Who Wears the Pants in the Family?

by Joseph Stoutzenberger

A newly ordained priest was recently assigned as associate pastor at a neighboring parish. He regularly wears his cassock, a long black robe, during public functions and around the parish grounds. During Mass, he is the picture of hands-folded, head-bowed piety. At a parish staff meeting, he announced that women should not enter the sanctuary as lectors or eucharistic ministers if they are wearing pants. Dresses or skirts are expected. He made no mention of what men needed to wear.

I tried to understand what was behind his “no pants for women” position. It seems out of touch with today’s fashions and an affront to women. Perhaps it is actually the archdiocese’s policy that the priest is adhering to. If so, I know the regulation is not adhered to in other parishes. My concern is that it appears to be about politics and power. 

Concerning power, his pronouncement was apparently made without consultation with a parish council or staff. The church has called for parishes to install parish councils to make decisions that affect the life of the parish in conjunction with pastors. This young priest was operating out of an autocratic style that the church has been seeking to move away from. I had a friend who became the pastor of a parish in Maryland. He expected the parish to be financially solvent; but when he took over, he discovered that it had accrued an excessive amount of debt. The previous pastor was a lover of religious art and statues. He often traveled to Germany and Italy to purchase expensive statues, shipped to and paid for by the parish, without consulting with a finance committee about whether or not this was the best use of parish funds. He even had a life-size statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in the priests’ private quarters that no parishioners ever saw. I know of another parish, this one in the Harrisburg diocese, that had an active youth choir, complete with piano and guitars, that played at Sunday Masses. A new pastor came in and immediately disbanded the choir and hired a friend of his, an older woman, who played the organ by herself and only chose old-fashioned traditional hymns that no one sang along with.

Should parish decisions be in the hands of one individual, even if that individual is ordained? It smacks of the clericalism that Pope Francis speaks out against so forcefully. In 2021, speaking to a group of seminarians, he said that “clericalism is a perversion of the priesthood: it is a perversion. And rigidity is one of the manifestations.” “When I find a rigid seminarian or young priest, I say ‘something bad is happening to this one on the inside.’ Behind every rigidity, there is a serious problem, because rigidity lacks humanity.”

Catholicism is not ready for the approach used by some Protestant churches, such as Presbyterians and Methodists, who interview candidates for pastorships in their parishes. However, the church clearly has been calling for greater lay involvement and shared decision making for some time now.

Is the priest’s decision political? There’s a saying that goes back centuries about “Who wears the pants in the family?” It equates wearing pants with being in control of the family. Implied is that husbands are supposed to wear pants and be in charge of family matters, as they are supposed to do in the natural order and some would say prescribed in scripture. When women wear pants and exert authority in the family, it is a disruption of the natural order. Some conservative Christian women adhere to what they see as a biblical mandate to wear dresses and concede final authority in the family to their husbands. The young priest may not express this perspective on power overtly, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he harbors these sentiments and is acting on them covertly. He might say that he is simply concerned about proper attire in the sanctuary, but that concern represents his understanding of gender and power. Does he really believe that women wearing pants is less attractive or decorous that women in skirts? If he believes that, he needs to get out and talk to more women, especially professional women. I suspect that women in pants suits are threatening not just his sense of proper attire but of his understanding of power arrangements between the sexes. Is Sister Lillian in pants more threatening that Sister Lillian in a dress? Perhaps she is.