The Phoebe Ministy in some Churches in Africa

copyright(2016) njoka m dom. Phoebe-ism in the pastoral ministry- pastoral reflections today, unpublished work. The Phoebe Ministry in some Churches in Africa This ministry is informal but a custom in Malawi and Zambia, that pastors when on duty outside the parish, a single woman of means is set aside to accompany and pastor the pastor, euphemistically described as 'washing the feet of the Apostle'.It is derived from mis-presentation(or over- presentation) of the epistle to the Romans, 16: 1ff. Let the reader bear with my prejudice ,if any, in this respect. In the Hebrew culture, the word feet has many meanings, among them being the 'shorter leg'. At first I thought that these Church communities were suffering a native cultural lag, but it later dawned unto me that even in our local set up there are women who are so concerned with pastors and the vicarage welfare. Nobody appoints them but they are always available for volunteer cleaning, washing of clothes, cooking for the Vicar's visitors and other chores. When the Vicar raises the concern that his official residence needs some attention, other women appoint the Phoebe to attend to the situation.. It may take a Vicar several months to know their 'unseen' interests, and when he fails to know, or ignores their advances, then chaos begin. They may be married, single, or widowed but have one thing in common, namely, being very influential in the local secular and Church politics. They can even influence the transfers of the clergy from the backyard. They have very efficient underground networking and experience to cause the desired effects. On the other hand, if the Vicar falls into their designs, the pastoral office suffers a lack of moral authority. The issue is a review of our inherited view of single mothers as women. Whether we admit it or not, women and their generic power of healing individuals and communities, imbue a definitive bearing upon the pastoral ministry and the Church theology. The priest who apparently succeed are those 'swallowed '' up by these Phoebes, but as far as ones spirituality is concerned, they live as women slaves. The way out is to present oneself to the congregation as its spiritual father but not a potential lover. This delicate balancing of spirituality against pastoral risks and hazards, needs a concerted training of the ministerial candidates in the training colleges. Many do not realize, that it as a professional hazard in the ministry, and only realizes the innate power of a woman when the shameful fruit is already in the mouth. Within the whole frame work of the pastoral ministry, God is ever aware about this inevitable entanglements. A synthesis is to act in the 'via media'- the Anglican way . Any conflict between women sexuality and the pastoral seriousness ends up in the individual pastor losing the pastoral grip with the congregation. The moral position is the application of the'' principle of double effect''- it postulates, that among two inevitable evils as the consequence of either of the moral choice, choose the lesser one. Moral integrity is the ideal choice, unless one converts ones divine ministry to social work per se, resulting to what today may be called pastoral secularism. This should be so carefully and prayerfully tailored, so as to hold and avoid losing any soul. After all, a woman is a human being created by God, and a rightful beneficiary of the divine grace. It is indispensable to keep on remembering that a priest is also a human being, set aside(legitimate holiness) to serve God through other human beings, and that he is not necessarily above the flock in righteousness, having been as weak as the flock, and equally called to repentance (spiritual holiness).Strangely enough, the spiritual mean-score of the flock reflects that of the pastor. Thus, the principle is true, that 'prayer, meditation and temptation', is the lifestyle of a pastoral minister, whether or not ordained as a ministerial priest There is no salvation outside the caring of women as women, and this means translating motherhood as the substance of the pastoral ministry. Any other pastoral activity revolves round this 'unseen' fact. Do you know why politicians and community leaders tend to have an exodus of female friends?The pastoral ministry is no different, only that the priest is moderate in mingling with the world, and that there are other stake-holders to cushion him from these professional entanglements. On the other hand, if an individual pastor feels that his ministry cannot escape the feminine traps, and that he desires to hold his conscience, then he better move to other church ministries, such as teaching, chaplaincy, counselling , clerical work etc. targeting the male clients exclusively, as much as this would be functional. Realistically, pastoral ministry has to go the God's way, you cannot avoid ministering women and legitimately claim to be called by God to serve Him. Let infantile spirituality remain shelved for the sake of God and our ministerial vocation. I personally do not support the phoebe ministry in the Malawian way, but this does not stop the congregations from having them. Each case on its own merit, God being our Helper. The author is an AC clergy- contact for feedbacks- email domphilo@yahoo.com 22nd January 2016.

Are females begotten males?

Copyright 2015, dom m njoka. Mwea West, Kirinyaga County Women are not 'misbegotten males', as Aristotle(384-322 BC) put it. ..''femina est mas occasiantus''..? In his effort to explain the soul power difference between males and females, Aristotle contends that a male soul has superior power of reason than a female. Thus, he observes, that women bear lower soul for lower reason, while males bear superior soul for superior reason Developing from Aristotle, but with some deviations, St Thomas said, that the feminine character of affectivity, due to their physiological constitution, factor the influence of their reasoning process. It means that a sick male would have a similar difficulty in the reasoning as much as a woman would in her natural state. Aristotle went a bit too far, at least as far as courtesy, but not honesty, is concerned, that the soul of a woman has the same power mean-score as that of a seven year old boy, or a mad adult male. However, exceptions were not excluded in both sexes. More over, Aristotle said that females were not intended by nature to be, but a malfunction occurred which resulted in their existence. Thus, using the Christian terms, St Thomas put it, that God did not intend to create them, but something went wrong and the intended male developed to a female.He justified this by contending that the superior soul of God would not have intended to create a lower soul, but that of the superior character as His. Could we also get an impression that a male is a misbegotten deity, going by the thought of St Thomas? In addition, in an attempt to justify the existence of females, Aristotle said that the causative perimeters of a female begins and ends with the bearing of a male baby. This belief factors very challenging ideological hang-ups in the socio-political history of the world. Notably, the traditional black African cultures have similar, if not identical, impression upon women, save the Greek philosophical style of expressing it. I do not know how to save this parallelism of ideas from races suffering such a geographical distance, not mentioning that it took several centuries for the West to access the interior Africa. In Page 2 of 6 Are females misbegotten males as Aristotle said?.rtf 2015/12/26 12:46 PM other words, the universal impression of women upon themselves, and as also shared by the males, has been true, that there exist superior and also lower souls depending on the sexes. Naturally, if Aristotle is right, a lower soul means a lower character of will, and thinking powers, among the four soul faculties, namelymemory, imagination, thinking and will, inherent in all human minds. Experience has demonstrated, that women have more superior imagination, and memory, than men. Conversely, males have superior will, and thinking power, more than females. This is not a weakness of the either, but a sure foundation of sex and gender complementarity. In reference to the family customs of Africa, polygamy is a pragmatic testimony that one superior soul, in the person of the male husband, is capable or holding, directing and safeguarding the multitude of lower rational souls in the persons of the wives, and in the same household. The reverse has not been experienced, that one female can keep custody of several males in the same household, except in the casual group sex, but in this case not for marriage. While polygamy had been a social mechanism for containing females in a family structure till recently when the economic factors proved unfavourable to this custom, the monogamy custom has had a definite share of the gender monopoly, if not imperialism. There has been notable 'hard-headedness' among the wives of the monogamous marriages, and this tendency has been attributed to the weakness of the social structures in the management of the natural femininity. Today, husbands have no state houses. Each resides with his wife, and has therefore to conform to her individual tastes and preferences, having been in her custody. As a single wife, with the multiple roles of housekeeping, securing food for her children, and nurturing them according to her tastes and preferences, the husband would have very thin freedom to control the husbanding of his household. Multiple wives attract a healthy competition, expressed in conformity if not obedience to the husband, inter-wives consultation, and the fear of losing 'employment' as a wife, if not for some private privileges. Without some fear of being punished, any person would tend to take ones personal course regardless of the other peoples rights. As the 'sole wife' feels being in total charge of her house, and with a man Page 3 of 6 Are females misbegotten males as Aristotle said?.rtf 2015/12/26 12:46 PM without a house, the internally displaced person( i d p ), in the person of the husband, cannot help to be an un- anchored. As a matter of fact, the wife having been brought up in the custom of mothers having their own houses, and with the father residing independently in the same household, the modern monogamous custom calls for a definite social syllabus to train both young men and women on how to share the same residence with their husbands, 'till death put' them sunder. The hostility exhibited by these 'sole wives', is a regression to the prepolygamous era in Africa, and this will necessarily call for a recall of the same functional solution which our ancestors had devised. It strongly appears that a polygamous household, with a wide democratic space of the siblings, and the inevitable sharpening of the problem solving process, is more suitable than the monogamous one in the training and production of the political as well as the entrepreneurial leadership. Most of the African statesmen are direct products of the polygamous families. With an eroded husband authority, and the concomitant expansion of the authority of the wife, the male has a narrow democratic voice. This is not a new thing in the male-female gender play, but polygamy had been introduced as a gender programme to emancipate the male folk from the feminine imperialism In the first place, the African cultures distinguishes between house and household, such that while every wife had her own' residential house with her daughters, the husband had also his own 'state house'. Women are numerically more than the males in any society. Since politics is numbers, and that the majority tend to have the final say on matters pertaining policy and leadership, there is no doubt that the males superior reason has been hand-capped by the majority lower souls in the socio-political day to day life. I would want to believe, but I find it contradicted by the real life situation, that the grace of God works upon the nature of a female to transform her lower reason to that of a superior male soul , automatically. I equally do not get convinced that the female 'lower Page 4 of 6 Are females misbegotten males as Aristotle said?.rtf 2015/12/26 12:46 PM 'soul was not predestined by God with a purposive rationale. God created everything and saw that all was good. In other words, while man was for management and security of the female folk, the latter was primarily designated to motherhood. Therefore, to endow the same folk with the duo identical designations would have been a misbegotten divine design in the human creation. Otherwise, a male would also be said to be a misbegotten female, deprived of the power of pregnancy, and the actual child delivering character. May the Lord forbid! To be honest, this is more of my sentiments than reasoning with the fathers of classic philosophy. Am also suffering from the 'mother- child relationship' with my mother., whom I would hate to see being diminished in value. But this is not the point here. The character impression has been that a woman is inherently of a lower soul than that of a male, diplomatic and Sunday sermon flatteries not withstanding. In this alone, several reported cases of women causing grievous harm to their husbands' genitals have reached the social media. Very few women raise any condemnation of these heinous acts, but the culprits raise highest voices in support of their evil actions. Conversely, when any of them is done a similar harm by a male, the females go mad calling for concerted measures to deter such crimes, and preferably to 'chop' off the genitals of this males. So paradoxical, that women seem to suffer a mental condition of ' male genital-osis', if not an obsessive male genital maniac depression. Sorry, we are 'playing around ' with the Creator, if this is believed to be an acceptable mental condition of a female maniac jealous for the unattainable sex value addition. This is not new in history, 'women madness' has been reported in the whole of Africa. Kikuyu call the hurricane wind, 'ngoma cia aka'- literary, the spirits of dead women. Time has come to face the phenomena as it is, without misappropriating the grace of God. Since He created women as they are, to invoke God to change their nature is, therefore, contrary to His character. Instead, the society should appropriate them. Otherwise, so far the females, dear as they are, are grossly misappropriated, Page 5 of 6 Are females misbegotten males as Aristotle said?.rtf 2015/12/26 12:46 PM following the so called Beijing.. Christian grace.. law of the land.., to an extent of alienating the female nature, character and contextual propriety, then there lies an active gender cor-ruption( heart rupture), in the pragmatic psycho-social play of males and females. Humanity suffers the consequent chaos, which threatens the very gender survival As Alfred Tennyson, the 19th Century poet put it, when a woman unsexes herself she becomes most heartless, hateful and disgusting. They naturally and chronically crave for protection by the male figure, irrespective of the latter's physical ability. She needs a superior soul as much as a male needs a lower soul supplement, to complement humanity. Humanity is both spiritual and corporal, and the sexual difference is in no way a defect, unless God is also crazy for having created crazy males and females. They are not 'misbegotten males', but the society has unsexed them, reducing them to the most heartless, hateful and disgusting humans. Men are to blame for the misappropriation of this female human resource, within the conventional religious, and legal framework. They have sidelined the feelings of women for 'too long', and women in their effort to liberate themselves end up playing the game 'without knowing the rules', resulting in hateful, heartless and disgusting behavioural exhibitions. The gender emancipation is still on the process, and will be attained when all the societies shall recognize the precise nature, character and the pragmatic tendencies of women. The issue is not sex equality, but each sex to exploit its potentiality in full, and for the building of the society. Otherwise, a man will never be a mother, and neither a woman a seed donor. Each has a respective natural and character specifications, with a temporal purpose of mutual service. Otherwise, equality should not be mistaken for identity. Females and males are distinctly different in mode and purpose, but both are destined for a common destiny- the fullness of humanity. This fullness of humanity may remain a discrimative dream to some population of females, owing to the explanation that as long as marriage and motherhood are doctrinally inseparable, at least as far as the missionary christianity is concerned, and that marriage is not always workable in every willing woman, not to mention that the Page 6 of 6 Are females misbegotten males as Aristotle said?.rtf 2015/12/26 12:46 PM mathematical sex distribution is uneven, females being more than males as in all animal, insect and even aqua kingdoms, it naturally follows that motherhood is conventionally threatened. It is desirable that motherhood should be contained in marriage. But when this is not functional in respect to specific female cases, then the individual woman is at liberty to realize herself within the given environment. This is where conscience takes the lead. This appears to be the women position in the current wake of the single mother sub-culture. It also indicates that no extent of human law has ever succeed in frustrating the feminine disposition to motherhood. A woman has always been herself, before and after the institution ofsocial structures, missionary religions notwithstanding. On the otherhand, they have a moral and intellectual duty to assert their identity without begging males to 'approve' them, or even fighting for the male inclined character and occupation so as to look as ' also able as men'. We see women in male attires today, but not males in female clothes. Who taught that a woman is only complete when in personified masculinity? If there is a point at which I can agree with Aristotle, it is in their copying of the behaviour of males so as to look like them. The very denial of ones nature would lead one to be misbegotten both in character and behaviuor, whether one is a male or female. Women are not misbegotten males, but are women as women, and do act according to their nature. God created them as they are, and they do not deserve such disgrading and dehumanizing attacks on the basis of their composite specifications and designation. The writer is a clergy and a social worker, an observer of feminism philosophy as well. 20-11-2015, dom - 0724-017-568- for critical comments.