“Why All the Fuss About the Body?” Gender, Ecclesiology, and Mary Douglas’s Grid-Group Theory

This article asks why matters of sex and gender are the nexus of theological and ecclesiological battles to the point of being church-dividing issues. I utilize Mary Douglas’s grid-group theory—her framework for correlating social form, body symbolism, and ritual density—to demonstrate that the body is a symbol of the social world and that different views of the body correspond with different ways of organizing a society. Thus, I argue that gender diversity is being perceived by the Catholic Church as a threat to ecclesial structure as well as to the church’s ritual life.