Well here’s a new one…
One of today’s headlines at Zenit.org reads: Scholar: Ordaining Women Is Disrespectful.
Come again? Yes, I’m serious.
Those who want to ordain women to the priesthood manifest a failure to recognize the dignity of women, said an expert in moral theology and women’s issues.[...]
“Woman will never be the bridegroom, in any form. The temptation to force upon women a masculine paradigm arises from our confused notions of power and authority which, in turn, devalue her vocation as a bride, clearly illustrated by Mary,” de Solenni said.
Ordaining a woman, she said, “would be, in essence, to show complete disregard for the reality she is as a woman, as a bride.”
De Solenni asserted: “The promotion of ordaining women to the priesthood is a sign of misunderstanding and even disrespect for the dignity of woman.”
[...]
The discussion of ordaining women to the priesthood has been a sort of “overemphasis of the masculine,” she said.
“No doubt,” continued de Solenni, “women need a voice in the Church, but it must be an authentic voice and not their voice made to sound like a man’s.”
Lord, have mercy.
Only a defective theological understanding of both Mary and the ordained priesthood could lead to this kind of argument. How is being the theotokos anything other than a priestly role? Take a look at the Virgin orans ikon. Mary is a symbol of mater ecclesia at prayer, with Christ within her blessing the faithful. How is this not priestly? Is Mary incapable of acting “in persona Christi.” Save in the hypostatic union itself, never was any human flesh more intimately immersed in the hypostasis of the Logos.
To shift from liturgy to apostolate, Thomas Aquinas notes that when the Samaritan woman leaves her water jar behind, this is like John and James leaving their nets. She runs to evangelize her people.
Have you ever read any Christopher West? He has done a lot of work with JPII’s Theology of the Body. He makes a very similar argument and it makes me sick. He talks about men being the “giver of the gift” and women as “receivers of the gift”. Why would women complain about being a receiver of gifts? Excuse my vulgarity, but you can’t help but think this when you read his stuff or hear his lectors – the gift = semen. And for some reason, since men are the giver of the gift, and Jesus was male and gave the gift of Himself to the Church(which is supposedly truly female), only men can be priests. He also uses the whole bride-groom and bride anology. You know what, I’m married, and I would hope that my wife loves me just as much as I love her. Masculinity and femininity have nothing to do with it.
I knew there were several reasons the word “bride” made very uncomfortable. This just added to the list.
I just noticed that the scholar saying this is a woman. I didn’t catch that the first time.
My sense is that the problem isn’t the word “bride,” per se, but how it is understood, especially linking it with “passivity” and “reception.” These crude, physicalistic metaphors are taken too far and linked too strongly with the “in persona Christi” image. The bride/bridegroom metaphor, which I have new appreciation for, should refer to Christ and the Church, not the priest and the laity. Applying the bride/bridegroom metaphor in this way is the only way that makes sense. I mean, if you take these male/priest/giver and female/laity/receiver metaphors to their logical conclusion, you would have male “giver” priests relating to male and female “receiver” lay people, and since they also want to be crudely physicalistic, we arrive at some interesting conclusions.
In short, it makes no sense.
That’s one of the issues with Catholic analogical thinking… We have all these beautiful images to help us understand theological realities, but the metaphors can get all mixed up and become quite perverse. I had a priest tell me a couple years ago that his role as presider at Mass was to be the “head of the Body.” Not to “represent” the head of the Body or anything… NO NO NO. CHRIST is the head of the Body.
I almost respect the “we can’t ordain women because we have never ordained women” argument more than I respect this sort of “reasoning.”
And what exactly about the priesthood is particularly masculine, or needs to be? That is not a rhetorical question either. I really want to know how that factors into their argument. How is a groom’s love different from a bride’s?
I think she is expressing a kernel of a good point in a poor way. If I understand, she is saying that men and women are different. Jesus’ apostles were men, not women. Mary was not present at the Last Supper for instance, yet she is no small figure and has a unique position. There is a role for women and a role for men and she is saying to make a woman do what is a man’s role is debasing to the dignity of women. You may not agree, but this is probably very closely aligned with Catholic orthodoxy.
Hi John—
You are absolutely right that Catholics believe in the complementarity of the sexes—that men and women are different but equal. And I agree with this; of course men and women are different. The problem comes in when you start assigning roles. Of course only women can be mothers and only men can be fathers and that sort of thing but even those statments would need to be unpacked a bit; what does it mean to be a mother as opposed to being a father? Although men and women are different, this does not immediately translate into “gender roles,” and I am definitely of the mind that gender roles are more constructed than they are ontological realities.
It simply does not follow that because men and women are different then women should not be priests of Christ’s Church. In order to explain how one follows from another, the only thing that they can come up with is that Jesus was a man and that the priest represents Christ, which is the biggest load I have ever heard.
The fact that men and women are different, in my mind, makes and even stronger case for the ordination of women.
If there is one thing I will openly disagree with the leadership of my Church about, this is it.
It’s not clear to me why women should be priests or why women would want to be priests.
As to whether gender is an essentially ontological or constructed reality, I think the question betrays some confusion about the mind/matter puzzle. Pointing to the body and explaining the differences between men and women as wholly physical/cultural begs the question of why they are different in those domains. Materialists like to point ou that changing brain chemistry will change the mind, but equally so changing the mind will change the brain. If schizophrenics and geniuses have different brain structures than normal folk, there is no a priori reason to believe that the brain structure causes the mind rather than the obverse conclusion. It’s a mystery. Saying that the difference between men and women is merely physical is a misleading judgment, since God governs the mystery of mind and matter, there is no reason not to think that the physical difference translates to an ontological difference between the sexes.
You can perhaps point to the traditional differences between men and women and its association with the suppresion of invididual rights by men against women, but one should be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
“It’s not clear to me why women should be priests or why women would want to be priests. ”
Because they feel called to it, like any other Vocation. Because a woman can be a shepherd to a community, a representative of Christ, a spiritual counselor, a disciple forgiving in Christ’s name, a servant of all, soldier for Christ, and everything else a priest is. I can’t stand it when people respond to my comment of it being a calling by simply saying “she must be misunderstanding what God is calling her to do.” When, at the same time, any inkling of a call to the priesthood of a male is met with shouts of joy and encouragement to follow that call.
I wouldn’t reject out of hand the notion that women can feel called to become priests, but I’m skeptical of it. Feeling called to serve God is distinct from feeling called to perform the Divine Liturgy and other rites of the Church. St. Teresa of Avila wrote in her diary something very interesting that may bear on this point: ” I feel in me the vocation of the priest. With what love, O Jesus, I would take You in my hands when, at my voice, You would come down from heaven. And with what love would I give You to souls! But alas! while desiring to be a Priest, I admire and envy the humility of St. Francis of Assisi and I feel the vocation of imitating him in refusing the sublime dignity of the Priesthood. ”
While not rejecting out of hand the notion that women could become priests, I personally am very skeptical and it seems to me that there is wisdom in submitting to the Church on such matters, even if you quietly do not understand the reason for it.
Actually, that was not St. Terese of Avila, but St. Thérèse de Lisieux.
John—I think gender roles are largely constructed.
It’s not clear to me why women should be priests or why women would want to be priests.
Sometimes it’s not clear to me why men would want to be priests.
With Chris, I think the priesthood should be open to women because many women feel called.
I can’t stand it when people respond to my comment of it being a calling by simply saying “she must be misunderstanding what God is calling her to do.†When, at the same time, any inkling of a call to the priesthood of a male is met with shouts of joy and encouragement to follow that call.
This is true. The Church will take any warm (male) body they can find and ordain it. This is wrong.
I wouldn’t reject out of hand the notion that women can feel called to become priests, but I’m skeptical of it.
Why skeptical of it? Because no woman would ever be called to something that human rules say she cannot do?
I guess you have never met a woman who has felt the call? I have. A Catholic friend of mine from college struggled throughout her 4 years there because she felt called to the priesthood. She was ordained an Episcopal priest last summer. I attended her diaconal ordination in full support of what she was doing.
It seems to me that there is wisdom in submitting to the Church on such matters, even if you quietly do not understand the reason for it.
Sure, there is wisdom in some sense in submitting to the leadership of the Church on this. The main reason being that our Church is a transnational communion and that ordaining women at this point would probably cause severe strain on that communion, much like the Anglican communion is experiencing. But I think this is a practical matter more than a settled matter regarding the “truth” of our theology of the priesthood. I consider the matter of women priests an open question, despite what the hierarchy says. The sexism in the Church is a startling example of the Church’s brokenness and sinfulness.
That said, and I’m assuming my position is clear now, I do not support groups like Womenpriests and Call to Action insofar as they continue the charade of women’s “ordination” outside of the structures of the Church. Their ecclesiology and their theology of the priesthood is considerably lacking, as it stands. Their way of thinking presumes that just because a person “feels” called to the priesthood that (s)he should be a priest. I think there are problems with this whether we are talking about women or men. I appreciate these groups for what they call their “ministry of irritation” but I can’t support these fake ordinations and I don’t think they help matters in the least.
The practical matter of keeping the Catholic faith intact is a small aspect of it, but there is good reason to submit on matters that you don’t understand for the simple reason that you might be wrong. There may be a very good reason for the complementary nature of the sexes within the ecclesiastical function of the Church, and not perceiving it clearly or being absolutly befuddled as to why men and women have unique roles may be understandable, but even here there is wisdom in submitting openly to the judgment of the Church. It certainly doesn’t seem to me that the Church leadership is being merely pragmatic on this one, trying to keep the Church together; the Church seems to believe that men and women have different roles.
You say that gender roles are largely constructed, but this ties in with the earlier mind/matter puzzle. You can point to the fact that human institutions created roles, in a sense, and it’s a truism that in some sense even the Church is man-made, but there is also a reason why men and women have had different roles historically, these are two sides of the same coin. Chesterton said: ”
” In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, ‘I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.’”
It’s certainly not clear to me that men being priests was arbitrary and the two sexes are clearly different in nature, emotionally and intellectually. One is not inferior or superior to the other, but men and women are clearly different. The Catholic Church seems to have many teachings that relate to the relationship between body and mind that bear on this point. The Catholic teaching on condom use, for example. Open dissent on such matters seems rash.
...but there is good reason to submit on matters that you don’t understand for the simple reason that you might be wrong.
But John, I do understand the Church’s position and its reasons for its position. I simply disagree with it. I think any responsible dissent—if you can even call my disagreement here “dissent,” as that is debatable—will require the dissenter to hold open the possibility that he or she is wrong, of course. So I do not “submit” to the Church’s teaching on this matter, but certainly would say that there is the possibility (very very slim possibility, though!) that I—and millions of other Catholics—might be wrong on this issue.
It certainly doesn’t seem to me that the Church leadership is being merely pragmatic on this one, trying to keep the Church together; the Church seems to believe that men and women have different roles.
You are right; the Church’s reasons for its position are not pragmatic. I was saying that, for me, there might be some wisdom in “submitting” to the Church’s position only because of the pragmatic reason for maintaining communion. I would not submit for any other reason.
[T]he two sexes are clearly different in nature, emotionally and intellectually.
Care to elaborate?
The Catholic Church seems to have many teachings that relate to the relationship between body and mind that bear on this point. The Catholic teaching on condom use, for example. Open dissent on such matters seems rash.
I don’t dissent openly on “such matters,” (i.e. the Church’s sexual teaching, generally speaking), only the issue of ordination.
I’m not sure I can elaborate much without overstepping the point. Beyond saying that it seems evident that male and female are distinct, not only physically, one can only paint broad generalizations that never fully capture the unique nature and meaning of each sex. Generally speaking one might say that men tend to be more cerebral risk takers and that women are much more grounded and emotionally intuitive than men. That is merely one dimension in which they differ, and even there you will find exceptions that in someway tend to prove the rule that men and women are two sides of the same human coin.
I didn’t mean to accuse you of dissent, but you were pretty clear that this matter was something you would openly disagree with the Church on, which I may have misinterpreted.