womens-ordination

Deacon Douglas McManaman

One day I was driving a fair distance to a York Regional Forest Trail to walk my dog and realized I’d forgotten my phone, so my only other option besides silence was to listen to AM talk radio. I tuned into a talk show about Vache Canadienne (Canadienne Cattle), and their guest was a French scientist from the University of Montreal, where I had studied theology. She spoke of a number of her French colleagues and all that they are involved in regarding the latest research on the Vache Canadienne, and of course she spoke with a strong Quebecoise accent. 

I was raised on the West Island of Montreal and studied Theology at the University of Montreal, an all French university. I love Montreal and Quebecoise culture, not to mention the accent. But as a young boy raised on the Anglophone West Island, I was exposed to a rather pervasive anti-Quebecoise prejudice, and as an ignorant and impressionable  young boy I acquired a good dose of it myself: I saw the French as dumb and somewhat backward. By the time I was an adult, married for only a few years, I like to think I was completely over this, but my priest-friend from Washington D.C., on a few occasions, expressed a certain dismay at my rather cynical remarks about the French. So it took a bit more time for me to fully appreciate the irrationality of the prejudice that took root in my childhood. I like to think I have arrived, and I do believe so. However, during this radio talk show on the Vache Canadienne, I became aware of a layer buried deep within me, like an early layer of soil underneath multiple layers formed centuries later; this was an old layer of prejudice that, when allowed to speak without the censorship of a conscious and enlightened mind, quietly suggested that these people are not really scientists in the true sense of the word, but “pretend” scientists, at best secondary scientists, trying to emulate the English ones. Now, this is a completely irrational thought which has no place in my conscious assemblage of convictions, but I was intrigued to sit back in silence and watch it spontaneously rear its ugly head. I was amazed at how enduring are the childhood prejudices picked up from the adults in one’s young life. 

Perhaps that is why many people believe we are a rather long way away from the ordination of women to the diaconate–and centuries from ordination to the priesthood. In other words, perhaps it has everything to do with ancient prejudice and that the “Roman system” is fundamentally misogynistic. Many women feel they are viewed and treated as second class–after all, they are not permitted to read the gospel at Mass, they cannot preach a homily–but can in certain circumstances give a reflection, which must however be preceded by a short homily by the priest followed by an explanation that what follows is only a reflection. Women do ministry work, but they cannot receive the sacramental graces in order to carry out that ministry as effectively as they would had they received those graces through ordination–otherwise, what does ordination and sacramental grace really mean in the end? And we typically don’t see women on the sanctuary, and all this because those in question are female. 

The best arguments put forth to preserve the status quo can indeed sound more like theological rationalizations than sound theology rooted in Scripture. For example, the Marian vs. Petrine Principles employed to keep women from Holy Orders appear to some as a theological instance of the fallacy of begging the question (the Petrine principle represents the male hierarchical/governmental aspect while the Marian principle represents the Church’s spousal, maternal, and receptive nature). Mary, who is a person, somehow became a principle; so too Peter, a person, but somehow he becomes a principle employed to necessitate a certain conclusion. Is this principle anything other than a “construct”? One woman asked some interesting questions regarding the use of this principle to keep women out of Holy Orders: “If the concept of the Petrine is used to close off authority and governance to women, what does the Marian close off to men? …Is vonBalthasar and, through its use of his theology, the hierarchy, saying that men are excluded from love and receptivity? That they may not be receptive? Is that why the Church (being male/Petrine governed) is struggling with Synodality which seems to require receptivity?”  

This is a very interesting series of questions. I am inclined to wonder that if the Marian principle has a bearing on me (a male) –not to mention every other member of the Church, cleric or otherwise–, could not the Petrine principle have a bearing on women? 

Another puzzling anomaly is that a baby is baptized and anointed with sacred chrism, anointed priest, prophet and king, and gender is entirely irrelevant–we don’t just anoint male babies priest, prophet and king, but female babies as well. A baptized woman exercises a real priesthood (the royal priesthood of the faithful), and gender is clearly not a factor. Certainly Christ is the bridegroom, and the Church is bride and mother, and yet, in the evening prayer for Thursday within the octave of Easter, the Church prays: “Almighty God, ever-living mystery of unity and Trinity, you gave life to the new Israel by birth from water and the Spirit, and made it a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a people set apart as your eternal possession. May all those you have called to walk in the splendor of the new light render you fitting service and adoration.” The entire Church is a “chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, to proclaim the virtues of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light” (1 Pt 2, 9). 

Hence, the Church as a whole is a priestly people and at the same time bride and mother (female); for it is the entire congregation that offers gifts to be consecrated. The entire congregation is not simply a group of passive observers, but active agents, priests offering their gifts, their labors, their sufferings and toil, their bread and wine, placed at the foot of the altar; the ministerial priest offers it on behalf of the entire congregation, of which he too is a part. Christ receives those gifts and changes them into himself, and returns them to us as our food. The priest can be seen both as our own representative (representing the bride of Christ) and as Christ’s representative (representing the bridegroom). However, the priest may also represent Christ the mother who feeds us–providing food and drink is, in Scripture, woman’s work, and Yahweh takes on that role. As women fetch water for their families, i.e., Gn 21, 19; 24, 11; Ex 2, 16ff, etc., so too the Lord supplies water in the desert for the people, and Jesus offers us the living water (Jn 7, 37-39). Mothers feed their household, as we read in Proverbs 31, 14-15, or Genesis 18, 6; 27, 9; or 2 Sam 13, 7-10, so, Yahweh prepares manna and quail for the children of Israel,[1] and of course Jesus is the Bread of Life who feeds us.

Jesus is the new Moses (see Mt 5, 1ff), and yet Moses addresses a series of questions to the Lord: “Did I conceive all this people? Did I bring them forth, that you should say to me, “Carry them in your bosom, as a nurse carries the sucking child, to the land which you swore to give their fathers”? (Num 11, 12). The implications here are interesting. Yahweh was certainly a mother and nurse of the wandering children in the desert. Or consider Nehemiah 9, 21: “Forty years you sustained them in the desert, and they lacked nothing; their clothes did not wear out and their feet did not swell”. The Lord takes on the role of dressmaker, as we see also in Gn 3, 21. As a woman clothes her family (Proverbs 31, 21ff), so too the Lord clothes us.[2] Or consider Isaiah: “Now I will cry out like a woman in labor, I will gasp and pant”, or: “Can a mother forget her infant, be without tenderness for the child of her womb? Even should she forget, I will never forget you” (Is 49, 15). Or, “Shall I bring a mother to the point of birth, and yet not let her child be born? says the Lord. Or shall I who bring to birth yet close her womb? says your God” (Is, 66, 9). Or, “As one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you. (Is, 66, 13). Christ came for the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Mt 15, 24), and in Luke he is compared to a woman searching for her lost coin: “What woman having ten coins and losing one would not light a lamp and sweep the house, searching carefully until she finds it? And when she does find it, she calls together her friends and neighbors and says to them, ‘Rejoice with me because I have found the coin that I lost’” (Lk 15, 8-9). But for some historical reason, the ministerial priesthood, which is a sign of Christ, is reserved for males. 

Scripture scholar Phyllis Trible writes: 

Although the Old Testament often pictures Yahweh as a man, it also uses gynomorphic language for the Deity. At the same time, Israel repudiated the idea of sexuality in God. Unlike fertility gods, Yahweh is neither male nor female; neither he nor she. Consequently, modern assertions that God is masculine, even when they are qualified, are misleading and detrimental, if not altogether inaccurate. Cultural and grammatical limitations (the use of masculine pronouns for God) need not limit theological understanding. As Creator and Lord, Yahweh embraces and transcends both sexes. To translate for our immediate concern: the nature of the God of Israel defies sexism. [3] 

And so I am compelled to wonder: Could it be that those in the Church who are not misogynists have made a special effort to rise above an ancient layer of prejudice that centuries of misogyny have established? And are they few and far between? 

Concluding Thoughts

I’d certainly be a hypocrite if I were to suddenly encourage others to sow seeds of dissent among the faithful in the congregation or in the classroom, for I continue to point out to my students that teachers who sow seeds of dissent among their students are engaging in a kind of false advertising–insofar as the school advertises itself as Catholic on the one hand, and on the other hand undermines a basic trust in the teaching office of the Church. Furthermore, one reason I began reading Where Peter Is is that I became very tired of writers of Catholic journals bellyaching about Pope Francis and the cognitive dissonance he caused in others who were far too doctrinaire in their approach to Catholicism as it is, as though the Church were not a living organism that continually develops her self-understanding in light of new information, insights, and the lived experiences of the faithful. As we read in Dei Verbum, 8: “This happens through the contemplation and study made by believers, who treasure these things in their hearts through a penetrating understanding of the spiritual realities which they experience, and through the preaching of those who have received through Episcopal succession the sure gift of truth. For as the centuries succeed one another, the Church constantly moves forward toward the fullness of divine truth until the words of God reach their complete fulfillment in her”. 

We do owe a “loyal submission of will and intellect”, even when it comes to common teaching. But common doctrine is not irreversible, unlike statements of faith,[4] and some great theologians have argued rather persuasively that this issue is not at all closed to discussion and debate.[5] Most importantly, students, the vast majority in fact, are less and less persuaded by the standard arguments that exclude women from Holy Orders, and our task as teachers is to welcome their doubts, questions and opposing arguments, to listen to them carefully, and acknowledge their brilliance when they are indeed brilliant–not to mention put forth by women who are clearly smarter than we are, such as Ruth Tiffany Barnhouse, Elizabeth Schussler-Fiorenza, Elisabeth Behr-Sigel, and others.[6] Perhaps the theological situation we are in with respect to the issue of the ordination of women is comparable to the basic theological argument found in Humanae Vitae, which was not strong enough to convince the average couple about to be married in the Church that closing the marital act to new life is to be avoided–thank goodness for thinkers like Germain Grisez, Joseph Boyle, John Finnis, and William May, who put forth a far more convincing and persuasive analysis of why doing so is morally problematic.[7] In other words, perhaps a much better series of arguments explaining the reasonableness for the non-ordination of women is just around the corner. Or, perhaps not. Perhaps this is nothing more than a case of rationalizing the tolerance of a practice that is in the end indefensible, as was the Church’s centuries long tolerance of slavery and the death penalty. Regardless, a synodal Church is a listening Church, and listening to challenging objections from our students makes teaching all the more exciting–except for those brought up on an old and outdated pedagogical model that refuses to encourage critical insight, opposition, and push back.

Notes

1. Phyllis Trible. “Depatriarchalizing in Biblical Interpretation”, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Mar., 1973, Vol. 41, No. 1, Mar., 1973, pp. 31-35. 

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid., p. 34

4. See “The Hope of Salvation for Infants Who Die Without Being Baptised”. International Theological Commission. Section 34. 2007. <https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20070419_un-baptised-infants_en.html#*&gt;

5. Richard Gaillardetz writes: “It is my contention that appeals to the infallibility of the ordinary universal magisterium are ill-suited for resolving controversial matters related to the Christian faith precisely because of the inevitable ambiguities involved in verifying the fulfillment of the conditions for the exercise of the ordinary universal magisterium as outlined in Lumen gentium # 25.2. Given these ambiguities, it should not be surprising that even after the publication of the CDF Responsum questions linger regarding both the assertion that this teaching belongs to the deposit of faith (particularly in the light of the study of the Pontifical Biblical Commission) and the assertion that it has been infallibly taught as such in the unanimous teaching of the college of bishops. Given the gravity of the matter (the determination that this teaching is a dogma of faith) theologians would appear to be within their bounds to look for a clear substantiation of these assertions. It may be appropriate at this point to recall the canonical principle cited at the beginning of this article: “no doctrine is understood to be infallibly defined unless it is clearly established as such.” I infer from this canon that the burden lies with the ecclesiastical magisterium, not only to assert that the church’s teaching on the exclusion of women from the priesthood has been taught infallibly by the ordinary universal magisterium but to “clearly establish” that fact. The questions which I have raised in this article suggest that the claims of the CDF, at this date, have not been “clearly established.” Richard R. Gaillardetz, “Infallibility and the Ordination of Women”. Louvain Studies 21 (1996): 3-24.

6. See Ruth Tiffany Barnhouse. “Patriarchy and the Ordination of Women”. Towards a New Theology of Ordination: Essays on the Ordination of Women, ed. by Marianne H. Micks and Charles P. Price, Virginia Theological Seminary, Greeno, Hadden &Company Ltd. Somerville, Mass., 1976, pp.71-89. <https://womenpriests.org/articles-books/barnhou2-patriarchy-and-the-ordination-of-women/>. See also Ruth Tiffany Barnhouse, “Is Patriarchy Obsolete?” in Male and Female: Christian Approaches to Sexuality, New York: Seabury Press, pp. 223-235, and her article entitled, “On the Difference Between Men and Women”, Ibid., pp. 3-13. 

7. See Germain Grisez, Joseph Boyle, John Finnis, William E. May. “Every Marital Act Ought to be Open to New Life”: Toward a Clearer Understanding. The Thomist: The Catholic University of America Press. Volume 52, Number 3, July 1988, pp. 365-426.