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a response to Dennis M. Ferrara
by Sara Butler
Theological Studies ( Theol Stud ) v. 56 (Mar. '95) p.
61-91
A response to Dennis M. Ferrara's article in the June 1994 issue.
According to Ferrara, the writer explains, when Thomas Aquinas describes the
priest's actions in celebrating the Eucharist as in persona Christi, he means
that the priest effaces himself before Christ rather than represents him. For
Ferrara, she continues, this insight counters the chief theoretical objection
to the ordination of women in the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith's
Inter insigniores, which was that women lack the "natural resemblance" to
Christ called for by in persona christi. The writer disputes both
Ferrara's interpretation of Aquinas and his reading of the argumentation
derived from Aquinas in the Inter insigniores. Also included is a response by
Ferrara.
A rather surprising thesis was defended by Dennis Michael Ferrara in the
June 1994 issue of this journal.(1) He proposes that when Thomas Aquinas
describes the priest's action in the celebration of the Eucharist with the
formula in persona christi he means that the priest effaces
himself before Christ, not that he represents Christ. This "apophatic"
interpretation, Ferrara believes, captures the primary meaning of the formula.
He allows that Thomas has in mind an indirect representation of Christ when he
uses the same formula to describe the priest's exercise of hierarchical
authority, but, because the priest's "hierarchical-regitive" role is entirely
ordered to and normed by his "ministerial-eucharistic" role, Ferrara maintains
that the applications of the formula must be similarly ordered. The
non-representational, ministerial, and "apophatic" meaning of in persona
Christi, not its hierarchical meaning, he claims, is primary, original, and
normative for St. Thomas.
In Ferrara's opinion, this insight can be used to counter the chief
theoretical objection to the ordination of women, namely, that women lack the
"natural resemblance" to Christ called for by the fact that the priest acts
in persona christi.(2) While he is aware that the Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith does not advance this argument as the decisive ground for
its judgment in Inter insigniores,(3) he nevertheless suggests that
overturning it would remove the major obstacle to a line of reasoning driven by
a "subordinationist" theory.
Pope John Paul II's apostolic letter reaffirming the Church's constant
teaching, Ordinatio sacerdotalis(4) was released just as Ferrara's essay
appeared in print. Theological Studies then published a note in which
Ferrara continues to press his point.(5) His June article questions the reading
of Thomas's theology of priesthood found in Inter insigniores. His
December note questions the magisterium's use of the distinction between (1)
the "fundamental reason" why the Church can admit only men to ministerial
priesthood (viz., the fact of a constant tradition which the Church
traces back to the will of Christ) and (2) the theological explanations which
have been developed to illustrate the fittingness of this tradition .
Ferrara characterizes the first as the "extrinsic" and the second as the
"intrinsic" basis of the argument, and then proceeds to object that the
magisterium's "studied separation" of the two arguments leads to a new fideism.
In his view, the magisterium has abandoned the traditional and faulty intrinsic
argument (its appeal to the subordinate status of women) without supplying a
theological rationale rooted in a more adequate Christian anthropology. As a
consequence, the extrinsic argument is left hanging in mid-air, unintelligible
because no explanation is supplied as to why Christ willed to restrict the
apostolic ministry to men.(6) In his note, Ferrara restates his earlier thesis,
making its application to women's ordination more explicit.
It seems to me most worthwhile to engage Dennis Michael Ferrara in
debate. Serious theological dialogue within the Church cannot be advanced
without the careful consideration of the teaching of the contemporary
magisterium. Some years have passed since the initial responses to Inter
insigniores were published, and the magisterium has addressed the question
again since then. There are questions here that deserve further examination,
and I welcome the occasion to reopen them.
My response is addressed to both of Ferrara's pieces, but I will begin
with the note since it provides the frame of reference for the article. I
intend to dispute at length Ferrara's interpretation of St. Thomas and his
reading of the argumentation drawn from Thomas in the Declaration Inter
insigniores.
Value of Identifying the "Fundamantal Reason"
The distinction which the magisterium draws between the fundamental
reason for reserving ministerial priesthood to men and the theological
arguments from fittingness serves the purpose of clarifying its dominical
foundation, rejecting an argument now seen to be faulty, and retrieving the
elements of a more adequate argument. In my view, it need not and does not lead
to fideism.
Pope John Paul II's Ordinatio sacerdotalis reinforces the
distinction between the statement of the normative tradition , proposed
with authority by the magisterium, and the theological reasons brought forward
to clarify it by means of the analogy of faith, which do not engage the
authority of the magisterium.(7) In this document he reasserts the "fundamental
reasons": the example of Christ, attested in Scripture , in choosing
only men as his Apostles, and the constant practice of the Church in fidelity
to his example. Because this new intervention of the magisterium does not
repeat the theological argumentation proposed in section 5 of Inter
insigniores, some speculated that it was being discarded. The appearance of
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger's Commentary has corrected this impression: the
purpose of the apostolic letter is to address the formal and gnoseological
structure of the doctrine. Ordinatio sacerdotalis intends to make
explicit the grounds for the Church's certitude that it does not have the
authority to admit women to ministerial priesthood.(8) It does not repudiate
the argumentation of Inter insigniores, but presupposes it. The further
development of arguments from fittingness based on a renewed theological
anthropology, Ratzinger writes, is the task not of the magisterium but of
theologians.(9)
In response to Ordinatio sacerdotalis, Ferrara sets out to
contribute to the discussion "with specific reference to the distinction, and
the importance thereof, between the external fact of the Church's traditional
ban on the ordination of women and the inner theological meaning of the
tradition ."(10) In his earlier article he takes explicit note of this
distinction, describing the use of arguments ex convenientia in sections
5 and 6 of Inter insigniores. He also expresses his conviction that the
doctrinal statement and its explanation are in a certain sense inseparable,
even though the binding force of doctrinal affirmations cannot be said to
depend on the cogency of the arguments used to defend them.(11)
Ferrara appreciates the fact that this distinction allows Inter
insigniores to reject arguments in the traditional teaching that are
"scarcely defensible today."(12) He believes, and I agree, that the intrinsic
argument ultimately turns on the question of theological anthropology.(13)
Nevertheless, although Ferrara acknowledges the primacy of the extrinsic
argument, he does not seem to appreciate that it forms the basis of the
intrinsic argument. His characterization of the categories as "extrinsic" and
"intrinsic" tends, I think, to obscure their actual relation. We are, after
all, confronted not only with the historical fact of the Church's constant
tradition , but with the claim that this tradition is rooted in
the will of Christ. The force of Ordinatio sacerdotalis is to
call attention to this source of the Church's certitude.
I readily grant that the link between this tradition and the will
of Christ manifested in the choice of the Twelve poses other questions,(14) but
I believe Ferrara is mistaken in thinking that the extrinsic argument cannot
claim our assent unless it can be shown to be reasonable on some prior grounds,
i.e. the meaning of the natural differentiation of the sexes. As I understand
it, the function of theological argumentation from fittingness is to discover,
by means of the analogy of faith and human reasoning, the appropriateness and
intrinsic reasonableness of something we receive as God's gift or revelation.
The choice of the Twelve may not belong to the same class as the call of
Abraham or of Mary,(15) but that it be naturally intelligible independent of
the history of salvation is not the only alternative. Inter insigniores seems
to classify it instead with sacramental signs. Sacraments possess a deep
natural symbolism, but they are correctly interpreted only in light of their
link to the constitutive events of Christianity and to Christ himself.(16)
Again, if we try to discern why the Word became a man rather than a woman, we
may appeal to arguments drawn from a theory regarding the natural
differentiation of the sexes, but it is entirely possible that this fact of
revelation may, in the end, be the source of a proper anthropological
theory.(17)
Dominical foundation of the Tradition
One consequence of distinguishing the norm from theological attempts to
illustrate its fittingness has been a clearer identification of the New
Testament source of the Church's constant tradition on this question in
the call of the Twelve. This argument can be traced to the patristic period. It
is neither the invention of late scholasticism nor a "new tradition "
inaugurated by the Vatican.
Ferrara looks upon the appeal to Christ's call of the Twelve as a new
argument. The relation of the scriptural texts cited by the magisterium to the
question of women's ordination strikes him as "tenuous at best."(18) He
supposes that this extrinsic argument first appears in the late scholastic
period in the form of an appeal to Christ's institution of the priesthood, and
then suggests that this appeal may have come about in response to the
anti-intellectualism that followed the condemnations of 1277. In support of his
view, he notes that neither Thomas nor Bonaventure makes appeal to Christ's
institution.(19)
I propose another explanation. In the first place, a review of the
history of this question reveals that two lines of argumentation dominate in
the patristic era. When women were admitted to priestly functions among the
Christian Gnostics, Marcionites, Montanists, and Collyridians, the Church
countered these innovations (1) by citing the Pauline injunctions against
public teaching by women, especially 1 Cor 14:34-35 and 1 Tim 2:12,(20) and (2)
by appealing to the "command of the Lord" and the "law of the gospel." This
second court of appeal is found in third and fourth century ecclesiastical
constitutions and collections of canons.(21) In the Panarion (374-77) of
Epiphanius of Salamis, this appeal begins to take the form that would become
classical in the West, viz., since the Lord did not call his Mother to belong
to the Twelve, despite her great dignity and excellence, it is evident that he
did not intend women to assume priestly functions.(22) Notice that admission to
priestly and episcopal functions is consistently identified with admission to
the office of the Twelve. I believe Ferrara would have to concede that some of
the earliest arguments for restricting the priesthood to men rely precisely on
the normativeness of Christ's call of the Twelve.(23)
In discerning the value of these two traditional arguments, the
contemporary magisterium has clearly preferred the second to the first. The
argument from the Pauline texts does not form the basis of its judgment, but is
in fact subjected to a critique and even given a new interpretation, based on
the "gospel innovation" in Gal. 3:28, in recent papal teaching.(24) The faulty
"intrinsic" argument, which is intimately linked (but not identical) with the
tradition of appealing to the Pauline ban, and which marked Catholic
explanations of the exclusion of women from ministerial priesthood up until
very recently, has been abandoned. Instead, the argument from the will of
Christ in choosing the Twelve has been given new prominence, even while it is
acknowledged that apart from the witness of the tradition one would not
easily find explicit indications of Christ's will on this matter in the
Scripture .(25)
In the second place, I would offer two points in response to Ferrara's
theory about the source of the late scholastic appeal to the "extrinsic"
argument. One, it seems that Thomas and Bonaventure were well aware of and took
for granted the existing consensus of the Church, fixed by that time in
canonical legislation, when they advanced arguments from fittingness on this
question. Both cite the Pauline texts as evidence of a binding tradition
.(26) I take this to be a form of the extrinsic argument. Two, the appeal to
institution by Christ (the alternate form of the extrinsic argument) found in
the later scholastics may be explained in light of the question that intrigued
them, namely, whether the Church is guilty of injustice for denying priestly
ordination to women. Their interest is to show that the restriction of orders
to males derives from the will of Christ, not from prejudice against women on
the part of the apostles or of the Church.(27) While this move may reflect some
of the influences noted by Ferrara, his theory is not needed to account for
it.
Retrieval of Bonaventure's Argument from Fittingness
The magisterium has rejected the argument from fittingness based on a
faulty (i.e., hierarchical) understanding of sexual complementarity, and
proposed in its place an argument from fittingness which links the requirement
of maleness for the priest with the maleness of Christ. This is not a novelty,
as Ferrara supposes,(28) but is drawn from the sacramental theology of St.
Bonaventure.
In reporting that the late scholastics were the first to appeal to the
extrinsic argument of Christ's institution of the priesthood, Ferrara has
overlooked evidence presented in Inter insigniores. He likewise
overlooks the evidence the Declaration supplies when he judges that "the
theological tradition prior to Vatican II knows only one intrinsic
argument against the ordination of women: the 'faulty' argument from women's
inferior status."(29) It seems to me that the magisterium has successfully
retrieved a "non-faulty" argument from the teaching of Bonaventure on this
question: it is the argument from maleness as a condition for the priest's
sacramental signification of Christ, Head and Bridegroom of the Church.(30)
A rather full exposition of this teaching, set in the larger context of
Bonaventure's understanding of sacramental signification, was published by Jean
Rezette shortly before the release of Inter insigniores;(31) it can
reasonably be assumed that this provides a rationale for the Declaration's
interpretation of the Seraphic Doctor's teaching. Although Bonaventure's
commentary includes arguments of unequal value, as the Declaration
acknowledges, it also provides the elements of the argument from fittingness
which the Declaration adopts.
Curiously, Ferrara's report omits from Bonaventure's position the very
point that the magisterium finds most telling, namely, his understanding of the
way the person enters into the constitution of the sacramental sign, and the
relevance of male sex to the signification of Christ the Mediator, who became
incarnate as a male. Ferrara cites only the first half of the pertinent
sentence, then (without notifying the reader of the omission) skips over to a
different argument, drawn from the solution to the first objection.(32)
He also fails to mention that one of the reasons Bonaventure gives
against the ordination of women is their incapacity for the office of bishop
(an office to which the other orders lead): because the bishop is the
bridegroom of the Church, a woman cannot become a bishop.(33) The special
contribution of this "nuptial" argument is its potential for articulating the
differentiation of the sexes as a relationship of complementarity oriented to
self-gift, rather than a hierarchically structured relationship related to
social status.(34)
For Bonaventure, sacramental signs must have some quality in common with
the realities they signify. This principle is easily understood in the case of
baptism and Eucharist. In the case of orders, by contrast, there is no "matter"
in the strict sense; there is, however, an external sign which might be called
the "element" or "sign" in a broad sense. In fact, the recipient of orders is
himself the sign, a symbol of Christ. The truth of the sacrament requires, for
Bonaventure, that the visible sign have a "natural resemblance" (i.e.,
correspond even by way of gender) with the one signified.(35)
An Argument Common to Bonaventure and Thomas
It seems that this argument from fittingness can be positively
coordinated with St. Thomas's principles of sacramental theology and his view
of priestly action in persona christi in the sacrament of the
Eucharist.(36) The common principle is that a sacramental sign should bear a
"natural resemblance" to the reality signified, and the common presupposition
is that the priest symbolizes Christ. Inter insigniores draws out the
implications by claiming Thomas as well as Bonaventure in support of its
theological argument from fittingness.
In Ferrara's view, the presentation of Thomas's argument from
fittingness in Inter insigniores is "so completely bowdlerized as to be
virtually indistinguishable from Bonaventure's symbolic argument that the
ordained person is 'a sign of Christ.'"(37) He believes that the "natural
resemblance" Thomas has in mind is, rather, the position of eminence in the
ecclesial community appropriate to the male. This, he supposes, is an
expression of the "faulty" argument based on the hierarchical relationship
between the sexes that has been rejected, not on the priest's sacramental role.
"None of this has to do in any way, shape, or form with a 'natural resemblance'
to Christ himself."(38)
In my opinion, there is a genuine convergence in the thinking of these
two great scholastics,(39) but it can be discovered only by allowing that both
understood the priest to represent Christ in the celebration of the Eucharist.
I do not expect to demonstrate that Thomas provides an argument against the
ordination of women based on "gender symbolism" (other than the faulty argument
already discounted). I do intend to challenge Ferrara's view that a
non-representational, "apophatic" meaning is primary in Thomas's use of the
formula in persona christi. I wish to show that Thomas regards the
priest to be a sign as well as an instrument in the sacrament of the Eucharist,
that he presents this mode of signification as unique, and that he understands
the sacramental symbolism of persons as inclusive of the natural resemblance of
gender.(40) This leads me to my detailed response to his article,
"Representation or Self-Effacement?"
An “Apophatic” Understanding of in persona christi"?
Ferrara sets out to investigate Thomas's use of the formula in
persona christi in light of his theories of instrumental causality and
sacramental signification. He reports that Thomas uses it almost exclusively
with reference to the celebration of the Eucharist, the supreme expression of
the priestly office. Thomas teaches that ordination confers a sacerdotal
character, that is, a spiritual power ordered to divine worship which is
instrumental and ministerial. The priest, endowed with this instrumental power,
is himself a kind of instrument; in the administration of the sacraments he
operates not by his own power, but by the power of Christ. In consecrating the
Eucharist he acts both by the power and in the person of Christ.
According to Ferrara's analysis, this instrumentality prohibits rather
than requires the priest's representation of Christ. As instrumental cause of
the Eucharist, the minister "has no other act save the pronouncing of the
words" of consecration.(41) Whereas in the other sacraments the minister utters
the form in his own person, in this sacrament he effaces himself, for he
pronounces the words "as if Christ were speaking in person." Ferrara concludes
that the priest, uttering these words in persona christi, appears "not
as 'another Christ' but as 'another than Christ'" (201). Instead of adding
"some kind of representation of Christ to the priest's mere instrumentality,"
he argues, this sacrament "reduces it to the barest minimum" (205).
Ferrara makes his case by appealing to the "anamnestic" nature of the
sacramental form. The presence and transcendent causality of Christ, the chief
minister, is "sacramentally visible" not in the person of the priest but in his
recital of Christ's words. The priest, in fact, "quotes" Christ: "in the
quotation of Christ's words of institution by way of anamnesis, the 'I' of the
priest steps aside in order to let the 'I' of Christ appear, the persona of the
priestly narrator gives way visibly to the persona of Christ" (213). Claiming
the authority of St. Thomas, Ferrara proposes that any positive representation
of Christ by the priest would obscure the "sacramental visibility" of Christ,
the true speaker of the words of consecration, and "to that extent would imply
a merely symbolic rather than real presence of Christ [in the eucharistic
elements]" (215).
Ferrara supports the point that the priest is "other" than Christ by
insisting on the historical distance between the Last Supper and the Mass. In
his view the visible, sacramental sign of the Eucharist (sacramentum tantum
Eucharistiae) "has the form of an historical recollection in which the priest,
in uttering the words of Christ by way of quotation, by that fact publicly and
manifestly affirms the difference between the Last Supper and the Mass and his
own nonidentity with, indeed, his radical otherness from, Christ" (211).
A key point in Ferrara's "apophatic" interpretation of in persona
Christi, then, is that the priest "quotes" Christ but does not represent him.
From this premise, he argues that the priest's instrumentality does not involve
dramatic representation. This, in turn, leads to his conclusion that, "since
the quoting has nothing whatsoever to do with 'taking Christ's role'
dramatically and in fact expressly excludes it, neither has being a man" (211).
The success of his thesis is entirely dependent on whether his initial premise
is correct.
The Priest does more than “Quote” Christ
In Ferrara's view, the priest recites or reads aloud an historical
narrative when he speaks the words of consecration. As evidence, he brings
forward a text from the Summa theologiae 3, q. 78, a. 5: "The priest recites
that Christ said: 'This is my body'" (207). Ferrara explains: "The 'my' of
'This is my body' is antecedently included in the 'he' of 'he said'" (208).
Article 5 of Question 78 asks whether the formulas used to consecrate
the eucharistic elements are really true. Thomas sets out to explain how they
are true, in the face of objections regarding what "This" refers to (the bread?
the objects of sense experience?) and the causal relation of the form to its
effect. (That the priest quotes Christ is not the point at issue for him.)
Thomas first affirms that the formulas are true because these words are
pronounced in persona christi.(42) He then proceeds to consider four
opinions; three are unacceptable, the fourth, correct. The passage Ferrara
cites--"The priest recites that Christ said: 'This is my body'"--is taken from
the first opinion. What Thomas finds objectionable is the idea that the
celebrant says "This" in a purely material sense, without intending to indicate
anything present. In the next sentence he writes: "This view, however, cannot
be sustained. If it were so, the words would have no reference to any present
bodily material, and so there would be no sacrament."(43)
Ferrara takes from this only the point that the priest quotes Christ. He
draws the conclusion that since the power of the sacrament lies in the words,
no signification is required. According to Thomas, however, simply "quoting"
Christ would be insufficient to accomplish the consecration, even if the
celebrant were ordained. The priest must pronounce the words "as having
signifying power (significative) and not in a purely material sense."(44)
Thomas teaches that the celebrant must pronounce the words "simul et
recitative et significative."(45) On the one hand, the priest must recite the
words of Christ in a material sense, and this he does recitative, that is, as
the words of another.(46) Ferrara is quite right to insist on this dimension:
the priest is entirely dependent upon Christ. Unless he quotes the words as
Christ's, his speaking them would not refer to the Lord's own words and deeds
at the Last Supper. The liturgy would be not a memorial, but a new and
different sacrifice. The priest would not act in persona christi, and
the word "my" would refer to his own body and his own blood.(47)
On the other hand, if all he did was to quote Christ, the word "This"
would refer not to what lies before him, but to the elements transformed long
ago at the Last Supper, leaving the elements on the altar unchanged. The
liturgy would remain only a memorial of the Last Supper; it would not be its
sacramental representation. So, in addition to quoting Christ the priest must
say the words of Christ formally, significative, giving them the signifying
power they would naturally have in his mouth. In order to do what Christ did at
the Last Supper, it is just as necessary that the priest speak the words
significative as that he speak them recitative.
The difference can be seen by comparing two cases: (1) a priest
proclaims Paul's institution narrative (1 Cor 11: 23-26) from the lectern, and
(2) a priest pronounces the words of institution at the altar. As a lector, he
pronounces the words only materially, as the words of another. In the sacrament
of the Eucharist, he pronounces the words of consecration both materially (as
the words of another) and formally (as his own) at one and the same time.(48)
Thomas refutes the very position Ferrara defends, namely, that the
causal influence of Christ is exercised through the words of institution alone,
while the minister disappears to the point of becoming invisible before the
person of Christ. For Thomas, Christ uses as instruments both the words and the
priest. The person of the priest, in a certain manner, enters into the form of
the sacrament, giving the form its instrumental value.(49) In his Commentary on
the Sentences Thomas writes that "the instrumental power which serves to
accomplish the eucharistic conversion is not only in the word, but also in the
priest; but it is in each in an incomplete state, since the priest cannot
consecrate without the word, nor can the word consecrate without the
priest."(50)
By insisting that the words be pronounced significative Thomas
maintains the effective, though instrumental, causality of the priest. By
insisting that only a priest has the power to consecrate he shows that the
priest himself enters into the constitution of the sacrament of the Eucharist
by taking Christ's role.(51) In the other sacraments, the priest as a minister
of Christ pronounces the sacramental words in his own name: e.g. "I baptize
you." He exercises his own proper, though instrumental, activity.(52) Here, his
ministry is self-effacing (Ferrara's point), and he does no more than supply
the words of Christ. Still, he is indispensable precisely because of his
ordination. The constitution of the sacrament of the Eucharist requires, as an
essential component, the activity of one who is ordained to obey the command,
"Do this in memory of me." The causality of Christ is present not only in the
words of institution but also in the person of the priest who gives sacramental
visibility to Christ whose minister and instrument he is.
This sacramental visibility, for Thomas, includes not only the words but
the actions of the priest. In celebrating this mystery, the priest acts in
persona Christi when he consecrates, offers, and administers the sacrament.
This leads to another point in Ferrara's analysis.
The Priest “Takes the Role” of Christ
Ferrara objects to the idea that the priest represents or "takes the
role of" Christ. As he sees it, Thomas stresses the priest's "otherness," both
personally and in his historical situation, from Christ. He contends that
Inter insigniores, claiming the authority of St. Thomas, replaces this
apophatic "otherness" with a theory of dramatic representation. But does the
Declaration maintain that the priest "takes the role of" Christ in the manner
of an actor in a historical drama, as Ferrara suggests (210)?
The Declaration does indeed speak of Christ's "role" being "taken" by a
man, stating that "role" is the original sense of the word persona in the
formula in persona christi. And the Commentary released with the
Declaration explains this use of persona in terms of "a part played in the
ancient theatre, a part identified by a particular mask. The priest takes the
part of Christ, lending him his voice and gestures."(53) Admittedly, this seems
to provide a basis for Ferrara's view that the analogy is "to an actor who
plays the part of Christ in a historical drama" (210).
Assuming this to be the case, Ferrara uses the following example to
compare the dynamics of dramatizing a historical event with the dynamics of
celebrating the Eucharist. In a drama about the Civil War, he points out, every
effort would be made to abolish the difference between the actor and Abraham
Lincoln; in the Mass, on the other hand, no effort is made to disguise the
non-identity of the priest with Christ whose words he quotes. In the drama,
moreover, every effort is made to abolish historical distance, so that the
audience experiences "being there"; in the Mass, however, the past is recalled
as past and historical distance is consciously affirmed. The liturgy is clearly
not an historical pageant intended to reproduce the Last Supper, and the
celebrant is quite evidently not disguised as Christ.(54) From this, Ferrara
concludes that acting in persona christi should not be interpreted as
"taking Christ's role." In his judgment, the "anamnestic" form of the
consecration serves to "rule out formally and completely the meaning assigned
to the term persona" by the Vatican Declaration (209).
Inter insigniores is concerned, however, neither with the
apophatic self-effacement described by Ferrara, nor with dramatic
representation in the manner of a historical play, but with sacramental
representation. And in this, I would argue, the Declaration is faithful to St.
Thomas. It is clear to any onlooker that, although he is not an actor, the
priest is ritually enacting Christ's part in relation to the other worshippers.
He pronounces the words spoken at the Last Supper with the intention of doing
what Christ did, and he accompanies his words with gestures (breaking, giving
to eat and drink).(55) He presides as host at this sacrificial meal, in
obedience to the Lord's command, just as Christ presided at that Supper. The
voice which pronounces the words of consecration is not disembodied, but the
speech of a person who stands in the midst of a community, taking the part of
Christ in a way not shared by the others who are present.(56) Thomas does not
hesitate to say that the priest enacts, or "bears" the image of Christ.(57)
The sacramental mode of representation is sui generis. On the one hand,
the priest is not simply identical with Christ. On the other, there is a
positive relationship of sacramental representation, not just between the words
the priest speaks and the words Christ once spoke, and not just between what
the ministerial priest does and what Christ once did, but also between the
priest himself and Christ. This cannot be explained, as Ferrara would like,
only in terms of "otherness" and "non-identity."
According to Aquinas, it is the nature of the sacraments to be signs,
and as signs they make the realities they signify present under "alien"
forms.(58) Similarly, liturgical anamnesis looks to the past, and in fact
recalls a real, concrete event in history, but it neither leaves the event in
the past nor reproduces it in its natural condition. Rather, anamnesis makes
the past event effectively present now. The virtue of this category lies
precisely in its capacity to highlight the unity of the eucharistic celebration
with Christ's once-for-all sacrifice on the cross.(59) History is irreversible,
so the historical event is not itself repeated, but by the Holy Spirit and by
means of signs, this very event becomes sacramentally present.(60)
When Thomas considers the role of the priest as minister of this
sacrament, he calls attention not to historical difference but rather to the
unity of the Eucharist with the sacrifice of the cross. In ST 3, q. 83, a. 1,
he poses the question, "Is Christ sacrificed in this sacrament?" Then he
considers a possible objection: "in Christ's sacrifice priest and victim are
the same.... Yet in the mass the priest and victim are not the same." In the
body of the article Thomas lays the foundation for his reply: "the celebration
of this sacrament is a definite image representing Christ's Passion, which is
his true sacrifice"; when this commemoration is made "the work of our
redemption is carried on." Then, in answer to the third objection, he asserts
that "the priest also bears Christ's image (sacerdos gerit imaginem Christi),
in whose person and by whose power he pronounces the words of consecration....
And so in a measure (quodammodo) the priest and the victim are the same." Just
as this sacrament in a certain way represents Christ's passion, so the priest
in a certain way represents Christ.(61)
According to Ferrara's "apophatic" interpretation of acting in persona
Christi, the "visible" sign is not the priest but the "anamnestic form," that
is, the "formal differentiation and subordination of speakers" which is evident
when the priest, in the recitation of the words of consecration, quotes Christ"
(212). We have already seen that the authority of Thomas cannot be claimed for
this interpretation.(62) Ferrara thinks Thomas's apophatic interpretation of
in persona christi rules out the Declaration's reading that the priest
"takes the role" of Christ. I maintain that both Thomas and Inter
insigniores refer to sacramental representation, not dramatic
representation. But, granted that acting in persona christi differs from
dramatic representation, is there any basis in Thomas for thinking it requires
gender correspondence between the priest and Christ?
Gender Symbolism and the Sacramental Sign
Sacramental representation, I have argued, belongs to a different order
than dramatic representation. The priest who "takes Christ's role" in the
celebration of the Eucharist does what Christ did and pronounces his words. For
this to have its sacramental effect, he must be ordained, but he need not be a
good candidate for the lead role in "Jesus of Nazareth." Nevertheless, when
Inter insigniores defends the fittingness of symbolic correspondence of
gender, it appeals to Thomas's principle that sacraments represent what they
signify by way of natural resemblance.(63)
Is there any evidence from Thomas that this principle extends to
persons, as well as to things? The Declaration claims the authority of Thomas
when it invokes this sacramental principle at a crucial point in its
theological argument.(64) Three examples indicate how he takes this into
consideration.
In the first example, Thomas judges that only someone in grave need of
physical healing is competent to receive the sacrament of extreme unction
(today, anointing of the sick), because the spiritual healing conferred by the
sacrament is signified by way of bodily healing.(65) He would exclude, as
unable to signify the grace of the sacrament, persons who are healthy or facing
execution. There is obviously no reference to gender here, but this example
serves to illustrate the principle. His point is that without a sick person the
sacramental sign of Extreme Unction cannot be constituted. The visible sign of
a person in need of healing is a precondition for signifying the grace of the
sacrament which pertains not only to liceity but to validity. Thomas invokes
this example to argue against the ordination of women, a case that turns on the
relation of gender symbolism to sacramental reality.(66) It is pertinent to our
question, then, in that it establishes that persons enter into sacramental
signification and that their bodily condition may be a relevant factor.
The second example is found in the question "whether a woman can
baptize?"(67) In this case, Thomas explores the possible requirement of natural
resemblance based on gender, but declares it irrelevant to the constitution of
the sign. The person whose sexuality may possibly be symbolically meaningful in
the constitution of this sacramental sign is the minister, not the recipient.
The objectors think women are prohibited from baptizing on account of their
sex, even in an emergency.(68) The first and second objections recall that
women are prohibited from exercising public, authoritative pastoral
functions.(69) The third argues that since spiritual regeneration imitates
natural regeneration (the water symbolizes the waters of the mother's womb
while the one who baptizes holds the position of the father), it is
symbolically unfitting for a woman to baptize.
Thomas answers the question in the affirmative on the authority of Pope
Urban II: a woman is permitted to baptize in case of necessity. Theologically,
he solves this on the grounds that a woman who baptized would act as Christ's
minister. Because Christ is the chief baptizer, and because "in Christ there is
neither male nor female," a woman can baptize in an emergency, just as a layman
can.(70) This solution relies on the argument that Christ is the principal
cause, and the minister his instrument, a principle which also proves the
capacity of the non-baptized to administer baptism.(71) The priest (or bishop)
is the ordinary minister of the sacrament, but the principle of instrumentality
is invoked in the case of emergency because baptism is necessary for
salvation.(72) In response to the first two objections, Thomas teaches that
public and authoritative pastoral services not ordinarily permitted to women
are allowed in case of emergency. In response to the third he rejects the
objector's premise about the need to signify spiritual generation by
appropriate gender roles and repeats his appeal to instrumentality: the
minister acts not by her own power but only as an instrument of Christ.
This example is extremely pertinent to our topic. At first it appears to
support Ferrara's position. Thomas argues that there is no need for a symbolic
correspondence of gender between Christ and the minister of baptism because the
minister functions only as an instrument (by implication, not a representative)
of Christ. Thomas excludes the necessity for "natural resemblance" based on the
minister's capacity for symbolizing the "active," fatherly role in carnal
generation. The spiritual generation of baptism, in other words, requires
neither the sign of physical maleness nor the signification of authority that
the medieval authors assumed was proper to males.
Ferrara cites this example in support of his case that Thomas's
principle of instrumental causality, applied to the sacraments, positively
excludes the representation of Christ by the minister (202). But I believe
Ferrara's argument from baptism fails precisely because he overlooks the
difference between acting by the power of Christ and acting by the power and in
the person of Christ. Acting as the "minister of Christ" is not the same as
acting in persona christi.(73) In baptism, the form of the sacrament is
pronounced by the minister, speaking in his own person, not in persona
christi. This confirms the teaching of Inter insigniores that the
symbolic correspondence of gender is required only "in actions which demand the
character of ordination."(74)
The third example is the question "whether the female sex is an
impediment to ordination?"(75) Thomas bases his answer on the Pauline
prohibition of women's teaching in Church and having authority over men,
traditionally interpreted as excluding women from orders. He adds a point that
would not touch on the validity of the sacrament, but only its fittingness, the
traditional objection that women should not receive tonsure (1 Cor 11). He
begins his theological argument by stating the principle that a sacrament
requires the signification of the reality, then proceeds to develop an analogy.
Just as in extreme unction it is necessary to have a sick person in order to
signify the need of healing, so in orders the male sex is necessary, both for
the liceity and validity of the sacrament, in order to signify eminence of
degree. Since, in his view, a woman is unable to signify eminence of degree
because she is in a state of subjection, she cannot receive the sacrament of
order. This reasoning supplies evidence that Thomas relates the masculine
symbolism of "being head" and the feminine symbolism of "being subject"
explicitly to the question of sacramental realism.(76)
Is Thomas's understanding of the symbolic value of sexual difference
limited to this hierarchical consideration? Attention to the objections and
responses suggests that it is not. The first objector argues that since women
are eligible for the office of prophet, which is greater than than the
priesthood, they should be eligible for the office of priest. Thomas's response
points out the difference: prophecy is not a sacrament, so there is nothing to
prevent a woman from receiving it; there is no signification involved, only the
reality. He adds: "in matters pertaining to the soul woman does not differ from
man as to the thing [res] (for sometimes a woman is found to be better than
many men as regards the soul)." This underlines that what is in question is not
one's potential for achieving spiritual pre-eminence, but precisely what is
signified by one's sexuality.(77) This response is said to provide the solution
to the second and third objections.
The second objector reasons that since women can achieve preeminence in
other ways, such as by martyrdom or by religious life, and since they can
exercise authority as abbesses (or, in the Old Testament, as judges of Israel),
they should be eligible for orders. The third, closely aligned with the first,
points out that since the power of orders resides in the soul, and "sex is not
in the soul," sexual difference should be irrelevant to the reception of the
sacrament. Again, Thomas replies that the impediment to ordination lies not in
an incapacity for the reality of spiritual pre-eminence but in an incapacity,
rooted in the bodily nature of being a woman, for symbolizing it. Thomas
teaches, then, that female sex is an impediment to orders at the level of
bodily signification. This is an impediment specific to sacramental
signification.(78)
Thomas does not link this explicitly with an incapacity to signify
Christ who is male, or with his speculations regarding the reason for a male
incarnation. He does, however, claim that a certain resemblance to what is
signified is a condition for sacramental signification which sometimes pertains
to the validity of the sacrament, and that this principle extends to persons,
for they participate, as minister or recipients, in the constitution of
sacramental signs. The natural gender symbolism of women and men, in their
bodily conditions (sickness) and bodily constitutions (sexuality), may also
enter into these signs. In an emergency, women may baptize as "ministers of
Christ." The principle of instrumentality governs this, for no external (sexual
correspondence) or internal (sacramental character) configuration to the person
of Christ is required of the minister. In the case of priestly ordination,
however, the principle of signification comes into play; it explains why the
sacrament cannot be validly conferred on a woman. Whereas we rightly reject the
hierarchical understanding of sexual differentiation Thomas appeals to, it is
possible that we can imagine another, non-hierarchical, way of understanding
the complementarity of the sexes that may illuminate the reasonableness of this
determination.
Inter insigniores neither accepts nor employs Thomas's
"subordinationist" explanation of masculine-feminine symbolism. It draws
instead on his general principle that sacramental signs must be perceptible and
recognizable, and on his teaching that they represent what they signify by way
of natural resemblance. Thomas does not, like Bonaventure, appeal explicitly to
the need for symbolic correspondence between the priest and Christ on the level
of sex. When he calls him the "image" of Christ, he refers to the fact that the
priest is configured to Christ, in ordination, by means of a sacerdotal
character, an invisible, spiritual sign (res et sacramentum). But since the
sacrament of orders must be visible on the level of the sign (sacramentum
tantum), he may also have in mind the fact of being ordained and of "taking the
role of Christ" vis-a-vis the community.(79)
Inter insigniores specifies that symbolic correspondence of
gender is required of the priest "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 the ministry of
salvation."(80) It locates the "natural resemblance" to Christ effected by the
priest's maleness not at the level of dramatic representation, but at the level
of sacramental signification. This outward sign makes his actions vis-a-vis the
congregation perceptible as Christ's actions. Maleness links the priest to
Christ at the level of the sign, a sign established by the fact of the
Incarnation and bound up with the mystery of God's covenant love.
A Reply to Sara Butler
Since, as St. Thomas observed, truth comes to light in the to and fro of
disputation, "as iron sharpens iron" (Prov 27:17),(1) I welcome Sara Butler's
critique as an opportunity to clarify not only what I said (and did not say)
about the serious issues at hand, but more importantly, the issues themselves.
Following her lead, I will respond to her critique first of my views on the
relation between the Church's tradition and its theological meaning,
then of my reading of St. Thomas. While I will strongly dispute her individual
charges and claims, what will emerge overall is a fundamental difference in
theological mentality.
The Church’s “Tradition” and its Inner Meaning
A first point has to do with the relation between the extrinsic and
intrinsic arguments against the ordination of women. Citing the standard truth
that theology relies on the analogy of faith and human reasoning to discover
the reasonableness of what we receive through the gift of revelation (63-64),
Butler accuses me of failing to "appreciate that [the extrinsic argument] forms
the basis of the intrinsic argument" (ibid.), adding that "this fact of
revelation may, in the end, be the source of a proper anthropological theory"
(64).
The obvious flaw in this criticism is that it equates, without further
ado, a tradition of the Church and divine revelation. For the authority
in question is not that of God but of tradition and the magisterium.
Butler may rightly speak of a "normative tradition , proposed with
authority by the magisterium" (62), but the questions "how normative?" and
"with what degree of doctrinal authority?" remain. Ordinatio
sacerdotalis notwithstanding, it is still not unequivocally clear whether
the ban against women priests is a purely historical and changeable
tradition or a dogmatic and immutable tradition . The chief merit
of leaving this question open is that it frees us from the rigid presumption
that the arguments put forth by the magisterium are theologically coherent and
thereby enables us to subject them to a historical and theoretical
critique.
In a sharper version of the foregoing, Butler imputes to me the position
that "the extrinsic argument cannot claim our assent unless it can be shown to
be reasonable on some prior grounds, i.e., the meaning of the natural
differentiation of the sexes" (64), to the point that it would be "naturally
intelligible independent of the history of salvation" (ibid.). Sara Butler has
seriously misconstrued my words and attributed to me a position tantamount to
rationalism. I spoke neither of assent nor of the grounds for assent, but
rather contrasted the inherent, not antecedent, intelligibility of doctrines,
especially those which, like the ban against women priests, correlate a
constitutive element of the Church with a constitutive element of the natural
order, with actions that proceed from God's inscrutable election (e.g. the call
of Abraham) to argue that the former find their formal basis in the divine
intellect and not in the elective divine will stressed by Pope John Paul II in
Ordinatio sacerdotalis.
A third point concerns the relative importance of the argument from
Christ's institution and the arguments from theological reason in the Church's
tradition . Butler charges me with neglecting important evidence of the
"dominical foundation of the tradition " (64) and with considering the
appeal to Christ's institution as having "first appear[ed] in the late
scholastic period" or even as a "'new tradition ' inaugurated by the
Vatican" (65). My argument (admittedly somewhat imprecisely stated) was not
that the appeal to Christ's institution is absolutely new, but that as it
exists in the pre-modern tradition it lacks the dominant force
attributed to it by Inter insigniores and Ordinatio
sacerdotalis. This becomes clear when we examine the early texts to
which Butler and Inter insigniores, generally without actually presenting them,
refer.
Two of the texts are from the Didascalia. As in its treatment of the
scholastics, Inter insigniores limits its references to these texts in
keeping with its own ends. In regard to the Didascalia, the Declaration
references a passage which argues from Christ's institution but foregoes
reference to the preceding lines which intimate that what is really being
inculcated is the "faulty intrinsic argument" from women's inferiority. This
artificial separation disappears when the text is read as a consecutive
whole:
That Women Ought not to Baptize
Behold we declare unto you that great is the condemnation of those that
thus do these deeds. We command you not to do this, for this thing is a
transgression of the law. For the head of the woman is the man [cf. 1 Cor
11:3], who is appointed to the priesthood. We then ought not to transgress
against the Creator, (and) leave the head and follow the member. For the woman
is the member of the man, and came forth from him; and from her children are
born. Because He said unto her, "He is thy lord" [cf. Gen 3:16], as we have
already said, suffer not the women to admonish or teach, or execute the office
of the priesthood, which is not commanded in the law. And he that doeth thus
hath transgressed against God, and is as those that are without knowledge, even
those that appoint women to be priestesses to graven images of women. Such
women keep far away from the institution of Christ. Wherefore women ought never
to baptize anyone. If it were lawful for women to baptize, our Lord Jesus
Christ would have been baptized by his Mother, and would not have been baptized
by John; and He would not have sent us (only) into the world to baptize, but
would have sent women to baptize along with us. We too command you that they do
no such thing. Even if they are very wise, and have faith, and know the
Scriptures, we do not permit them to baptize or preach the Gospel.(2)
Another of the cited texts prohibits women from teaching. Here again, to
catch the full import of the text, which is principally concerned with the
behavior of widows, we have to begin the citation a few lines earlier, where we
read:
But on the matter of the destruction of idols and the fact that there is
but one God, on torment and peace, on the kingdom of Christ's name and on his
Lordship, no widow and no layperson is obliged to speak. For inasmuch as they
speak without knowledge of the teaching they bring calumny upon the Word.... If
the heathens who are converted hear the Word of God, unless it is proclaimed to
them in an orderly fashion for the building of eternal life, especially if it
is taught to them by a woman how our Lord was clothed in a body and about the
passion of Christ, they laugh and jest instead of praising the word of
teaching, and each makes himself guilty of the great Judgement.(3)
At this point, the passage referred to by Inter insigniores
begins: It is thus not necessary or even urgently demanded that women be
teachers, especially in reference to the name of Christ and the Redemption by
his passion. For you women and especially you widows are not installed to teach
but to pray and to entreat the Lord God. For He, God, the Lord, Jesus Christ,
our Teacher, sent forth us twelve to teach the people and the heathens. There
were women disciples with us: Mary Magdalene ...; nevertheless, he did not send
them to teach the people. For if it had been necessary that women teach, then
our Teacher would have commanded them to instruct with us.
The U.S. Catholic Conference Commentary on Inter insigniores adds
a reference to the Pseudo-Apostolic Canons, which presents the following
apocryphal dialogue on the subject of women and the celebration of the
Eucharist:
John: You have forgotten, brothers, when our Master asked for bread and
the cup and blessed them, saying, 'This is my body and blood', that He did not
enjoin them [the women] to stand with us. Martha: It was because He saw Mary
snickering (subridentem). Mary: No, not because I laughed, but [because of
what] He said to us earlier, when he taught us that what is weak shall be saved
through what is stronger. Cephas: Also recall that He ordered that women pray
not standing upright, but sitting on the ground.(4)
Except for the case noted below, none of the other texts cited by Inter
insigniores appeals to Christ's will. Origen, commenting on 1 Cor 14:34,
insists on literal obedience to its stricture, for "women cannot have
permission to speak in the Church,"(5) while Tertullian is outraged by the
"boldness and audacity" of women who "dare" to "preach, teach, argue, undertake
exorcism, perhaps even baptize"(6)--in short, to exercise the public and
official ecclesiastical functions reserved to men. Chrysostom rejects all women
and most men on the grounds that the immense responsibility of the pastoral
office requires those who surpass others in excellence of spirit as Saul
overtopped the Hebrew nation in bodily stature, indeed, as rational man
surpasses irrational creatures.(7) The texts cited by Inter insigniores
from Irenaeus( 8) and Firmilian of Caesarea(9) also fail to mention the will of
Christ.
The one exception is the Panarion of Epiphanius, composed to refute the
Collyridians, who so worshipped the Mother of God as to show her divine honor
by "offering bread to her name." Though chiefly concerned to combat female
deities, Epiphanius takes the occasion to inveigh against women priests,
perhaps because in his mind the latter were an inevitable harbinger of the
former. In any case, he compiles long lists of priests from both the Old and
New Testaments to show that "never since the foundation of the world has a
woman been a priest," adding that if God had wanted women to be priests or hold
"the administration of any office" in the Church, then Mary would have had to a
priest. "But He did not will it." Not even baptism was entrusted to her, for
Christ was baptized by John.(10) Of this argument, i.e. from Christ's
unwillingness to ordain Mary, Butler says that with it the argument from
Christ's institution "begins to take the form that would be classical in the
West" (65). I can only say I find it difficult to attribute classical status to
an argument which first emerges in a few scattered and contentious texts of the
third and fourth century, e.g. the Panarion and the Didascalia, and then
resurfaces after a millenium in the attempts by a handful of later scholastics
(e.g. Scotus and Durandus) to defend the Church's justice towards women in the
matter of priestly ordination.(11)
It is the foregoing texts, only one of which is actually presented and
none of which is examined in its historical purpose and Denkform, much less
assessed as to its doctrinal authority, that provide the cited basis for
Butler's contention that "admission to priestly and episcopal office is
consistently identified with admission to the office of the Twelve" (ibid.).
When the texts are actually examined, however, the weak and sporadic nature of
their appeal to Christ's institution, as well as their "traditional" view of
women, becomes palpable.
In reference to Scripture , the passages most frequently cited,
as Butler herself notes, are 1 Cor 14:34-35 and 1 Tim 2:12, two of the most
notoriously subordinationist texts in the entire canon. I have found no
citations in the earlier tradition of the texts cited in Ordinatio
sacerdotalis of Christ's historical call of the Twelve. From a purely
exegetical viewpoint, then, I do not consider it improper to view the link
between the Scriptural texts cited by Pope John Paul II and the question of
women's ordination as "tenuous at best."
Finally, unless a more convincing refutation is forthcoming, I stand by
my argument from the "voluntaristic" spirit of post-1277 theology for the
sudden emergence in that period of the appeal to Christ's institution. First,
Butler's attempt to include Thomas and Bonaventure as upholders of the
extrinsic argument because of their acceptance of church tradition on
the ordination of women is clearly not to the point, since the external
argument in question is the appeal to the authority not of the Church but of
Christ himself. Second, a historical fact, the effects of which in other
theological areas has been documented, seems a far more plausible explanation
of the scholastic appeal to Christ's institution after, and not before, 1277
than does a theological question (that of the Church's justice towards women)
the historical provenance of which is left unexplained.
The Teaching of St. Thomas
My response to Sara Butler's critique of my reading of Thomas will
begin with the general and non-problematic question of "natural resemblance" in
Thomas's theology of the priesthood and conclude with the specific and
textually debatable question of in persona christi.
The Notion of Natural Resemblance
Sara Butler interprets Thomas's notion of "natural resemblance" along
the lines of a "gender symbolism" (76-80) that assimilates it to the thought of
Bonaventure (68-69), though her argument is, I must say, not easily grasped. As
far as I can see, her point is that although Thomas, in treating women's
ordination, does interpret the "natural gender symbolism" inherent in the
sacramental sign in a hierarchical sense and does not explicitly link it to
representation of Christ, it is possible to interpret this natural symbolism
non-hierarchically in order to illuminate the reasonableness of refusing
ordination to women (80). By this non-hierarchical interpretation she seems to
have in mind a nuptiality rooted in a "complementarity oriented to self-gift"
(68). A retrieval of Thomas along these lines would presumably enable us to
link Thomas's thought to that of Bonaventure on the basis of their "common
presupposition that the priest symbolizes Christ" (ibid.).
In all this, Butler ignores the fundamental relation between nature and
grace that governs Thomas's conception of the sacraments. For Thomas, the
natural sign which serves as the matter of any sacrament bears a natural
likeness to the effect of that sacrament in sanctifying its recipient:
among sensible things, that one is used for the sacramental
signification which is most commonly employed for the action by which the
sacramental effect is signified: thus water is most commonly used by men for
bodily cleansing, by which the spiritual cleansing is signified: and therefore
water is employed as the matter of baptism.(12)
This "natural resemblance" between the sacrament's matter and its
grace-effect is spelled out in detail in ST 3, q. 65, a. 1, where Thomas
explains the sevenfold number of the sacraments in light of the analogy between
the spiritual life and the natural life, according as the recipient is
considered as an individual or in relation to the larger community. Thus:
As an individual, one is perfected in the bodily life either directly,
by acquiring some vital perfection, or indirectly, by removing some impediment
to life such as sickness or the like. Direct perfection is threefold: (1) by
generation, whereby one begins to exist and live, the spiritual counterpart to
which is baptism, which is a spiritual regeneration ... (2) by growth, whereby
one attains perfect size and strength, the spiritual counterpart of which is
confirmation, in which the Holy Spirit is given as a strengthening; (3) by
nourishment, whereby one's life and strength are preserved, the spiritual
counterpart to which is the Eucharist. [In regard to indirect perfection,
Thomas uses the analogy of bodily sickness to explain penance and last
anointing as spiritual healings.] In regard to the whole community, a person is
perfected in two ways: (1) by receiving power to rule the community and
exercise public acts, the spiritual counterpart to which is the sacrament of
order ...; and (2) in regard to natural propagation, which is perfected in both
the bodily and spiritual lives by marriage, since it is not only a sacrament
but a function of nature.
Perhaps nothing so clearly exemplifies Thomas's synthesis of nature and
grace than this teaching. For Thomas explains the number and nature of the
sacraments on the basis neither of their historical origin nor an alleged
"direct reference to the mysteries of Christ," but on the basis of that human
nature which they elevate and perfect. This approach is the very opposite of an
imaging of grace by nature. The natural signs do not image an already existing
Christian world--even if that world be taken as the "constitutive events of
Christianity"--any more than, as Thomas insists in his Aristotelian critique of
the Platonic eidos, the concept in the mind images an idea existing in some
supersensible realm. Rather, the natural signs represent the basic structure
and dynamism of human existence which the grace of Christ presupposes, redeems,
and elevates; indeed, only on this basis can the sacraments appear not as a
reduplicative and hence alienating superstructure, but as the incarnation of
grace in human existence itself.
With specific reference to the sacrament of order, ST 3, q. 65, a. 1
makes it clear beyond even unreasonable doubt that for Thomas the sacrament of
order perfects natural "eminence" in the public order of society by granting
the recipient preeminence in the ecclesial community. For Thomas, it is
precisely and only women's inability to signify public eminence in the natural
order that make them congenitally unfit for the reception of orders,(13) a
point underscored by his identification of this "natural resemblance" with
woman's natural (as contrasted with a slave's merely historical) "state of
subjection" in the one text where he speaks of "natural resemblance,"(14) a
text which Butler fails to discuss and the interpretation of which by Inter
insigniores I rightly characterized as "completely bowdlerized." I repeat,
then, without qualification, what I said in my article: "None of this has to do
in any way, shape, or form with a 'natural resemblance' to Christ himself."
It is important to add that the nuptial image, far from transcending the
subordinationist framework, as Butler would have it, is simply a variant of it.
The "self-giving" and "complementarity" of which she speaks could only
transcend subordinationism if they signified a reciprocity of equals in the
modern sense. But then they could no longer image the relation of Christ to the
Church. For Christ is the Bridegroom of the Church not in the modern sense but
as its head and life-giving source, as Eph 5:22-32 makes abundantly clear. It
is, moreover, precisely this grace of headship which the ministerial priesthood
cannot directly represent, since it is itself part of the graced totality of
the Church and is itself a grace deriving from the head.
In regard to Bonaventure, my failure to include the portion of his text
which speaks of woman's incapacity to signify Christ as mediator stemmed not
from some kind of "cover-up," as Butler seems to imply (67), but from quite
different reasons. First, not only is the text in question less than blazingly
clear (since the priest's alleged resemblance to Christ is filtered through the
notion of mediatorship), but it is more or less stray and nontechnical in
nature, as is the passage cited by Butler in which Bonaventure uses nuptial
imagery to describe the bishop's relation to the Church. The marginality of
these symbolic perspectives for Bonaventure's teaching on the subject seems
confirmed by the fact that neither appears in his treatment of order in the
Breviloquium.(15) Second, in failing to note such texts I was simply following
Inter insigniores, which cites Bonaventure in Section 1 as a witness to
the extrinsic argument from Christ's institution, but not in Section 5 to
support its claim of "natural resemblance." If, as Butler contends (68), the
authors of Inter insigniores based their view of natural resemblance on
Bonaventure (by way of Rezette's article), they failed to mention it.
"In persona christi"
The opposition between Butler's interpretation and mine on this central
theological issue is best explained, I think, by radical differences in
theological methods and aims. On a purely exegetical level, our opposing
interpretations seem to me to reflect the difference between what Lonergan
called undifferentiated and differentiated consciousness, the tool of
differentiation being theoria, a tool uniquely applicable in the case of
Thomas. For Thomas's genius was precisely theoretical in nature, as is apparent
in the characteristic dominance of technical vocabularly that, introduced and
applied by the ubiquitous distinguendum est, continually lifts his discourse
above the rhetorical, the descriptive, or the merely metaphorical to the level
of theoretical differentiation and allows him to speak, as is so wonderfully
said, formalissime. It is precisely such a theoretically differentiated and
technical level of analysis which the in persona christi axiom demands,
and this level which I pursued in my original article. Such a perspective, I
would strongly underscore, provides a firm basis for subjecting the lingering
"common sense" representationalism that clings to Thomas's treatment of the
priesthood to theoretical scrutiny and thereby frees us from the hopeless task
of trying to harmonize horizons which remain incommensurate and unreconciled in
Thomas (as perforce in any mind), and so enables us to retrieve what is truly
original, fecund, and forward-looking in his thinking from those elements of
the past which, left unassimilated, retard its momentum towards the future.
My "apophatic" interpretation of in persona christi in Thomas
was an attempt at such a retrieval. I did not, or at least did not intend to,
claim that Thomas consciously and thematically espoused such an apophatic view.
I did claim that the horizon of instrumental causality with which he views the
priesthood and the priestly character (the stated source of the power to
consecrate in persona christi) in general, when thematized and applied
to his mature exposition of the word of Christ as the form of the Eucharist,
moves in a direction opposite to that of representation. I then used the rubric
of anamnesis inherent in Thomas's recitative to advance this retrieval a step
further.
In attempting thus to retrieve what Heidegger would call the "un-spoken"
in Thomas's thought on this matter, I acknowledged and tried to account for the
presence of conflicting and disparate elements, two in particular. The first
was Thomas's occasional use of representational language in treating the
priest's relation to Christ. Butler lays great stress on these texts. The
question, however, is whether their marginality and inherently metaphorical
nature can withstand theoretical scrutiny, as the technical texts can,
especially when they concern a dimension of the Eucharist (e.g. sacrifice)
which Thomas himself did not clearly correlate with his more predominant view
of the Eucharist as meal.
Second, I used the centrality of the Eucharist in Thomas's sacramental
theology to critique Thomas's own subordinationist argument, detailed above,
for refusing the priesthood to women. In this, I called explicit attention to
the unresolved duality of Thomas's views on the priest's hierarchical and
sacramental powers respectively, an irresolution which Butler ignores by
conflating the two (79-80) in an effort to advance her symbolic retrieval of
Thomas.
Beyond these hermeneutical issues, Butler and I diverge on two
substantive systematic points. First, she accuses me of espousing the
"inherently problematic" view of an "apophatic sacrament" (75 n. 62), and
counters this "central flaw in [my] argument" by insisting that for Thomas the
priest recites the words simul et recitative et significative (71) in such a
way that "the person of the priest, in a certain manner, enters into the form
of the sacrament" (72), i.e., by "taking Christ's role" (73). Thomas's
significative, however, does not concern the priest's alleged representation of
Christ, but his referencing of the historical words of Christ, the true form of
the sacrament, to the sacramental matter here and now present. This referencing
is completely explainable by way of the priest's intention to use his
instrumental power to direct the words of Christ to the bread and wine before
him, a kind of intentional "pointing." That it involves no imaging of Christ
for Thomas seems clear from the fact that he does not invoke this notion to
explain the significative.(16) Nor should we expect him to. For the sole form
of the Eucharist is the word of Christ: "This is my body, this is my blood." It
is this form which, uttered anamnestically over the bread and wine, gives
sacramental visibility to Christ as the true speaker of the form and thereby
gives the Eucharist its sacramental visibility as the body and blood of Christ.
What is apophatic is not the sacrament, but the ministerial priest's
self-distancing utterance of its form so that Christ's speaking may appear in
its effective power. Butler's statement that the priest "pronounces the words
of consecration both materially (as the words of another) and formally (as his
own) at one and the same time" (72) reverses the truth of the matter exactly.
For the sole formal speaker of the words--as is made uniquely clear in a
concelebrated Mass--is the one whose body and blood is signified by these
words: Christ.
The second and even more far-reaching point concerns Butler's entire
notion of symbolic or sacramental representation. For Butler, it is "clear to
any onlooker that ... the priest is ritually enacting Christ's part in relation
to the other worshippers," reciting his words, repeating his gestures, serving
as host at the sacrificial meal (74). Such a view represents what I, for my
part, consider the "central flaw" in Butler's analysis: a naive parallelism
between the Last Supper and the Mass which essentially bypasses the primarily
ecclesial form of the Mass as act of the Church. It is only within and not
outside of this ecclesial form that the role of the priest and the meaning of
in persona christi can legitimately be determined. In Thomist terms, to
view the Mass as a direct image of the Last Supper is to confuse the ontic with
the epistemological relation between image and exemplar and thus relapse into
an uncritical Platonism that ignores the exigencies of the a posteriori
way.
In the matter at hand, thematic insistence on this way introduces a
clarity and discipline that dispels the naivete which pervades Butler's
analysis, surprisingly, I would add, because the basis for applying the a
posteriori method to the sacraments was laid over 30 years ago by Rahner and
Schillebeeckx. As Schillebeeckx put it: "Each sacrament is a personal saving
act of the risen Christ himself, but realized in the visible form of an
official act of the Church as such.... Just as Christ through his risen body
acts invisibly in the world, he acts visibly in and through his earthly body,
the Church, in such a way that the sacraments are the personal saving acts of
Christ realized as institutional acts of the Church."(17) It is precisely these
ecclesial acts, in all their concrete specificity and density, that provide the
ineluctable "phantasm" for our attempts to elucidate the meaning of the
priest's transcendental relation to Christ. Butler's analysis bypasses this
ecclesial concreteness.
Finally, Butler's and my differing interpretations of the issues at hand
reflect sharply divergent purposes. Her main concern is to justify the teaching
of the magisterium and the tradition of the Church on the question of
women's ordination, whereas mine is to uphold the intellectual integrity of
theology and to clarify the purely ministerial nature of the Church's
priesthood vis-a-vis the absolute priesthood of Christ, the question of women's
ordination being instrumental to these concerns. If I criticize the Church's
tradition on the latter, it is only to highlight the greatness of its
tradition on the former. For there are traditions and there is
Tradition , and it is a disservice rather than a service to the Church
to mistake the one for the other. As to the "burden of proof" (63 n. 9), I
believe that the weakness of foundation that appears when the historical
tradition against women priests is actually examined shows this burden
to fall on the magisterium, a situation which does not obtain in the case of
other traditions which are "in possession," e.g. the virginity of the Mother of
God, a doctrine incomparably rich in theological, spiritual, and existential
meaning.
Greater still, I would conclude, is the Church's tradition ,
indeed, confession, of the primacy of Christ. For it is he--"Ipse, the only
one, Christ, King, Head," as Hopkins so powerfully invokes him(18)--whose glory
alone may shine in the Church, he before whom we all, confessing and serving,
can be nothing but "apophatic." Unless Catholic sacramental theology makes this
primacy unequivocally clear, it gives continuing credence to the not wholly
unjustified Protestant charge that Catholicism impedes rather than mediates the
relation between Christ and his people.
Added material Dennis Michael Ferrara Washington, D.C. Sara Butler,
M.S.B.T. Mundelein Seminary Mundelein, Illinois
Footnotes
1. "Representation or Self-Effacement? The Axiom in persona
christi in St. Thomas and the Magisterium," TS 55 (1994) 195-224;
henceforth referred to as "Representation."
2. Ibid. 195 n. 1.
3. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Declaration on the
Question of the Admission of Women to the Ministerial Priesthood (Washington,
D.C.: USCC, 1977); AAS 69 (1977) 89-116; hereafter, Inter
insigniores. I will cite page numbers (in parentheses) for the Declaration
and the Commentary from the USCC edition.
4. For the English text, see "Apostolic Letter on Ordination and Women,"
Origins 24 (1994) 49-52.
5. "The Ordination of Women: Tradition and Meaning," TS 55
(1994) 706-19; henceforth referred to as "Ordination." Ferrara asserts that his
intention is "to combat the hierarchical interpretation of in persona
christi that dominates recent magisterial teaching" (706).
6. Ibid. 716.
7. This distinction is found in Inter insigniores, section 5
(11) and in the Commentary (30).
8. Joseph Ratzinger, "La Lettre Ordinatio sacerdotalis
confirme ce que l'Eglise a toujours vecu dans la foi," La Documentation
Catholique no. 2097 (3 Juillet 1994) 611-15.
9. Ferrara insists that the magisterium must "explain its position, and
the mind of Christ himself, with reasons other than have appeared in the
tradition of the Church thus far" ("Ordination" 718). He holds that the
burden of proof rests on those who defend the tradition rather than
those who promote change. This raises the deeper question of the role of
tradition . I believe the burden of proof lies on those who argue for
change.
10. Ibid. 706.
11. Ferrara, "Representation" 195, n. 1. The Commentary (31)
agrees that "it is impossible to be content with making statements, with
appealing to the intellectual docility of Christians; faith seeks
understanding, and tries to distinguish the grounds for and the coherence of
what is taught."
12. The Commentary (22) makes it clear that St. Thomas's "most famous"
argument, quia mulier est in statu subjectionis, is the one being
rejected, even as it indicates the difficulty of disentangling the
philosophical concept from its traditional biblical sources (Gen 1-3; 1 Tim
2:12-14).
13. Ferrara, "Ordination" 718, n. 43. The need for a renewed
anthropology was wellestablished by George H. Tavard in the early years of the
contemporary debate. See his Woman in Christian Tradition (Notre Dame:
University of Notre Dame, 1973). In my opinion, this inquiry must include
further consideration of the theological relevance of the maleness of Christ.
14. Since Ferrara does not open up this line of reasoning in his essays,
I will not attempt to do so in this response. Still, it is clearly pertinent to
Ferrara's argument, and he admits to being baffled by the way the magisterium
appeals to it ("Ordination" 709-10).
15. Ibid. 709.
16. Inter insigniores, section 4 (10).
17. See Joan Gibson, "Could Christ Have Been Born a Woman? A Medieval
Debate," Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 8 (1992) 65-82. The
scholastics maintained that whereas a female incarnation was within God's
power, incarnation as a male was more fitting. They presupposed that whatever
God actually did is most excellent.
18. Ferrara, "Ordination" 710.
19. Ibid 714-15. See Bonaventure, In IV Sent., d. 25, a. 2, q. 1; Thomas
Aquinas, In IV Sent., d. 25, q. 2, a. 1.
20. The Pauline ban was, in turn, supported by appeal to Gen 2:18-24 and
1 Cor 11:7.
21. This other pattern of reasoning came to clear expression in the
East, especially in the Antiochian and Egyptian traditions (Inter
insigniores, section 1 [5]) and Commentary [30]). For citations of the
original sources, see notes 7 and 8 of the Declaration.
22. Epiphanius employs the first line of argument; in addition, he
appeals to the Church's constant tradition . See Manfred Hauke, Women
in the Priesthood: A Systematic Analysis in the Light of the Order of Creation
and Redemption (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1988) 416-18. This entered the
canonical tradition in the West as a result of its use by Pope Innocent
III. See the citation in Inter insigniores, section 2 (7).
23. He holds that "attempts to justify the maleness of the priest by
appealing to the normativeness of Christ's call of the Twelve" were unknown
prior to Vatican II ("Ordination" 718).
24. This revision is found especially in Pope John Paul II's Apostolic
Letter On the Dignity and Vocation of Women (Mulieris dignitatem)
(Washington: U.S. Catholic Conference, 1988); AAS 80 (1988) 1639-1729.
25. Commentary 27.
26. Bonaventure cites Paul in some of his objections, but he appears to
rely more heavily on the authority of the tradition , summed up in
Gratian's Decretals. Thomas cites 1 Tim 2:12, conflated with 1 Cor
11:34. Modern readers sometimes underestimate the weight given by the
scholastics to the "argument from authority" in the sed contra of St.
Thomas. See Leo V. Elder, "Structure et fonction de l'argument "sed
contra" dans la Somme Theologique de saint Thomas," Divus Thomas 80
(1977) 245-60.
27. See the analysis of John Hilary Martin, "The Injustice of Not
Ordaining Women: A Problem for Medieval Theologians," TS 48 (1987)
303-16.
28. Ferrara, "Ordination" 718.
29. Ibid. I would concede that the precise points from Bonaventure's
treatment which are now regarded as pertinent were not reported in the
tradition represented by manual theology. See, e.g., Joseph A. Wahl, The
Exclusion of Woman from Holy Orders, Abstract of a Dissertation, Catholic
University of America Studies in Sacred Theology (Second Series) 110
(Washington: Catholic University of America, 1959) 48, 53-54.
30. I have attempted to elucidate some of the implications of
Bonaventure's position as it relates to our contemporary inquiry regarding
women's capacity for priestly ordination, in "The Priest as Sacrament of Christ
the Bridegroom," Worship 66 (1992) 498-517.
31. "Le Sacerdoce et la femme chez Saint Bonaventure,"
Antonianum 51 (1976) 520-27.
32. Ferrara, "Ordination" 712. Bonaventure writes: "In hoc
enim sacramento persona quae ordinatur significat Christum Mediatorem; et
quoniam mediator solum in virili sexu fuit et per virilem sexum potest
significari: ideo possibilitas suscipiendi ordines solum viris competit, qui
soli possunt naturaliter repraesentare et secundum characteris susceptionem
actu signum huius ferre." Ferrara excerpts this only up to the word
"mediatorem." See Bonaventure, In IV Sent. d. 25, a. 2, q. 1, concl. (Opera
Theologica Selecta [Quarrachi-Firenze: Collegii S. Bonaventurae, 1949]
4.639).
33. Ibid. 638.
34. This is the line of development pursued by Pope John Paul II in
Mulieris dignitatem nos. 23-27. The nuptial analogy relies on the
symbolism of bodily sex, but understood as a specific, reciprocal capacity for
the personal gift of self, not simply as physical or biological sex. I have
drawn out some of the implications in "The Priest as Sacrament."
35. Rezette provides this analysis ("Le Sacerdoce et la femme"
525-26.) A formal consideration of Bonaventure's position would have to take
into account his other arguments, especially his appeal to the traditional view
that a man, by reason of his sex, is a more fitting image of God.
36. Bonaventure also teaches that it is because the priest speaks
"in persona Christi" that he can say "my body" and "my blood" when he
consecrates the Eucharist (IV Sent. d. 8, a. 1, q. 1, concl. [Quaracchi, Opera
IV, 464]; cited by Rezette, "Le Sacerdoce et la femme" 527).
37. Ferrara, "Ordination" 716.
38. Ibid. Ferrara proposes a distinction, in Thomas, between the
priest's hierarchical and his sacramental role ("Representation" 203). I
would follow Bernard Dominique Marliangeas, who believes Thomas intentionally
linked these roles (Cles pour une theologie du ministere: in persona
christi, in persona Ecclesiae [Paris: Beauchesne 1978] 227). On this same
point, Ferrara's claim that Thomas never invoked 2 Cor 2:10 in a eucharistic
context cannot be supported; the key passage he dismisses directly refers to
the New Testament priesthood in the context of offering sacrifice (ST 3, q. 22,
a. 4 c).
39. This might have come to full explicitation had Thomas lived to
complete his Summa theologiae. In fact, we have only what he wrote in
his Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, a work written some
twenty years earlier. This article, In IV Sent. d. 25, q. 2, a. 1, was
incorporated into the Supplement (Q. 39, a. 1) of the Summa theologiae
by his disciples after his death.
40. I will confine my inquiry, as Ferrara has, to the doctrine of
Aquinas and its relation to what is proposed in current Catholic teaching. I
will indicate page numbers from Ferrara's article, "Representation," in
the text.
41. ST 3, q. 78, a. 1 c.
4.2 See ST 3, q. 78, sed contra.
43. ST 3, q. 78, a. 5 c. (I am using the Blackfriars translation
of the Summa Theologiae [New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963]).
44. Ibid.
45. This expression is drawn from In IV Sent. d. 8, q. 2, a. 1, sol. 4
ad 4. Striking out beyond the thought of his predecessors, Guerric of St.
Quentin and St. Albert the Great, Thomas adds the requirement of pronouncing
the words significative. Marliangeas discusses this whole question (Cles
89-91).
46. See Aimo M. Roguet, Saint Thomas d'Aquin, Somme Theologique,
L'Eucharistie (Paris: Desclee & Cie, 1960) 1.393-405; henceforth
referred to as Roguet, L'Eucharistie.
47. Ferrara does not draw these conclusions, but seems in fact to
promote what Thomas rejects, namely, the independence of the eucharistic
celebration from the Last Supper and the differentiation of speakers in the
form as uttered ("Representation" 210-11).
48. Marliangeas shows that Thomas draws the idea of acting or speaking
in persona christi from a patristic tradition of biblical
exegesis, which is rooted in 2 Cor 2:10 (Cles 33-60).
49. L'Eucharistie 402. Roguet notes that Thomas is very aware of
the temptation to assimilate the sacramental structure of the Eucharist to that
of the other sacraments, especially the role of the minister of baptism to that
of the minister of the Eucharist (ibid. 392-93).
50. In IV Sent. d. 8, q. 2, a. 3, sol. 9, cited by Roguet
(L'Eucharistie 402-3). Thomas notes that the priest has a greater
similarity to the principal cause than the word, since he is a sign of Christ,
but the word is in some respects more powerful than the priest inasmuch as it
is the sign of the effect. He uses the analogy of a writer, who employs both
his hand and his pen to write: the pen (like the word) is nearer to the
writing, but the hand (like the priest) to the writer.
51. Thomas explains that only a priest has the power of consecrating
in persona Christi (ST 3, q. 82, a. 1). He states further that
"the consecrating virtue is not only in the words of consecration, but also in
the power delivered to the priest when he is dedicated and ordained (ibid. ad
1).
52. Roguet insists on Thomas's distinction between acting "by the power"
and "in the person" of Christ (L'Eucharistie 398). Ferrara agrees with
this ("Representation" 203). Marliangeas, on the other hand, seems to
suppose that Thomas identifies the two (Cles 129, 134).
53. Inter insigniores section 5 (13); Commentary 32.
54. In Ferrara's comparison, "Only a man (or an ungainly and heavily
disguised woman) can play Abraham Lincoln; but anyone can quote the words of
Christ" ("Representation" 211).
55. Thomas argues that administering the sacrament belongs to the
priest, just as the consecration does, for "he consecrates in the porson of
Christ, who consecrated his body at the Last Supper and also gave it to others
to receive" (ST 3, q. 82, a. 3 c). See also Marliangeas, Cles 95.
56. It seems Ferrara pays insufficient attention to the contextual
situation of the priest vis-a-vis the worshipping assembly. Here is where the
value of sexual differentiation comes into play, signifying sacramentally the
relation of Christ and the Church.
57. ST 3, q. 83, a. 1 ad 3.
58. Ansgar Vonier writes: "At no time do we deal in the Eucharist with
Christ in his natural condition, in propria specie.... He must be there in
specie aliena in order to safeguard the veracity of the sacrament as a sign"
(A Key to the Doctrine of the Eucharist [Westminster, Md.: Newman, 1960]
32).
59. Jean Marie Tillard provides an excellent survey of the use of this
concept in Catholic teaching since Vatican II; see his "Sacrificial Terminology
and the Eucharist," One in Christ 17 (1981) 306-23. One function of this
biblical concept is to exclude the error that the Eucharist only "calls to
mind" the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ.
60. Ibid. 314.
61. Roguet speaks of a "dynamic, accidental, and transitory
representation" of Christ by the priest in the eucharistic celebration
(L'Eucharistie 399).
62. This is the fundamental flaw in Ferrara's thesis. More generally,
there is something inherently problematic about the concept of an "apophatic"
sacrament, for sacramental reality is inextricably linked with the Incarnation.
63. Inter insigniores, section 5 (12), citing Aquinas, In IV
Sent. d. 25, q. 2, a. 2, q. 1 ad 4. Also see ST Suppl. q. 39, a. 3 ad
4.
64. The Commentary notes that both Thomas and Bonaventure "require that
the sign should have natural meaningfulness" (32). It also makes clear that
maleness is thought to link the priest to Christ at the level of the visible
sign (sacramentum tantum); the sacramental character of ordination (res et
sacramentum), which is spiritual and invisible, is what constitutes the priest
Christ's representative.
65. ST Suppl. q. 32, a. 1.
66. He teaches that the ordination of a woman would be invalid as well
as unlawful. A woman is incompetent to receive orders, he explains, in the same
way that a healthy person is incompetent to receive extreme unction.
67. ST 3, q. 67, a. 4.
68. This was commonly taught and enforced until the eleventh century.
69. Here the gender symbolism is directly related to arguments which
depend on a faulty anthropology, so I will not comment on them.
70. The chief reason offered to explain the capacity of a layman is the
fact that baptism, being necessary for salvation, must be accessible.
71. See ST 3, q. 67, a. 5 on the capacity of a non-baptized
person. This is another reminder that the notion of "minister" is analogous,
not univocal.
72. ST 3, q. 67, a. 3 makes this explicit. Article 4 alludes to
this when it says that "just as a layman can baptize, as Christ's minister, so
can a woman."
73. ST 3, q. 78, a. 1, c; q. 82, a. 1, c and ad 2.
74. Section 5 (13) and Commentary (31). A. G. Martimort discusses the
implications of this point in his essay, "The Value of a Theological Formula
'in persona christi,'" in The Order of Priesthood: Nine Commentaries on
the Vatican Decree Inter insigniores (Huntington, Ind.: Our Sunday
Visitor, 1978) 85-97 at 92-94.
75. In IV Sent. d. 25, q. 2, a. 1; see ST Suppl. q. 39, a. 1.
76. The Commentary on Inter insigniores explicitly disowns such
explanations to the extent that they are based on the conviction that women are
inferior to men (22, 31). The Declaration itself is more cautious (section 1
[5]).
77. Contemporary feminist analysis inclines some to read into this a
"soul-body" dualism, or to see in it reference to "biological sex" as opposed
to "socially-constituted gender." It is likely that Thomas views this in the
more classical manner (admittedly, entangled with "hierarchical"
considerations), viz., that the bodily condition of being male or female bears
a certain symbolism. While he does not agree, e.g., that spiritual generation
in baptism needs to be symbolized by an appropriately male minister, he
evidently accepts as a given the fact that male and female capacities for
generation have symbolic value.
78. Notice that Thomas does not prohibit women from exercising authority
over men in the secular order (ST Suppl. q. 39, 1 ad 3).
79. Thomas required that the sign have natural meaningfulness in these
two respects (Commentary, 32). He considered the priest's action in persona
Christi chiefly in its distinction from and relation to his action in persona
Ecclesiae. See Marliangeas, Cles 89-140. Thomas is more inclined to
conceptualize the relation of Christ to the Church as that of Head to Body than
that of Bridegroom to Bride. It appears to me that this explains why gender
symbolism, taken in the sense of the natural differentiation of the sexes, does
not occupy a significant place in his reasoning.
80. Section 5 (13). Thomas uses these same three images - head,
shepherd, bridegroom - in discussing the need for holy orders as a service to
the Church's unity, linking the sacramental and hierarchical ministry of the
ordained to Christ's service (Summa contra Gentiles 4.76.7).
1. "On the Perfection of the Spiritual Life," concl., cited by Josef
Pieper, The Silence of St. Thomas (Chicago: Regnery-Logos, 1965)
4-5.
2. The Ethiopic Didascalia: Translations of Christian
Literature, Series IV. Oriental Texts, tr. J. M. Harden (New York:
Macmillan, 1920) 91.
3. As cited in Haye van der Meer, Women Priests in
the Catholic Church? A Theological-Historical Investigation (Philadelphia:
Temple University, 1973) 51.
4. Didascaliae Apostolorum: Canonum
Ecclesiasticorum Traditionis Apostolicae Versiones Latinae, ed. E. Tidner
(Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1965) 111-13 (author's translation).
5.
"Fragmentum [no. 74] in 1 Cor.," Journal of Theological Studies 10
(1909) 41-42; van der Meer, Women Priests 60.
6. De praescriptione
haereticorum 41.5; van der Meer, Women Priests 52.
7. On the
Priesthood 2.2.
8. Adversus haereses 1.13.
9. As cited in
Cyprian, Epistle 75; van der Meer, Women Priests 58.
10. Panarion
79.2-4; van der Meer, Women Priests 47-49.
11. John Hilary Martin,
O.P., "The Injustice of Not Ordaining Women: A Problem for Medieval
Theologians," TS 48 (1987) 303-16, at 312-14.
12. Summa
theologiae (ST) 3, q. 65, a. 1 c.
13. ST Suppl. q. 39, a. 1.
14. ST Suppl. q. 39, a. 3 ad 4.
15. Breviloquium 6.3.
16.
ST 3, q. 78, a. 5.
17. E. Schillebeeckx, Christ, the Sacrament of
the Encounter with God (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1963) 59.
18. Gerard
Manley Hopkins, "The Wreck of the Deutschland," Stanza 28, in Poems and
Prose, ed. W. H. Gardner (Baltimore: Penguin, 1966) 21.
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