Women's ordination: six responses.

Avery Dulles 

The question of women's ordination, unavoidable though it was, became acute as a result of recent changes in Protestant and Anglican polity. John Paul II, to all appearances, wants to prevent the Catholic church from being torn apart by this issue as the Anglican communion has been. He may also be anxious to reassure Anglicans who are thinking of leaving their own communion over this issue that the Catholic church is not likely to follow suit. Ecumenically, he is concerned with cultivating closer relations with the Orthodox, who reject any feminine priesthood. And of course he has strong convictions about the nature of priesthood and the roles of men and women in the church.

For these or similar motives the pope issued a short apostolic letter, Ordinatio sacerdotalis, dated May 22, 1994. Here, in virtue of his ministry of "confirming the brethren," he declares "that the church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the church's faithful." Following Paul VI, John Paul II relies primarily on arguments from authority: the example of Christ in choosing his Apostles, the constant and universal tradition of the church (not only Catholic but also Orthodox), and the recent teaching of the magisterium. He mentions also that the Apostles, imitating Christ, chose only men as their successors in the ministry. This final argument depends somewhat on one's interpretation of the New Testament data, but it seems to hold regarding the offices of bishop and presbyter, which are here in question.

The pope alludes in passing to "other theological reasons." Very likely, he has in mind the "iconic" argument that only men can properly represent Christ at the altar, acting in persona Christi. In Mulieris dignitatem (1988) he treated the anthropological and ecclesiological aspects of the question in the perspectives of a rich theology of creation and redemption. Such reasoning, based on the very nature of priesthood and human gender differences, can help to show that the action of Jesus and the tradition of the church were not dictated by sociological factors but belong to the permanent constitution of the church.

These theological arguments, intended to give added intelligibility to the evidence from Scripture and tradition, do not preclude all possible objections. It would be excessive to demand apodictic proofs for the church's teaching on this, or other, matters. Few, if any, doctrines of the faith can be ultimately confirmed without reliance on arguments from authority.

A few critics have expressed regrets that the pope did not choose to speak in unison with the bishops. But the pope is always free to exercise his ordinary magisterium as successor of Peter and pastor of the whole church (Lumen gentium, 22). I have no doubt that some consultation with bishops did precede this statement. The development of a common statement from the universal episcopate would have been a long and cumbersome process.

In Ordinatio sacerdotalis the pope refrains from proclaiming a new dogma, as he might have done had he felt it opportune. Instead he confirms by his apostolic authority a tradition that he takes to be already binding, for the reasons mentioned above. He accordingly declares that his teaching is "to be definitively held"--an expression normally used since Vatican II (Lumen gentium, 25), and presumably also in the present document, to designate the kind of assent that is owed to irreversible Catholic teaching.

From the pope's assertion that the reservation of priestly orders to men pertains to the divine constitution of the church, one may infer that he regards it as contained in the deposit of revelation and as pertaining to the apostolicity of the church, which we confess in the creed. But since the doctrine has not been clearly defined by an infallible exercise of the magisterium, those who deny it are not to be accused of heresy (canon 749, #3). Even if revealed, it ranks relatively low in the hierarchy of truths.

Can Catholic theology treat the question as an open one? In view of the supreme teaching authority of the pope and the forcefulness of the present declaration, I would judge that theologians are no longer free to advocate opposed positions. While legitimate questions can be asked, Catholic theology cannot responsibly contradict the official teaching on this point.

The recent pronouncement has provoked dismay in some circles, in which the ordination of women is regarded as a matter of justice and equality. Conscious of this difficulty, the pope devotes three paragraphs of his short letter to the reaffirmation of his unwavering position that men and women have equal dignity before God and that the role of women in the life and mission of the church is absolutely irreplaceable. Since the letter was issued, a large number of bishops in the United States and Canada have echoed this concern. Archbishop Rembert Weakland of Milwaukee, dissatisfied with current solutions, issued a moving cri de coeur, asking how he can communicate the present decision to women who feel marginalized in their church. He puts his finger on a pastoral concern that should be taken with the utmost seriousness. (Archbishop Weakland's response is printed in the June 17 issue of Commonweal. It may also be found, together with six other statements by North American bishops, in the June 9 issue of Origins.)

It would be futile and counterproductive for Catholics to react with bitterness or weary resignation, although such feelings need not be denied where they exist. Believers recognize that Christian faith involves the acceptance of "hard sayings," contrary to what they might have thought if left to their own devices. It is a blessing to have in the Catholic church a divinely instituted authority that can settle contentious issues and dispel false expectations.

The effort to find new channels for the abilities and energies of dedicated women should be encouraged. Scripture and church history testify to the creative ideas and exploits of many holy women, powerful in word and deed. The example of their loyal service can inspire new initiatives appropriate to our own age and culture. Ordinatio sacerdotalis, besides putting an end to some recent debates, can be a point of departure for building new relationships between women and men in the church. This process must now begin.

Avery Dulles, S.J., holds the Laurence J. McGinley Chair at Fordham University.

Regina Plunkett Dowling

I can remember asking my father, one summer day when I was little, why there were so many clam shells left smashed on the road by the beach. (Since I collected shells, I mourned all these poor broken pieces.) My father told me that the seagulls liked to eat the clams, but they had no way of prying them open, and so they carried them up into the air and dropped them from a great height, trying to smash them open.

When I first read the news of the pope's apostolic letter, all my carefully guarded emotions and crefully arranged thoughts broke apart and scattered. I remembered then the broken bits of clam shells on the road, and thought, I have been dropped from a great height.

Here, then, are some few fragments, gathered if not yet made whole:

1. Root and Branch. The pope effectively lays the axe to the very roots of the flourishing debate over women's ordination. By locating the ban on women's ordination in the will of Christ himself, a will transcending "the sociological or cultural motives peculiar to his [Jesus'] time," the pope intends to rule out every conceivable challenge to the teaching. Questions of historical reconstruction, the theological function of narrative and metaphor, the practice of the early Pauline churches, or the pastoral theology of Paul himself: All are implicitly ruled irrelevant. To cite one example: were we to unearth tomorrow a papyrus letter from Paul to a woman church-leader, giving her instructions on the proper way to run the Lord's Supper in her housechurch (not an outlandish possibility at all, given the active ministries of women like Prisca and Phoebe), even this apostolic witness would not be allowed to count against the pope's teaching, because it stands in contradiction to the will of Christ.

2. The Teaching Problem. Having spent an entire semester training students in the exacting techniques of exegesis, the teacher of Scripture will be hard pressed to reconcile the pope's transparent reading of the Synoptic accounts of the Last Supper with the methods patiently inculcated throughout the course. Delicate judgments are required, particularly when distinguishing between the historically conditioned elements of the written tradition ("the words of men," as Vatican II had it) and the Word itself. The well-trained student would be led to ask, quite properly, "Why is it that Jesus' choice of twelve Jews for his disciples is somehow historically conditioned, but his choice of twelve men is not?" (I expect similar problems will confront those teaching Christology, ecclesiology, and sacramental theology.)

3. Gotcha. The American bishops have been considering a set of guidelines intended to extend their authority more effectively into the theology departments of the Catholic colleges and universities. Until now, it has been hard to pinpoint a particular issue that would serve as a rough-and-ready test of orthodoxy. I think the bishops have been handed their litmus test.

4. Mother of God, Pray for Us. The Blessed Virgin has been regularly enlisted by both sides of the ordination debate to shore up this or that position; yet it seems to me, now, that we would do better to have recourse to her in prayer. The Body of Christ is riven by anger and suspicion and mistrust. May she who cradled the broken body of her Son at the foot of the Cross turn her merciful eyes to us. May she who received her Son's Spirit at Pentecost pray God to illumine our darkened minds and sluggish hearts with the living flame of love.

Regina Plunkett Dowling is a doctoral candidate at Yale University.

Catherine Mowry LaCugna

Recently I spent a few days in England with some Anglican women who just this past April were ordained to the presbyterate. By their account, what moved the Anglican church finally to approve the ordination of women was the public discussion, in print and electronic media, of theological reasons for and against such ordinations, and the discovery in the process that there were no compelling or coherent theological reasons against ordaining women. Although it is unlikely that such a debate would be sustained by the American media, discussion is taking place nonetheless in all quarters of the church and in wider society, despite the pope's desperate efforts to foreclose debate. Does the pope not realize that debate and dissent are enemies only for an administration or government or ideology that is on the brink of losing control? A large voice, but not the only voice, in this debate is that of women: the thousands of Catholic women who are active in the ministry of the church and know their ministry to be sacramental; and the hundreds of Catholic women who have been trained as theologians, experts in detecting specious arguments.

Let us be clear about what the document asserts. The pope repeats the argument of Inter insigniores regarding "the constant practice of the church" (he means only the Roman Catholic church) not to ordain women. This theological principle is at least worthy of discussion, but only if pursued in light of the experience of the Anglican, Episcopalian, Lutheran, Presbyterian, United Church of Christ, and so many other churches that have ordained women. Since the pope believes it is "God's eternal plan" not to ordain women and that this belongs to "the church's divine constitution," what would he make of the practice of these other churches?

When the pope writes that he also embraces the "other theological arguments" of Inter insigniores, it is unclear whether he means to include the assertion in Inter insigniores that women are not and cannot be in persona Christi: since women cannot bear a natural (sexual) resemblance to Jesus Christ, women cannot be a sacramental sign of Christ. I have written elsewhere of my suspicion that the authors of Inter insigniores might wish they had never made this argument, since it is patently inconsistent with the church's own sacramental theology and prior tradition. It is also the argument that has generated the greatest amount of pain, frustration, and cognitive dissonance for so many Catholics. My undergraduate students, hearing this argument after spending three months learning about the riches of the doctrine of the Trinity for theological anthropology, were dumbstruck and deeply dismayed. Given the deliberate continuity of the pope's apostolic letter with Inter insigniores, does the Vatican intend to claim still that women are not in persona Christi? If not, this would be a very significant correction to Inter insigniores and should be made explicit. But if so, then the Vatican is still declaring that it is God's will for women that women may never sacramentalize Christ, never represent Christ, never stand in the person of Christ, at the Eucharist.

The pope's conclusion that the church "has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women" seems to imply that other churches' ordinations are not valid, and that there is no possibility for development in Catholic tradition and practice. This rather negative assessment of the identity and mission of church and the freedom of the Spirit to animate it creates a sense of hopelessness in the reader, especially if the pope intends to perpetuate the in persona Christi argument.

Catherine Mowry LaCugna is professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame, and author of God for Us: The Trinity and Christian Life (HarperCollins, 1991).

Fleming Rutledge

In the nineteen years since I was ordained, first to the diaconate and then to the priesthood of the Episcopal church, it has never ceased to seem extraordinary to me that I should have been ordained at all, that any human being should be entrusted with (to quote the apostolic letter) "the mission of the Incarnate Word himself." A stance of wonder and amazement is always appropriate with regard to holy orders. Uncounted women over these two millennia have served our Lord without being ordained. For those of us in this first generation of Episcopal clergywomen, our astonishment at what has happened to us in just two brief decades has not receded. The newness of it is still pronounced. I for one am willing to suggest that it continues to be an experiment.

But what an experiment! All over the United States, ordained women in the various Protestant denominations are finding themselves being used by the Holy Spirit. There are fruits to demonstrate that this is not merely a self-serving personal opinion. These fruits will be the best evidence, over time, that Jesus' choice of the Twelve was a choice of twelve people, not twelve men. John Paul II seems to have little or no understanding of this experiment. Perhaps it is too much to expect of him. No one person can operate successfully on every front at once. This pope has made masive, indeed unprecedented, contributions toward the repair of Jewish-Christian relations. He has played a unique role, not only in strengthening the Polish resistance, but also in emboldening the church to stand against tyranny all over the world. Many examples could be given of his absolute dedication to human rights and human dignity, to religious liberty, to social justice, to scientific research, to the redressing of ancient wrongs.

The intransigent tone of the apostolic letter is indeed a bitter disappointment. Apparently the hour has not yet struck for Catholic women. The letter is in character, however, for a man who has always been uncompromising in his assertion of the faith over against claims of the world. While women hope for the kairos to arrive in a subsequent pontificate, it is still possible to be thankful for the achievements of this one. An ordained Episcopal woman recently wrote, in another context, "I am more comfortable with those who oppose my ordination out of loyalty to their understanding of God's will than those who cheer me on out of loyalty to a humanistic social agenda. Ordination is not a women's rights issue. It is obedience to a call or it is nothing" (quoted in The Living Church, June 12, 1994). We will be in trouble whenever and wherever we start thinking of ordination as a right to which we are entitled, rather than an unmerited and unexpected gift of God's mercy. Paul the Apostle speaks for us all: "I am the least of the Apostles, unfit to be an Apostle...but by the grace of God I am what I am" (I Cor. 15:9-10). Steady pressure through a clear witness to our calling, combined with love and patience, is the way ahead.

The Rev. Mrs. Fleming Rutledge is the pastor of Grace Episcopal Church in New York City.

Robert P. George 

Ordinatio sacerdotalis reaffirms the teaching that "the church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women," and declares that this judgment "is to be definitively held by all the church's faithful." Does the pope's use of the term "definitively" imply that he has defined this judgment ex cathedra? No. The pope is not here proposing the judgment infallibly. The term "definitively," in this context, plainly refers to how the judgment is to be held by the faithful, not to how it is being proposed by the papal magisterium.

Does this mean that faithful Catholics may legitimately dissent from the pope's teaching on the reservation of priestly ordination to men only? No. In light of the church's firm and constant teaching on the obligation of Catholics to give religious assent to the judgments of the ordinary magisterium--a teaching explicitly reaffirmed by the Second Vatican Council--it is clear that dissent, even from papal teachings that are not ex cathedra, can be legitimate only where assent is impossible; and assent is impossible only where someone (1) is aware of some factual error on which the teaching of the ordinary magisterium is based, or (2) has knowledge of a superior source, i.e., Sacred Scripture or the church's tradition (as manifest, for example, in a defined doctrine), whose teaching is plainly inconsistent with the judgment proposed by the ordinary magisterium.

It is true that Ordinatio sacerdotalis only sketchily defends the judgment it proposes. One may or may not be persuaded by the reasons given by the pope. As a logical matter, however, the truth of a proposition does not depend on the persuasiveness of the arguments offered in its support. And, however one evaluates the pope's arguments, the judgment he proposes is neither based on some factual error nor plainly inconsistent with the teaching of Scripture or the church's tradition. Hence, religious assent is required. Dissent is illegitimate.

Much of the debate over women's ordination has assumed that the church has the authority to ordain women. Proponents of women's ordination have argued that the reservation of priestly ordination to men is unjust, a violation of women's rights, inappropriate to the modern age, and so forth. In light of Ordinatio sacerdotalis, however, these arguments are beside the point. The pope has gone to the more fundamental issue of whether the ordination of women is possible, and reaffirmed the teaching that it is not. It cannot be unjust or inappropriate to decline to do (or, more accurately, to decline to purport to do) what it is in fact impossible to do.

Of course, it is far from clear, just from the available data, whether the ordination of women is possible. The answer must therefore be implicit in Scripture and tradition, and the task of the magisterium is to determine what is implicit and to explicate it. Now that the pope has rendered a judgment on the matter to be held definitively by faithful Catholics, theologians must work to explicate the teaching more fully so that all of us can understand why priestly ordination is reserved to men. As a model of how this work of explication can be done, I would encourage readers to consult Father Benedict Ashley's article entitled "Gender and the Priesthood of Christ" in the July 1993 issue of the Thomist. Here, Ashley argues for the superior coherence of the church's traditional position on women's ordination with central themes of both the Old and New Testaments. More work of this quality is needed.

I began by observing that the teaching of Ordinatio sacerdotalis is not infallibly proposed. Let me conclude, however, by suggesting that it soon might be. As Vatican II teaches, when the bishops scattered throughout the world, but in communion with each other and with the Holy Father, propose the same teaching on a matter of faith and morals as to be held definitively, then they teach the doctrine of Christ infallibly. It is entirely possible that the bishops will now unite in virtual unanimity in affirming the pope's teaching. Although, for the reasons I have stated, such a development is not necessary for this teaching to bind faithful Catholics in conscience, it would provide welcome assurance that the teaching is certainly true.

Robert P. George teaches legal philosophy at Princeton University.

Sara Maitland

The "definitively" is the problem, of course. No one really thought the Holy Father was, abracadabra, going to announce the admissibility of women to priestly ordination all of a sudden this summer. But it is a big problem. "This judgment is to be definitively held by all the faithful" is not a directive as to practice but as to conviction. What am I meant to do? I tried this problem out on a parish priest--not a particularly progressive one (I try not to cheat). "Father," I said, "I am not able to accept the teaching in the pope's letter to his bishops."

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"I mean I don't think it can end the debate; I don't think it will end the debate; and, most importantly, I don't think it should end the debate. I cannot accept it as the last word on the matter; I cannot accept it as the church's definitive statement on the subject. What should I do?"

"What?" he asked. I though he was looking plaintive.

"Does this mean I should withdraw from membership in the church, or at least from Communion?"

"Consult your conscience," he said most properly.

"I have, and believing it to be well informed, I'm not planning to do any such thing. But now that I've told you what I believe, would you refuse me Communion?"

"Sara," he said, "don't be so stupid."

Would any priest, would any bishop, exclude from Communion someone in my position--that is, someone who consents to live with the present but not to foreclose her mind on possible development and further theological enlightenment in the broadest sense? If not, the whole thing is apparently definitively binding but totally meaningless. That seems pretty stupid to me. It is an excessive and therefore wrong use of the word "definitively." It is disrespectful to the intelligence of the people of God. It exposes once again the gap that exists in our theology around the whole issue of the sensus fidelium, and the process of the reception of teaching. It is rude (to Catholics, to women, and to other denominations). If Saint Paul is right, courtesy is one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit. Does such a marked absence of courtesy permit us to question the presence of the fullness of the Holy Spirit in this letter?

Sara Maitland is a feminist writer and lay theologian. Her most recent novel is Ancestral Truths (Henry Holt).