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A Note by Dennis M.Ferrara .
Published in Theological
Studies,vol.55, no.4, 1984, pp.706-719.
In a
recent issue of this journal, I essayed a retrieval of St. Thomas’s
interpretation of the theological axiom that the priest, in consecrating the
Eucharist, acts in the person of Christ (in persona Christi), arguing
that Thomas assigns the axiom a primarily ministerial-apophatic rather than
representational sense.(1) Although the main burden of the article was to
combat the hierarchical interpretation of in persona Christi that
dominates recent magisterial teaching, it was perforce related to the question
which has triggered this interpretation, namely, the question whether women may
be ordained to the priesthood.
Even
as my article was going to press, Pope John Paul II issued a terse
reaffirmation of the traditional ban against women priests, declaring that his
judgment “that the church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly
ordination on women . . . is to be definitively held by all the church’s
faithful.”(2) If the precise binding force of this declaration remains
somewhat unclear, the pope clearly does not rule out scholarly discussion of
the arguments on which it is based, as even Joseph Ratzinger has insisted.(3)
The present note is intended as a contribution to this ongoing discussion, with
specific reference to the distinction, and the importance thereof, between the
external fact of the Church’s traditional ban on the ordination of women
and the inner theological meaning of this tradition.
Contemporary statements of the magisterium on this question have argued on both
fronts. First and foremost, they have argued on the basis of the Church’s
constant and universal tradition of reserving the apostolic ministry to men.
According to the magisterium, this tradition cannot be explained by the social
and cultural vagaries of human history, specifically, by the historical
prejudices against women, but stems from the will and institution of Christ
himself, in such wise that the Church is powerless to change it: “The
Church, in fidelity to the example of the Lord, authorized to admit women to
priestly ordination";(4) “the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer
priestly ordination on women.”(5)
There
is, however,argument advanced by the magisterium against the ordination of
women, namely, the argument from theological meaningfulness, what Inter
insigniores calls the consonance of an all-male priesthood with God’s
plan of salvation,(6) the light which this doctrine sheds, within the analogy
of faith, on the mystery of Christ(7) and the Church.(8) Pope John Paul II
himself argues along these lines. In Ordinatio sacerdotalis, he speaks
of the “appropriateness of the divine provision,”(9) makes repeated
mention of God’s “plan,”(10) specifically ascribes the choice of
men alone to “the wisdom of the Lord of the universe”,(1l) and cites
approvingly Paul VI’s statement that in choosing only men Christ gave the
Church a “theological anthropology” thereafter ever followed by the
Church.(12) The anthropological argument had been specified in Mulieris
dignitatem(13) in terms of the nuptial mystery between Christ and the
Church in a way that rehearses the central theoretical argument advanced in
Section 5 of Inter insigniores, i.e. that the priest in celebrating the
Eucharist represents Christ the bridegroom and acts in persona Christi.
Nonetheless, despite this affirmation in principle of the existence of
intrinsic arguments, Ordinatio sacerdotalis makes no attempt to specify
what these might be. In particular, the pope virtually bypasses the notion, so
central to both Inter insigniores and Mulieris dignitatem, of the
priest’s “representation of Christ,” being content with a
generalized and passing reference, supported by a citation not of Inter
insigniores but of Lumen gentium, to priests as “carry[ing] on
the apostles’ mission of representing Christ the Lord and
Redeemer,”(14) relying instead on a forceful appeal to the will of Christ
in choosing twelve men as Apostles.(15) The present note addresses what I
believe to be the two main points raised by this new, almost voluntaristic
approach of the magisterium to the question of women’s ordination:
- the inherently
intelligible character of the question itself; and
- the actual
understanding of this question in the concrete tradition of the Church.
The Intelligible Nature of the Question
In
the classic teaching of St. Thomas, the act of faith, though performed under
the “imperium” of the will, formally resides in the intellect, since
its object is the true, the verum.(16) It is for this reason precisely that
theology, as fides in statu scientiae, has as its proper aim the
understanding of revealed truth. Implied in this characteristically Catholic
view of faith and theology is the intelligibility of revealed truth itself. Nor
is this view belied by the abiding mysteriousness and supernaturality of those
truths which constitute the formal and normative objects of faith: the Trinity,
the Incarnation, and our divinization through grace. However opaque our
intellects in the presence of the pure refulgence of divine light—like the
eyes of the bat in the presence of the sun, says Thomas—however meager and
halting the insights achieved by our piecemeal forays into the infinite, open
country of divine being, it remains ever true that God is truth and that our
search aims at the understanding of that truth, at the meaning of what is
believed.
Now
if this Catholic affirmation of the intelligibility of divine truth and of our
ability, though scant, to grasp that intelligibility obtains in regard to even
the most strictly supernatural of mysteries, it obtains even more in regard to
the question of the ordination of women. For this question formally and
directly concerns a constitutive element of the natural order, viz. the
division of the sexes, insofar as that division is “presupposed and
perfected” in the order of grace. It pertains, then, as Pope John Paul II
himself states in Ordinatio sacerdotalis, to the divine wisdom, that
wisdom which, as St. Thomas further explains, constitutes the intelligible and
intelligent basis, the “first principle,” of the natural order based
on the “distinction of things.”(17) More precisely, the priesthood is
a sacrament and so involves, as Inter insigniores insists, a natural
sign,(18) as do the other sacraments, e.g. washing for baptism, a meal for the
Eucharist. In the case of priesthood, moreover, the sacramental sign pertains
directly to the Church’s public and social nature, that is, its character
as a ”differentiated body" and a “supernatural society,”(l9)
with its own immanent and permanent structures. Now the doctrine that the
priest must be male expressly ties this sacramental sign to the natural
differentiation of the sexes and by that very fact posits the existence of an
intelligible link between the two in terms of what Paul VI, as noted above,
rightly called “theological anthropology.”
Correlatively, to admit that the question of women priests pertains directly to
the divine intellect is by that very fact to admit that it does not
pertain directly, and hence cannot be resolved by appeals to, the divine
will. For while God does many things which leave us entirely baffled,
the placing of women in Church and world is not one of them. We are not dealing
here with an object of the divine election, not with God’s choice of
individuals (Abraham, Mary) or nations (Israel, the Persians) as instruments of
the divine purpose, nor with God’s permissive unleashing of the devil upon
the innocent (Job, Christ, perhaps, at times, ourselves). Such choices are
indeed inscrutable, their “meaning,” as Job 38-41 makes painfully
clear, lost in the mystery of the divine counsel. Faced with them we can only,
if we have the heart and grace for it, repeat with St. Paul: “How deep are
the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How inscrutable his
judgements, how unsearchable his ways!” (Rom 11:33). But the relation
between the priesthood and the natural differentiation of the sexes does not
and cannot pertain to God’s will in this sense, unless, of course, we wish
to say that the traditional Catholic axiom on the relation between nature and
grace has here, in this one instance and quite arbitrarily, been abrogated by
the First Truth.
Once
we grasp the inherently intelligible nature of the question of women’s
ordination—if God has willed to exclude women from priesthood, there must
be a reason for it, one in some way meaningful to the inquiring Christian
mind—we are forced to limit the import of the magisterium’s appeal to
the will and example of Christ. Inter insigniores, for example, stresses
Christ’s enlightened and antiprejudicial attitude to argue that his
reservation of the apostolic ministry to men was consciously willed and not the
product of “sociocultural conditioning.”(20) Pope John Paul II makes
the point even more strongly, emphasizing Christ’s sovereign freedom in
calling the Twelve,(2l) a freedom exercised in union with the Father and his
eternal plan.(22) However, this line of argument, which stresses the historical
Jesus’ transcendence of cultural conditioning, besides curiously taking
its stand in the no-man’s land of historical reconstruction, begs the
basic and underlying issue: if Christ indeed consciously willed to restrict the
apostolic ministry to men for all time, what was his reason for doing
so? For some reason must be assigned to the Lord’s alleged
decision:(23) the subjective freedom of an act is one thing, its objective
content quite another. To vindicate Christ’s freedom in choosing only men
thus tells us nothing whatsoever about the divinely intended reason for the
alleged choice. Nor is the notion of divine vocation, which the magisterium
invokes by citing texts such as Mark 3:13—"he summoned the men he himself
had decided on"(24)—pertinent in this context; for God’s call, as an
intervention in the historical order of grace, is addressed to individuals, to
unique historical persons, not to a natural class.
The
question, then, concerns not the Lord’s will but the Lord’s
mind in this matter and, no less, the means available to us for
discerning it. Here, traditional Catholics will surely find Pope John Paul
II’s argument from Christ’s call of the Twelve unsettling; first,
because the link between the scriptural texts cited by the pope and the
question of women’s ordination seems tenuous at best; second, because in
the Catholic tradition, the privileged means for discerning the meaning of
Scripture is not private interpretation (even by a pope), but interpretation by
the living tradition of the Church.(25)
The Concrete Tradition of the Church
The
primary argument advanced by the contemporary magisterium against the
ordination of women is the constant and universal tradition of the Church. In
itself, of course, an appeal to merely factual tradition cannot be decisive,
for then the distinction between authoritatively binding tradition and purely
historical and changeable traditions would collapse. The magisterium itself
acknowledges this by arguing that the historical tradition has its ground and
authority in the will and institution of Christ. Omitted from the argument is
the theological rationale for the factual tradition evidenced in tradition
itself. How, in other words, has the theological tradition explained the
Church’s factual exclusion of women from the priesthood, and thus, by
implication, the will and institution of Christ himself? Since it is impossible
in the scope of a brief note to review all the pertinent texts, I will limit
myself in what follows to the witness of medieval scholasticism.
Two
features of scholasticism indicate the particular value of this focus. The
first is the scholarly, compendious nature of the scholastic corpus, as
evidenced, for example, in the Sentences of Peter Lombard and the
numerous commentaries thereon, yielding at least a working presumption that we
will find resumed in that corpus whatever of significance the Fathers had to
say on our subject. The second point goes to the heart of the matter. For it
was the unique characteristic of scholasticism, and its lasting contribution to
the Church, to insist on the unity of faith and reason, to seek the
intelligibility inherent in what is believed, and in so doing lay a conscious
and characteristically Catholic foundation for a faith that, however
transcendent its object, does not bypass the exigencies of the human mind.
Since
Pope John Paul II bypasses historical witnesses in his two pronouncements on
our subject, my approach here will take the form of a commentary on the appeal
made to scholastic thought by Inter insigniores.
The Scholastic Witness
According to Inter insigniores, although “the Scholastic doctors,
in their desire to clarify by reason the data of faith, often present arguments
that modern thought would have difficulty in accepting or would even rightly
reject,” their refusal to admit the ordination of women was inspired by
the “same conviction” of fidelity to Christ as was that of the
Apostles.(26) This interpretation of the scholastic witness raises, as the
scholastics themselves would say, questions both of fact. and of meaning. The
question of fact are two. The first concerns the frequency with which the
intrinsic arguments presented by the scholastics are “faulty” and
objectionable to the modern mind. According to Inter insigniores, this
was “often” the case, although no texts are cited to explain or
support this contention. The second and correlative question is whether and to
what extent the scholastics, despite these “sometimes” faulty
intrinsic arguments, ultimately based their rejection of women priests on the
extrinsic argument, namely, fidelity to the mind and will of Christ. Four
scholastics are cited in support of this latter assertion: St. Bonaventure,
Duns Scotus, Richard of Middleton, and Durandus of Saint-Pourçain.
Noticeably absent from this list is the Church’s Common Doctor, Thomas
Aquinas.
The
significance of the omission of Thomas begins to become apparent when we note
that all four of the scholastics cited as affirming the extrinsic argument
explain the meaningfulness thereof by way of what the Declaration calls a
“faulty” intrinsic argument—a veiled reference to woman’s
traditionally alleged inferior status, an argument based on the priest’s
hierarchical role as leader of the community (eminentia gradus) and not
on his sacramental role.(27) Thus Bonaventure:
Our
position is this: it is due not so much to a decision by the Church as to the
fact that the sacrament of Order is not for them. In this sacrament the person
ordained is a sign of Christ the Mediator. He who rules bears the type of
Christ the Head; thus, since a woman cannot be the head of a man, she cannot be
ordained.... There is a perfection in regard to sanctifying grace, and this can
be received equally by women and men; and there is a perfection of status in
regard to a charism; and this can benefit one sex and not another, since it
relates not only to what is internal, but also to what is external. Such is the
perfection of Order, in which there is a conferral of power, which can be shown
on multiple grounds evidently not to befit women.(28)
Scotus presents the same argument even more forcefully. While indeed contending
that the exclusion of women from orders is due neither to “a determination
by the Church,” nor even “a decision by the Apostle [Paul],” but
“derives from Christ” who, he adds, “did not even place his
mother in any grade of Order in the Church,”(29) Scotus argues as follows
for the meaningfulness of Christ’s alleged institution:
Order . . . is a certain grade of eminence over others in the Church and is for
a certain act of superiority which must somehow be signified by natural
eminence of condition and rank. But woman is naturally in a state of subjection
in relation to man, and therefore cannot possess a rank of eminence over any
man, because in reference to nature, state, and nobility, women are less noble
than any man; hence, after the fall, the Lord subjected her to man’s
dominion and power. If then she could receive Order in the Church, she could
preside and rule, which is against her condition. Thus, a bishop conferring
orders on a woman not only does evil by transgressing the precept of
Christ—he does nothing at all, nor does the woman receive anything, since
she is not a matter capable of receiving this sacrament.(30)
The
same basic arguments had been rehearsed by Richard of Middleton, an earlier
Franciscan doctor, who, while asserting that “Christ instituted this
sacrament for conferral on men only, not women,” argues the reasonability
of this institution as follows:
- public teaching
does not befit women on account of the weakness of their intellect and the
mutability of their affections; and
- woman’s
state of subjection and natural inferiority make her by nature incapable of
representing the eminence of rank in which one is constituted by Order.(31)
We
come, finally, to Durandus of Saint-Pourçain, an independent (i.e.
non-Thomist) Dominican of the early 14th century. Women, according to Durandus,
are indeed barred from priestly ordination by the institution and precept of
Christ, who, both at the Last Supper and in his postresurrection bestowal of
the power to forgive sins, ordained only men, to the exclusion of even his
mother, the holiest of women. At the same time, Christ’s will is based on
a sound reason for Durandus, and what this is, is not surprising. Order, he
says, places one in a rank of superiority over the nonordained, a rank which it
does not befit women to have over men, since women are in a state of subjection
on account of their bodily weakness and intellectual imperfection.(32)
In
sum, all four of the scholastics cited by Inter insigniores as basing
the rejection of women priests on the extrinsic argument defend the
reasonableness of this argument by intrinsic arguments labeled
“faulty” by the Declaration itself, i.e. the commonly accepted view
of women’s natural “state of subordination.” Nor does the
Declaration cite any “non-faulty” intrinsic arguments by the
scholastics. That this belies the implication of the Declaration’s
statement that the scholastics “often” invoke intrinsic
arguments—the implication, namely, that some scholastics presented
intrinsic arguments that were cogent—is confirmed when we examine St.
Thomas’s position on the matter.
Like
Scotus, Thomas argues that the male sex is so required for the validity of
orders that even if a woman were otherwise qualified her reception of the
sacrament would be invalid. The reason for this is that the sacrament is a sign
and hence requires not only the reality signified (res), but also the
signification of that reality (significatio rei); for example, since
Extreme Unction signifies the healing of the sick, only a sick person can
validly receive it. Now since woman’s state of subjection makes it
impossible for the female sex to signify any eminence of rank, women are
incapable of receiving the sacrament of Order.(33) Of particular note is
Thomas’s exclusive reliance on the intrinsic argument, on the argument
from theological meaning. Despite his explicit recognition of the
fundamentality of Christ’s institution of the sacraments,(34) Thomas
foregoes the appeal to that institution made by the later scholastics cited by
Inter insigniores and, of course, both by Inter insigniores
itself and Ordinatio sacerdotalis. And the same must be said of
Bonaventure, who, in the very text cited by Inter insigniores itself
(see above), makes no appeal to Christ’s institution.
This
brings us to the second question of fact raised by the Declaration’s
interpretation of scholasticism: the extent to which the scholastic authors
based their rejection of women’s ordination on fidelity to the mind and
will of Christ. According to Inter insigniores, the appeal to the
institution of Christ is normative for the entire scholastic period:
“The same conviction ... animates medieval theology.”(35) The texts
reviewed above, however, reveal two distinct groups of scholastics with two
distinct approaches: a first group, represented by Thomas and Bonaventure,
which relies solely on the intrinsic argument; a second group, represented by
Scotus, Richard of Middleton, and Durandus, which employs both intrinsic and
extrinsic arguments. There is, moreover, a plausible historical reason for this
difference: the caesura in scholastic thought brought about by the
condemnations of 1277.
As is
well known, the rapid introduction of Aristotle into Christian intellectual
life in the 13th century brought sharp and not-altogether-uncalled-for
criticism from traditionalist quarters. This criticism gathered force in
response to what Josef Pieper has called the “dynamic rationalism”
that began to emerge at the University of Paris around 1265 under the aegis of
Siger of Brabant, whose Averroist reading of Aristotle provided the basis for
what later came to be known as the “double truth” theory. The matter
came to a climax in 1277, when the bishops of Paris and Canterbury, in whose
respective jurisdictions lay the universities of Paris and Oxford, the
intellectual centers of Christendom, condemned, virtually simultaneously and
seemingly in prearranged concert, a variety of propositions (many of them
Thomist) allegedly derived from pagan philosophy and inimical to the faith.(36)
Of specific importance is that underlying many of these propositions (in their
condemned form, at any rate) was a subjection of faith to reason or, more
precisely, a restriction of divine activity to what is rationally possible and
even necessary. Gilson speaks in this connection of “Greek
necessitarianism”: the “Aristotelian identification of reality,
intelligibility, and necessity, not only in things, but first and above all in
God.”(37) The condemnations had a profound and chilling effect on
Christian intellectual life. The free play of ideas was checked, and the
University of Paris paralyzed for half a century. Gilson even thinks that in
certain cases one can tell simply by examining a teaching whether it was
conceived before or after 1277. (38)
The
anti-intellectual milieu created by the condemnations, a climate in which
reason became suspect by faith, makes historically intelligible, if admittedly
it does not demonstrate, the relative emphasis placed on the extrinsic argument
against women priests—the argument from Christ’s institution—by
Richard of Middleton (who came to Paris in 1278), Scotus, and Durandus in
contrast to the simple intrinsicism of Thomas and Bonaventure. At the same
time, the post-1277 emphasis on the extrinsic argument is only relative: all
five of the scholastics in question defend the reasonableness of the
Church’s refusal to ordain women with the same “faulty”
intrinsic argument from women’s “natural inferiority.” Nor does
the marginality of two of the Declaration’s four witnesses enhance the
credibility of its interpretation of the scholastic period.(39)
To
sum up, the Declaration’s assessment of the scholastics is at best highly
misleading and at worst erroneous on both of the matters pertinent to the
present discussion. First, a review of the Declaration’s own witnesses
points to the conclusion that the scholastics do not offer “faulty”
intrinsic arguments merely “often,” but always: no other intrinsic
argument appears to be forthcoming. Second, the appeal to Christ’s
institution is not a constant but a late phenomenon within scholasticism,
unknown to its two greatest and most typical exponents and quite plausible in
the anti-intellectual milieu obtaining after 1277.
If
the direct effect of the Declaration’s skewed interpretation is to
emphasize the importance of the extrinsic argument far beyond what is
historically warranted, its ultimate effect is so to separate the
extrinsic and intrinsic arguments as to propose the former in an historical and
intellectual vacuum. Specifically telling in this regard is the
Declaration’s “scissors and paste” approach to the scholastic
material, its citation of textual snippets on the extrinsic argument to the
exclusion of the intrinsic arguments, often present in those very same texts.
This studied separation of fact and meaning is unmistakably clear in the
official commentary on Inter insigniores:
As
for the theologians, the following are some significant texts: Saint
Bonaventure: “Our position is this: it is due not so much to a decision by
the Church as to the fact that the sacrament of Order is not for them. In this
sacrament the person ordained is a sign of Christ the Mediator.” John Duns
Scotus: “It must not be considered to have been determined by the Church.
It comes from Christ. The Church would not have presumed to deprive the female
sex, for no fault of its own, of an act that might licitly have pertained to
it.” Durandus of Saint-Pourçain: . . . “the male sex is of
necessity for the sacrament. The principal cause of this is Christ’s
institution.... Christ ordained only men ... not even his Mother.... It must
therefore be held that women cannot be ordained because of Christ’s
institution.”(40)
The
separation is heightened by the Declaration’s treatment of St. Thomas, who
as noted above, knows only the “faulty” intrinsic argument. Inter
insigniores deals with this embarrassing truth about the Church’s
Common Doctor in two ways: first by excluding Thomas in its rehearsal in
Section 1 of the scholastic witnesses to the extrinsic argument; second, by its
citation, in the notorious “natural resemblance” passage of Section
5, of Thomas’s intrinsic argument in a form so completely bowdlerized as
to be virtually indistinguishable from Bonaventure’s symbolic argument
that the ordained person is “a sign of Christ the Mediator.”
Citing Thomas, Section 5 argues that “the sacraments represent what they
signify by natural resemblance” and hence that the priest must be male,
“for otherwise there would not be this ‘natural resemblance’
which must exist between Christ and his minister.” What Thomas himself
meant by “natural resemblance” is clear. In response to the objection
that slaves, being, like women, in a state of subjection, are likewise barred
from orders, Thomas writes: “The sacramental signs are representative by
reason of natural resemblance. Now woman is in a state of subjection by nature,
which is not the case with a slave. Hence the two cases differ.”(41) This
argument merely specifies the preceding argument from sacramental
signification. Just as a healthy person cannot receive the sacrament of the
sick, so woman, who is in a state of subjection vis-a-vis man, cannot receive
the sacrament of order, which signifies a position of eminence in the ecclesial
community, a position within the ruling hierarchy. And while this argument from
a “state of subjection” is true for Thomas of both slaves and women,
it is true of them differently: for a slave is in subjection only factually and
hence is capable of being freed, whereas women is in a state of subjection by
nature and hence irreparably. It hardly seems necessary to add that none of
this has to do in any way, shape, for form with a “natural
resemblance” to Christ himself.
Conclusion
The
contemporary magisterium rejects the possibility of ordaining women on two
bases: tradition and theology, external fact and intrinsic meaning. Of these,
the appeal to tradition is primary and normative, only, however, insofar as
this tradition is seen as reflecting the will and institution of Christ,
thereby reducing the arguments from theological meaning to secondary
importance, an emphasis which reaches its apogee in Ordinatio sacerdotalis,
the recent apostolic letter of Pope John Paul II. I have argued that this
approach is incommensurate with the nature of the doctrine in question, with
the traditional practice of Catholic theology, and with the historical facts
themselves.
It is
incommensurate with the doctrine, because the doctrine involves the structural
relation between nature and grace and hence has its ultimate formal basis not
in the divine will, and hence not in the will of Christ, but in the divine
intellect, what Pope John Paul II himself calls “the wisdom of the Lord of
the universe.”
It is
incommensurate with the traditional practice of Catholic theology, which, even
in regard to the highest and most mysterious of revealed truths—the
Trinity, the Incarnation, and our divinization in grace—has consistently
aimed at understanding divine truth, at moving beyond mere fact, even divine
fact, to the intelligibility of the fact, to the meaningfulness of what is
believed.
It is
incommensurate with the historical facts of tradition, insofar as the tradition
makes only sporadic appeals to Christ’s institution and always joins this
appeal, where it occurs, with an intrinsic argument showing the meaningfulness
of this institution.
Finally, the theological tradition prior to Vatican II knows only one intrinsic
argument against the ordination of women: the “faulty” argument from
women’s inferior status, an argument linked, as I have said, to the
priest’s hierarchical rather than sacramental role. While the present note
has limited its argument on this point to the scholastic era, a review of the
patristic texts cited by Inter insigniores will reveal the argument to
be valid more universally.(42) Particularly unknown prior to Vatican II are
attempts, as in both Inter insigniores and Mulieris dignitatem,
to justify the maleness of the priest via the notion of
“representation” of Christ, whether by way of nuptial imagery or,
more technically, by invoking the in persona Christi axiom. And the same
must be said, I believe, of attempts to justify the maleness of the priest by
appealing to the normativeness of Christ’s call of the Twelve. Ironically,
such arguments represent what the magisterium itself might call a novelty: far
from restating the older theological tradition, they inaugurate as it were a
new tradition.
The
critically tenable conclusion of all this is not that the magisterium’s
position on the ordination of women is wrong. The critically tenable conclusion
is that unless the magisterium wishes to inculcate a form of fideism on this
question, it will have to explain its position, and the mind of Christ himself,
with reasons other than have appeared in the tradition of the Church thus far.
Any such rationale, as has been noted, will have to address the central
theological issue: the alleged link between the sexual difference and the
nature of the priesthood,(43) a link which comes to intelligible expression in
the essential functions and operations of the priesthood,(44) traditionally
summed up as the threefold “office entrusted by Christ to his apostles of
teaching, sanctifying, and governing the faithful.”(45) However faithful
to the magisterium, then, theologians may strive to be, they must, precisely as
theologians, continue to ask: What is it in these priestly functions that
requires that they be exercised by a man? What, that forbids them from being
exercised by a woman?
Notes
1.
Dennis Michael Ferrara, “Representation or Self-Effacement? The Axiom
In Persona Christi in St. Thomas and the Magisterium,” TS 55
(1994) 195-224.
2.
“Priestly Ordination” (Ordinatio sacerdotalis), Apostolic
Letter on Ordination and Women of Pope John Paul II of May 30, 1994
(Origins, 24/4 [9 June 1994] 50-52).
3.
Joseph Ratzinger, “La Lettre Ordinatio sacerdotalis confirme ce que
l’Eglise a toujours vécu dans la foi” (La Documentation
Catholique no. 2094 [3 Juillet 1994] 611-615, at 612).
4.
“0n the Question of the Admission of Women to the Ministerial
Priesthood” (Inter insigniores), Declaration of Oct. 15, 1976 of
the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (U.S. Catholic Conference
Edition with Commentary [Washington, D.C., 1977] Introduction; Acta
Apostolicae Sedis 69 [1977] 98-116, at 100).
5.
Ordinatio sacerdotalis no. 4.
6.
Inter insigniores no. 4, end.
7.
Ibid. no. 5.
8.
Ibid. no. 6.
9.
Ordinatio sacerdotalis no. 2.
10.
Ibid. nos. 2, 3.
11.
Ibid. no. 3.
12.
Paul VI, Address on the Role of Women in the Plan of Salvation, Jan. 30, 1977
(Insegnamenti 15 [1977] 111) as cited in Ordinatio sacerdotalis
no. 2.
13.
“On the Dignity and Vocation of Women” (Mulieris dignitatem),
Apostolic Letter of Aug. 15, 1988 of Pope John Paul II (Origins
18/17 [6 Oct. 1988] no. 26; AAS 80/2 [1988] 1653-1729 at 1715-16).
14.Ordinatio sacerdotalis no. 2.
15.
Ibid.
16
Summa theologiae (ST) 2-2 q. 4, a. 2 c and ad 1.
17
ST 1, q. 44, a. 3 c.
18.
Inter insigniores nos. 4-5.
19.
Ibid. no. 6.
20.Ibid. no. 2.
21.
Mulieris dignitatem no. 26.
22
Ordinatio sacerdotalis no. 2.
23.
In Ratzinger’s excellent formulation, the will of Christ is neither
“positivist” nor “arbitrary,” since it is precisely
“the will of the Logos and thus a will which has a meaning”
(“La Lettre Ordinatio sacerdotalis” 612).
24.
Inter insigniores no.6; Ordinatio sacerdotalis no. 2.
25.
Of considerable pertinence here is the traditional teaching that the grace of
the teaching office (magisterium) in no way bestows on the officeholder a
special private access to the meaning of revealed truth and hence does not
dispense him from taking the ordinary means—serious and objective study,
wide consultation with clergy and laity, prayer—for determining the truth
in difficult and disputed matters. It is, I would add, precisely by its
willingness to take such ordinary means that the magisterium best exhibits
fidelity to its own essential nature as a ministry of the revealed truth
delivered once for all to the Apostles.
26.
Inter insigniores no. 1.
27.
This point is elaborated at greater length in my article “Representation
or Self Effacement?” 216-23.
28.
Bonaventure, In IV Sent. d. 25, a. 2, q. 1, ad 1 and ad 4. Scholastic
discussions of the question of women’s ordination are found in
commentaries on Book 4, dist. 25 of Peter Lombard’s Sentences,
written around the middle of the 12th century. That the Lombard did not
himself raise the question of the ordination of women indicates that the time
frame in which the pertinent scholastic texts occur begins in the 13th century.
29.
Scotus, In IV Sent. d. 25, Scholion (Opus Oxoniense).
30.
Ibid. d. 25, q. 2 (Report. Paris.)
31.
Richard of Middleton, In IV Sent., d. 25, art. 4, n. 1.
32.
Durandus of Saint Pourçain, In IV Sent., d. 25, q. 2.
33.
ST Suppl. q. 39, a. 1 c.
34.
ST 3 q. 64, a. 2 ad 1.
35.
Inter insigniores no. 1.
36. My
account of the condemnations of 1277 and their significance is based primarily
on Josef Pieper, Scholasticism: Personalities and Problems in Medieval
Philosophy (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1956) 118-51, whose sources include
Gilson’s History of Christian
Philosophy in the Middle Ages and van Steenberghen’s The
Thirteenth Century. For a generally confirming view, see James Weisheipl,
Friar Thomas D’Aquino: His Life, Thought, and Work (New York:
Doubleday, 1974) 331-50.
37.
As cited by Pieper, Scholasticism 138. Similarly, Weisheipl writes that
“The main thrust of the Parisian condemnation was to preserve the
omnipotence of God” (Friar Thomas 339).
38.
See Pieper, Scholasticism 127, 144.
39.
So arcane did I find the references to Richard of Middleton and Durandus of
Saint Pourçain that I had to go outside the Washington, D.C. area to
find copies of their works.
40.
U.S. Catholic Conference Commentary 23
41.
ST Suppl. q. 39, a. 2 ad 4.
42.
For a fuller examination of the patristic literature, van der Meer’s
pioneering study remains indispensable (Haye van der Meer, S.J., Women
Priests in the Catholic Church? A Theological-Historical Investigation,
trans. Arlene and Leonard Swidler [Philadelphia: Temple University, 1973]);
chap. 3 provides a critical review of many of the patristic authors cited by
Inter insigniores. Even a cursory reading of van der Meer reveals the
essential sameness, if not downright repetitiousness, of the views expressed on
our subject throughout the patristic era, as well as the validity of the
author’s summary remark that underlying the various views is “the
conviction that women cannot have any leadership role” (106).
43.
In the end, the question of women’s ordination turns on the question of
theological anthropology, as implied by both Paul VI (see note 12 above) and
John Paul II himself (see notes 9-11 and 13 above). It is, for example, only in
terms of the anthropology of the sexes that the argument from Christ’s
will in calling the Twelve, which plays such a central role in Ordinatio
sacerdotalis, can take on theological meaningfulness. And here it is of
note that Ratzinger, who places repeated emphasis on the significance of this
call (“La Lettre Ordinatio sacerdotalis” 611, 612, 613), makes
no attempt whatever to interpret this significance anthropologically, even
while implying that it is precisely the anthropological reasons that make it
meaningful rather than arbitrary (612).
44.
Ratzinger rightly rejects a “purely functional” and
“pragmatic” view of the priesthood, insisting on its
“Christological criterion,” namely, the priest’s self-renouncing
service of and obedience to Christ, who was himself the archetype of service,
washing the feet of the disciples and preaching not his own word but that of
the Father (“La Lettre Ordinatio sacerdotalis” 614). However,
not only does Ratzinger make no attempt to think this Christological criterion
in terms of the duality of the sexes, his argument actually reinforces the
apophatic-ministerial interpretation of the priesthood which I developed in my
article on in persona Christi, and which concluded that precisely
because of its ministerial essence, the priesthood transcends the sexual
difference.
45.
Ordinatio sacerdotalis no. 1. In this opening sentence, Pope John Paul
II himself invites us to think the relation between priesthood and the
distinction of the sexes “functionally” or, as the scholastics would
say, in terms of those fundamental operations that actuate and express the
inner essence of priesthood.
44.
Ratzinger rightly rejects a “purely functional” and
“pragmatic” view of the priesthood, insisting on its
“Christological criterion,” namely, the priest’s self-renouncing
service of and obedience to Christ, who was himself the archetype of service,
washing the feet of the disciples and preaching not his own word but that of
the Father (“La Lettre Ordinatio sacerdotalis” 614). However,
not only does Ratzinger make no attempt to think this Christological criterion
in terms of the duality of the sexes, his argument actually reinforces the
apophatic-ministerial interpretation of the priesthood which I developed in my
article on in persona Christi, and which concluded that precisely
because of its ministerial essence, the priesthood transcends the sexual
difference.
44.
Ratzinger rightly rejects a “purely functional” and
“pragmatic” view of the priesthood, insisting on its
“Christological criterion,” namely, the priest’s self-renouncing
service of and obedience to Christ, who was himself the archetype of service,
washing the feet of the disciples and preaching not his own word but that of
the Father (“La Lettre Ordinatio sacerdotalis” 614). However,
not only does Ratzinger make no attempt to think this Christological criterion
in terms of the duality of the sexes, his argument actually reinforces the
apophatic-ministerial interpretation of the priesthood which I developed in my
article on in persona Christi, and which concluded that precisely
because of its ministerial essence, the priesthood transcends the sexual
difference.
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