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Cardinal Robert Bellarmine was, perhaps, the most influential Catholic
theologian of his time. Under Popes Clement VIII and Paul V he was first
consultor to, then Cardinal Prefect of, the Holy Office in Rome.
Bellarmine never wrote specifically on the question of the ordination of
women. His views and theological arguments can be deduced, however, from many
passages where the issue came up indirectly.
In an argumentation against the Protestant theologian Martin Chemnitz,
Bellarmine states that women cannnot offer the sacrifice
of Mass. He gives the following reasons:
- He quotes Tertullian (same text, §
4)
- and Epiphanius (same text, § 5) who
stated that ‘Christ did not even permit his own mother to
sacrifice’.
- He also quotes Augustine in another passage (same text, see § 10).
Bellarmine indicates that his main reason for rejecting the ordination
of women was women’s subservient status.
‘Another kind [of prophesying] is specific to priests, and is not
suitable for women, for it is the role of women to be subservient, not to be
dominant. And it is this reason that blessed Paul adduces (in 1 Corinth.14):
“Let women be silent in the Church, for they are not permitted to speak,
but they must be subject...” .’
De Sacramentis in Genere, bk
1, ch 24, see § 5.
Women’s subservient status was, first of all, based on a woman's presumed inferiority of
nature. Bellarmine shared in this the general prejudices against women
of his time, prejudices which directly affected his theological judgment.
“Which argument goes to show that woman is of a simpler nature,
with less prudence and judgement than man, for (as Chrysostom notes in his
commentary on this passage), the Apostle preferred to say, "man was not
seduced, woman was seduced" rather than "Adam was not seduced, Eve was
seduced." He said this in order to show that what happened to Adam and Eve came
about from the different nature of man and woman, and that men are naturally
more prudent and of better and more mature judgement and temperament than
women, and for this reason women, who are more easily seduced, are not suitable
for teaching.”
De Amissione Gratiae, bk 3,
ch 7, see § 6.
“Read: ‘God said: It is not good for man to be alone; let us
make him a helper like himself.’ From which passage Augustine rightly
concludes that woman was thus mostly established for this purpose: so that she
might help her husband in the propagation of children. For there is no other
work in which a man is not better aided by a man than by a woman. And
especially in paradise, where no hard labor had to be undertaken, no poverty
was feared, where there was no reason why a woman would be necessary to a man
except for generation.”
De Amissione Gratiae, bk 3,
ch 11, see § 11.
Woman’s subservient status was also based by Bellarmine on
Eve’s role in orginal sin. This too
was a general theological prejudice of the time. Bellarmine states clearly that
women would have been subject to their husbands even without the Fall. But
after the Fall, the subjection became a harsh slavery imposed as punishment.
“Wherefore the punishment of the sin is that women bear the fetus
in the womb with disgust and labor, that they give birth with pain, that they
are so subjected to their husbands, that even unwilling, they must obey them,
and that they are forced not only to love them, but also to fear them. And it
is this that God predicted to Eve when He said: ‘I shall multiply your
hardships, etc.’.”
De Amissione Gratiae, bk 3,
ch 11, see § 15.
“Further, what in describing the punishment of woman is said:
‘you will be under the power of your husband’, or--as the Greek
translation has-- ‘your turning will be towards your husband’: this
can be construed in two ways because of the ambiguity of the Hebrew noun
[teshuqathek], which sometimes is used to mean conversion and obedience,
and sometimes desire and longing.”
* So the sense will be either that
the woman ought to be turned towards her husband by serving and obeying, as if
she should hang on the commands from his mouth;
or surely the meaning will
be that woman even after the labor of bearing in her uterus, and the pain of
delivering, will still desire her husband. And the punishment is not light,
that she is not able to keep herself from that which brings her to such great
labor and sadness.”
De Amissione Gratiae, bk 3,
ch 11, see § 18.
“As for the second, I say that woman, as much before the sin as
after, was both partner and subject to her husband: a partner in generation and
subject in being ruled. But the phrase You will be under the power of your
husband does not signify any kind of subjection, but rather an involuntary
one, along with sadness and fear, of the kind that married women experience for
the most part.”
De Membris Militantis
Ecclesiae, bk 3, ch 7, see § 14.
Like Thomas Aquinas before him and all
contemporary theologians, Bellarmine also based the subject status of women on
a totally in adequate concept of a woman’s role in procreation. The
idea was that the father contributes the seed, which contains the future human
being, and that the mother only ‘provides matter’ -- her womb being
like the soil in which the seed has been planted.
“For we contract original sin because when Adam sinned, we were
in him, as in the active principle. But we were not in Eve, as in an active
principle, since the mother does not offer the active force, but contributes
only matter for generating offspring.”
De Amissione Gratiae, bk 4,
ch 13, see § 5.
“The Apostle said, "through one man", that is, "Adam", because he
was the principal cause of original sin, and not Eve. This is so both because
Adam's sin, not Eve's, is handed down to posterity; and because man is the
active cause of regeneration, woman the passive. On this account if, with Eve
sinning, Adam had remained in innocence, their children would not have carried
original sin; and the opposite would hold if Adam had sinned, with Eve
remaining in innocence.”
De Amissione Gratiae, bk 4,
ch 8, see § 6.
However, women are useful because they are necessary for creation. That is why God created them.
Though I have found no explicit quotation from Bellarmine to prove this,
he probably followed Thomas Aquinas in thinking that
woman cannot represent Christ ‘because she is not a complete human
being’.
Conclusion. Bellarmine’s arguments against women's
ordination, dispersed through his works as they are, are clearly based on
prejudice and not a balance and well informed theological judgment.
After thought
Bellarmine was typical of the theologians of his time. They were so sure
that women cannot be ordained priests that they did not even bother to consider
the arguments explicitly.
Bellarmine’s lack of considered judgment is all the more apparent
because of his miserable failing, as a theologian and a Church leader entrusted
with the magisterium, to discern the true theological and doctrinal truth in
the case of Galileo Galilei. Bellarmine was directly
involved in Galileo’s condemnation, a misjudgment that has plagued the
Church until our own day.
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