Old woman, how much for that rug in the stall? The man on horseback called. One hundred rupee, sir, the old woman answered. It is a fine rug and I will not sell it for a single rupee less. One hundred rupee, woman? the man said. Why, in all my travels I have never seen a rug so fine. Why in the name of Allah are you asking only one hundred rupee? And the old woman paused in wonder and in pain and said: Because, sir, until now I never knew that there were any numbers above one hundred.--Sufi Tale

Extending horizons is both exciting and painful. Neither the church nor other social institutions, neither women nor men, are being spared the bewilderment and stimulation associated with contemporary reconsideration of women's worth. This statement on women intends to bring the wisdom of our own monastic experience to bear on the present situation of women. As we educate ourselves to our cultural and ecclesial heritage, we are growing in self-understanding and in awareness of the continuing struggle of all our sisters. We are finding power in our own tradition as monastic women, reasons for our growing solidarity with all women, and, most importantly, our own voice in the discussion.

If we have only recently come to awareness of the richness of our own heritage as women, this lack of attention to the foundations of our lives is not unprecedented. The Rule of Benedict begins in the middle of things too, taking much for granted. For example, Benedict continually emphasized the dignity and uniqueness of each person who comes to the monastery. But he nowhere cited the belief that supported that conviction. He took for granted the early baptismal creed, For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ. (Gal 3:27-28).

Followers of the Rule in every generation have routinely acted in the same way, taking much for granted, seldom looking at the foundations of their lives. Only when new experiences and new questions rise does it become useful and even necessary to think again about starting points, to see what is being taken for granted and what might well have been forgotten. American Benedictine women find themselves in such a situation in the 1980s. Two events, one ecclesial and the other cultural, occurred in the 1960s to generate new questions and to unsettle familiar ways of living and thinking. The Second Vatican Council called for the reform and renewal of the church. The women's movement, dormant through the middle third of the century, gained new vigor and new public visibility. Both of these events have had rapid international impact.

At the outset it was not clear that the two matters were related. North American Benedictine women set themselves diligently to the task of the reform and renewal of their federations and priories. General chapters developed new constitutions; the Conference of American Benedictine Prioresses collaborated in a series of statements focusing the vision of that renewal process: Upon This Tradition (1975); Of Time Made Holy (1978); Of All Good Gifts (1980). But as a group we were hardly aware of the cultural developments concerning women. Within a decade, ecclesial and cultural concerns converged as renewal activity revealed the complexity and ambiguity, the excitement and the pain of being a woman in the Roman Catholic Church during the post-conciliar period.

Now at the end of a second decade of renewal activity, in the face of heightened cultural and ecclesial concern with women's identity, we cannot afford to take for granted the foundations of our religious lives. In this document three areas are identified: the theological, the psycho-social, and the historical, in order to begin the reexamination which is imperative so that communities can find their way forward together in solidarity with other women for the sake of the Gospel.

THEOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS

Three interrelated matters provide a theological foundation for Benedictine life for women: Christian baptism, the mystery of God's self-disclosure, and the biblical word as a summons to freedom. Contemporary New Testament scholarship confirms that women associated directly with Jesus had no doubt about his positive regard for their humanity and their own capacity for full discipleship. Jesus of Nazareth welcomed and accepted without qualification women as disciples and apostles of the good news of salvation. Early Christianity understood and was faithful to Jesus' own attitude and actions. As long as the memory of Jesus was strong, women's full participation in the Way was not in doubt. The canonical writings are rich with references to women who collaborated in the spread of the Gospel: Mary of Magdala, Chloe, Lydia, Prisca, Junia, and the four prophet daughters of Philip the deacon. Baptism in the name of Jesus was the sign that women and men together were called to discipleship and to ministry.

The church's understanding of baptism and its consequences for women and men is the first foundation to be reexamined in any effort to respond with integrity to the question of women's ecclesial identity. Both sexes have been judged suitable candidates for baptism because the church has never doubted Jesus' promise of fullness of life to whoever trusts in him as the way, the truth, and the life. The Spirit of Jesus is poured out on whomever God chooses.

Unfortunately, the church weakens the credibility of the Gospel when it operates on the assumption that women's gender somehow inhibits the power of baptism, so that baptized women, as women, are less Christlike than baptized men. Present church discipline which rejects in principle young girls as altar servers and adult women as suitable candidates for diaconal, presbyteral or episcopal ordination, puts into doubt the baptismal principle that you are all one in Christ. The discipline suggests instead that being female is even more problematic than original sin, because baptism in the name of Jesus can heal the latter but has no power to overcome the presumed defective humanity of women. Followers of the Rule of Benedict, who prefer nothing whatever to the love of Christ, must join women and the whole church in reexamining the full implications of Christian baptism.

The mystery of God's self-disclosure in Christ and in us is the second related area which confronts those committed as Benedictines to the lifelong seeking of God. Who is our God? The biblical tradition offers the church many images for God. Most, but not all of them, are grounded in male social roles of ancient Palestine: king, warrior, judge, bridegroom. Jesus called God Abba. But the biblical tradition is itself grounded in a radical disclosure of God to Moses in the name which is no name at all: YHWH. I am who I am, I will be who I will be.

The praying church is struggling with the question: who is our God? By what names shall God be named? Two approaches to the matter are possible: the way of affirmation and the way of negation. Each of these is traditional, and each is partial. Taken together, they can tell us something about the mystery of God, whose love gives Benedictine monastic life its purpose for being.

The first way to name God affirms that everything that is, is a manifestation of the triune God who is its ground. Humankind, male and female, is the most complete manifestation because humankind is capable of loving communion. The second way of naming God denies that anything is an adequate manifestation of God, who is always greater than we can imagine or comprehend. Each approach corrects the other. God is Father. God is Mother. But fatherlike or motherlike, God is always and forever YHWH: I am who I am. I will be who I will be. The prohibition against graven images intends to protect YHWH's self-revelation. Nothing in the heavens or on the earth is adequate to reveal the mystery. Ironically, the prohibition against images was not perceived as extending to verbal images, with the result that we have taken our own language too literally, believing that our words were fully accurate when they presented God in male images.

The biblical and liturgical traditions have assumed that God can be named and have proceeded primarily by the way of affirmation in naming God. But the images that they set out for the church at prayer are inevitably partial expressions of the truth because they have been almost exclusively male in their point of reference. By contrast, the mystical tradition has proceeded by the ways of affirmation and negation. Affirming that humans are icons of God, the mystics have regularly seen and testified to both the feminine and the masculine faces of God. But mystics, like Moses, have also come away from the mountaintop speechless and in confusion.

The witnesses to the power of feminine imagery for God and Christ are many, and they are found among mystics across cultures and centuries. They need to be recovered for the truth which is in them, so that the mystery of humankind's destiny as the divine image in creation is not lost. Christ as Sophia (Wisdom) and the motherhood of Jesus are two recurrent themes worthy of exploration. But both masculine and feminine images need to be confronted with the more radical disclosure that God is unable to be contained by the human imagination.

Benedictines, who live a contemplative way of life within the church, devoting themselves to prayer, must open themselves fully to the mystery of God within Christ and within themselves. When the fullness of the mystery of God is contemplated over a lifetime, it becomes evident that the maleness of Jesus is not what the church values in its proclamation that Jesus saves.

The substantive issue is whether there is divine mercy and compassion, whether redemption is possible for alienated women and men who have been cut off from their own truest selves, cut off from the recognition of the truth of full humanity. The resolution of the issue will come only with the experience that there are both women and men who, because they are filled with the Spirit of Jesus, are themselves compassionate, forgiving, merciful, loving. Such ambassadors of reconciliation are harbingers of hope, the sacrament at one and the same time of a living God and renewed humanity.

Benedictines take for granted the mystery of God and redemption. As a result, they have reflected very little on either the full ecclesial tradition about God's self-disclosure or the baptismal foundation for all Christian life. But new questions rising from within the life of the church are a gift calling North American Benedictine women to consider again what they know and to recover what they might have forgotten.

The greatest potential hindrance to recognizing the face of God is a preconceived limiting of God's possibility for self disclosure. So Benedictine women have also to consider in a fresh way the commitment they have to the daily reading of the Scripture. The Rule of Benedict promotes the reading of Scripture as an aid to spiritual maturity. In an era of biblical fundamentalism which looks to the Scriptures to find ready answers to life's questions, there is a new danger that reading Scripture naively can become the occasion for distorted consciousness about male and female identity and relationships. Conversely, the tradition of critical biblical scholarship has opened up new opportunities for understanding better the relations of men and women in the first Christian generations. But neither fundamentalism nor critical exegesis exhausts available approaches to the study of Scripture for contemporary Benedictine women.

Benedictines need to cherish the monastic way of reading the Scriptures. The tradition of lectio divina has never looked for easy answers, but rather for the power of transformation toward more authentic discipleship. All uncertainties of meaning are to be tested against the rock which is Christ (RB 4:50). Whoever--woman or man--reads the Scripture in the power of the Holy Spirit of Jesus is addressed and summoned to love and to freedom. Perfect love and freedom cast out fear of the unknown. In the absence of such perfection, the monastic woman willingly risks losing herself and her familiar security in the search for the living God. She will be sustained and nourished daily through attention to the life-giving word which transforms fear into freedom and alienation into communion.

Courage is needed. Recent theological discussions exaggerating the importance of the physiological maleness of Jesus have caused some Christian women to pose a radically new theological question at the end of the twentieth century: can a male savior save women? Claims that only men can image Jesus as Jesus images God seem to be saying that women are incapable of putting on Christ and of enjoying the fullness of life which he promises. The question goes to the heart of the identity of American Benedictine women. Once voiced, the question demands attention from women who are committed to seeking God in spirit and in truth.

THE RULE OF BENEDICT AS HUMAN EMPOWERMENT

Firmly grounded in a reevaluation of baptism, in a prayerful search to see God face to face and so live, in an openness to hear the address of Christ in the word of the Scripture and in awareness of social situations, contemporary Benedictine women will be able to move toward a fuller feminist consciousness. Feminism, a commitment to the dignity, humanity and equality of all for the good of both sexes, is a gift basic to the Christian dispensation. When read with this developing consciousness, the Rule of Benedict becomes a renewed witness to the good news of life in Christ. While the dominant culture tends to stereotype certain human values and traits as masculine or feminine, and to hold the former in greater esteem, the Rule of Benedict offers a different perspective. In the face of our present need, three aspects of our Rule--humility, community, and contemplation--stand out as pointing the way to full humanity.

Humility frees women and men alike to recognize the worth of their own being and to experience their redemption from sin. This humility is foundational for a vision of peace and non-violence. The Rule presents Jesus as the norm of full humanity caught up in life with God. It proposes the possibility of psychological integration and maturity for both women and men. Against the humanity of Jesus, believing Christians can recognize the true worth of all human traits. When both the secular and religious cultures exalt rationality, aggression and competition, political control and order, the Rule calls for the imitation of Jesus, who chose to be humble. In his ability to deny himself so that others may live, this same Jesus shows strength in his compassion, care, and welcoming.

Followers of the Rule imitate Jesus in this kind of self-giving as they respond to God's grace in community. This response is lived out by service of one another in love (35:6), whether in the kitchen (35), as reader (38), in the infirmary (36), as cellarer (31:8), or as the head of the monastery (64), to guests, strangers, pilgrims, the poor (53) and through commitment to peace (Prol 17).

According to Benedict, the head of the monastery does not receive power to rule despotically but rather to care solicitously for the young, the sick, and the old. There must be concern for the wayward who are to be led, if possible, to a fuller life in Christ (23-29). Members of the community are to be valued for their uniqueness and treated with regard for their needs and character (2:12, 22, 23, 25). Decision making in the monastery calls forth the integrative function of leadership, not dominance. All are to be consulted where major decisions are to be made: The Lord often reveals to the younger what is better (3:3).

The monastic tradition of lectio divina displaces the culture's exclusive valuation of rationality and analysis with an invitation to balance the rational and the intuitive in the move from lectio to meditatio to contemplatio. Contemplative prayer reveals God who accepts unconditionally, who listens with empathy, who is receptive to every need. This God empowers men and women to image such receptivity in their relationships with each other, even as Benedict and Scholastica were empowered. The seniors are obeyed with great love and concern (71:1). Community members support with great patience one another's weaknesses (72:5). In the use of both active and receptive qualities, there is hope for the fullness of human integration. It is in preferring nothing whatever to Christ and in His bringing all together to eternal life that this fullness is finally realized. Meanwhile, there is the precept to run while we have the light of life (Prol 13).

HISTORICAL EXPERIENCE OF BENEDICTINE WOMEN

In addition to the recovery of theological foundations and human dimensions of the Rule, Benedictine women, growing in a new consciousness of their identity and their place in the life of the church, are well served by a recovery of history. The participation that women are seeking in church and society at the present time is not entirely new, but rather a return to and further development of the vital contributions women made in the early and medieval church. In earlier generations, women had roles as prophets and apostles, heads of local churches, deaconesses, leaders of ascetic movements, and heads of monasteries. What the church has forgotten, we must remember. The truth is larger than the immediate experience of recent generations.

Recent historical research indicates that women's leadership in early monasticism has been traditionally minimized or eliminated. Contrary to past interpretations, women were far from being marginal, and did, in fact, establish the first religious communities. These communities then gave rise to the more institutionalized monastic structures of a later period. The ascetic life was one of the more liberating options for women from the third through the fifth centuries. Macrina in Asia Minor, Paula in Bethlehem, and Melania in Jerusalem founded, endowed, or governed some of the most famous early monastic institutions in the East and the West.

Monastic life allowed women to take charge of their own lives in communities organized and governed by them. It also made it possible for them to avoid unwelcome marriage alliances. The women's communities became centers for the preservation of culture and the fostering of contemplative spirituality. The fruits of their contemplative work have been lost to us, as their voices were eventually eliminated from the corpus of the church's tradition.

Medieval monastic communities provided women with ample opportunities to grow in holiness and develop their personal gifts. Women lived in autonomous monastic communities throughout Europe from the fifth century onward. We need only recall the leadership roles of extraordinary individuals like Brigid of Ireland, Hilda of Whitby, Gertrude of Helfta, Lioba of Franconia, and Hildegarde of Bingen, women whose varied ministries effectively helped shape medieval society and the church. Their resolute response to the Spirit by undertaking such tasks as classical scholarship, teacher-training, missionary activity, social reforms, and synodal leadership established a precedent for Benedictine women's continued call to excellence.

Many centuries later, Bavarian and Swiss nuns, who were the heirs of this almost forgotten tradition, left Europe for the American frontier and began a new chapter in the history of Benedictine life for women. The nineteenth-century beginnings were characterized by rapid expansion; the new situation evoked an evolution in the expression of Benedictine values. Today, one hundred-thirty years later, sixty-five monasteries of women in Canada, the United States and Mexico engage in a broad spectrum of ministries: prayer, education, health and pastoral care, missionary activity, hospitality to the poor and the oppressed.

From the beginning American Benedictine women have combined liturgical and contemplative prayer with ministerial activity. The former was the heritage they preserved; the latter was called for by a church situated on the frontier. The inter-action of the tradition with necessity produced opportunity for the emergence of new forms. The strict enclosure of European monastic life for women gave way to the flexibility and mobility called for by the new environment, a mobility which had traditionally characterized monastic life for men. Distinctions between choir and lay sister survived less than a generation in many monasteries. The sisters accepted American pluralism, responded positively to change, and made the adaptations necessary in order to transplant the monastic heritage.

The flexibility of their response to social reality was hampered by the ecclesiastical authorities' intervention during the nineteenth century. Churchmen assumed, in the spirit of the times, that women could not develop spiritually without more rigorous discipline, greater regulation and constant supervision. These assumptions and the interventions flowing from them had, at best, ambiguous consequences for the personal and communal development of Benedictine life for women. The impact of nineteenth-century interventions persists at the end of the twentieth century.

One of the most serious distortions of the heritage of American Benedictine women came at the hands of well-meaning churchmen. They first prohibited solemn vows on the grounds that papal enclosure obligatory for women was impossible on the frontier. Church leaders then declared that without solemn vows these women were not nuns, and redefined their groups as communities dedicated to works of the apostolate. In spite of women's self-definition as fully monastic, they were defined otherwise by Roman authorities for the reason that they no longer retained papal enclosure.

The tension between the two definitions persists to this day. Equally unresolved is the question whether women are to be accorded the authority of self-definition. Nevertheless, pioneer Benedictine women believed that what they knew of the tradition and their own experience equipped them for authentic interpretation of Benedictine life within the American culture. With courage and integrity they maintained their conviction for those who would follow them, no matter how difficult the struggle. This conviction is their greatest gift to us. It has provided a pattern to cherish and an example to imitate in our own ongoing process of renewal and reappropriation of our monastic identity.

MONASTIC AND ECCLESIAL ASPECTS OF SELF- DEFINITION

The models of Benedictine women from the past are a challenge for today. These women made their influence felt in both the social and spiritual realms. The influence and effectiveness of their lives provide criteria for the contemporary role of Benedictine women. At a period in history when the question of the equality of women is a gathering agenda, Benedictine women bring to the question an identity drawn not only from their own lives in community, society, and the church but from their own tradition as well. Out of this consciousness, therefore, present priorities must continue to be critically reexamined so that we make our own influence felt in both the social and spiritual realms.

More than the history of the Order impels us, however. Monastic life, sustained by a common vision and goals and nurtured by fidelity to prayer, study, and the spirit of the Rule, can be a powerful witness to a contemporary society whose secular values all too often produce alienation, injustice, violence, and oppression. Our proclamation of monastic equality and mutuality can speak to the condition of women in society today.

The radical implications of the Gospel call us to that fullness of life and affirmation of self which leads naturally to the affirmation of the dignity and equality of others. The Jesus who called us friends, not servants, expects us to speak for the dignity of others as well. The vows, therefore, free us to share our spiritual and material possessions, our friendship and concern for others, and our commitment to the liberation of others through ministry. The vowed life says to others that Christ's message of life is sure, is true, is universal, is available to all. The equality built into the Rule affirms the personhood of all, regardless of race, status, class or gender.

In monastic life we affirm our individual and corporate gifts of the Spirit by the recognition and support of others' charisms. We structure a life together in which all are held to be gifted by the Spirit, in which all are called to participation, in which all are seen as equal. Then, convinced of our own integrity and worth through God's grace and communal bonding, we can empower others to maintain or reclaim their own sense of dignity and live out their lives according to the Gospel principles of love and justice.

Our identity as members of the larger ecclesial community is probably best expressed by our willingness to share with the larger church the insights and rewards that come from community life in a rich tradition. The problem is that the church community to which we desire to give is often incapable of receiving the fullness of our gifts because of rigid structures and an absolutism that radically limits the spiritual empowerment of women. As a result, both the spiritual life and the institutional life of the church are deprived of the insights, experience, and values of feminine monasticism. It is particularly within these male-dominated structures that Benedictine women need to collaborate with others to identify and correct the injustices against women in the church and society which have, in the past, led to the suppression of energy in medieval monasteries of women, and, in the present, to the rejection of the broadest possible range of women's gifts. A sense of ourselves as Spirit-filled members of the church community demands our constant efforts to remind church leaders that by continuing to deny women their proper and legitimate leadership roles in response to the Spirit's calling, the church is in reality denying to itself the spiritual gifts of half the People of God. Such denial of the Spirit stands as a grave sin within the body of the church today as well as in the past.

Just as many early monastic communities were formed as protest to the institutionalized church's growing secularization, our communities today must with candor, though with love, articulate the injustices evoked by an institution permeated by sexism and fearful of change. Through prayer, study, and dialogue we must assume responsibility for leadership both within and outside the church.

With all these things in mind--the meaning of baptism, the call in the Spirit, the vibrance of the tradition, the process of social change--we have to recognize that the human element is an integral aspect of the shaping of church policies and laws. Church laws are written by men with specific cultural experiences and expectations, with personal biases and fears as well as with a love for the Gospel and a commitment to the preservation of the church. It is important to understand and to help others to understand that certain decrees--canon law, universal directives, exhortations, or local implementation--are to be interpreted, not as hard-and-fast dictates, but as guiding principles for reconciling elements of confusion and conflict within the corporate body of Christ. Where these decrees compromise integrity and hinder growth, the upbuilding of the whole church requires that they be subjected to the experience of the Christian community in the context of the Gospel. The ongoing call of the Spirit must never be suppressed in the church of Christ.

Just as monastic communities of the past have been in the forefront of renewal and reform movements within the church and society at large--peace, liturgy, social welfare, conservation, education and agriculture--the Benedictine heritage now challenges us to create new forms of spirituality, opportunity, ministry, and scholarship for women. Feminist theology is one such challenge. In its holistic approach, it considers woman's experience as a valid base from which to explore the revelation of God. Feminist theology, learning from the past, forces us today to confront those ideologies and structures which impede continued growth and development of the entire People of God, the global ecclesia.

Called to justice within our own communities, we must continue to seek justice for ourselves and for others. We must strive to become living signs of Christ's gift of liberation by enabling others--the silent, the powerless, the oppressed victims of an impersonal, domineering, life-destroying culture--to achieve self-articulation. The Gospel impels us, the Rule enables us, the vows free us, our own history as Benedictine women challenges us to achieve that self-articulation. We must not permit male-dominated structures to obstruct us, nor our own inertia and lack of self-esteem to excuse us.

CULTURAL EXPERIENCE AND ITS MESSAGE: A MANDATE FOR CHANGE

Two questions, then, confront the Benedictine woman as she contemplates her relationship to a women's movement that is international in scope and culturally specific: the first, are women really oppressed or are they simply different and therefore unequal? and the second, does God want things that way? Are the inequalities of divine origin? If women are attempting to do things that are basically unnatural to females, then the so-called promotion of women could be both unjust and immoral. Many women, in fact, see no oppression in their own lives and question whether it is social inequity or individual extremism that is the greater issue.

Women religious in particular are often removed from the oppressive realities facing most other women of the world. Whatever their own struggles for self-determination and full self-development over the years, religious have nevertheless had a kind of social status and privilege that set them off from most of the women in the culture around them. Religious were given high-level academic preparation, administrative responsibility, and a type of independence for spiritual and personal development far beyond the levels given to most women. What is more, the institutional barriers to education, financial security, or personal autonomy that faced most women were often waived or simply did not apply to religious. Even worse, this gulf between women was often seen as the natural consequence of vocational choice rather than as manifestations of male-dominated systems. The struggles of women for economic survival, for political equality, for personal dignity, for human growth, often went unnoticed by religious sisters. The first task is to see and respond to the plight of women who must live without community support or systems, whose roles have been narrowly defined, whose options are limited.

The problem is that though the life opportunities of men and women differ, their human needs apparently do not. Both have intellectual ability, spiritual gifts, physical appetite, social interest and moral responsibility. For men, the development of these areas is taken for granted; for women, the spheres are limited.

Women have been denied participation in the political system, barred from educational institutions, deprived of physical development programs, refused economic security, begrudged financial independence, and rebuffed in social, professional and ecclesial structures, all because of having been born female. To believe that God made some humans less human than other humans, or that God gave all people human potential that was intended for the full use of only half of them, creates more theological problems than it solves.

Equality, the Rule teaches us, is not based on sameness but on need. Consequently, the problem is not that some people have more opportunity or money or social impact or spiritual authority than others. The problem is that, in sexist societies, women have had little or none of these, not because they are essentially incapable, but simply because they are women and someone, somewhere, has decreed it so. But not YHWH. In Genesis, Adam and Eve are told that the labor to which they are both called is a result of their joint sin and therefore a condition to be redeemed, not a state to be institutionalized. And not Jesus. In Jesus, every discrimination is destroyed. Jesus talks to women, teaches women, touches women, witnesses through women, calls women to his ministry and makes them the channel of his presence. Something else, not YHWH and not Jesus, has built the barriers and maintains them still and everywhere. The results are apparent in every situation and in every nation on earth. At the end of the twentieth century, the inequities of the Western world are well documented and recurring.

Because women are either unqualified or unwanted in upper- echelon positions in industry or business, female heads of houses and their children are more likely to live in poverty than men who find themselves facing the same situation as heads of single-parent homes. Women are clustered in the nation's lowest paying positions, in women's roles, which, though said to be valuable, carry little compensation and less chance for advancement.

Women face financial discrimination. Property may often be sold without a wife's permission; pension plans commonly take no note of a widow, or provide her with only a reduced amount of what would have gone to the husband himself. The implications of such programs are clear: the money and the property are his, not hers; he is entitled to all of it, she is not.

Working women with college degrees earn less than working men who left school after the sophomore year of high school. Minority women earn even less. An education, therefore, is of less value for a woman than it is for a man, qualifies her for less and rewards her little.

Homemakers are devalued, their experience in management and social service unnoted, their contribution to the financial status of the family unmarked. Women who are poor are often without the social supports of childcare programs, physical security, or credit and housing options needed to enable them to enhance the conditions of their lives.

Though women as women earn less than men, they have routinely been charged more for medical insurance, disability coverage and life-insurance policies, despite the fact that these exclude pregnancy, childbirth and miscarriage costs.

Where women are hired, they are often overlooked for promotion. The majority of college students are now women, yet women are considerably less represented in full-time college faculty positions. In education, for long years a basically female profession, women still constitute almost all of the classroom teaching staff, but only a limited percentage of the principal-ships. What is more, there is a growing decline in the proportion of female administrators to teachers. Instead of progress, the research reveals that when men enter any field, women cease to advance.

Women are exploited as sex objects in advertising and conditioned to be consumers, especially of things for the body. They are denigrated by pornography and victimized by abortion, child abuse, and rape. In literature and entertainment and humor, women are reduced to objects or are trivialized.

Women have little access to the decision-making centers of public institutions. They are almost invisible on corporation boards, only a token minority of the management force, and, though now appearing on the consultative commissions or staff positions of most dioceses and parishes, are nevertheless still totally removed from the synods or canonical offices in which the governance and direction of the church is actually accomplished. It is in these realms, however, that official positions are defined, major strategies developed, policies decided. Women become the pawns of the system. Some become the powers behind the throne; few have the right to decide for themselves; all are either directly or indirectly under the authority of the men who make decisions for and about them in the domestic, national or ecclesial systems in which they exist.

In other cultures the situation is no better. Third-World women, who had once controlled the agricultural systems of their people, were denied the right to own or operate the mechanized farm programs imported by Western colonialist powers. With this imposition of Western customs, these women lost status in the community as well as the opportunity for advancement in the new money economies.

Women of the Third World are routinely denied education and so are illiterate, or given only the few years of schooling necessary to master elementary principles.

The sexuality of many Third-World women is still denied. Clitorectomy is common; sexual response is a male prerogative. Pharaonic circumcision, a form of sexual mutilation of young girls used to guarantee chastity and the legitimacy of children, is only now beginning to be questioned by some of the Christian denominations. These practices, as well the social segre-gation of women and prohibitions against the remarriage of widows, have all been highlighted during the United Nations 'Decade of Women' (1976-1985), and by the World Health Organization as current forms of female oppression.

In many areas, polygamy is legal; polyandry is not. In at least one republic in Africa, there is a tax levied on women who theoretically live alone. The implication is, of course, that women do not actually live alone and must be either promiscuous or dishonest if they describe themselves as independent.

Sexual rights are the prerogatives of men and sexual duty the responsibility of women, many of whom die in childbirth or from the pressure of caring for large numbers of small children.

Everywhere women are owned or controlled by male-dominated institutions. The social situation of women is a history of denied opportunities, denied abilities, denied independence. Everywhere women's horizons have been limited. Religious life for women offered the hope of the liberation of women's gifts and an arena for their leadership. Religious women envisioned and built great institutions, distinguished themselves in academic pursuits, witnessed through celibate community that women were capable of self-direction. Nevertheless, a double standard was imposed by church authority and to this day prevails among Benedictine religious.

To be a Benedictine monk, cloister is optional. To be a Benedictine nun, cloister is necessary. The head of any autonomous male Benedictine community is an abbot. Communities of Benedictine sisters, whose lifestyle is the same, were not permitted to elect an abbess. Instead their elected leaders were named prioresses, although that title designates derivative and delegated authority. Furthermore, simple vows replaced solemn, since, it was reasoned, being in the world made perpetuity of commitment unlikely for a woman. These distinctions affected our attitudes toward ourselves, often bringing out in us exaggerated deference and loss of self-esteem.

Finally, in the sacraments, God must be mediated to women through a man.

The psychological effects of such structures go deep. Women learn early that their life choices are limited and that their expectations must be adjusted and diminished. Things they know they could do they also know that they may not do. They master the traditional message of female incompetency. And as a result, a world caught in increasingly more complex questions has only half its human resources with which to address them. Women may influence men in the private arena, but in the public domain it is men who control the money, make the decisions, and plot the future. They are, of course, to do so with the best interests of women and children in mind, but they do it alone.

In this age of struggle and tension, when most people pay at least lip-service to the equality of women, an even subtler form of oppression has emerged. Women get the work, but not the title; the position, but not the pay; not one job but two: woman's work and whatever else they want to do. The double message is a heavy burden: we need you, but not really. You're equal, but not free of your traditional role. Where women and men negotiate new life relationships, it is often at the good will ofthe man rather than as part of his human responsibility to nurture children, defer to talent, or participate in the domestic duties of life.

The message of the experience of women throughout the world is that in the light of the Christian Gospel, the situation must change. A radical shift in consciousness is occurring worldwide. The need for self-determination is now a need recognized as common to women, too. The sin of sexism must be repented, in structures as well as in theory.

FUTURE TRENDS AND CHALLENGES

Neither the achievements nor the deprivations of the past give as sure an indication of the future as the circumstances of the present. In women's issues the situation is startlingly clear: consciousness is rising, expectations are emerging, structures are resisting change. Where compulsory education to the age of sixteen has long been a cultural characteristic, the pressure for change is particularly apparent. But to say that the woman's question is an American question is to overlook completely the rising awareness of women throughout the world. The United Nations 'Decade of Women' is powerful testimony to the fact that the women's movement is a social agenda of universal impact. The spirituality, education, and experience of Benedictine women require a prophetic response to this issue. The theology of creation, incarnation, and church is incomplete until the equality of women is both recognized and honored.

History indicates that women not only can perform but also have performed as well as men in similar positions. The great Benedictine women of the past confirm this truth; the unknown women of the future require that we in our day do no less.

The contributions that Benedictine women can make to the achievement of feminine equality in the light of the monastic tradition are special ones. We can listen to our own questions and the questions being asked by other women, and take seriously the expectation of an answer. We can participate in the study and reflection that the answers require. We can encourage and contribute to feminist scholarship, concentrating on the development of ideas that make life better for others. We can see study as a way not simply to make a name but to make a difference. We can learn to value the work of our own women, promote their development and preserve their work in our own archives. We can promote Christian feminism and the systemic changes it requires so that both women and men have lives rich in equal opportunity. As a gift to others, we can broaden the images of God that are used in our own prayer life. We can refuse to participate in the polarization of women and men, but refuse as well to deny or surrender the rights of women in that behalf. We can understand celibacy itself as a sure sign that women, like men, are whole human beings. We can bring the Benedictine commitment to peace to focus on the place of women in the peacemakers' search for conflict resolution and negotiation. We can bring the Benedictine concern for individuals, mutuality, listening, and humility to the issue of the insertion of women in both church and society. We can also bring clear evidence of the effects of dual standards, oppression, and control on human development and the ministry of the church.

As women throughout the world press for human rights, human dignity, human development and the same fullness of life opportunities that are taken for granted by the men of the cultures around them, Benedictine women can bring to the struggle a history of autonomy, achievement, self-reliance, and endurance that gives both hope and help. As women both of privilege and of pain, we must be concerned for those women who cannot speak for themselves.

IMPLICATIONS

In the light of this study, convinced of our baptismal equality in Christ and of our solidarity as Benedictine women, we take for challenge and study the following: