Liturgy and gender

The church assigns liturgical texts for many saints based on their gender.  The church might wish to rethink this.

Traditionally, today, July 29, was the feast day of St. Martha.  We talked recently about Martha and her sister Mary.   My breviary, Christian Prayer, accords today's feast the rank of Memorial, which means it's a day of some significance in the church: most saints aren't on the liturgical calendar at all, and most that are on the calendar have the lower rank of optional memorial, meaning "celebrate the saint today if you want to, but if you don't want to, you don't have to".  Martha's day was obligatory: she was considered to be sufficiently significant that the church must sing her praises each year.

When a saint's day is celebrated, special texts in honor of the saint substitute for the ordinary texts of the day.  For example, the saint might have her/his own antiphons or reading or hymn.  These special texts can be of two types:

• Proper texts: a text specific to the saint of the day
• Common texts: a set of texts shared by various saints

Many saints have a mixture of Proper and Common texts.  For example, St. Martha had one proper text for Morning Prayer: the antiphon for the Canticle of Zechariah.  For any other texts for her day, the person praying would use ordinary prayers for the weekday, or choose prayer texts from one of the Common sets of texts, the Common of Holy Women.  (Guidelines are provided to help the person praying determine whether an ordinary or common text should be used for a particular prayer, antiphon, reading, et al, but there is no point in going any farther down that rabbit hole now.)

I've been referring to St. Martha's day in the past tense because Pope Francis changed the calendar last year: July 29 is now the memorial day of Martha, Mary and Lazarus.  That seems like a good move.  Until last year, neither Mary of Bethany nor Lazarus had his/her own day on the calendar.  Why Martha previously had been singled out among the three siblings for calendar purposes wasn't clear, but perhaps there was something about her caring about many things that resonated with faithful people - even though Jesus states that Mary had chosen the better part.

It's interesting, at least to me, that in changing July 29 from Martha's day to Martha's, Mary's and Lazarus's day, the church also had to appoint a different set of Common texts for the day: Lazarus pretty clearly was a guy, so it didn't seem fitting to utilize the Common of Holy Women anymore.

It's worth noting that the Common texts are fairly gendered.  They are:

• Common of the dedication of a church
• Common of the Blessed Virgin Mary
• Memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary on Saturday
• Common of Apostles (all men)
• Commons of Martyrs - there is one for a single martyr and one for groups of martyrs (either men or women or both)
• Common of Pastors (all men)
• Common of Doctors of the church (either man or woman)
• Common of Virgins (all women)
• Common of Holy Men
• Common of Holy Women
• Common for Religious (either man or woman)
• Common for those who worked for the underprivileged (either man or woman)
• Common for Teachers (either man or woman)

Thus, while the church recognizes that martyrs, doctors of the church, religious, teachers and those who work for the underprivileged can be either males or females, it only appoints men as Apostles (apparently Mary Magdalene's status in the East as the Apostle to the Apostles doesn't qualify her for this category), only women as virgins, and distinguishes between holy men and holy women.

For Martha, Mary and Lazarus, the church's solution is to appoint the Common of Holy Men.  This actually works fairly well, at least for Morning Prayer, because that common group of texts isn't particularly gender-specific.  By contrast, the Common of Holy Women is more woman-focused.  

The Church might be well-served by creating a Common for Holy People.  Not only could that be used for today's feast of the three siblings; it would also be useful should the church decide, as many people advocate, to canonize some married couples and add them to the church calendar.  

Creating a Common for Holy People also might be received as a bit of a reach-out to those who don't identify according to traditional gender identities.  Such folks certainly are capable of leading holy lives.  Perhaps there could be saints someday from their ranks.  (Perhaps there already are some, and we're just not aware!)