Ooooooooohhhhh!!! I’m studying to be a “pastorix”. (Apparently in Latin, “pastor” is a male noun and the ending indicates it as such. Therefore, I should be a “pastorix” because I’m female.) Nice try but… I really don’t think this is a good argument against female ordination (if one wanted to use it as such). Our language adopts words with no regard to the gender they had in the prior language.
A few of the women at my seminary used to joke about the fact that we were studying to be “priestesses”. Ironically enough, *we* (the women) were not the ones who advocated bizarre liturgical dances in worship, inclusive language (which is a misnomer), poems about nature being read as the sermon, and the other New Age stuff that all the anti-female ordination people said would enter the church when women became pastorices. (Gotta get that ending right!) The *men* advocated for all those things.
*sighs*
Matt wasn’t spending his time arguing against the ordination of women (though he can); he was making a linguistic point.
People called Amelia Earhart an aviatrix. That is one of the few linguistically-correct feminizations I can think of off the top of my head.
It would be linguistically correct to render words that way, but since so many words were in the masculine form because they exclusively referred to men, they never came over with their feminine forms.
The other example I was trying to come up with was beau vs. belle. They came into French from the same adjective, bellus for the masculine and bella from the feminine.
Bellus came into French as “beau” and bella as “belle”. We would never refer to a woman as a beau, and we’d never refer to a man as a belle. So they are very dependent upon the gender of the language they come from.
I know that he wasn’t trying to argue against the ordination of women by his post. I’ve just heard the whole “pastor is a male word, therefore the pastoral ministry is only for men” argument from male friends who are classics majors. So… I decided to have a little fun with Matt’s post.
“inclusive language (which is a misnomer)”
EXACTLY.
thank you very much.
i cannot stand “inclusive” language, particularly in hymns.