“She Spent All She Had . . . But Only Grew Worse”:Paying the Price of Paternalism

by Karen A. Barta

from Where can we find her?
searching for women’s identity in the new church
edited by Marie-Eloise Rosenblatt , pp. 24-36

Published by Paulist Press, 1991
published on our website with the necessary permissions

Three times the New Testament tells the story of the hemorrhaging woman.(1) The hemorrhaging woman, a stark image of women’s reality. Nearly two thousand years ago, according to our sacred texts, the woman was cured. Her hemorrhaging ceased. Her faith made her whole. So why have women through twenty centuries continued to bleed?

A crime has been committed against humanity, perpetuated in all human institutions, and the community has blood on its hands. In varying degrees, each person has been an accomplice and it is difficult to own up to this deed upon which social systems are built and supported. In these circumstances, those in authority within these institutions are tempted to see themselves as healers, rather than causes, to identify with Jesus in the story of the woman’s cure rather than with the physicians under whom she had suffered greatly.

More than a half century ago, British novelist and literary critic Virginia Woolf responded to a group of women concerned about women’s employment. Two experiences shaped Woolf’s prepared text. From the beginning, Woolf said, she realized she had to do battle with a phantom. Calling the phantom “The Angel of the House,” Woolf described her in these words:

She was intensely sympathetic. She was immensely charming. She was utterly unselfish. She excelled in the difficult arts of family life. She sacrificed herself daily. If there was chicken, she took the leg; if there was a draught, she sat in it-in short she was so constituted that she never had a mind or a wish of her own, but preferred to sympathize always with the minds or wishes of others. Above all, she was-I need not say it-she was pure. Her purity was supposed to be her chief beauty-her blushes, her great grace.(2)

To become a writer, Woolf realized, she had to destroy this phantom. “I turned on her and caught her by the throat. I did my best to kill her.” Had she been taken to court, Woolf confided, her excuse would have been that she acted in self-defense. “For, as I found, directly I put a pen to paper, you cannot review even a novel without having a mind of your own.” Getting rid of this phantom was not easy. As she notes, “It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality.”

The second experience Woolf shared in her brief address was the problem of telling the truth about her own experiences as a woman. Although she felt she had solved the problem of the Angel of the House, Woolf acknowledged that telling the truth of her experiences as a woman was far more difficult. Once rid of the false self, of the Angel of the House, a woman needs only to be herself. “Ah but what is herself?” Woolf asked. “What is a woman?” To which Woolf answered:

I do not know. I do not believe that you know. I do not believe that anybody can know until she has expressed herself in all the arts and professions open to human skill.

Woolf spoke from her own experiences and perspectives as a writer, but no woman can escape the difficulties Woolf so astutely identified, namely the recurring problem of a “false self” and the uncertainty of her true identity as a woman. Far from glorifying the image of the completely selfless woman, Woolf exposed it as an idol standing in place of a true self. In her effort to develop her own thought and view, Woolf found the false self to be meddlesome, time-wasting, inauthentic, and deceitful. Moreover, Woolf cautioned, destroying the false self only sweeps the house clean. The task of giving genuine expression to one’s personhood as a woman in society and culture remains.(3) These two insights are basic to any purposeful discussion involving women’s concerns.

Unless and until the church recognizes the personhood of women as something both distinct and more basic than the roles they perform as mothers and wives (and sisters and daughters, as well as friends, teachers, employees, bosses, etc.), an official pronouncement will only exacerbate the problems facing women today. Existing documents do not state explicitly that women are more responsible than men for building and sustaining relationships or for developing the virtues required for genuine community. But church leaders continually appeal to images which have carried this ambivalent message in the past, images which point to women’s roles (especially in relation to Mary as the mother of Jesus) rather than to their reality (for which Mary Magdalene, among others, offers a refreshing model since she is not referred to in the gospels by any role besides that of a disciple of Jesus).(7)

What is amazing about the gospel tradition is how remarkably little the gospels actually say about “the family” or the “roles” of mother, father, son, daughter, husband and wife! The gospels treat those who follow Jesus primarily as persons and as hearers of the word. Their familial roles are quite secondary. We only learn that Peter is married through a miracle Jesus performs on his mother-in-law (Mk 1:29-31). The sons of Zebedee drop their father’s fishing nets and immediately answer the call of faith by following Jesus (Mk 1:18-20).

Moreover, according to Mark, the family of Jesus did not accept his preaching mission and even attempted to persuade him to return home (Mk 3:20-22, 31-35). The encounter ends with Jesus’ repudiation of his natural family and his acknowledgment as family those following him: “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” Other sayings of Jesus assert the primacy of discipleship over family bonds in equally strong terms. “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me” (Mt 10:37; Lk 14:26). To the disciple who says, “Lord, let me go first and bury my father,” Jesus answers curtly, “Follow me, and let the dead bury their dead” (Mt 8:22). At another time Jesus commands, “Call no one on earth your father; you have one father and he is in heaven” (Mt 23:9).(8)

Nor should the Samaritan woman escape our notice. “Many of the Samaritans of that town began to believe in him because of the word of the woman who testified” (Jn 4:39). She is the same woman, as Jesus pointed out, who had had five husbands and the man she was living with was not her husband. For this she had been ostracized from the community.

What these sayings suggest is that there exists a gospel perspective on family to which recent church documents on women make no appeal. However, such a perspective would give valuable insight and support to women’s claim of their own personhood as something of profound value and significance beyond the roles for which they are traditionally praised and disciplined by church authorities. In fact, the bishops would do well to remind us that “women have been misled about themselves insofar as they have accepted the roles assigned to them by men. If a woman can be satisfied in these roles, she is, for all intents and purposes, lost to herself and perhaps to God as well.”(9)

Unfortunately, there are singularly few texts within pastoral statements challenging women to a greater awareness and appreciation of themselves as women called to full personhood in Christ. There is little ecclesial reflection on what this awareness and appreciation might mean for women themselves and for the church. Although there are numerous references to women giving care to others, no words in pastoral statements directly encourage women to care for themselves. Caring for oneself requires and fosters a sense of self, the very thing many women lack most .(10) Self-care does not mean no longer needing or caring for others, but rather being able to identify and distinguish one’s own needs and find resources for help and support in securing them. Above all, caring for oneself requires a woman to stop hiding behind the roles she fills and be able to identify and express her own needs, desires, dreams, and hopes as well as her sources of pain and pleasure.’ (11)

Paternalism: An Authority of False Love

Paternalism is the most formidable obstacle to women taking responsibility for their own well-being. Paternalism is “the claim or attempt to supply the needs or to regulate the life of a nation or community in the same way as a father does those of his children.”(12) In other words, the alluring promise within paternalism is that one need not care for oneself because someone else will. Whereas men are socialized to supply leadership for the system, to be strong because “people depend on you,” women are socialized to be dependent rather than in charge, male-identified rather than self-identified, helpers rather than initiators, passive rather than active, and in second place rather than first – even in their own lives.(13) The projection is perfect: men turn to women to be the Angel of the House, to do their “emotional housework,” and women are left to rely on men to protect and take care of them. When the system works, neither develops fully, neither becomes whole. When the system fails, each can blame the other, without taking responsibility for one’s own self. As “shepherds of the flock,” issuing “pastoral letters,” the bishops are in the difficult business of exerting authority without being paternalistic or autonomous.(14)

In a recent study on authority in modern, post-industrial society, Richard Sennett identifies paternalism and autonomy as the two major forms of exercising power.(15) Sennett defines autonomy as an exercise of power that denies any need of or connection with others, an authority without love. Paternalism, on the other hand, easily becomes an authority of false love.

Paternalism is what remains of ancient patriarchy. Strictly speaking, patriarchy is a system of domination and control over those who are consciously related by blood ties. In the medieval world, patriarchy gave way to patrimony, a system whereby power was passed on to male relatives by means of property. But in modern society males no longer dominate through either blood ties or property, but on the basis of their roles as fathers, judges, elected officials, employers, etc. Paternalism, unlike patrimony, is not able to give power and position in the world by means of property. Consequently, as Sennett points out, “no father can guarantee to his children a known place in the world; he can only act protectively. ”(16)

In offering this protection, however, paternalism becomes a false love as it resists its “children’s” growing up, becoming mature, responsible, and independent. Moreover, paternalism presumes to know what is good for those under its “care” and makes decisions for them. Ultimately, it robs people of their personhood by limiting or foreclosing their experiences of life, or by interpreting for them what their experiences mean, or by pronouncing final judgment, and by doing for others what they need to do for themselves as part of being human and free.(17)

Suggesting how early experiences “prepare us for life” within paternalistic systems, Alice Miller’s books offer a strong critique of common child-rearing practices that rob children of their humanness and personhood.”(18) Just how pervasive paternalism is within our social institutions is suggested by a growing number of excellent studies that detect its presence not only in families but in government and in the professions, as well as in business and in the church.(19)

Letty M. Russell draws upon Sennett’s study to point out that paternalism in the church “is an invitation to the sin of dependence and immaturity in faith and action” while autonomy “is an invitation to the sin of pride and selfishness, masked in the rhetoric of objectivity and excellence.”(20) Accordingly, the alternative Russell proposes for ministers active within the church is the model of partnership in ministry, reminiscent of the title of the first draft of the bishops’ pastoral on women.(21) Faced with the dominating forms of authority in modern society, Russell advocates developing a partnership model within church ministry that employs four principles. (1) Begin from the underside. Listen to the losers who can not only open up the scriptures but put us “in a position to know the effects of domination and paternalism.” (2) Follow the questions. Only paternalistic need drives us to assume we can answer everyone’s questions. (3) Act together. Attentive listening helps a group to find its collective authority. Beyond the easy answers we can hear the voices of pain and suffering. (4) Demystify the structures. Ignorance of the structures keeps people dependent on those who rule “for them.”

Both women and men need new models for facing up to the spiritual devastation wreaked upon them by patriarchal claims of male superiority, female inferiority and the internalized feeling that women are dispensable. Women especially need new models to help them break the bonds of paternalism, which promises security at the price of maturity and growth. Women especially need fresh models for claiming their wholeness and exorcising the demons of internalized inferiority bequeathed by the structures of domination and submission in which they have lived so long. One such model returns us to the image with which we began: the hemorrhaging woman.

The Hemorrhaging Woman Takes Action

Three times the gospel tradition tells her story. Mark’s version, the oldest, is also the longest and most detailed. “There was a woman afflicted with hemorrhages for twelve years,” we are told. Not only is a woman the main character within this healing story, but her ailment is directly linked to her sex. Nor was her pain merely physical. Jewish cultic law defined menstruation as a time of ritual “uncleanness.” Even more serious was a persistent discharge of blood from a woman, as set down in the book of Leviticus:

If a woman has a discharge of blood for many days, not at the time of her impurity, or if she has a discharge beyond the time of her impurity, all the days of the discharge she shall continue in uncleanness; as in the days of her impurity, she shall be unclean. Every bed on which she lies, all the days of her discharge, shall be to her as the bed of her impurity; and everything on which she sits shall be unclean, as in the uncleanness of her impurity. And whoever touches these things shall be unclean, and shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the evening. But if she is cleansed of her discharge, she shall count for herself seven days, and after that she shall be clean. And on the eighth day she shall take two turtledoves or two young pigeons, and bring them to the priest, to the door of the tent of meeting. And the priest shall offer one for a sin offering and the other for a burnt offering; and the priest shall make atonement for her before the Lord for her unclean discharge (15:25-30).

Thus for twelve years the woman of the gospel story lived under oppression: stigmatized as unclean, cut off from human contact, denied sexual intercourse, and severely restricted in her activities. The story continues: “She had suffered greatly at the hands of doctors and had spent all she had. Yet she was not helped but only grew worse.” A poignant image of a woman’s plight within a paternalistic system. To the already heavy burdens of physical, emotional, and spiritual pain are added a failed trust, bitter disappointment and economic disaster. She reached out to those with power within the system and they not only failed to help but contributed to her worsening condition until, at last, her illness defined her being.

The hemorrhaging woman approached Jesus. “She had heard about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak. She said, ‘If I but touch his clothes, I shall be cured.’ ” The decision to reach out is her own; she takes matters into her own hands; she takes responsibility for her life. She acts. And through her bold and assertive act, she breaks out of the barriers imposed by her faith tradition, culture and society. She is healed.

Following her cure, one barrier remained: to own up to her action, to claim her experience and name her reality. Jesus inquires who touched him. He refuses to let the woman remain invisible. His question calls her forth. His disciples, as usual, miscomprehend and defensively point out the size of the crowd pressing upon him. But Jesus persists until the woman, overcoming her inner fear, comes before Jesus “and tells him the whole truth.” She claims her new self and chances rejection. But instead of rejection, this bold, assertive, and courageous boundary-breaker receives affirmation with the words, “Daughter, your faith has made you whole. Go in peace and be cured of your affliction.”

What can this woman teach us? What can she teach the bishops? For one thing, we never do find out whether she was a mother or even married. The focus of the story is rather on the great dignity of this person and her struggle toward wholeness. Her roles are not primary; she is. Nor is she championed for being self-effacing, without a mind or wish of her own, and sympathetic with the minds or wishes of others, like Woolf’s phantom of the Angel of the House. Rather, after relying for many years on others to help her, she finally decides and acts on her own. Taking responsibility for her life, she identifies her need and finds someone who can truly help in her struggle toward wholeness. She is assertive, even bold, courageous, and honest. To claim herself, she has to cross boundaries that severely restricted her life and person.

By itself this healing story offers a vivid example of a woman breaking the chains of paternalism. But the immediate context within Mark’s gospel heightens its message. For the story of the first healing, wrought by the bold, assertive action of a brave and determined woman, is set within the healing story of a twelve year old girl, on the threshold of entering womanhood through menstruation. Her father, a synagogue official, takes things into his own hands. He relies, as a father, on his own ability to help her by seeking out Jesus. He approaches Jesus to speak for her welfare. While Jesus is on his way to the girl, the woman intrudes. Unlike the daughter whose father acts for her benefit, the hemorrhaging woman takes action for her own good, speaks up for herself, and becomes whole.

When the narrative returns to the frame story, word arrives that the synagogue official’s daughter has died. Then it becomes clear that the father acted not so much out of faith as out of a sense of what he could do for his daughter. Like the hemorrhaging woman, he had exhausted all his resources too. As paterfamilias, the entire resources available to him and his household had failed him, suggesting the bankruptcy of paternalism. We can imagine that all the religious-cultic rituals and chants (the mourners are already there!) have been invoked.

The daughter dies because the system cannot give her life. The father, having done all he could to save his daughter, is ready to retreat. The advice he receives-“Why bother the teacher any longer?”-is sad but reflective of his own paternalistic views. Jesus, not Jairus, disregards the message. Jesus’ advice to the father is to have faith. Faith will confound paternalism’s conflicting messages: “Come help my daughter / Don’t bother, she’s dead!” Arriving at the house, Jesus sends the mourners away, raises the girl back to life, and tells those amazed by the workings of faith to give the girl something to eat .(22)

Conclusion

People of faith evoke faith in each other. The healing power resided in the little girl herself, as it did in the hemorrhaging woman, and not in the paterfamilial system. Perhaps if the father had drawn on his daughter’s strength rather than upon his household, she would have recovered much sooner. “Talitha coum” is a prayerful summons to the child’s spirit and inner power to awaken. Then she may be fed. These two interlocking healing stories confront religious-cultic mindsets which prevent persons (the woman, the synagogue official, the household) from self-appropriating their own selves or enabling others to do the same. Might not this suggest that any pastoral the bishops (episkopoi or heads of households) may wish to compose needs to stress that only by mutual enhancement, and not by paternalism and its phantom image of women, can we together create a future open to the healing powers of God?

Notes

1. Mk 5:24-34; Mt 9:20-22; Lk 8:43-48.

2. This and the following quotations appear in the essay, “Professions for Women,” in Virginia Woolf, Collected Essays, Vol. II (Hogarth Press: London, 1966) 284-289.

3. That Woolf did not underestimate the enormity of the task is clear from her insight into the need for forerunners and predecessors. As she writes in A Room of One’s Own (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1929) 68-69, “For masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice.”

4. A typical listing of stereotypic traits appears in Irene H. Rieze et al., Woman and Sex Roles (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1978) 284.

5. See Joan C. Tronto, “Beyond Gender Difference to a Theory of Care,” Signs 12 (Summer 1987) 644-663 for an excellent discussion of the issues and relevant bibliography.

6. Statistics worldwide reveal how much women bear the burden of society’s poverty and its consequences: poor health, illiteracy, malnutrition, problem pregnancies, and the like.

7. See, e.g., Carolyn M. and Joseph A. Grassi, Mary Magdalene and the Women in Jesus’ Life (Kansas City: Sheed and Ward, 1986).

8. For a succinct discussion and summary of the relevant texts, see Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her (New York: Crossroad, 1983) 145-151.

9. Jeffrey C. Eaton, “Simone Weil and Feminist Spirituality,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 54 (1984) 691-704.

10. See Paul Cooey, “The Power of Transformation and the Transformation of Power,” ,Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 1 (Spring 1985) 23-36.

11. As Susan Nelson Dunfee points out, not pride but the sin of hiding tempts most women. See her article, “The Sin of Hiding,” Soundings 65 (Fall 1982) 316327.

12. Oxford English Dictionary, Vol 7:551.

13. See Rita Nakashima Brock, Journeys by Heart (New York: Crossroad, 1988), especially Chapter One on the depths of the problem.

14. Ivan Ilich, Gender (New York: Pantheon Books, 1982) 151-152, raises serious questions around the institutionalized corruption into “care” of the theological notion of “Christian charity.” “Care,” writes Ilich, “is an insidious key word for a characteristically Western thing.” Unlike the west, the priest never became a “curate” or producer of care in the Christian east. His central task remained the celebration of the eucharist, not the administration of sacraments.

15. Richard Sennett, Authority (New York: Vintage Books, 1981).

16. Sennett, Authority, 54.

17. Gerald Dworkin, in an oft-quoted essay, “Paternalism,” The Monist 56 (1972) 64-84, discussing paternalism and the civil laws, concludes that “we would be most likely to consent to paternalism in those instances in which it preserves and enhances for individuals their ability to rationally consider and carry out their own decisions.”

18. See Alice Miller, The Drama of the Gifted Child (New York: Basic Books, 1981); For Your Own Good (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1983); Thou Shalt Not Be Aware (New York: New American Library, 1984) and Brock’s discussion of Miller in Journeys by Heart, Chapter One; also useful is Alexander Lowen’s study, Narcissism: Denial of the True Self (New York: Collier Books, 1985).

19. See John L. Knight, The Mask of Love: Professional Care in the Service Economy (Boston: Marian Boyars, 1982); James F. Childress, Who Should Decide: Paternalism in Health Care (New York: Oxford University press, 1982); Erwin H. Epstein, “The Peril of Paternalism: The Imposition of Education on Cuba by the United States,” American Journal of Education 96 (November 1987) 1-23; Jay Katz, The Silent World of Doctor and Patient (New York: Free Press, 1984); Lucian Pye, Asian Power and Politics: The Cultural Dimensions of Authority (Cambridge: Belknop Press, 1985; Princeton University Press, 1986).

20. Letty M. Russell, “Authority in Mutual Ministry,” Quarterly Review 6 (Spring 1986) 10-23.

21. Cf. Russell’s recent book, Household of Freedom: Authority in Feminist Theology (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1987); also her earlier books, The Future of Partnership; Growth in Partnership; and Becoming Human.

22. See also the creative use of this text in Brock, Journeys by Heart, 81-87, and the redactional critical investigation of the story by Marla J. Selvidge, Woman, Cult, and Miracle Recital (Lewisberg: Bucknell University Press, 1989).

RECOMMENDED READING

Brock, Rita Nakashima. Journeys by Heart. New York: Crossroad, 1988. Subtitled “A Christology of Erotic Power,” this 1988 winner of the Crossroad/Continuum Women’s Studies Award is an emotionally provocative book which places an emphasis on the vulnerability of Jesus in the gospels as the source of his healing power. Feminist theory offers a new perspective on Jesus as redeemer.

Ilich, Ivan. Gender. New York: Pantheon Books, 1982. A challenging book on the asymmetry of gender that probes questions on the roles of male and female and the work each performs within a history of scarcity.

Lowen, Alexander. Narcissism. Denial of the True Self. New York: Collier Books, 1985. Presents an excellent case for reclaiming feeling as the route to regaining the integrity of the self. Those in authority are not exempt.

Russell, Letty M. Household of Freedom: Authority in Feminist Theology. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1987. A respected scholar suggests fresh models and insights for empowering all members of a church community through a revisioning of authority.

Sennett, Richard. Authority. New York: Vintage Books, 1981. The first of a four-volume series on “the emotional bonds of modern society” exploring traditional and contemporary roles of authority in consenting, natural, and imposed relationships.