An act of going: musings on a feminist engagement with theological nomadism

Anne Musso

Introduction

This paper tells of my feminist engagement with theological nomadism. Though I now realise I have been “becoming” a theological nomad most of my adult life, I first grappled with the concept within two important but different contexts in the mid-1990s. One of these was the context of academic studies. After completing a theology degree I began postgraduate studies by reading some key texts in feminist critical theory (for example Harding 1987, Harraway 1988, Nicholson 1990, Butler 1990, Butler & Scott 1992, Donaldson 1992, Stanley and Wise 1993). This was when I encountered Rosi Braidotti’s feminist theorising of nomadic subjectivity and embodied sexual difference (1994a). I found her work provided me with language and concepts that resonated well with readings I gave my own life experiences.

The second significant context for my feminist engagement with theological nomadism was my membership of a self-support group of eight Catholic women from a regional Australian diocese. The group began meeting in October 1993; later we named ourselves the Sophia group.¹ All participants were active, committed Catholics who had been educated in Catholic schools prior to Vatican Council II and had later come to experience and recognise the institutional church’s disempowerment and marginalisation of women. At our informal gatherings, participants shaped a safe environment in which to share stories, air grievances and discuss Catholic Church teachings and practices. Together, we reflected on life experiences and came to realise that we could “do theology” together – learning from and with one another.

These two contexts were brought together in the postgraduate research work I undertook. The project focussed on the Sophia group’s theologising: I gathered data over a two and a half year period, and analysed the presence of difference in the collated texts. To facilitate the analysis I made use of Braidotti’s explication of embodied sexual difference in which she identifies three intermeshed levels or phases of difference: difference between women and men, difference among women, and difference within each woman (1994a: 158-167). Feminist nomadism became a key analytical tool when I discovered that difference intensified as participants left behind theological fixity, journeying at their own pace in their own theological directions. I realised then that nomadic feminist theologising was actually an “act of going” (Braidotti, 1994a: 22-23) which encouraged and respected difference and opened up multiple theological pathways and possibilities.²

In this paper I present a Focus Text that offers a keyhole glimpse into the Sophia group’s understandings of theological nomadism. This text features a discussion that took place in May 1996 when we were developing awareness of ourselves as Catholic feminist nomads, and it acts as a springboard for musings that capture my engagement with the concept of theological nomadism in the late 1990s. These musings include a brief explanation of Braidotti’s feminist theory of nomadic subjectivity, an overview of relevant canonical Catholic discourses and a presentation of the perspectives of some Sophia group members in conversation with other women. The paper exemplifies women coming together to listen to, learn with, understand and teach one another; dynamics evident in most Sophia group discussions. I begin with an extract from one of these, the paper’s Focus Text.

Focus Text

The Focus Text comes from the Sophia group meeting held in May 1996, about two years after I first started taping group sessions. Six women were at the meeting and the voices of four of these are heard in the Focus Text. With myself as the exception, pseudonyms have been assigned to the Sophia group participants.

Focus Text (May 1996)

My explanation at the start of the text signals an understanding of nomadism as an ideology of leaving behind “fixed ideas, beliefs and structures”. I had been reading Rosi Braidotti’s (1994a) work on feminist nomadic subjectivity, and my words were influenced by how I interpreted her theoretical articulation of being/becoming nomadic. I had also applied a theological dimension to the concept and it is this application which is central to both the Focus Text and this paper. However, before looking at the theological dimension more carefully, I will ground my musings on the feminist nomadic theorising undertaken by Rosi Braidotti.

Braidotti’s work on nomadism

In an interview with Kathleen O’Grady (1996) Braidotti said, “My greatest fear is to become petrified: to become a tree, to put out roots and not be able to move.” It is not surprising then that she had endeavoured to “develop and evoke a vision of female feminist subjectivity in a nomadic mode” (1994a: 1), and in so doing, has responded to “the need for a qualitative leap of the feminist political imagination” because of what she sees as the limitations of a logocentric approach (1994a: 3). While Braidotti’s nomadic figuration evolved from observation of the nomadic lifestyle, it is not a literal nomadism that forms the basis of her figuration. Braidotti notes:

[T]he nomadism in question here refers to the kind of critical consciousness that resists settling into socially coded modes of thought and behavior. Not all nomads are world travelers; some of the greatest trips can take place without physically moving from one’s habitat. It is the subversion of set conventions that defines the nomadic state, not the literal act of traveling (1994a: 5).

For Braidotti, nomads are comfortable with transitions and change: they do not cling to permanence and stability. Nomadic consciousness is always in transit, although this does not mean that nomads do not or cannot have stable bases that enable participation in a community (1994a: 33). Using her nomadic figuration of subjectivity, Braidotti builds a conceptual framework for thinking about “changes and changing conditions: not static formulated truths, but the living process of transformation” (1994b: 163) and she does this in a “multidifferentiated nonhierarchical way” (1994a: 146). Drawing on Deleuze’s work, Braidotti notes that “the point of being an intellectual nomad is about crossing boundaries, about the act of going” (1994a: 22-23, emphasis added).

As the Focus Text reveals, I identified with Braidotti’s articulation of feminist nomadic subjectivity and applied her words to theological activity. The point of doing theology, I decided, was to cross boundaries and subvert set androcentric theological conventions, to become nomadic and participate in a theological act of going. Moreover, the Focus Text demonstrates that three others in the Sophia group believed that being theologically nomadic was a positive self-image for Catholic women who are open to change and to evolving theologies.³ Ruth made this clear with her comment: “It gave me a lift to be able to name what I’m doing … to be able to name myself as a nomad” (Focus Text).

As nomadic consciousness developed within each of us, Ruth, Dorothy, Wendy and myself became at ease in leaving behind Catholic Church structures and dogmas which we found oppressive to us as women. Furthermore, I grew curious about the extent to which canonical Catholic discourses acknowledged or repressed a view of theology as open-ended and evolving. There was little cause for rejoicing in what I discovered.

Canonical Catholic discourses

My research revealed that an understanding of dogmas being fixed/unchanging and of theologies being evolving/developing coexist within Catholicism’s heritage – demonstrating that Catholic tradition is not monolithic. However, I also found that the institutional church has emphasised the former at the expense of the latter. In particular, two church teachings have contributed significantly to this: one in relation to the fidei depositum (deposit of faith) and the other in relation to doctrinal infallibility.

The church teaches that there is a single deposit of faith (fidei depositum), complete in itself. This was affirmed in Vatican Council II’s (1965) Dei Verbum (Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation) which states: “Sacred Tradition and sacred Scripture make up a single sacred deposit of the Word of God, which is entrusted to the Church” (n. 10, emphasis added). The document goes on to assert that the church’s magisterium – the official teaching office of the Catholic Church staffed only by men – has sole authority to authentically interpret this fidei depositum. Moreover, everything the magisterium says is part of God’s revelation can be found in the fidei depositum: “It [magisterium] teaches only what has been handed on to it. … All that it proposes for belief as being divinely revealed is drawn from this single deposit of faith” (Dei Verbum n. 10, emphasis added).

The Code of Canon Law (Canon Law Society, 1983) has ratified the existence of this single deposit of faith consigned to the church:

Those things are to be believed by divine and catholic faith which are contained in the word of God as it has been written or handed down by tradition, that is, in the single deposit of faith entrusted to the Church . . . . (canon 750, emphasis added).

As well, the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1994) has an introduction by Pope John Paul II—his (1992) Apostolic Constitution on the Publication of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, entitled Fidei Depositum—which reinforces this assertion (1994: 1-2).

The other church teaching that valorises dogma as given and unalterable is the doctrine of infallibility. The institutional church understands itself as sharing in the infallibility of Jesus. This is expressed, for example, in the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

In order to preserve the Church in the purity of the faith handed on by the apostles, Christ who is the Truth willed to confer on her [sic] a share in his own infallibility (n. 889). … Christ endowed the Church’s shepherds with the charism of infallibility in matters of faith and morals (1994: n. 890).

The power to designate a doctrine definitively (infallibly) belongs to the pope either on his own or jointly with the other bishops throughout the world, though only under stipulated conditions (specified in The Code of Canon Law, 1983: canon 749 §1&2).

Together these two teachings developed exclusively by men herald an ideology of theological fixity: theological truth has been revealed to the church’s magisterium (pope and bishops) by God who has made one complete deposit of unchanging and unchangeable theological doctrine into the church’s “bank” of faith. The institutional church, through its magisterium, is sole owner/custodian and interpreter of this single fidei depositum. About key matters of faith and morals, the magisterium’s definitive interpretations of the faith cannot be changed and cannot be incorrect.

Yet, within Catholicism’s heritage there is also an understanding of theology as something which is developing (or nomadic). Although God’s revelation to humanity is said to be complete in the person of Jesus Christ and there is no further revelation to come – “The son is his Father’s definitive Word; so there will be no further Revelation after him” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1994 n.73, see also n.66) – the church acknowledges the need for understanding of the faith to develop with time: “Yet even if Revelation is already complete, it has not been made completely explicit; it remains for Christian faith gradually to grasp its full significance over the course of the centuries” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1994 n. 66).

Within John Paul II’s Fidei Depositum, signifiers of faith as developing and changing are also to be found:

A catechism should faithfully and systematically present the teaching of Sacred Scripture, the living Tradition in the Church … It should take into account the doctrinal statements which down the centuries the Holy Spirit has intimated to his [sic] Church. It should also help to illumine with the light of faith the new situations and problems which had not yet emerged in the past.

This catechism will thus contain both the new and the old (cf. Mt 13:52), because the faith is always the same yet the source of ever new light (Fidei Depositum in Catechism of the Catholic Church 1994: 4, emphasis added)

Especially in this last sentence, the tension that exists between the two different ideologies becomes evident, for while the faith is the “source of ever new light”, the faith remains “always the same”. This seems to imply that developing theological understandings and interpretations are valid only if the integrity of the fidei depositum is upheld: “new light” may illuminate old doctrine provided it does not challenge definitive core tenets of the androcentric theological status quo. As can be seen in the Focus Text, this qualification was not acceptable to some Sophia group members whose readings of their experiences led them to adopt a more open and embracing nomadic understanding of theological truth. So I return to the Focus Text now, continuing these musings on my engagement with theological nomadism in conversation with the Sophia group participants and other women.

The Sophia Group’s perspective

For four members of the Sophia Group, the institutional church’s restraints on new theological insights (“new light”) is an unjustifiable curtailing of the free activity of God’s Spirit at work in today’s world; a curtailing which valorises the power and dogmatism of the church’s male magisterium while negating the theological agency of women and other marginalised persons. Hence boundaries rigidly fixed by definitive church dogmas need to be challenged in light of contemporary justice issues, something Mary Jo Weaver does when she says feminism requires that “truth claims must be subjected to more rigorous testing”, and that “new standards of universality” – such as being “good for women as well as men, inclusive of the poor as well as the rich, sensitive to ethnic and religious differences rather than culturally imperialistic” – must be applied (1992: 202).

With justice values such as these not being seen to be upheld by the male-dominated institutional church, Dorothy was led to say: “Each of us can see that what we believed, what we saw, is not true”, and Wendy stipulated: “Church can’t be static, it can’t be fixed, it can’t be set. … The church keeps wanting to define the boundaries. We’ve moved on past that” (Focus Text).⁴

Wendy’s assertion that the church simply cannot be fixed/static finds support in Mary Hilkert’s work on revelation. Hilkert shows that in the Vatican II document on revelation, Dei Verbum, progress was made when an opening chapter was added to the document’s initial draft. In this added chapter, Hilkert notes that revelation is presented as “God’s self-disclosure and offer of friendship to humankind”, marking a basic shift to “a relational and dialogical model of revelation as divine-human friendship” (1993: 63).

Hilkert believes that a consequent implication of this basic shift is that revelation necessarily has to be viewed as ongoing:

[An] undeveloped implication in the Vatican documents is that if revelation constitutes a relationship of communion with God as mediated through creation and human history, then it is necessarily an ongoing process that must be expressed and symbolized anew in every age and culture. … The process of revelation is necessarily ongoing because neither the divine nor the human mystery can ever be defined, and the relationship between the two remains ongoing and surprising (1993: 65).

As well as Dei Verbum, Hilkert (1993: 64-65) draws on Vatican II’s Gaudium et Spes (Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World) because it affirms the possibility of each and every person being in relationship with God. However, Hilkert does concede that there are no documents from the Second Vatican Council which explicitly name human experience as revelatory (1993: 65).

Hilkert’s understanding of the relationship between the human and the divine being necessarily “ongoing” as well as “surprising” resonates well with my interpretation (Focus Text) of a scriptural passage found in the gospels of Luke (9: 58) and Matthew (8: 20). According to Matthew (8:19-20): “A scribe then approached [Jesus] and said, ‘Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head’.”⁵

As indicated in the Focus Text, I had previously understood this passage in a physical-literal sense: Jesus’ work is itinerant and therefore followers of Jesus have to be prepared to travel wherever they are needed, having no home to call their own. This interpretation is similar to the interpretations I remembered hearing priests and teachers give. For example in The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, a popular Catholic scriptural commentary, Benedict Viviano says: “Jesus … teaches that since he leads a risky, unsettled, itinerant way of life, the disciples can expect no better” (1990: 648). Yet I came to consider the passage in “new light”. Within Judaism at the time, scribes were the official interpreters of the Torah (God’s Law/Word). Teachers would pass on to the people the official interpretations set down by scribes. In this sense, teachers followed scribes. Therefore, it might be “surprising” to some to find a scribe crossing an established religious boundary so as to follow Jesus.

So I came to understand Jesus’ words (Mt 8:20) as a metaphorical warning for his would-be followers to be prepared to relinquish previously held religious beliefs, practices, laws. Other passages from Matthew’s gospel support this interpretation. For example, when Jesus is asked which law is the greatest, he replies with two very broad commandments: love God, love one’s neighbours (Matthew 22:34-40). Rather than stipulating precisely what to do, these laws require circumstances and contexts to be taken into consideration. Laws cannot be definitive: they need to be interpreted and applied anew in response to changing socio-cultural and historical situations.

Hence, following Jesus would offer no comfort zone of stable theological beliefs, no restful secure theological haven in which to lay down one’s head: what Jesus asks is a willingness to embrace God’s “ongoing and surprising” relationship with humanity. Or, expressed using terminology borrowed from Rosi Braidotti, being a follower of Jesus invites one to become a nomad, to cross boundaries and subvert set androcentric conventions (1994a: 5). I certainly viewed Braidotti’s work on nomadism as sitting comfortably with christian theology, for feminist nomadism provided me with a key for unlocking the hidden dynamic of the developing Christian tradition. Since that time, I have found support for feminist theological nomadism expressed in the work of Lisa Isherwood, who suggests: “Christianity has often imaged itself as a pilgrim and resurrection community and so it should not be too difficult for such a community to understand its role as that of ‘nomadic subjects’ dislocating the grip of patriarchy” (2000: 34).

The goal of “dislocating the grip of patriarchy” featured in many written submissions and oral presentations made to the Australian Catholic Bishops’ (1990’s) research project into the participation of women in the Catholic Church in Australia. In results published in a comprehensive report entitled Woman and Man: One in Christ Jesus (Macdonald, Carpenter, Cornish et al, 1999), it was noted that an “overwhelming” response to the project had been received, a response far greater than for previous consultations by the Catholic Church. Hence the report concluded that this particular topic was both “crucial and controversial” (1999: vii).

In the context of this paper, it is significant that the report acknowledges: “Many suggested that tradition is used in a rigid and static way, history is presented as men’s story and that Scripture is used in such a way that women’s stories are excluded” (1999: 197, emphasis added). Additionally, the report included this comment – which also sits comfortably with feminist nomadism – from a participant in Adelaide:

To hold to a notion of the unchanging nature of [Catholic Church] Tradition would seem to counter this belief in the ongoing, living reality of God’s revelation in a Church. Thus to hold that the traditional ways of appreciating women’s participation cannot be subject to change would seem a distorted view of the nature of the living tradition of the Church (1999: 197, emphasis added).

Members of the Sophia group contributed both a written submission and an oral presentation in response to the Australian Bishops’ research project. Like the Adelaide participant (just quoted), we wanted the institutional church to be open to the “ongoing, living reality of God’s revelation” in us and other marginalised persons. We chose feminist theological nomadism, embracing God’s “ongoing and surprising” relationship with us, even though this had significant repercussions for us as Catholics. In the Focus Text Dorothy speaks of one such repercussion: she had changed dramatically and consequently had become disillusioned with the church. She notes: “[the church] is not what we thought it was”. A more precise articulation of this view had been expressed by Dorothy earlier in the same meeting:

Maybe our eyes have been open. We have become aware of what [the church] represents, and it’s not what we think church and Christianity should be about. I believe that what church stands for now is not what we stand for. … It’s not what Jesus stood for. The gospel values that we have learnt to love and that we believe in, that’s not there in church (May 1996).

Dorothy was hurt by the failure of the institutional church to constantly reassess its values, teachings and practices, because she, along with many other women, “poured so much love into it”. Ruth had also been hurt and she spoke of going through a “real grieving process” (Focus Text). There is even a hint of deep inner frustration when she asks: “When do you get out the other side?”(Focus Text). It seems that many other Australian women share Dorothy’s and Ruth’s pain, for the Executive Summary of Woman and Man: One in Christ Jesus (Macdonald, Carpenter, Cornish et al, 1999: viii) concludes that “the overall findings of the written submissions, public hearings and targeted groups revealed a strong sense of pain and alienation resulting from the Church’s stance on women”.

Wendy was able to view her experience of pain quite positively, acknowledging growth taking place within her on her journey through life. Wendy says: “When you look back over your life, the whole of it has been a journey, hasn’t it? Everything that happens leads you on to something else. I think that’s what I’ve held onto with this, the knowledge that somehow or other, I’m growing through it all” (Focus Text, emphasis added).

For Wendy, remaining static and not growing – locked in theological and spiritual fixity – was totally unacceptable: “My fear was that I wouldn’t grow and that I’d just be stuck there, not being able to go outside the boundaries again” (Focus Text). Although Wendy had never read Rosi Braidotti’s writings, I could not help being struck by the remarkable similarity of her words to Braidotti’s when she spoke of “crossing the boundaries” (1994a: 5) and remarked: “My greatest fear is to become petrified: to become a tree, to put out roots and not be able to move” (in O’Grady 1996, quoted above p. 5). What was important for Rosi Braidotti was important for Wendy, as it was also for Ruth, Dorothy and myself: we needed feminist nomadic freedom to move, to think and theologise outside androcentric boundaries, to grow and develop, and to delight in our own theological acts of going.

Conclusion: continuing the journey

In sum, the musings on my mid-1990’s engagement with theological nomadism that have been presented in this paper:

• were set in motion by the Sophia group’s reactions to the concept (Focus Text);

• gained momentum with Braidotti’s feminist theorising of nomadic subjectivity;

• were somewhat waylaid in the dense undergrowth of canonical Catholic discourses;

• and were reinvigorated through reflections provided by Dorothy, Ruth, Wendy and other women.

Seven years on, the journeying continues. Six members of the Sophia group still meet on a regular basis though church issues no longer dominate group discussions. For myself, onging questions/issues sparked by the concept of theological nomadism continue to haunt my mind. For instance, I ponder the direction and “aloneness” of my nomadic theological journey. And I think about other women who have left behind theological fixity and wonder what our journeying in different directions will mean long-term – for us and for others. In particular, I wonder if there will be ongoing repercussions for the institutional church as the gap widens between its comparatively rigid canonical discourses and nomadic women’s theologising. Or perhaps, into the twenty-first century, the stability and security offered by the institutional church will succeed in reining in the rich diversity of nomadic feminist theologising produced in the late twentieth century. Though much about the future is unknown to me, I know I highly value my own nomadic theological journeying, and the inspiration I receive as I listen, learn, understand and teach, along with other women who enjoy the freedom, adventure and spiritual growth brought about by our multiple theological “acts of going”.

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