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15 An Interview with Yoke-Heng Woon for In God’s Imag In God’s Image e In July 2005, I had the privilege of giving a lecture and workshop in Kuala Lumpur, which was sponsored by the Asian Women’s Resource Centre for Culture and Theology (AWRC). The very name of this feminist organization affirms the interlinking impact of culture and theology on the lives of Asian wo/men. It insists that if we want to end the oppression experienced by Asian wo/men, we must deal with the negative impacts of religions and cultures on wo/men and those dependent on them. In the context of the workshop, I sat down with Yoke-Heng Woon for the following interview for AWRC’s journal, In G*d’s Image.1 Yoke-Heng Woon (Y-HW): Let me first situate this conversation. In the wake of the euphoria over the July ordination of Roman Catholic women priests on a river between Canada and the United States of America, a voice of concern is raised. It comes from none other than feminist theologian extraordinaire Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, whose pioneering work in critical feminist biblical interpretation has helped raise the consciousness of women all over the globe. Indeed, Schüssler Fiorenza, who was one of the keynote speakers at the International Women’s Ordination Worldwide Conference held in Ottawa before the July ordination ceremony, was reported by Catholic Online to have expressed concern in her address entitled, We are Church – A Kingdom of Priests, that “by taking ordination at any price, we are in danger of creating an anti-hierarchy among women which is still a hierarchy.” Similar concerns were expressed by theologians Rosemary Radford Ruether and Mary Hunt at 1. First published as “An Interview with Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza (with Woon Yoke Heng).” In God’s Image 24, no. 3 (2005): 39-48. [Asian Women’s Resource Center for Culture and Theology: www.awrc4ct.org] 235 the conference. I explored Schüssler Fiorenza’s disagreement with the strategy of the women’s ordination movement in two-hour interview for IGI (In God’s Image, the quarterly journal of the Asian Women’s Resource Centre for Culture and Theology) in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where she was invited in June to conduct a workshop on feminist biblical hermeneutics and as forum speaker. Women and Church Hierarchy Y-HW: I understand that for you the Roman Catholic women priests and ordination movement is in a somewhat “depressing” phase. Could you explain? Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza (ESF): What upsets me is that Catholic wo/men are now imitating the practices and structures of the hierarchy by saying only if we are ordained according to the traditional rite are we truly representatives of church. Unwittingly they institute the traditional hierarchical structures such as deacon, priest, bishop among wo/men. Some have a pre–Vatican II understanding of priesthood as privatized call and piety. Hence, there are “clandestine” ordinations. Moreover, they set up individuals as spiritual authorities who decide whether one is called. For instance, if I would want to exercise my priestly ministry as a theologian, I would have to be tested and a woman bishop would ascertain through a spiritual director whether or not I am called and worthy of ordination. It is not the practice of my ministry as a theologian that is proof of my ministerial call or my work as a pastor of a community that counts, but the decision of some spiritual director or woman bishop on whether I could be ordained. If wo/men imitate and repeat the hierarchical structures, as it seems to be the case, then it is the same old power game. The irony is that Catholic wo/men have developed very creative forms of ministry for serving the people of G*d in the past thirty years or so because we were not ordained and incorporated into clerical structures. Rather than celebrate such creative and committed women ministers as “priests,” the women’s ordination movement is knocking our heads on the hierarchical walls, insisting that we must become part of the hierarchy in the hope that the Vatican will, in the end, give its stamp of approval. This is very depressing, because thirty years of feminist theological work seems not to have been able to reach women who are in the forefront of Catholic progressive struggles and to teach them how to exorcise the kyriarchal theological mind-sets they have internalized. They still work...

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