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How could Mary be looked upon as a priest if women cannot receive Holy
Orders?
Theologians and spiritual writers were well aware of the restrictions imposed
on women. They perceived an obvious tension between Mary’s priestly
functions and priestly status on the one hand, and her being a member of the
“weaker sex” on the other.
The objection was even directly related to Mary in a text of the 4th
century that would be repeated many times in the Middle Ages:
“If women had been appointed to act as priests on behalf of God,
or to perform official liturgical acts in the Church , it must surely have come
about that Mary herself, who received the privilege of carrying in her bosom
the Sovereign King, the heavenly God, God’s Son, would in the New
Testament have exercised the priestly office. But she did not judge such action
to be right. She was not even entrusted with the bestowal of Baptism, since the
Christ himself was baptized not by her but by John . . . . It was the Apostles
who were entrusted with these ministries and they appointed their successors .
. . Never has a woman been appointed amongst bishops and priests. But, someone
will say, there were the four daughters of Philip, who prophesied. Yes, but
they did not exercise the priestly office.” Epiphanius of Salamis, Panarion 79,
§ 3.
How
did they try to resolve this contradiction? During the time of the Fathers of
the Church, the question was not raised explicitly. The Fathers simply
asserted Mary’s priestly dignity, leaving the
tension unsolved.
The conflict was tackled more directly from the Middle Ages onwards.
Theologians asked themselves how the prohibition for women to be ordained
affected Our Lady. In general they came to the conclusion that, though Mary may
not have received the sacrament of Holy Orders in the ordinary way, she somehow
received the priestly grace and priestly power implied in the sacrament, in an
equivalent manner. This was asserted most forcefully by St. Albert the Great, Doctor of the Church.
These are various formulations theologians came up with:
1.
Mary received Holy Orders in an equivalent manner.
‘Mary possessed in very perfect fashion all the sacramental
graces. She received all the sacraments that had been instituted in her time
and generally received by all people. In this manner nothing of their effects
and perfections was lost for her. And, according to Albert [=St. Albert the
Great], she received all sacraments except for Holy Orders, but she received
these Orders in an equivalent manner, for she possesses their dignity, power
and ministry in the Church and has become the sovereign priest after
Christ.’ Jan Mombaer (1501), Rosetum,
title 24, section 5.
‘ In his “Mariale” Albert the Great asks
the question: “Did the Virgin possess all the orders of the priesthood and
episcopacy ? ” He answers that she did not in any way possess the
[sacramental] character of these orders, but that she has only participated in
its tasks and functions according to the most excellent and noble way so that
-- and these are the words of Albert -- “She possessed the priesthood in a
sovereign way,” that is: she possessed the highest degree of the
priesthood.
We will speak in another place about the quality and the
grandeur of Mary’s priesthood: and then it will be clear that Christ has,
not only shared, but totally exhausted over Mary the fullness of his own
priestly anointing.’Ferdinand Chirino de
Salazar (1575 - 1646 AD), Canticum, vol. 2, pp. 95.
2.
Mary was ordained a priest through an interior anointing, as distinct from the
external anointing given to present-day priests at ordination. Therefore it was
the Holy Spirit himself who ordained Mary.
‘The Blessed Virgin can be said to have been anointed not
externally but interiorly, and thus ordained a spiritual, not a legal,
priest.’ -- ‘The glorious Virgin, anointed not externally but
interiorly, was ordained a priest, not according to the law, but according to
the Spirit.’ -- ‘More than any other woman and differently, Mary was
anointed with invisible oil. Otherwise, how could Christ have been born from a
Virgin, unless the Virgin had been anointed with heavenly oil [=the oil of the
Holy Spirit].’ Ippolito Marracci
Sacerdotium Mysticum Marianum (ca.1647), passim.
“ In the first creation, woman was drawn from man.
In the second, it will be man, the heavenly man, who will be drawn from the
woman, but from a very extraordinary woman: that is a woman-highpriest. In
order to be highpriest one needs to be ordained, one needs to produce a victim,
to consecrate it, to offer it. One needs to teach and pray. One needs to
communicate the priesthood. One needs to give birth to souls and to recreate
them. Well, all these conditions are united in Mary. She has been anointed and
ordained by the Holy Spirit himself . . . ” F. Maupied, Orateurs Sacrés, Paris 1866,
vol. 86, p. 228.
3.
It was Christ who anointed Mary making her a priest. Christ extended his own
priesthood to her. He deputed her spiritually and communicated his own dignity
to her.
“Christ the Lord has passed on to Mary much better
and much more abundantly than in any other soul or even in the entire Church,
the signification of his name. He who is called ‘Christ’, that is,
“anointed”, because he was a saint, because he was king, because he
was priest, because he was master and prophet, poured out the abundance of his
ointment on Mary, and so made her a saint, a queen, a priest, and a
governess for ever.”
“ Since the Virgin fulfilled the
functions of every priesthood both ancient and new we can rightly say that,
in this regard, the ointment implied in the name of Christ [‘Christ’
means ‘anointed’] has been entirely used up and poured out on her.
”
. . . “The most blessed Virgin fulfilled the function of
priest because, manifesting a will completely in conformity to the will of
her Son, she offered him and sacrificed him on the altar of the cross, exactly
as he sacrificed himself . . . just as she offers every day with the priests
the body of her Son in the non-bloody sacrifice of the most holy
Eucharist.”
“The sacred anointing of divinity established Christ
as sovereign priest and bishop. And also the Virgin, who was impregnated by
this unction to a degree more excelling and eminent than other souls,
obtained a priesthood that is more excelling and more eminent.”
Ferdinand Chirino de Salazar (1575 - 1646 AD),
Canticum, vol. 2, pp. 92, 94-95.
“In truth it is the Son of God himself who is the
priest and the sacrificer just as he is himself the victim, but together with
Mary. He shared with her his character of being a priest and of being a victim
which he communicated to her through an extension of his own priesthood,
through the anointing of his grace and even through the imprint of the priestly
character, not in a formal sense, but more eminently than the priestly
character possessed by all other priests, so that she could cooperate with him
in a more noble and excellent way for the reconciliation of sinners.”
Auguste Nicolas, La Vierge
Marie d’après l‘Évangile, Paris 1858, p. 295.
“How would Christ not communicate the two dignities
[=royal and episcopal] to Mary since he was the Son and she his Mother? . . .
If because Christ was a king- a title he had not received from his mother, he
communicated his royal dignity to her, with how much more reason would he
communicate the dignity of the episcopacy to her since he was the great Bishop
a title he had received from his mother? [=through her priestly descent]”
Antonio Vieira (1608-1697), Sermon on the
Rosary, ib. p. 78-80a.
4.
Though Mary was not ordained sacramentally, yet she possessed the substance of
the priesthood to the highest degree. The eminence of the priesthood resided in
Mary.
“Her superior quality and her gender did not allow God to call
the Blessed Virgin to a mystery which only men could offer externally and to
which only men could be deputed by the Church. Although she was a woman, the
Blessed Virgin carried all the invisible grace of the apostles and priests in
herself. She had already been anointed with the fulness of grace. She had
already publicly fulfilled the function of a priest in Jerusalem when she
offered him in human form and not as sacrament, and when she offered him later
on Calvary, since the sacrifice needed to reflect her own property. And if she
was absent at the last supper and did not offer the mystery under the
sacramental signs as the apostles and priests according to the order of
Melchisedech do, she offered it interiorly through the universal spirit and
fulness of grace with which Jesus Christ had filled her.” Jean-Jacques Olier (1608 - 1657), Recueil,
manuscript in Saint Sulpice, Paris, Rue du Regard, p. 230.
“ . . . . As mother of Jesus Mary possesses a right and a sovereignty over
the apostles, not by authority of jurisdiction which would not agree with the
condition of her sex, but by eminence of spirit and grace. That is why after
the Ascension she was not the chief carrier of authority, but rather the heart
of the mystical body . . . Priests possess two powers, one over Jesus’
physical body when they render it present on the altar through the sacred
words, the other over his mystical body . . . The first power is a shadow of
Mary’s motherhood, the other of her sovereign power.” F. Bourgoing, Vérités et excellences
de Jésus Christ, Paris 1636, vol. 2, Méditation 19, § 3,
pp. 183-184.
“Whatever there is of dignity in the dignity of a
bishop, I do not refuse to give to the Mother. Because of her sex and her
modesty I am not attributing to her whatever masculine there is in this office;
I only withhold from her whatever is pure worry and obstacle to contemplation,
and I can concede her with liberality and generosity every grandeur, even the
highest grandeur which the effort of the human spirit could imagine. . . . If
it so clearly belongs to the honour of the Bishop to make the Body of Christ
with solemn words and if the Bishop pleads with God for the sinner, will the
Virgin who was the most predestined to do this, be deprived of the title
although she abundantly achieves the substance of that office?’ Jacques le Vasseur (1610), Diva Virgo, ch. 22,
pp. 171, 176.
. ‘Let us now pay attention to the title of our discourse which
says “that the virgin has possessed the dignity of the priesthood without
its [sacramental] character .... ” The most knowledgeable Raymond Jordan
said that all privileges and all dignities of the Church can be found in Mary
to the extent they are compatible. That is why I say that the dignity of being
a priest is in her without its [sacramental] character.Christopher of Avendaño (1628), Marial de las
Fiestas, French edition, p. 209.
5.
Mary shared in Jesus’s own priestly character.
“Mary shares . . . in Jesus’ character as
priest and victim which her son communicates to her. Her hands are the altar.
Her submission fulfils the task of the priest and her heart is the victim of
sacrifice and love.” Hubert
Lebon, Marie, mére admirable, Paris 1861, p. 98.
“Mary is priestess by character. In other priests, the character is added
on; in Mary, on the other hand, the character is inherent, intrinsic. In other
priests it exists on its own; in Mary, on the other hand, it is joint, that is
to say: it is there in a better way . . . The reason of the superiority of
Mary’s priesthood consists in the hypostatic union [=the union of the
divine and human in Christ] to which Mary belongs through her divine
motherhood. In fact, just as Jesus Christ is a priest not by a character that
was externally added to him, but in virtue of the hypostatic union through
which his human nature was assumed, so the Virgin who belongs to the hypostatic
order, shares in the priesthood in the manner in which the priesthood is found
in Jesus Christ, not like that which is communicated to other priests.”
Gaetano GuidaIl sacerdozio di Maria, 1873, p.
31.
6.
In Mary the obstacle of her sex was overcome.
“ Since the obstacle of her sex has thus been
clearly overcome by the authority of the saints, by the example of scripture
and the power of reason . . . , we may now pass from a discussion of legality
to the facts: let us see in the Queen of the Rosary or in the Rosary of the
Virgin, the title, power, and exercise of her episcopal dignity . . . The
blessed Virgin was not only a bishop in the proper sense of the term, but
specifically: 1. A bishop through the meaning of the word. 2. A
bishop through the tokens of her dignity. 3. A bishop through the power
of the keys. Antonio Vieira (1608-1697), Sermon
on the Rosary, ib. p. 81.
7.
Mary’s priesthood was obscured by her closeness to Christ.
“ No creature has ever shared in the priesthood of
Jesus Christ as this queen of the apostles and of the clergy . . . . The reason
why one hardly ever speaks of her priesthood is that she is always so close to
the great High Priest, in whose presence all shared priesthood disappears and
vanishes as a star before the sun.
If Mary’s priesthood disappears
and loses its name in face of the eternal priesthood, it is not a real loss. It
comes from a fusion of heart and mind in the one unique sacrifice.”
Philpin de Rivière,
Union de Marie au fidèle, Paris 1861, pp. 265, 301.
8.
Mary’s priesthood was contained in her motherhood.
“ Women are excluded from this dignity of the
priesthood, and Mary herself, because of her sex, cannot receive it. If one can
give her the name of priest, it is not because she has been ordained by the
apostles, it is because the priestly dignity is contained in an eminent manner
in her dignity as mother of God. Her divine motherhood gave her the right to
fulfil certain functions of the priesthood. And she fulfilled them in actual
fact, for example when she presented Jesus in the Temple and especially when
she offered him on Calvary for our salvation. She certainly possessed the grace
which makes priests, but without the power to offer the body and blood of her
Son of her adorable Son on the altar.” J.B. Petitalot, La Vierge Marie
d‘après la theologie, Paris 1876, pp. 60-61.
9. Mary has been the only woman priest.
“ Mary is priestess for she represented in the work
of Redemption of her sex -- though in full dependence on the universal
representation by Christ. But the priesthood of Mary is limited to her person.
There is no other woman to succeed her and carry on her special task . . . It
is therefore the male priest who, in his ordination, has received Mary’s
share. But he has received it in favour of women evidently, rather than for his
own advantage. In a word, this link affects the priesthood so that the priest,
the representative and minister of Christ, is also similarly and at the same
time minister of Mary, instrument of Mary for her sex. So, the dignity and
meaning of the priesthood stands in a new light from a mariological
perspective.” H. Oswald,
Dogmatische Mariologie, Paderborn 1850, p. 198.
Conclusion
Though theologians and spiritual writers, because of the cultural and
theological perceptions of their time, did not see that the ban against the
ordination of women itself is questionable, they did keep reaffirming
Mary’s priestly status.
Implicitly, and at times explicitly, they are thereby stating that
Mary’s sex is not an obstacle to her being a priest. But if one woman can
be a priest, so can all. Sex or gender by itself is not a sufficient reason to
exclude women from ordination.
The Vatican has opposed the ordination of women from the beginning.
It is obviously for this reason that the Holy
Office under Pope Benedict forbade images of Mary in priestly vestments and
later, under Pope Pius XI, forbade the devotion
to Mary Priest itself.
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