The Catholic Church teaches that there are seven sacraments: baptism, which opens the way to all the others, then confirmation, holy communion, reconciliation or confession, matrimony, holy orders and the last rites; but in fact, for half the human race there are only six sacraments.
This study of the arguments underlying the Roman Catholic Church’s ban on women being ordained to the ministerial priesthood arose from a conversation I had, several years ago, with a friend and colleague, about the basis on which the Church justifies this teaching, rooted as it is in tradition and in the writings of certain of the mediaeval scholastic theologians.
It involves an understanding of the particular way in which the Church’s teaching authority, the Magisterium, uses scripture and the historical sources of its own legacy to support its doctrine, and also the way in which it considers the role of tradition in Church teaching. There is a deep-rooted belief in the unchanging nature of Church doctrine from the very beginning—despite the obvious fact that there have been many changes and gradual developments in teaching and practice—with reference made to the opinions of leading authorities and Church Councils over the centuries, as being of relevance to the current position. The weight of tradition is considered equivalent to that of the gospels, and other canonical books of the Bible.
So the Vatican’s teaching on this topic, as on many others, has to be evaluated with this in mind, that scripture, church tradition, the writings of the early Fathers and mediaeval scholars, the Church Councils of Western Europe and latterly of the Vatican itself, must all to be taken into account, along with canon law. All of these authoritative sources are clearly produced almost exclusively by men, and, generally speaking, by clerics, ordained priests and members of religious orders.
Hence, this examination of the subject starts by reviewing what the position of the Church today about the subject of ordination, and its reservation to men only. It then goes on to analyse in detail the various strands of the argument, and explore their roots, and the reasons why they are together given such weight in the final judgement, that women cannot receive the sacrament of Holy Orders.
Briefly, the development of the teaching is as follows. In his lifetime Jesus had many followers, both men and women. Women also feature in the writings of the early Church during the first century AD, as characters in the stories of the people who began to found Christian communities around the eastern-Mediterranean region. They played a significant role during this period, alongside the men, as leaders of communities, teachers and prophets. But as time went by, for a number of reasons, women were gradually excluded from positions of authority and from ministry of all kinds. This situation eventually became formalized until, by the ninth and tenth centuries, legislation explicitly forbade women from receiving the Sacrament of Holy Orders and, thus, from formal teaching or holding positions of authority. Theological arguments were extended to explain why women could not be ordained and, by this time, reservation of the ministerial priesthood to men was taken for granted as a part of revealed Christian doctrine from the earliest times. Since then, little changed until the twentieth century, when certain roles, previously open to men only, were gradually permitted to women, though not everywhere around the world. These functions include singing in church choirs, reading during the Mass, acting as ‘extraordinary’ ministers of the Eucharist for taking Holy Communion to the sick and for distributing the hosts during Mass when necessary, and serving as acolytes on the altar. After Protestant and Anglican churches opened up the ministerial priesthood to men, the Catholic Church took a firm stance against, and successive Popes have rejected it altogether.
It is clear that the value of taking a historical perspective on the issue of women’s ordination in the Church is relevant to the modern debate precisely because the Church itself resorts to tradition and centuries-old practice to underpin its stance, despite clearly asserting that it does not subscribe to the misogynist attitudes expressed in some of the mediaeval writings on this issue.[1] To modern eyes, many views and comments expressed in the literature of earlier times, especially from Christian writers from the centuries after Christ and up to and beyond the Middle Ages in Europe, do appear shockingly misogynistic.[2] To mention just a couple of examples from these centuries of writing: Tertullian (c. 160–225) reminds women that they are the daughters of Eve and therefore carry her guilt forever:
The judgement of God upon this sex lives on in this age, therefore, necessarily the guilt should live on also. You are the gateway of the devil, you are the one who unseals the curse of that tree . . . you are the one who persuaded him whom the devil was not capable of corrupting: you easily destroyed the image of God, Adam.[3]
While St John Chrysostom (347?–407) says: ‘The woman taught the man once and made him guilty of disobedience, and ruined everything.’[4]
Thomas Aquinas, on whose work much of Church teaching is based in many important areas, used the biblical sources and the writings of Aristotle to offer the following conclusion to the creation of woman, neatly summarizing the arguments against their ordination:
When all things were first formed, it was more suitable for the woman to be made from man than (for the female to be from the male) in other animals.
First, in order thus to give the first man a certain dignity consisting in this, that as God is the principle of the whole universe, so the first man, in likeness to God, was the principle of the whole human race. Wherefore Paul says that ‘God made the whole human race from one’ (Acts 17:26).
Secondly, that man might love woman all the more, and cleave to her more closely, knowing her to be fashioned from himself . . .
Thirdly, because, as the Philosopher says (Ethic. viii, 12), the human male and female are united, not only for generation, as with other animals, but also for the purpose of domestic life, in which each has his or her particular duty, and in which the man is the head of the woman. Wherefore it was suitable for the woman to be made out of man, as out of her principle.
Fourthly, there is a sacramental reason for this. For by this is signified that the Church takes her origin from Christ. Wherefore the Apostle says (Eph. 5:32): ‘This is a great sacrament; but I speak in Christ and in the Church.’[5]
The famous statement by Aquinas that ‘woman is a defective male [mas occasionatus]’[6] was part of a discussion in his Summa Theologiae on the reason for the creation of two sexes. This arises from the contemporary biological understanding of the way in which an embryo developed in the womb. It was based on the work of Aristotle,[7] who taught that, at conception, the child is always male, but various factors can interfere to produce a female—thus nature’s intention is to produce males. Woman was perceived as being biologically a mistake in the particular case, but—in a rather convoluted piece of argument—one that, in general, God intended in order that the species could be propagated.[8] Although the Scriptures say that woman was created as a helpmate, a companion, for man, Aquinas’ opinion was that this could not have been to help him in his actual work, because a man would always be better helped by another man, so it could only have been for the production of children.[9] Alongside this, there was also dispute as to whether woman was truly created in imago Dei, or simply as man’s subordinate. Using these arguments, by virtue of her sex alone, woman was unfit to represent Christ as priest and, in the order of creation, it was man who was created in the image of God and woman who was inferior and therefore deficient.
The guilt of Eve, as recounted in Genesis 3, was generally considered one of the chief pieces of evidence of woman’s inferiority and corruption. For centuries, it appeared constantly as a trope in homilies, commentaries and in popular morality literature. The interpretation of the biblical text, coupled with social and cultural norms, shaped the attitudes and the context in which such views were expressed. The scholastic writers were not necessarily guilty of a conscious prejudice against women in general; they were simply working within their own contemporary knowledge and culture to explain the situation as it stood and the reasons for the assumption of women’s disqualification from the Sacrament of Orders, but even modern popular culture ascribes greater culpability to Eve than to Adam for the sin of disobedience.[10] Although Eve’s greater guilt is no longer used as part of the justification for excluding women from Orders, it is still the case that the order of creation—man first then woman—is considered indicative of the mind of God in establishing a proper hierarchy in nature, as expressed by Paul (Eph. 5:23): ‘For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Saviour.’ Despite the development in scientific understanding of human origins from the nineteenth century onwards, the story of the paradise garden and original innocence remains a powerful myth, long after the literal account of two original parents, who individually and together were responsible for the entry of sin into the world, has been discarded. The Roman Catholic Church is still endeavouring to find ways of reconciling the various strands of scientific knowledge—such as the continuing discoveries into the origins of the cosmos and human evolution and their implications for biology and psychology—with faith and doctrine on creation ex nihilo, incarnation and redemption, and sin in human origins.[11]
It is important to remember that, for the mediaeval scholastic writers of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, suitability for ordination in itself was not a major issue. There were far more pressing matters for philosophy and theology to consider, such as the Eucharist, the Trinity, the nature of being, biblical truth, the papacy, marriage and inheritance law, sin, and forgiveness. These were all issues which were exercising the schools of theology and the Church,[12] not to mention political power and authority between the secular and the spiritual forces in Europe, and the divisions within the Church itself in the East and West. The position of women and others (children, slaves, etc.), who had no voice in society, was of minor interest. In the light of this, it was inconceivable that women could be considered for positions of authority over men, or as teachers, guides, or to provide pastoral care.[13] This is not in any way to deny the reality of the prejudice against and oppression of women during this period of history, but it was no greater or more unpleasant than the situation which has persisted in large parts of the world throughout recorded history and, indeed, up to the present day. There are many historical and cultural factors that form intellectual and emotional attitudes towards issues around gender-based discrimination in the context of women’s role in the Church, including the matter of ordination to the priesthood. Such structures today are widely seen as unjust, or even sinful, in a changing social context, more conscious of the significance of discrimination and prejudice, the way power is wielded against vulnerable groups, and intolerance breeds oppression and violence. A culture in which one group is seen as flawed, less than complete or deviating from the norm cannot help but take for granted the automatic degradation of that group, its subordinate status, entitlement to fewer rights and, as a result, exclusion from positions of power, particularly moral power.[14]
We will also examine in some detail the way in which the language used to discuss issues relating to women has significantly influenced thought and affected attitudes. Some of the ideas expressed, over and over again, in debating these topics during the mediaeval period would today be considered almost amusing, if they were not so offensive:
- women are unsuitable for priesthood because of the weakness of their intellect and the mutability of their emotions;
- teaching in public is not proper for a woman because of the weakness of her intellect and the instability of her emotions, of which defects women suffer more than men by a notable common law;
- women are not perfect members of the church, only men are;
- woman was the effective cause of damnation since she was the origin of transgression, and so on.
As well as considering the content of such statements and the ways they continued to influence the Church at that time and onwards, we will also explore the kinds of language used, and particularly the terminology. The study of language itself played a key role in the intellectual life of the Middle Ages.[15] The gradual rediscovery of the works of Aristotle, from the ninth century onwards, through translation, from Greek to Arabic and then later Arabic into Latin, encouraged the spread of new ideas in which the Latin language with its logical, structured approach was seen as the optimum way of expressing complex thought in a clear and organized way. Latin expanded its vocabulary enormously during the mediaeval period, many neologisms being created to cope with the demands placed on the language by philosophical and scientific exploration.[16] Translation as a tool, from Greek and Middle-Eastern languages to Latin and, subsequently, to the vernacular European languages, affected the arguments about women’s ordination in various ways.
Spousal imagery is also a common feature of Church writings, even up to the present day. This point is discussed in some detail in this volume, along with other implications of the idea of a ‘dead metaphor’: that is, the freezing of what was once a helpful, explanatory image into a fact of life and thus inhibiting understanding and clarity in debate.
Canon law, the legislative framework for the Church, was formulated gradually in the Christian world—East and West—as a series of collections of laws were assembled which became codified from the ninth century onwards, until the appearance of the collection made by Gratian (mid-twelfth century), the Decretum or Concordia Discordantium Canonum.[17] Over the centuries since then, the prohibition on women’s ordination in law has been retained, from Gratian to the present Code of Canon Law, last promulgated in the 1980s, which restates the rule that ‘only a baptized male can validly receive the sacrament of orders’, based on Scripture and on the unbroken tradition of the Church. Until the late twentieth century, this ruling was not generally questioned, but, during the 1970s, a number of scholars and at least two Vatican-appointed commissions[18] did come to the conclusion that, of itself, Scripture did not provide a conclusive answer to the question of whether women could be ordained. As for tradition, Fr Eric Doyle OFM, a member of the Assisi Commission, said in his report: ‘It appears to us to be more accurate to say: To ordain women would be contrary to the practice of the church. This is no verbal quibble but an important distinction because the word tradition carries a sense of far greater weight and authority than the word practice.’[19]
Another important factor affecting attitudes towards women in sacred spaces is the blood taboo, the pollution caused by menstruation and childbirth. Connected with the perception of women as ‘the weaker sex’, women’s assumed intellectual weakness, physical incapacity, emotional behaviour and even their greater sexual drive were seen by mediaeval writers as arguments against their suitability for Orders. This was a time when few women were educated, where in many societies wives were literally their husbands’ property in law, and where high numbers died young from complications associated with childbirth, but even today, such ‘female’ characteristics are still on occasion explained by reference to women’s biology, particularly the menstrual cycle, and it is sometimes still a perception, by women themselves as well as men, that women underperform at work while menstruating.[20]
This is not an attitude now confined to history, but one which is globally prevalent, not just in cultures that have ancient roots, such as early Judaism (Lev 15:19), or Islam,[21] but in contemporary societies, including Western Europe and the United States.[22] Such widespread but unexpressed prejudice has influenced attempts to argue for consideration of the female as meriting equal treatment by the Church and access to the Sacrament of Orders.
The documents issued by the Magisterium of the Church in the latter part of the twentieth century emphasize the fact that, since Jesus’ chief followers, and those to whom he entrusted the Church, were all men, this must have been the divine will and therefore cannot be gainsaid. The Pauline letters are also a source of support, particularly 1 Corinthians 14:34 (‘women must keep silent in the churches’) and 1 Timothy 2:12 (‘I do not permit women to teach or have authority over a man; she must be silent.’). The argument used by the Church today is that since, in so many ways, Jesus broke with convention where women were concerned, freely associating with them and including them among his followers, speaking to them alone, touching them even when unclean (the woman with the flow of blood (Luke 8:43)), he could, if he had so wished, also have included them within the closest circle of people known as the ‘Apostles’, but he did not. The teaching authority of the Church has therefore always maintained that this exclusion was deliberate, decided on by Jesus after a night spent in prayer to his Father (Luke 6:12), thus establishing a permanent rule to be accepted for all time by the Church.
The chapters that follow will therefore closely investigate the foundations of the present prohibition on the ordination of women in the Roman Catholic Church and seek to establish the origins of some of the reasons put forward at the present time as being beyond discussion and debate. It is important to clarify the basis for such an important and controversial discussion, the effect of which is so profound on women themselves and on the Church in general. If the present prohibition is said to be based on Scripture (on the actions of Jesus of Nazareth in history) and on the arguments proposed by the scholastic theologians in the Middle Ages that placed the debate into an academic context, then it is necessary to clarify the context and the reasoning used. It is also necessary to cast light on three areas that have not been brought together before, notably: the language used, in terms of translation and access to texts; the male imagery said to be a paramount obstacle to a female priesthood; and the issue of the exclusion of women from the sanctuary, a rarely-mentioned and yet crucially important factor in the discussion.
[1] Paul VI, Declaration ‘Inter Insigniores’ (15 October 1976), in CDF, From ‘Inter Insigniores’ to ‘Ordinatio Sacerdotalis’ (Washington, DC:/United States Catholic Conference of Bishops, 1996) p. 25.
[2] Alcuin Blamires gives many examples of such writing in Woman Defamed and Woman Defended (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), an anthology of mediaeval texts, to which the current author is indebted.
[3] Tertullian, De Cultu Feminarum, Book 1, §1, C W Marx (tr.) in Blamires, Woman Defamed, 51.
[4] John Chrysostom, Homily 9 on 1 Timothy 2:11–15, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol.13, Philip Schaff (ed.) (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing 1889)
[5] Aquinas, ST, Part I, q. 92, a. 2.
[6] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae (ST), part 1a, q. 92, a. 1, Corpus Thomisticum (Fundación Tomás de Aquino: Universidad de Navarra, 2006).
[7] Aristotle, On the Generation of Animals, Arthur Platt (tr.) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1910) Book II, §.3: ‘Now semen is a secretion and is moved with the same movement as that in virtue of which the body increases (this increase being due to subdivision of the nutriment in its last stage). When it has entered the uterus it puts into form the corresponding secretion of the female and moves it with the same movement wherewith it is moved itself. For the female’s contribution also is a secretion, and has all the arts in it potentially though none of them actually; it has in it potentially even those parts which differentiate the female from the male, for just as the young of mutilated parents are sometimes born mutilated and sometimes not, so also the young born of a female are sometimes female and sometimes male instead. For the female is, as it were, a mutilated male.’
[8] Allen, The Concept of Woman 393.
[9] Aquinas, ST, part 1, q. 92, a. 1: ‘cum ad quodlibet aliud opus convenientius iuvari possit vir per alium virum quam per mulierem’.
[10] Eric Jager, The Tempter’s Voice: Language and the Fall in Medieval Literature (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993) p. 191. In his interesting study of the literature of this period, Jager explores both religious writing and vernacular works on the subject of Adam and Eve in Eden and, after noting the moral and instructional literature written by men and aimed at a female audience, he asserts that ‘these writings dwell on Eve’s actions and experience’ turning her meeting with the Serpent into ‘cautionary tales [asserting] a large degree of control over women’s bodies, mental life, and conversation’.
[11] Despite speaking generally of ‘sin in our origins’, the Roman Catholic Catechism speaks repeatedly of Adam and Eve, of ‘our first parents’, of ‘man’s first sin’: Catechism of the Catholic Church, Articles 374–400 (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1994).
[12] See R.W. Southern, Scholastic Humanism and the Unification of Europe, vol. 1: Foundations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995) 145–52.
[13] Karl Rahner notes, in a paper delivered to a meeting of the Union of German Catholic Women in 1964, that those who use theological arguments against ordaining women ‘are unconsciously and without realizing it, working from positions deriving from an age which is no longer with us, and with which we no longer need to identify ourselves’: in Theological Investigations VIII: Further Theology of the Spiritual Life, vol. 2 (London/New York: DLT, 1971) 82.
[14] Significant amounts of research in this area can be found in contemporary scholarship. See, for instance: S. Plous, ‘The Psychology of Prejudice, Stereotyping, and Discrimination: An Overview’, in S. Plous (ed.), Understanding Prejudice and Discrimination (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2003) 3–48: ‘Prejudice is an outgrowth of normal human functioning, and all people are susceptible to one extent or another.’ This article is part of the Prejudice in any Language: The Prejudice Translation Project www.understandingprejudice.org (accessed 11 September 2018) carried out by the American Psychology Association, and provides a very useful summary of the drivers and function of prejudice of many kinds in human societies, both historically and today; Gill Valentine and Ian Macdonald, ‘Understanding Prejudice: Attitudes Towards Minorities’, study carried out for Stonewall Citizenship 21 Project (London: Stonewall, 2004).
[15] Michael A. Covington, ‘Scientia Sermocinalis: Grammar in Mediaeval Classifications of the Sciences’, in N. McLelland and A. Linn (eds), Flores Grammaticae: Essays in Memory of Vivien Law (Münster: Nodus Publikationen, 2005) 49–54. Covington explains how theories of grammar influenced the structure of the organization of the sciences throughout the mediaeval period up to William of Ockham (1285–1347) (and provides some useful diagrams of the evolution of the organization of the trivium and quadrivium in universities).
[16] The background to this area is covered by B.B. Price, Medieval Thought: An Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992) 136ff; Prudence Allen, The Concept of Woman, vol. 1 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1985) 361ff. The significance of the translation of Greek texts and their journey around the Mediterranean are described by Dmitri Gutas, Greek Thought, Arab Culture (Abingdon: Routledge, 1998) 1–8. The rediscovery of the works of Aristotle and others is also covered by David Knowles, The Evolution of Medieval Thought (London: Longman, 1962) 186ff.
[17] Gratian, Decretum Magistri Gratiani, Emil Friedberg (ed.), Corpus Iuris Canonici (Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1879/reprint Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, 1959).
[18] The Assisi Commission and the Apostolic Biblical Commission.
[19] P. Staples (ed.), Assisi Commission Report 1975 (Utrecht: Interuniversity Institute for Missiological and Ecumenical Research, 1975) 42 (original emphasis).
[20] Norma O’Flynn, MRCGP, PhD, ‘Menstrual Symptoms: The Importance of Social Factors in Women’s Experiences’, British Journal of General Practice 56(533) (2006): 950–7: ‘Many women treated for menstrual concerns do not have a discernible pathology. The validity of their concerns has been questioned. It has been documented that women are willing to undergo extensive medical or surgical treatment despite lack of pathology. Women’s accounts indicate the presence of strong social pressures to keep menstruation concealed. The most important part of menstruation that is concealed relates to menstrual blood. The onset of new symptoms or changes in symptoms and circumstances challenge women’s existing strategies of menstrual management. Such changes often result in stress and can influence health-related behaviour.’
[21] The Qu’ran only has one verse (Q.2.222) referring to menstruation: ‘They will also question thee as to the courses of women. Say, “They are a pollution (hurt). Separate yourself therefore from women and approach them not, until they be cleansed.”’ There are many later additions and interpretations in Islamic teaching on the defiling effects of menstruation and post-partum bleeding. See a discussion on this by Shuruq Naguib, ‘Horizons and Limitations of Muslim Feminist Hermeneutics: Reflections on the Menstruation Verse’, in Pamela Sue Anderson (ed.), New Topics in Feminist Philosophy of Religion: Contestations and Transcendence Incarnate, Feminist Philosophy Collection (London: Springer, 2010) pp. 33–50.
[22] Leslie-Jean Thornton, ‘“Time of the Month” on Twitter: Taboo, Stereotype and Bonding in a No-Holds-Barred Public Arena’, online publication: Springer Science+Business Media LLC 2011; Molly Castelloe, ‘The Last Taboo: Menstruation and Body Literacy’, Psychology Today (August 2010). In many cultures, even in the West, girls who cannot afford proper menstrual protection (tampons and pads) miss school regularly as a result, and menstrual stigma and exclusion continues to be a serious issue in many parts of the world: https://www.unfpa.org/news/period-shame-misinformation-linked-serious-human-rights-concerns [last consulted March 2019].