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by Ralph A. Keifer
from Women and Priesthood:
Future Directions, pp. 103-110.
edited by Carroll Stuhlmueller, C.P.
The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota.
Republished on our website
with the necessary permissions
RALPH A KEIFER, Associate Professor of Liturgy at
Catholic Theological Union and in Notre Dame University's Summer Graduate
Program in Liturgical Studies. M.A. and Ph.D. in Theology from Notre Dame
University. Also taught at Duquesne University, St. Mary's College, Notre Dame,
Indiana, Catholic University, St. Mary's Seminary in Baltimore. General Editor
for the International Committee on English in the Liturgy, 1971-73. Author of
numerous articles and co-author of several books. Married and father of three
children.
The
question of the ordination of women to the Roman Catholic presbyterate raises a
liturgical question: would the ordination of women be liturgically disruptive?
Or, to pose the question another way, would a decision to ordain women to the
presbyterate represent a break with the basic patterns of liturgical prayer in
the Roman rite? In a church which takes its patterns of liturgical prayer as
normative for belief (lex orandi legem statuat credendi), the question
has major import. If the ordination of women were to pose the possibility of a
basic disruption of the church’s prayer patterns, it would be prima
facie evidence that the ordination of women is theologically questionable.
I
It
may be useful to indicate what I mean by “disruption” of “basic
patterns”. I do not refer to the dismay which might attend the
introduction of the practice of women’s ordination, or to the difficulties
which some Catholics might experience in accepting women in the role of
presiding over sacramental celebration. Change, even major change and
innovation may evoke dismay from some. Such change need not, at the same time,
affect the basic patterns of liturgical prayer. For instance, the introduction
of the use of the vernacular into the liturgy was dismaying to some, but did
not affect basic liturgical patterns. By “basic liturgical patterns”
I refer to those aspects of liturgical prayer which express and signify the
fundamental reality of the church. The question which I address is: would the
fact and presence of female presbyters represent a basic change in those
patterns?
It is
the belief of this writer that the ordination of women would not represent a
basic change in liturgical pattern. The difficulty with proving this is that
negative facts are more difficult to prove than positive ones. I can, for
instance, prove that I was in Moscow at noon on Tuesday of last week. It would
probably be impossible to produce proof that I was never in Moscow. The only
way to prove negative facts is to entertain all the possibilities and then rule
them out.
With
regard to the ordination of women, there are only two critical possibilities
that can be entertained: the fact that ordination prayers speak exclusively of
male ministers, and the common understanding that the presbyter represents
Christ in the role of liturgical presidency. As to ordination prayers, the
argument on liturgical grounds is inconclusive. Since women presbyters have
been unknown to Roman Catholicism, its prayer formulae cannot be expected to
speak of the ministry of women, past or present. That the ordination prayers
appeal to paradigms such as the priesthood of Aaron, the priesthood of Christ,
the office of the apostles, etc. is also inconclusive. The question is not
whether women ever occupied such offices, but whether they can be assimilated
to the office of presbyter without betraying the church’s tradition on the
nature of presbyteral ministry. It is not a question which the prayers answer.
We
must turn, then, to the question of the presbyter’s role of representing
Christ as liturgical president, most notably as presiding at the eucharist.
Similar to other chapters in this book, our discussion will center around the
Declaration on the Question of the Admission of Women to the Ministerial
Priesthood, from the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
II
To
clarify its conclusion that women cannot be ordained, the Declaration
appeals to the fact that the bishop or priest, in the exercise of his
ministry, represents Christ, who acts through him. The supreme expression of
this representation is found in eucharistic celebration. The priest acts
“in persona Christi, taking the role of Christ to the point of
being his very image, when he pronounces the words of consecration.”(1)
The document then explains that since the priest is a sacramental sign of
Christ, Christ’s role in the eucharist would be obscured if the priest
were to be a woman. A “natural resemblance” must exist between Christ
and the priest:
The
same natural resemblance is required for persons as for things: when
Christ’s role in the eucharist is to be expressed sacramentally, there
would not be this natural resemblance which must exist between Christ and his
minister if the role of Christ were not taken by a man: in such a case it would
be difficult to see in the minister the image of Christ. For Christ himself was
and remains a man.(2)
It is
easy to counter this line of reasoning with the following objection. In
exercising the ministries proper to their offices, the priest or bishop
represents the entire church, a body consisting of women as well as men. There
is no reason then why such offices might not also be assumed by women. The
Declaration takes note of this objection, but meets it by asserting that
the priest represents the church “precisely because he first represents
Christ himself, who is Head and Shepherd of the Church.”(3)
The
Declaration, furthermore, develops the nuptial symbol. It draws upon the
Old Testament symbol of God as spouse of Israel,(4) and with the help of many
New Testament passages it speaks of “Christ . . . the Bridegroom; the
church . . . the Bride.” The Roman statement draws this conclusion:
That is why we can never ignore the fact that Christ is a man. And therefore,
unless one is to disregard the importance of this symbolism [Christ as
Bridegroom, Church as Bride] for the economy of Revelation, it must be admitted
that, in actions which demand the character of ordination and in which Christ
himself, the author of the Covenant, the Bridegroom and head of the Church is
represented, exercising his ministry of salvation—which is in the highest
degree the case of the Eucharist—his role (this is the original sense of
the word persona) must be taken by a man.(5)
This
theme of God, Spouse of Israel, originated in Canaanite liturgy and is often
applied to Christ, Spouse of the Church, within a distinctive liturgical
setting. The New Testament introduces this nuptial theme in the midst of a
heavenly or earthly banquet, celebrating the marriage of the King’s son
(Mark 2:19; Matt 22:1-4; Rev 19:7). The motif of God or Christ as bridegroom is
thus linked with a long biblical tradition about the heavenly or eschatological
banquet and leads into the liturgical commemoration of the Eucharist (Is 25:6;
Ps 22:27; Matt 26:29).
The
argument here is fundamentally liturgical and sacramental: the contention of
the Declaration is that the sacramental signing of Christ’s role,
especially and supremely in the eucharist, would be obscured if the presiding
minister were to be a woman. Citing a variety of texts from the Second Vatican
Council and subsequent official Roman documents, the Declaration argues
that the presiding minister only represents the church because he first
represents Christ as head of the church. What is at stake, above all, is that
the role of Christ in liturgical action, especially that of the eucharist, be
clearly and unmistakeably signed: “. . . the priest is a sign, the
supernatural effectiveness of which comes from the ordination received, but a
sign that must be perceptible and which the faithful must be able to recognize
with ease.”(6) The Declaration is suggesting that the role of
Christ as head and shepherd of the Church is signed in clear distinction from
the priest’s representing the Church as body and bride of Christ.
While
the argument is fundamentally liturgical and sacramental, the Declaration
does not support its position with more appeals to liturgical text and
rite. The eucharistic liturgy is directly mentioned only once, when the
document asserts that the priest takes the role of Christ when he pronounces
the words of consecration. And the footnote reference is not to the texts and
gestures of the Roman liturgy (nor to any other), but to the Summa
Theologiae of St. Thomas Aquinas.(7) If the distinctive role of Christ as
head and shepherd of the church is so clearly signed in distinction from the
church’s role as body and bride of Christ, it could be expected that
liturgical gesture and text would reflect that distinctive role. In fact, it
could be expected that it would be clearly mirrored in liturgical texts, for it
is in its verbal and oral articulation that a sacramental sign is given its
most specific perceptible meaning. The classic concern with the
“matter” (action, things) and “form” (words) of sacramental
activity was grounded in this understanding of a sacramental sign.
Yet
the Declaration gives no indication of liturgical texts which would
support its suggestion that in the act of consecration at the eucharist the
priest represents Christ the head and shepherd of the church in distinction
from his role as representing the church as the body and bride of Christ. It is
the view of this writer that no such textual support is to be sought because
there is none to be found. There is no point in the eucharistic liturgy at
which the priest represents Christ the head in contradistinction to his
representing the church. These roles are signed together, inseparably, and
without sharp distinction between them. A major weakness of the
Declaration’s liturgical and sacramental argument is that it has no
basis whatsoever in the prayer texts of the Roman rite or the texts of the
eucharistic liturgies of any other churches whose apostolic succession Rome
acknowledges.
Conventions of piety often hold such power, even over the perceptions of the
literate and the articulate, that the assertion of the preceding paragraph is
probably not wholly acceptable as a bald statement. We are, perhaps, schooled
less by what the liturgy says and does than by a long history of liturgical
passivity on the part of the laity which obscured the role of the people in the
liturgy. Centuries of a Latin liturgy have especially schooled Roman Catholic
piety to be more attentive to what appears visually at the liturgy than to what
is said. Within the context of such a piety, the Declaration’s
suggestion that the priest represents Christ as head and shepherd of the
church when he pronounces the words of consecration seems to be a reasonable,
even obvious suggestion. If one attends to the eucharistic action primarily
with the eye, it looks as if the priest takes on a distinctive role when
he “pronounces the words of consecration.” The point of what follows
in this chapter is to indicate that what may seem obvious is not, and that the
liturgical texts say something quite other than what the Declaration
says about the representation of Christ at the eucharist.
III
The
Declaration describes the priest as taking the role of Christ above all
in pronouncing the words of consecration.(8) Whether “words of
consecration” refers to the eucharistic prayer as a whole or to the
institution narrative alone is not entirely clear. Christian antiquity, at
least until the fourth century, universally viewed the entire prayer as
consecratory. Western theological reflection, for a variety of reasons that
need not be pursued here, had by the high middle ages singled out the
institution narrative as “words of consecration.” More recent
theological reflection, attentive to the nature and structure of the
eucharistic prayer, has returned to the older view.
The
effect of that reflection can be seen in the Anglican-Roman Catholic dialogue
on eucharistic theology, which views the whole prayer as consecratory.(9) The
Roman Missal of 1970 seems to incorporate both views, describing the
eucharistic prayer as one of “thanksgiving and sanctification,”(10)
while also describing the institution narrative as “institution narrative
and consecration.”(11)
If
the Declaration’s expression “words of consecration”
means the whole eucharistic prayer, the priest’s representation of Christ
is clearly conjoined integrally to his standing as representative of the
church. The eucharistic prayer is also offered in the first person plural
(“we”), and is intelligible only as a prayer offered on behalf of the
whole church. As the Roman Missal says so well, “The meaning of the prayer
is that the whole congregation joins Christ in acknowledging the works of God
and in offering the sacrifice.” (12) On a view of the whole eucharistic
prayer as consecratory, there is no basis for the suggestion that there is a
clear and distinctive signing of the priest’s role as representing Christ
as head and shepherd of the church apart from the priest’s representing
the church as body and bride of Christ. Both roles are enacted together.
But
it is doubtful that the Declaration is referring to the eucharistic
prayer as a whole when it refers to the “words of consecration.”
Since the Declaration cites no liturgical text and no work of
theological reflection (as distinguished from official documents) since that of
Durandus of Saint-Pourcain (d. 1332), and appeals to the Summa Theologiae
of St. Thomas Aquinas, it can be assumed that the Declaration
maintains the medieval view of the institution narrative itself as “words
of consecration.” If this is the case, it is not enough merely to cite the
integrity of the eucharistic prayer as spoken in the name of the whole church.
The authors of the Declaration seem to view the institution narrative in
some sort of disjuncture from the rest of the prayer—rather, perhaps, as
the General Instruction of the Roman Missal singles out the institution
narative as consecratio. Neither the consensus of Christian antiquity
nor current reflection is taken into account by the Declaration’s
apparent view of consecration.
In
view of this, it may be asked whether the Declaration can be met on its
own grounds by citation of other sources. And indeed it can. In the Roman
liturgy the institution narrative does not stand in any sort of disjuncture
from the rest of the eucharistic prayer. And at no point in the prayer does the
priest speak directly in the name of Christ. He continually speaks in the name
of the church. Even the institution narrative, which quotes the verba
Christi, is spoken in the third person: it is a quotation within a
narrative recital addressed as part of a prayer to God the Father, and it is
encompassed within a prayer spoken in the name of the whole church. The
Declaration contends that the priest represents the church because he
first represents Christ himself as head and shepherd of the church.(13) It is
not the purpose of this paper to discuss the theological truth of this
assertion. But on the level of sign, in what is said and done at the act
of eucharist, the exact opposite is the case. It is only by praying in the name
of the church that the priest enacts his role as consecratory representative of
Christ.
This
is all the more evident in the distinctively Roman pattern of eucharistic
prayer — notably in the ancient Roman Canon (now Eucharistic Prayer I of
the Roman Missal), but also in the newer prayers of the Roman eucharistic
liturgy. The institution narrative is preceded by an invocation (Quam
oblationem) that the gifts will become the body and blood of Christ, an
invocation that is offered in the name of all:
Quam oblationem
We pray, O God, that
tu, Deus,
above all you would be
in omnibus, quaesumus,
pleased to make this
benedictam, adscriptam,
oblation blessed,
ratam, rationabilem,
approved, right,
acceptabilemque facere
spiritual, and
digneris: ut nobis Corpus
acceptable, so that
et Sanguis fiat dilec-
it might be for us the
tissimi Filii tui,
Body and Blood of your
Domini nostri Iesu
Son, our Lord Jesus
Christi.
Christ.(14)
In
the classic Canon, the corporate character of the invocation is reinforced by
the petitionary quaesumus (we pray), as it is in the newer Prayers II
and IV of the Missal. Similarly, the invocation before the narrative in Prayer
III uses Supplices . . . deprecamur (“beseeching . . . we
pray”). Moreover, the institution narrative is linked to the invocation
which precedes it. In the classic Canon, the narrative begins Qui pridie
(“Who, on the day . . .”), and the antecedent of the pronominal
reference to Christ is the invocation which prays that the offering of the
Church will become the body and blood of Christ. A virtually identical pattern
is present in the other eucharistic prayers of the Roman rite.
Textually, then, the institution narrative is wholly dependent upon the
invocation which precedes it, and the narrative is unintelligible except as a
continuation of the invocation. The narrative does not stand alone or in
disjuncture from the rest of the eucharistic prayer. Thus in the articulation
of the eucharistic prayer in the Roman rite no clearcut distinction is made
between the priest’s representing the praying church and his representing
Christ the head and shepherd of the church. The two roles are enacted
simultaneously. Even on a view which insists on pinpointing a temporal moment
of consecration with the recitation of the verba Christi, there is still
no disjunctive representation of Christ as the head and shepherd of the church
apart from the priest’s representation of the church as the body and bride
of Christ. In reciting the institution narrative, the priest continues to speak
on behalf of the praying church.
It
can well be asked whether the Declaration does not reduce sacramental
sign to dramatic pictorial tableau or to enacted allegory when it singles out
the priest’s role in pronouncing the “words of consecration” as
signing his representation of Christ the head and shepherd of the church. The
priest’s offering of the rest of the prayer is surely as much a
representative sign of the presence of Christ the head and shepherd of the
church who stands before the Father as is the priest’s role in reciting
the institution narrative. Singling out the consecratory moment devalues the
sign that the rest of the prayer is. To offer prayer “through Christ our
Lord” surely cannot exclude Christ under his aspect of being head
and shepherd of the church. It is precisely because he is head of the church
that prayer can be offered in this fashion.
Conclusion
A
major defect of the Declaration’s argument is that it speaks of an
aspect of sacramental signification as if it could be singled out in a
particular moment of eucharistic celebration, in distinction from other moments
of eucharistic celebration which express other aspects. That is to say, the
Declaration speaks as if it assumes that at one particular moment one
aspect of the representation of Christ is signed, while at other moments, other
aspects are signed. The Declaration fails to recognize that in all
liturgical action, at all times, the priest represents simultaneously both the
church and Christ its head and shepherd. Further, the Declaration
overlooks the tradition of liturgical prayer by which the priest represents
Christ only by speaking in the name of the church. In so doing, the
Declaration verges dangerously close to saying that a priest can act as
priest without speaking and acting in the name of the church. Yet the pattern
of the church’s prayer is such that the priest acts as priest only because
he speaks in the name of the church.
What
appears, then, on the level of sign in the church’s prayer pattern is that
the priest represents Christ because he represents the church. There is no
moment in the eucharistic action when the priest represents Christ in any way
apart from the church. There is no liturgical prayer, and in particular there
is no eucharist, which is not the action of the church. Attention to the
sacramental signs actually used in the Roman liturgy indicates the weakness of
the argument against the ordination of women on the grounds that they do not
have a “natural resemblance” to Christ the head and shepherd of the
church. There is no separate and clearly distinct sign of Christ the head being
represented at the eucharist apart from the representation of the church. And
since, on the level of sign, the representation of Christ is grounded in
representation of the church, it would seem that a woman could perform the
priestly role of representing Christ as well as a man.
Notes
1. Declaration, Sec. 5, par. 26.
2. Declaration, Sec. 5, par. 27.
3. Declaration, Sec. 5, par. 32.
4. The origin and development of this symbol of Yahweh, spouse of
Israel, was investigated by Carroll Stuhlmueller, in ch 2. sec. 3 of this book.
5. Declaration, Sec. 5, par. 30.
6. Declaration, Sec. 5, par. 27.
7. Declaration, Sec. 5, par. 27; see also fn. 17 & 18.
8. Declaration, Sec. 5, par. 26.
9. Agreed Statement on Eucharistic Doctrine,
1971, frequently described as the Windsor Statement.
10. “. . . prex scilicet gratiarum actionis et
sanctificationis,” Institutio Generalis #54.
11. ''Narratio institutionis et consecrationis,"
Institutio Generalis #54.
12. ICEL translation. The Latin has: ''Sensus autem
jujus orationis est, ut tote congregatio fidelium se cum Christo conjungat in
confessione magnalium Dei et in oblatione sacrificii." Institutio Generalis
#54.
13. Declaration, Sec. 5, par. 32.
14. Literal translation.
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