The Taming of the Shrew

When I returned home at 10 pm from the Saturday evening 8:15 pm Mass, I was not quite ready for bed. I did a little channel surfing and found the movie, The Taming of the Shrew”, on TCM. While Shakespearean purists might find this Zeffirelli directed version of the comedy irksome, I have always thought it rather delightful. Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton are at the height of their acting abilities and launch into their roles with gusto. When I watched it this past weekend, while I still reveled in the acting, the comedy, the sets and costumes, and language, I found myself watching it with an increasing degree of uneasiness and sadness.

 

Like the novels of Jane Austin, the Taming of the Shrew is a product of its own time in history when women were chattel property of men, and unable to grow to their full potential as human beings of their own volition. Whether be Katherina of this play, or Elizabeth Bennet of Pride And Prejudice, women of these times were in need of men to advance and take their rightful place in society. As angry, as unpleasant, and as violent as Katherina is in the play, I found myself fully empathetic to her plight. Here is an intelligent woman who is condemned by the males in her life to a station that is far beneath her God given abilities and dignity. Would we all not strike out in anger and bitterness against this cultural enslavement? Gremio, an elderly suitor of Katherina’s more beautiful and younger sister, Bianca, is seeking anyone who will “woo, wed, bed and bid rid of” Katherina. Petruchio is the perfect person to fulfill this quest. His seeking after Katherina is not from the lust of a momentary sexual fling, nor the seeking of a life mate, but out of avarice, Katherina’s dowry being his real prize, and Katherina the unfortunate baggage that comes with that prize. To get the money, Petruchio reasons, he must first tame the shrew, Katherina.

 

My heart sank and grieved for her at the wedding, whereupon, not only did Petruchio arrive an hour late, but arrived drunk and dressed like a buffoon. As a Catholic cleric, I would have stopped the wedding immediately and set him packing. The exchange of vows were a travesty, with the groom too drunk to give his consent and the bride prevented from voicing her discontent to the wedding.  Though the whole thing was a sham and made a mockery of the sacrament of matrimony, everyone, including the officiating priest, looked the other way, and in doing so trapped Katherina into a loveless marriage and sent her off to a gloomy life with the uncaring Petruchio.

In younger days, I may have found myself sympathizing with Petruchio for marrying a most difficult woman. In the present, I have really no time for the man. Not knowing the original version of the play, I do not know what Shakespeare intended for the ending. From the Zeffirelli movie version, it appears that though Katherina looks tamed, she is hardly so, and is ready to reassert herself once more. I wouldn’t be surprised if along the way home she gives Petruchio and Grumio a good swift kick to their codpieces. It would serve them both right.

Do we as a Church treat our female disciples the same way? Has not the hierarchy of the Church sought to “tame the shrews” throughout much of the history of the Church? It was not so in the early Church where women like Priscilla, Chloe, and Phoebe held positions of great responsibility. So why the diminution of the role of women in the Church and judging by the recent Vatican investigations into the LCWR, the seeking to put female disciples of Jesus Christ under their hierarchical thumb? Has male spirituality in a sense lost its prowess, a kind of spiritual erectile dysfunction, that the only way to “feel good” is to diminish the spirituality and ministry of female disciples? As males, are we that unsure and insecure of our own spiritual orientation? 

I remember back in the ‘90’s when I was eating supper with 7 priests. They had come to parish in which I was working to take part in a communal celebration of the Sacrament of Reconciliation. The price of their service to the community was $45 a priest for each communal penance and a wonderful meal prepared for them and served them by the women of the parish. As we were eating, one of the priests, the pastor of a rather large conservative St Paul parish castigated the Sisters of St Joseph Carondolet. As he held court over the dinner, he referred to them as  “the Godless Horde” of the Catholic Church.  I was appalled at the sexism that poured from the mouth of this priest. Having known a number of sisters from that religious order I said that it sounded like he was so terrified of the sisters’ intelligence that their intellect would reveal his own intellectual and theological deficiencies. I concluded that I found his opinion of women demeaning and distasteful and as a married man I could not and would not eat with him. I got up and left the table. Incidentally, not one priest  around that table challenged this priest's vitriolic diatribe against women.

Dr. Michael Cowan, one of my professors at the seminary and coauthor of the book, Dangerous Memories: House Churches And Our American Story, said that the greatest sin of the Church in the 20^th century was sexism. This was at a time when women seemed to be gaining prominence in the Catholic Church, assuming roles as Chancellors and theologians in the Church. I did not quite believe his statement, however, I later observed that he was very prophetic for within a year or two, there was a resurgence of clericalism under John Paul II and the abandonment of the servant model of priesthood for the iconic/demigod priesthood of Trent. Sadly, we are discovering now, Cowan was almost correct. Sexism is the second greatest sin of the Church, the primary sin being clergy sexual abuse and the cover up of that abuse by our bishops.

The hierarchy of the Church has sought over 1500 years to “tame the shrew”, yet somehow, they never quite are able to do so. There will always be a Catherine of Sienna, a Clare of Assisi, a Joan of Arc, a Hildegard of Bingen, a Briget of Kildare, a Teresa of Avila, an Elizabeth Ann Seaton, a Mother Teresa, a Dorothy Day, a Sr. Joan Chittester, to name just a few of the notable female disciples of Jesus Christ, who have that remarkable ability of leaving their footprint on the codpieces of their would be tamers.

Sr. Joan Chittester once wrote that to replace the present patriarchal sexism with a matriarchal counterpart is not the answer. What the Church needs is the joining and giving in mutuality of all that male and female spirituality can offer. Her point is well taken. In having an equal seat around the table of Jesus Christ, we will finally find the fullness of God in whose image males and females are equally made. I pray that that day will come soon.