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by Frans Jozef van Beeck, S.J.
from Towards a New Theology of Ordination: Essays on
the Ordination of Women, pp.90-100.
Ed. by Marianne H. Micks and Charles P.Price, Virginia
Theological Seminary,
Greeno, Hadden &Company Ltd. Somerville, Mass.,
1976
Frans Jozeph van Beeck, S.J., is Professor of Theology at Boston College. His
view on validity was cited in Bishop Vogel’s statement on the Philadelphia
ordinations.
A
Meditation
The
worst thing to do is to shrug one’s shoulders, for it means you—with
your concern—are unimportant. I cannot imagine Jesus shrugging his
shoulders. He knew that the Father had entrusted everything to him (Jn
13:3). He let everything the Father had given him come to him, and was
determined never to turn away anyone who came (Jn 6:37) .
That
does not mean that Jesus let himself be dominated by the concerns that people
brought to him. Recognizing them is not the same as allowing yourself to become
enslaved by them. Jesus knew that he had come from God and was going back to
God (Jn 13:3) . Paul came to know that, too:
If
I am called to account by you or by any human court of judgment, it does not
matter to me in the least. Why, I do not even pass judgment on myself, for I
have nothing on my conscience; but that does not mean I stand acquitted. My
judge is the Lord (1 Cor 4:3 - 4) .
The
church is called to share in this freedom, “free woman” that she is
(Gal 4:31). To be free is to be open to every cause and concern, to be so free
as to be the slave of no cause or concern: that is the freedom of Christ. A
tall order. Actually, a hopeless enterprise for those whose principal concern
is with their own righteousness. After all is said and done, we must be willing
to find ourselves with no righteousness of our own, no legal rectitude, but
only with the righteousness which comes from faith in Christ, given by God in
response to faith (Phil 3:9). That means, in the concrete, that the church must
make discretionary judgments without trying to curry favor from people (if she
did, she would be no servant of Christ!), and then cast all her cares on God,
in the realization that she is his charge (Gal 10; 1 Pt 5:7)
Summary of the Discussion
This
article grows out of several convictions. The admission of women to Holy Orders
is the subject matter of a discretionary judgment on the part of the
Episcopal Church in the United States and is not primarily a doctrinal
matter. The fact that it is a discretionary matter implies that it is
squarely ecumenical. It also means that it must not be put in
political terms; if this were done, the church would be currying favor
from people. Obviusly, this does not mean that there are no political aspects
to the issue, nor that the eventual decision, whichever way it goes, will not
have political consequences. In the concrete, there is the danger of
selective ecumenism; the kind of ecumenism invoked to plead for or
against woman’s ordination is not true ecumenism at all. Hence, the
Episcopal Church is called to occupy its own place among the churches, and
there are reasons to count on the understanding of those churches which will
continue to keep women out of the ordained ministry. Finally, the issue is
ecumenical at a level that is more basic than ecumenism among the churches can
ever be, viz., at the level of harmonious relationships between men and women.
Let us take a closer look at these considerations.
I.
Doctrinal considerations
Three
points deserve consideration here, after it is remembered that Haye van der
Meer, in his Women Priests in the Catholic Church? (Phila.: Temple U.
P., 1973) has convincingly shown that the traditional arguments in favor of the
exclusion of women from the ordained ministry must be called insufficient.
(a)
First, there is the christological argument. The fact that Christ is a
man, the argument goes, shows that, by God’s own revealed will, it takes a
male to preside over the church; hence, only men can convincingly represent
Christ. This argument must be rejected, for it places masculinity in a
privileged position in the hypostatic union of the divine nature and the human
nature in the one Person of the God-Man. The tradition expressed this point as
follows:
The
only thing that is not implied in the general terms used by Chalcedon
are the individual characteristics. For that reason the saying “what is
not assumed is not redeemed” may be understood only of the specific nature
[i.e. the “human nature”] and not of these characteristics. In other
words, Christ would not have to be a woman, an atomic physicist, or a Japanese
in order to be redeemer for women, atomic physicists, and Japanese.(1)
Hence, all human persons can become the bearers of Christ’s person and of
his ministries, which is the same as saying that women can be ordained.
(b)
Second, there is the theological argument. God, it is said, is
consistently named by the name of “Father”, and the usage of Jesus
confirms this in such a way as to make the metaphor normative; hence only men
can convincingly act in the role of mediator between people and God. Now it
must be clear from the outset that this does not make God masculine, since the
divine essence, as especially St. Gregory of Nyssa has taught, is
incomprehensible and transcendent, surpassing all differentiations. The
question, in other words, is not whether God is masculine or not, but whether
he can be credibly represented only by masculine metaphors and male persons.
Without in any way denying the obvious preponderance of masculine imagery in
the tradition, it must still be said that the usage of Jesus must not be
uncritically taken as normative in this regard. Jesus calls his Father Abba,
which is a name expressing endearment. In other words, it is the
unprecedented tone of familiarity, and not the masculine metaphor in and of
itself, that expresses the unique relationship of Jesus to the Father—a
relationship which Christians are called to participate in. There is no
doctrinal reason why women could not, in the Lord, be the sacramental
representatives of our God, who calls us to such intimacy.(2)
(c)
The only doctrine that applies to the issue is the doctrine of the inclusive
unity of the Body of Christ implied in the baptismal formula of Gal 3: 2 8:
“As many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is
. . . neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” What
does this doctrine mean? It does not mean: women must be
ordained. So the fact that they have not been ordained in the tradition of some
of the mainstream churches is not a departure from sound doctrine. Doctrine, in
and of itself, does not put the church under any obligation. “Of course we
all ‘have knowledge’.” But “this knowledge breeds conceit;
it is love that builds” (1 Cor 8:1). Love must decide the issue. This love
takes the shape of discretionary ecclesiastical judgment if the issue affects
the church as a whole.(3)
II. Discretionary matters as ecumenical matters
Ordination of women to the priesthood is possible from the doctrinal point of
view. But this knowledge does not put the church under any obligation, any more
than the correct realization that “an idol has no real existence” put
the Corinthians under the obligation to disregard completely the conscientious
overtones of the eating of meat offered to idols (1 Cor 8:1 - 13; 10:23 - 11
:1).
This
is so because good Christian practice can never in its concreteness be
deduced from sound doctrine. Doctrine, after all, is not a stable, one-for-all
given; it is itself subject to the conditions of history, at least in the sense
that there is such a thing as development of doctrine. In the experience of the
church it has often happened that doctrine developed under the influence of the
practical, living faith-decisions of saints, inspired groups of Christians, and
others, who put vital life-issues up for mediation and theological study.
Hence, good Christian practice in the concrete has often been the source of
sound doctrine rather than the other way round.
But
are there doctrines, then, which are so timeless and essential that they remain
the source of good Christian practice— let us say, the divinity of Christ,
the all-encompassing mercy of God, etc.? If for a moment we prescind from the
time-determined formulations of such central truths, we must indeed say that
there are such doctrines. Otherwise we would lapse into complete doctrinal
relativism. But then we must also realize at once that such doctrines,
precisely because of their divine character, are inexhaustible. The church is
always called to a fuller realization and to a fuller actualization of the
mystery they convey. How that fuller realization and actualization will happen
in the concrete, however, cannot be read off without ado from the
doctrine in its stark form. It takes concrete situations to present the church
with the kind of decision-situation that calls for a discretionary
judgment—a judgment which at once changes the church’s practice and
gives her a deeper realization of the depths of mystery involved in the
doctrine. But to take this position means that practical decisions and
discretionary judgments are part and parcel of the church’s realization of
what is involved in doctrine.
What
is the shape which such discretionary judgments tend to take when the church as
a whole is involved? The answer is: they are concretized in church order. But
then we must be immediately reminded that the church order only conveys its
real meaning, i.e. its Christian meaning, if it is seen against the background
of what gave rise to it in the first place, viz. the practice of agape,
born of the desire to do justice to concrete needs and to show concern for
the weak and the wronged. That means: the discretionary judgments that make up
the church order are only intelligible if they promote communion and are
perceived as such. Hence the emphasis, from the earliest times, on koinonia
and communio, or, to use the Russian Orthodox term, sobornost.
The subjective attitudes that animate this communion are mutual respect and
understanding, a willingness not to be doctrinaire (epikeia), a sense
that we are to deal with each other, not as the slaves of doctrinal or legal
tyranny, but as members of one family, of one household (oikonomia).(4)
This
in turn means that the decision about the admission of women to the ordained
priesthood in the Episcopal Church is squarely ecumenical, since it
involves a practical, discretionary judgment which is also going to affect the
Episcopal Church’s relationships—at the level of church
order—with the other churches. In the practical situation of incomplete
unity among the churches such a discretionary judgment becomes very important,
so that the question becomes: how is the decision going to affect the unity of
Christians?
III. A political approach?
Communio, like the entire ecumenical enterprise, is far more than
politics, or the art of the feasible. The goal of ecumenism is not an easy
truce among the churches at the level of church order, but rather the union of
all Christians in the Lord. Any attempt to force such a truce would very
probably exclude a sizable part of the Christian world—political
settlements tend to have victims! The ecumenical enterprise would degenerate
into pure politics if the different church orders were taken for the main
object of comparison, negotiation, mutual adaptation, and harmonization,
without keeping in mind that those church orders represent discretionary
faith-and-agape judgments about the very nature of the church. This can even be
maintained with regard to elements in the order of a particular church which I
would consider objectively heretical; unless I manage to see and appreciate the
faith-inspiration behind such an element I am in no position to exercise the
theological, ecumenical virtue of acceptance and an understanding (and
confrontation!) in the Lord.(5)
Each
church’s loyalty in matters ecumenical is to the Lord, not to any
particular church order, whether it be its own or that of other churches.
Neither the tradition nor the practice of any church must be canonized,
although they can be usefully employed in the service of testing a new issue.
If the traditions of any church were canonized as such, ecumenism would become
a purely political (and terribly painful) exercise in harmonization and
negotiation at the level of church order, in which each church would agree to
having some of its feathers singed in the interest of a type of unity that
would amount to little more than forced uniformity. In addition, in such a
process, many if not all churches would find themselves truckling to the orders
of other churches and second-guessing the responses of other churches, and thus
they would be continually tempted to curry favor from people, rather than
seeking the will of the Lord in the matter of Christian unity.(6)
This
is, of course, not the same as saying that there are no political aspects to
the issue. The decision of the Episcopal Church, whichever way it goes, will
have consequences for its relationships to other churches at the level of
church order. I like to think that an affirmative decision would mean a lot to
the ordained women ministers, say, in the United Methodist Church and the
United Church of Christ, given the high visibility and authoritative status the
ordained clergy in the Episcopal Church have traditionally enjoyed. An
affirmative decision would also, I like to think, be a forceful invitation
extended to such churches as the Roman Catholic Church and the various Orthodox
Churches to confront the issue of the role of women in the church. But it would
be as wrong for the Episcopal Church to make an affirmative decision for such
reasons as it would be wrong not to make it because of some flack from
“Rome” or “Constantinople”. The fact that, in the
ecumenical situation, all churches find themselves responsible, in the Lord,
for each other does not mean that the churches are also responsible for each
other’s responses.
IV. Selective ecumenism
I
must be frank now. In the concrete, an affirmative decision made by the
Episcopal Church in the matter of the admission of women to the ordained
priesthood would raise issues mainly between the Episcopal Church and the Roman
Catholic, Old Catholic, and Orthodox Churches. I say this because I think that
the main sources of opposition to women’s ordinations in the Episcopal
Church are the concerns that animate such movements as the American Church
Union.
It
must be stated from the outset that the American Church Union is in some ways
the direct descendant of the Tractarian movement, which, more than any other
movement, has helped to place the Anglican Communion in the mediating position
in the ecumenical movement that it has today. In other words: its tradition
entitles the A.C.U. to raise the issue of ecumenism in the context of the
matter in hand. But it must also be said: the Anglican Communion as a whole
is the heir of the Tractarian movement, and it can claim to be its
rightful representative, for the Anglican Communion would not be what it is
without the powerful doctrinal, ascetical, and ecclesiological impetus of
Pusey, Keble, Newman, and so many others. Its impact on the Roman Catholic
Church is notable not only in the person and influence of Newman, but also in
the concerns brought forward and adopted in the course of the Second Vatican
Council.
This
means first of all that it would be inappropriate and untruthful for members of
the A.C.U. to think of themselves and their tradition merely as the
representatives of Roman Catholic and Orthodox concerns within the Episcopal
Church; they are also representatives of an Anglican tradition that has
caused significant changes in the doctrinal and ecclesial stance of the
Roman Catholic Church.
It
also means that it would be a misperception of the factual course of history if
the A.C.U. were to present themselves as the only representatives of the
Tractarians, and it would be inappropriate for them to act as if they were the
only members of the Episcopal Church to be actually responsible for good
relationships with “Rome” and “Constantinople”.(7) While
finding myself, as a Roman Catholic, in profound sympathy with many aspects of
A.C.U. sensibility in matters doctrinal, ecclesiological and ascetical, I
cannot get myself, as a Catholic theologian, to relate to the Anglican
Communion only through the mediation of the concerns represented by the A.C.U.
and those Christians in the Anglican Churches who see themselves as primarily
inspired by the Tractarian tradition.
Hence, there is no reason now to defend the exclusion of women from the
priesthood in the Episcopal Church under invocation of “Rome” and
“Constantinople”. It just may be the vocation of the Anglican
Communion once again to be the instrument in God’s hand to enlighten
them on this particular score.
Such
an appeal to “Rome” and “Constantinople” is often, as we
have said, put forward as an act of ecumenical concern, and it often is. But
not necessarily or in every respect. It may, in fact, be unecumenical. The
latter would be the case if it were implied that ecumenism would primarily (and
even exclusively) impel the Episcopal Church to reach out to Rome,
Constantinople, and Utrecht, thus relegating the great majority of Christian
churches to a “Low”—what a metaphor!—status. This would be
nothing short of an attitude of “selective ecumenism”—which in
fact would be no ecumenism at all.
V.
Can the Episcopal Church occupy its own place and count on understanding?
If
the soul of ecumenism is agape, communio, koinonia, sobornost, then
harmony at the level of church order becomes a relative good. This means: the
Episcopal Church is primarily called to occupy its own place among the
Christian churches, with its own church order, developed in function of the
concrete signs of the times as they appear within and around the Episcopal
Church. There lies its loyalty to the Lord who is to come.
The
question of women’s ordination to the priesthood is indeed an ecumenical
issue, but this means that it must be approached, not from the point of view of
the various orders of other churches, but from the point of view of
communio.
Hence, the question becomes: can the Episcopal Church count on the Roman
Catholic Church, the Orthodox Churches, and the Old Catholic Church to be
respectful and understanding, willing not to be doctrinaire, ready to approach
the Episcopal Church with oikonomia?
I do
not venture to speak for Orthodoxy, nor for Old Catholics, although I have
reason to suspect, in view of the long tradition of epikeia and
oikonomia that characterizes Orthodoxy at its best, that there will be
understanding from those quarters. I do not venture to speak even for the Roman
Catholic Church, because I lack any hierarchical qualification; I can only
speak as a Catholic priest and as a Catholic theologian. My expectation (and my
hope) is that the Roman Catholic Church will be understanding. My reasons are
twofold.
First, although recent statements on the role of women in the church’s
ministry have still firmly rejected the participation of women as ministers in
the church’s sacramental liturgy, this rejection has been based on
tradition rather than on any idea that women are essentially incapable of being
part of the church’s ordained ministry. The ancient thesis: “Only the
male can be the proper subject of ordination,” is obviously now understood
to express a discipline, not an essential incapacity.
Secondly—and more directly ecumencially—post-Vatcian II ecclesiology
has moved steadily away from a conception of the unity of all Christian
churches in terms of unity of church order, in the direction of collegiality,
relative local autonomy, unity in diversity, and even in the direction of a
communion of a variety of “rites”. This “synodal”,
“pluriform” orientation of Roman Catholic ecclesiology—combined
with a sustained emphasis on the Pope as visible center of Christian unity, but
with the “monarchy” metaphor toned down—warrants the expectation
that the ordination of women to the priesthood in the Episcopal Church will not
turn out to be an insuperable obstacle to harmonious ecumenical relationships
with Rome.
VI. “You are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28)
Oikoumene originally means “the inhabited earth.” Without
pressing etymology to the point where “ecumenism” would “really
mean” the process of making the earth inhabitable, it does make sense to
point out that ecumenism must press further than merely ecclesiastical
concerns. The ordination of women to the priesthood is but one way in which a
larger, more basic, more comprehensive concern is raised, namely, the need, in
the Lord, for harmonious relationships between men and women, not only in
friendships and marriages and good professional collegiality, but also in
social structures. The raising of the issue of discrimination against women in
the world at large as well as in the church must, from a theological point of
view, be seen as an instance of historical revelation, and as such it is the
work of the Holy Spirit in the world as well as in the church. Through this
process of consciousness-raising it has now more than ever become possible to
accept the gift of redemption from the debilitating cultural prejudice against
women, which is a social sin that has held men and women captives for so long.
Without the church’s commitment to absorb and outsuffer and so to redeem
the hurts and the scars of this affliction, a decision to ordain women to the
priesthood would be the worst kind of ecclesiastical tokenism. With such
a commitment—which would have to show itself in countless (and delicate)
other ways as well— it could be a blessing which would make the earth more
inhabitable for all of us.
Notes
1.
Piet Schoonenberg, The Christ (N.Y.: Herder & Herder, 1971), pp.
72-73.
2.
Cp. “Invalid or Merely Irregular?—Comments by a Reluctant
Witness,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies XI (1974) 381 - 399, p. 398
n. 45.
3. An
example of this in history is the practice of the medieval Church to withhold
the chalice from lay people. Much as we may now disagree with that decision
(which grew over a long period of time), we must recognize that this was a
discretionary matter. Hence, the argument of some reformers that this practice
amounted to the exclusion of the laity from the “true sacrament” is a
doctrinaire overstatement, a sample of conceit bred by “knowledge”.
4.
Cp. “Towards an Ecumenical Understanding of the Sacraments,”
Journal of Ecumenical Studies III (1966) 57 - 112, pp. 111 - 112.
5. I
do not mean to exclude the possibility that the issue of women’s
ordination to the priesthood could be used to “solve” a different
problem, again in a purely political fashion, viz. by the church’s making
an easy settlement with women’s liberation. This issue is outside the
scope of this paper, but let me point out two things. First, the church could
much better and much more critically deal with feminism if women were in the
ordained ministry (“What is not assumed is not saved”!). Secondly,
just as racist institutions tend to hire unqualified blacks, because they are
mainly interested in salving their own guilty consciences and promoting a
liberal image, so sexist institutions have a tendency to employ unqualified
women. In both cases the final outcome is the same: the performance of the
blacks, or the women, is below par, and the institution finds a new rationale
for its racist or sexist prejudices. This comparison must not be taken to imply
that the racial problem and the sexism problem are the same, but that a purely
political approach to either leads to analogous undesirable results.
6.
The background for the position here taken is the idea that ecumenism is not
retrospective, but prospective and eschatological. Cp. op.cit., n. 4,
pp. 69 - 73.
7.
Alleged utterances by some prominent Roman Catholic and Orthodox churchmen
(“It would sever all ties.”—"They won’t do it, for they put
too high a value on good relationships with us."—Etc.), while doubtlessly
born out of serious conviction, sound a little bit like veiled threats—to
which especially those in the Episcopal Church who feel close ties with Rome
and with Orthodoxy may easily give in. 1 Cor 4:3 - 4 is the watchword in such
cases.
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