The Church Is a Whore, But She Is Our Mother

If you've read a good deal in theology you've heard the phrase "the church is a whore, but she is our mother."

If you haven't heard this phrase, well, I bet the title of this post really grabbed your attention. 

The quote is often attributed to St. Augustine though, as best I can tell, this is a mistaken attribution. The better source seems to be Dorothy Day. Dorothy once wrote:

“As to the Church, where else shall we go, except to the Bride of Christ, one flesh with Christ? Though she is a harlot at times, she is our Mother.”

Not exactly the oft-cited quote, but close.

Can anyone offer illumination on the source of the exact quote? Or should we assume the quote comes from Day, albeit modified?

The whore imagery of the quote has some issues. I've written a bit about this imagery in the bible. My main problem with the image is that when sexual promiscuity is being discussed men are the better exemplars. For example, in a recent meta-analysis examining gender differences in sexuality Peterson and Hyde noted that, while the genders aren't as different as we might think, men do tend to be more promiscuous. Their conclusion:

Despite the small gender differences found in this meta-analysis, the results indicate that men typically report more sexual behaviors and more permissive sexual attitudes than women. In particular, the current study indicated that men are more likely than women to report casual sex and permissive attitudes toward casual sex.¹

Those issues noted, people use the quote "the church is a whore, but she is our mother" to express their ambivalent feelings about the church. The fact is that many of us have love/hate relationships with our churches, our faith communities and our faith traditions.

On the one hand, the quote expresses harsh prophetic critique. The church has often been faithless, hypocritical, corrupt, unjust, abusive, intolerant, and violent.

And yet, on the other hand, the church brought many of us to Jesus. And still does. And for that gift we are grateful.

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^{1. Petersen, J. L., & Hyde, J. (2010). A meta-analytic review of research on gender differences in sexuality, 1993–2007. Psychological Bulletin, 136, 21-38.}