The Settled Question of Ordaining Women

The question of ordaining women that has so exercised some Catholics and the mainline Protestant churches since the late sixties seems settled, with a firm if not infallible no for the Catholic Church and a firm and un-retractable yes for the mainline Protestant bodies. Even the conservative groups that split off and started new churches over the issue of homosexuality ordain women. Some of us would think their grounds for endorsing one innovation and so bitterly rejecting another fairly dubious — from the outside, it looks like cultural accommodation on the first and prejudice on the second — but they’re happy with it.

A friend had sent round the article by the Episcopal bishop whose abuse of Catholic history I discussed in St. Therese, St. Terese Benedicta, and Women Priests a few days ago and it started an email conversation in which one of the participants pointed to the Australian Catholic writer David Schütz’s helpful  summary of Sr. Sara Butler’s argument. In The Catholic Priesthood and Women: A Guide to the Teaching of the Church, she distinguishes between the reasons the Church doesn’t ordain women and the explanations for why she doesn’t. In Schütz’s summary:

The “fundamental reasons” are three fold:

1) The tradition of male only priesthood is rooted in Jesus’ way of acting (in chosing only males to constitute The Twelve): it is the will of Christ
2) The Apostles’ way of acting confirms the Tradition
3) The Tradition has normative value

These fundamental reasons are outlined in John Paul II’s Ordinatio Sacerdotalis but have their root in  Paul VI’s 1975 Letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Declaration Inter Insigniores.

These are the reasons why the Church cannot ordain women. Any argument with the Church’s practice must address these reasons. But for those who wish to understand what God’s purpose may be behind these reasons, there are explanations. It is important to note that the “explanations” are not “reasons”. They do not in themselves constitute the reasons for the Church’s way of acting, but rather are to be regarded as “theological arguments” which give us a way of understanding God’s purpose in directing the Church to act in such a way.

The explanations or “theological arguments” are based on the “Analogy of Faith” (i.e., male only priesthood in relation to the doctrine of the Mystery of Christ and to the doctrine of the Mystery of the Church).

1) The Christological Argument: The priest acts in persona Christi capitis ecclesiae; the priest is a sacramental sign of Christ; the priest is a sign of Christ who is and remains a man.

2) The Ecclesial Argument: The analogy of the covenant and the Eucharist; the priest as the “living image” of Christ the Bridegroom; the ministerial priesthood and nuptial symbolism.

Schütz then describes her response to the ten objections to the Church’s teaching, noting interestingly that she holds that

the Pauline “anti-women” passages do not fall into the “fundamental reasons” category, but rather into the “theological arguments” category. In other words, St Paul’s prohibitions are not the reasons why the Church cannot ordain women; rather they are themselves explanations or theological arguments for the practice that was already fully established in that first generation of restricting the pastoral ministry to men.