those "feminine" qualities with the Wild Man in him. Mister Rogers had a Tarzan inside. Only when there's a conscious marriage between masculine and feminine, in both males and females, can we become fully-realized human beings.

Jesus drove the money changers out of the Temple with nothing more than a handful of rope and his own righteous rage. That's a "masculine" side of Jesus the Church rarely allows us to see. What we find more often in insipid holy cards and lullaby hymns is Jesus meek-and-mild, the male-nurse Good Shepherd, the Jesus who tells us to turn the other cheek. Jesus surely had very real access to his "feminine" side. For someone without sin, he had remarkable empathy for weakness. He forgave as readily as any mother, without need to beg or catalogue sins, without a vindictive penance.

But that's not the only side of Jesus. He didn't always turn the other cheek. There's a time to be yielding, but there's also a time to be mad as hell.

Nor is Jesus' rage in the Temple the only time his "masculine" qualities emerged. To do justice to the people who hanged Christ, they didn't eliminate a gentle preacher who just wanted everyone to be nice. You don't bother to execute an irrelevance. Jesus' executioners found him too dynamic to tolerate. He showed no proper deference to those of pedigree and high station. In fact he said to the Temple priests (the equivalent of a diocesan priests' council, with the bishop present): "You hypocrites! You lay burdens on others that you refuse to carry yourselves." He used such uncomplimentary names as: "Blind fools...false witnesses...whitewashed tombs full of bones and decay...tangle of snakes...murderers of prophets...fit for hell." He thought nothing of upbraiding his wealthy host at dinner for discourtesy, praising a sinner who had broken in on the party. In fact, other than evil spirits and the storm at sea, the only sinners Jesus ever upbraided were the clergy and their minions!

Jesus' love--like all love--shows itself in tenderness, but not only in tenderness. More than a few times the real Jesus proved in word and action that his sole doctrine was not the "turn the other cheek" of the meek and mild holy-card Jesus.

Something unredeemed in me wonders if the Church doesn't over-feminize" Jesus, at the expense of the "masculine," because the Church wants to offer us a role model who's exclusively meek-and-mild, pliable, obedient, reluctant to make waves. That same unredeemed side of me is tempted to see those who govern the official Church, in contrast, as exclusively "masculine": judgmental, tough-minded, unyielding, and that they expect us--male or female--to be exclusively "feminine" in relation to them: yielding, receptive, biddable.

That's not what Jesus was. If he had been, he'd have seen a ripe old age. He told us: "Stand up and be counted! Get on the housetops and shout. Shine before the whole world." If anybody, even the official Church, subtly suggests we be pliable, unquestioning, acquiescent (which flies directly in the face of what Jesus said and did), I'll go with Jesus every time.

Copyright © 2008, McQuaid Jesuit