Ida Görres on the Relationship of Women's Religious Orders to Men

Mary Ward: Until the Jesuits arrived on the scene the religious orders were “androgynous’’: both a masculine and feminine system, the “first’’ and the “second” order constituted the order as a whole—for the Benedictines, Cistercians, Carmelites, the Franciscans, Dominicans and probably a host of others, long forgotten. The Jesuits formed the first purely male society—bachelors. And with Mary Ward came the spinsters as an independent kind of religious order. But no, not with her, after her. She always intended herself and her followers as the feminine counterpart and complement to the S.J.—much against their will!—planning and pursuing this end with all the energy and vehemence of which she was capable. But this was so directly contrary to the character and will of the S.J. that she had to give in, and so the way was paved for her-own community—without a masculine “half’’. And so the “beehives” began, with the Mother General as queen-bee. For hitherto even the small communities of women religious, such as the Ursulines, with no masculine counterpart still had a male “head” in the bishop, the male guiding counter-pole, i.e. these convents were still enlarged reproductions of the single consecrated virgin who depended on her bishop as the Church on Christ. But now this element was dropped and religious ant-hills began to take form—sterile to the last degree, merely “useful”. I wonder whether in her “providential” opposition to Mary Ward (as distinct from pure policy) the Church also sensed this break with the past—the break-away of women from the bi-polar world into a somehow un-natural, one-level existence, and endeavoured to postpone this as long as possible? That she was actually prepared to sacrifice the enormous and undeniable usefulness of the new institute to the traditional idea of religious? Did the ancient Zeitgeist oppose the rising one not only out of stubbornness, but also because it sensed instinctively the inevitable consequences ? For once this door was opened it could never again be closed. Sooner or later the lone “professional bee’’—the “single” female, no longer virgin-bride but simply virgin-spinster—would have to follow in the wake of the corporation, the conventual bee-hive. Single, i.e. “rid” of man—neither bound to him nor really free of him, building up a purely “women’s world’’, in which the female element hypertrophied—and atrophied—ending up at last as a hybrid substitute for the man it believed to be no longer necessary. How significant and how salutary—and what a mercy it is—that with her iron barrier against female priesthood the Church has bolted at least this door against feminine autarchy! Here at least even the religiously emancipated woman still remains tied to man by her spiritual dependence. So that, strangely enough, even in this sphere the Church is once again maintaining the order of nature.

Broken Lights is currently out of print. It was also published in the US in 1964 by the Newman Press, Westminster, MD.

To learn about the translator, Barbara Waldstein-Wartenberg, read here.