 |
 |
 |
|
|
|---|
|
Josefa Theresia Münch
MA Theology
Principal Head
Teacher
Konrad Adenauer- Str. 21
88471 Laupheim
Germany
The
Head of the Catholic Church
Pope John Paul II
I- 00120 Città
del Vaticano.
Laupheim, the 29th May 1994
Venerable Head of the Catholic Church,
I
should like to express my admiration regarding your amazingly speedy recovery
from your accident, including the operation and its consquences.
A.
On the
13th April 1994, thus before your severe accident, you said during the
general audience in the Basilica of St. Peter (no longer in the Aula: not
covered by the Osservatore Romano of the 14th April 1994), that there
must be no discrimination.
I
listened with interest to your condemnation of discrimination in whatever form.
B.
For discrimination on account of gender is the principal reason for the
exclusion of women from priesthood.
(1)
Statements such as the following:
- “ Woman is
the devil’s gate” (Tertullian),
- “Woman is
not created in the image of God” (Gratian),
- Woman is
something defective and accidental, a “mas occasionatus”, simply a
failed man (Thomas of Aquinas)
have,
among others in theology and canon law, had serious and damaging effects on
women.
Such
instances of misjudgment and debasement at the same time constitute a
grievous slander against women. Their effect has been all the more devastating,
because they originated from the mouths or pens of famous, respected and highly
influential clergymen, ( abuse of the ‘magisterium’ of the Church).
(2)
Misogynists of a lesser mental stature have liked to refer to such detraction
by famous Doctors of the Church, thus passing on and multiplying the
calumnies aimed at women. What an unholy, misogynist kind of tradition!
(3)
Such discrimination was usually aggravated by the lack, at that time,
of knowledge about biological facts; in part they were even a result of
that lack. Thus, for example, what I term the “soil theory”
attributed the growth of a child only to the man’s sperm. It totally
ignored the fact that half of the set of chromosomes is contributed by the
female ovum - and treated as of almost no account the contribution of the
woman to the development of human life: bearing a child in the womb for nine
months, the painful delivery, nursing it, rearing it.
(4) It
is true that INTER INSIGNIORES admits that in the writings of the Fathers of
the Church the “undeniable influence of prejudice”(INT.
INS.i,1) against women is to be discerned. INTER INSIGNIORES moreover concedes
that “the scholastic theologians often put forward arguments concerning
this point, “which modern thinking accepts with difficully or even rightly
rejects” (INT. INS. i,2).
This
means (although INTER INSIGNIORES apparently fails to recognize the full
consequences of these faulty decisions). An important premise. i.e. the
alleged inferioritv of the woman, which for centuries served as an excuse
for excluding women from priesthood, is not valid.
(5) In
MULIERIS DlGNITATEM misogynist exegeses are dismissed with amazing
assurance (MD, footnote nr.49). Such exegeses had for centuries been used by
Fathers of the Church, by scholastic theologians and their successors, among
other things, as a pretext for excluding women from priesthood. What unholy
transmission of misogyny and errors!
C.
Whoever points to the long tradition of
women’s exclusion from the priesthood, even in 1994, and uses it as a
fundamental argument, e.g. against the ordination of Anglican women priests,
- has not taken
into consideration (or possibly even hopes that the faithful masses will not
notice), how firmly this tradition is linked with the misogynist ‘soil
theory’ ( whose creation and continuation is only to be explained with a
good deal of male hybris!),
- has still not
understood that this tradition was more convincing when no one knew of the
female ovum and its set of chromosomes;
- does not seem
to realize to what extent this tradition was based on erroneous, misogynist
exegesis;
- is not aware
(or has repressed it from his/her consciousness?) how much this tradition has
lived off the unholy, inveterate custom of misogyny ( the woman = “the
devil’s gate", “ not in the image of God”, “mas
occasionatus”).
D.
(1)
Since so many traditional objections against the ordination of women cannot be
upheld or have been proved wrong, theologians are not arguing correctly, if,
in spite of the faulty premise(s), they seek to perpetuate or, in fact, do
perpetuate the faitful deduction: “ The priesthood of women is
impossible and forbidden”!
(2)
Whoever wishes to put forward new arguments, ought to make sure that
they are not based on sophistry, for otherwise he/she will expose even the old,
untenable deduction as being all the more implausible.
E.
In a
number of writings, I have dealt with further arguments brought to bear
against the priesthood of women, refuting them:
- already
in my petition to the Council of the 3rd/ 5th October 1962;
- also in my
article “Catholic Women Priests?” ( published in Der christliche
Sonntag, CS 41 / 1965, of the 10 /10/1965)
- further in my
“Comment on the Second Draft of the U.S. Bishops’ Pastoral on
Women”, released April 3rd, 1990, of the 28/ 8 / 1990,
- moreover in my
note of the 24 / 4 / 1994, in which I wished to inform you of what I had no
opportunity to say to you at the general audience.
I
have sent all these texts at least once to each of the Popes in office at the
time. At least one copy of my article “Catholic Women Priests?” ought
to have had the chance not to be thrown in the waste- paper basket before even
reaching your anteroom, but to be read by you, Venerable Head of the Catholic
Church; for at the general audience of Wednesday, the 8/3/1989, you had it
collected from me by one of your staff.
F.
In
this letter I wish to reply again, and more at length, to only one of
the objections put forward against the priestly ordination of women and to
which I have already replied. What objection am I talking about? The authors of
the new World Catechism of the Catholic Church do not from shrink from dishing
it out to the faithful once again: “ Women cannot become priests because
Jesus called only men to be his twelve Apostles”.
However, I want to point out the following:
- Jesus did
not say a single word against women’s ordination.
- Those who
assert that they cannot admit women to the Church’s priestly ministry
because they wish to strictly follow Christ’s example, who called
only men to be His twelve Apostles,
- must also
follow strictly Christ’s example regarding the priestly and episcopal
ordination of male persons.
- Jesus
called only Jews into the fellowship of His Apostles, He did not
choose a single Gentile to become an Apostle. He often travelled through
pagan country. He also healed the foreigner of leprosy. Male Gentiles - just
like women - were allowed to listen to his sermons. But none of them was called
into the circle of His Apostles, not even the centurion of
Capernaum.
- Those who
want to strictly follow Christ’s example when women are to be
discriminated against,
- must
consequently not ordain male Gentiles as priests and bishops either.
- must
also ask themselves whether Gentile priests’ and bishops’
ordinations are at all valid. And the majority of present-day priests
and bishops - including the Pope - do not qualify for ordination because they
are not Jewish.
- The fact
that the Apostles were Jewish cannot be dismissed as an irrelevance to be
accounted for by their time.
As a matter of fact, Peter did not
even dare to enter the house of the Gentile Cornelius! It was only after
three heavenly visions that Peter dared baptize or have baptized a Gentile and
his family (cf. Acts, ch. 10 and 11)! That, however, did not prevent a
fierce dispute arising at the Council of the Apostles in Jerusalem about
whether Gentiles should be allowed to be Christians at all (Acts,
ch. 15).
How the Judaists would have railed against the calling of
Gentiles to the Apostolic office, if indeed one could speak of the
Apostolic office at that time!
Those who consider gender, for
reasons of a defect in the “materia sacramenti”, as a reason for
declaring woman to be incapable of receiving Holy Orders, must therefore, to be
fair, also declare all Gentile males, including the Pope, to be incapable of
taking Holy Orders.
G.
As
for the assertion that a woman cannot represent Christ at the celebration of
the Eucharist, may I reply to it only this much again:
The priest is
not meant to represent the masculinity of Christ at the Eucharistic Mass, but
Christ’s loving devotion to His Heavenly Father, and he is to embody
God’s love of humankind (God is a Spirit, not a man!). And a woman is at
least as capable of doing so as a man. So this is no reason for the exclusion
of women from the priesthood.
H.
I am
quite prepared to deal with the argument “personam Christi gerere” in
more detail than I have done in item G above,) and reply to further objections,
such as: “ We feel committed not only to the example of Christ, but also
to the attitude of the Apostles in this matter” or “uninterrupted
tradition that in the Catholic Church women have never been ordained”, and
so on, if you, most Venerable Head of the Catholic Church, are prepared to
consider my expositions seriously.
I.
Even
as a young teacher I felt deeply touched by the complaint of the Church about
the shortage of priests. A number of other women and girls felt similarly. In
accordance with the Church’s appeal, I prayed fervently for good priests
and vocations to the priesthood. But one day the question struck me:
“Should I not follow his call myself?” (Today I know my patron saint,
St. Thérèse of Lisieux, also felt a vocation to the priesthood
-see enclosed leaflet.)
In
Brasil and elsewhere, many lay women and nuns have (re-)established, on the
instruction of their bishops, complete parishes and have run them.There they
carry out all the pastoral work which otherwise a priest would do, with the
exception of administering the sacrament of penance and leading the celebration
of the Eucharist. These restrictions have to be borne by those poor communities
- not because those women lacked the human or spiritual qualificalions, but
because the Church (still) denies those pastors their ordination.
And
although they have to contend with “great poverty, with the lack of
respect for women in society, and numerous adversities, these women carry out
their work to the complete satisfaction of their bishops, loyal to them and
to the Church. The Latin-American bishops and the Vatican have definitely
no more problems regarding the loyalty of These women than they ever had with
the loyalty of male clergymen. (The heretics in the history of the Church were
of the male gender!) .
In my
opinion the beneficent service of these pastoral workers under such
unfavourable conditions is only possible because these women are called by God.
However, if they are called by God, then the Church should not deny them
ordination. After all, St Peter did not take it upon himself either to deny
those Gentile men and women baptismal water, who had been filled with the Holy
Spirit of God (Acts 10,44-48: 11,17; 15,8 and 9a).
Venerable Head of the Catholic Church,
Let
me take you at your word that there must be no discrimination. Please make sure
that double standards are not prevalent in the Church - not even where women
are involved, not even where the ordination of women is at issue.
Veni
Sancte Spiritus!
Come, Divine RUACH !
With
this prayer for all of us I greet you
Josefa Theresia Münch
Please find enclosed a tract concerning the priestly vocation of St.
Thérèse of Lisieux.
I am
planning to send (translated) copies of this letter also to Cardinals, Bishops,
possibly to some media agencies, organisations and episcopal conferences.
- Go to My Letters to the Pope”,
The Catholic Citizen, Journal of St. Joan’s International Alliance,
vol 72 (1991) no 1, pp. 18-29.
- Go to Should Women be Silent in the Church?,
in the German Catholic weekly Der christliche Sonntag, 15th. Aug.
1965.
- Go to “Catholic Women
Priests?”, Der christliche Sonntag, 10th Oct. 1965.
Return to the duty of speaking out?
Join our Women Priests' Mailing List
for occasional newsletters:
An email will be immediately sent to you
requesting your confirmation.
Please, credit this document
as published by www.womenpriests.org!