The Catholic Church teaches that there are seven sacraments: baptism, which opens the way to all the others, then confirmation, holy communion, reconciliation or confession, matrimony, holy orders and the last rites; but in fact, for half the human race there are only six sacraments.
This study of the arguments underlying the Roman Catholic Church’s ban on women being ordained to the ministerial priesthood arose from a conversation I had, several years ago, with a friend and colleague, about the basis on which the Church justifies this teaching, rooted as it is largely in tradition, and in the writings of certain of the mediaeval scholastic theologians.
It involves an understanding of the particular way in which the Church’s teaching authority, the Magisterium, uses scripture and the historical sources of its own legacy to support its doctrine, and also the way in which it considers the role of tradition in Church teaching. There is a deep-rooted belief in the unchanging nature of Church doctrine from the very beginning—despite the obvious fact that there have been many changes and gradual developments in teaching and practice—with reference made to the opinions of leading authorities and Church Councils over the centuries, as being of relevance to the current position. The weight of tradition is considered equivalent, for doctrinal purposes, to that of the gospels, and other canonical books of the Bible.
So the Vatican’s teaching on this topic, as on many others, has to be evaluated with this in mind, that scripture and church tradition, the writings emanating from the early Fathers and mediaeval scholars, from the Church Councils of Western Europe and latterly from the Vatican itself, must all to be taken into account, along with canon law. All of these authoritative sources are clearly produced almost exclusively by men, and, generally speaking, by clerics, ordained priests and members of religious orders.
Hence, this examination of the subject starts by reviewing the position of the Church today with regard to the subject of ordination, and its reservation to men only. It then goes on to analyse in detail the various strands of the argument, exploring their roots, and the reasons why they are together given such weight in the final judgement, that women cannot receive the sacrament of Holy Orders.
Briefly, the development of the teaching is as follows. In his lifetime Jesus had many followers, both men and women. Women also feature in the writings of the early Church during the first century AD, as characters in the stories of the people who began to found Christian communities around the eastern-Mediterranean region. They played a significant role during this period, alongside the men, as leaders of communities, presiders at the liturgies, teachers and prophets. But as time went by, for a number of reasons, women were gradually excluded from positions of authority and from ministry of all kinds. This situation eventually became formalized until, by the ninth and tenth centuries, legislation explicitly forbade women from receiving the Sacrament of Holy Orders and, thus, from formal teaching or holding positions of authority. Theological arguments were extended to explain why women could not be ordained and, by this time, reservation of the ministerial priesthood to men was taken for granted as a part of revealed Christian doctrine from the earliest times. After the late Middle Ages, the Roman Catholic Church considered that the topic of women’s ordination had been settled by the judgement of the scholastic theologians and the canonists. Subsequently, it was rarely discussed within the Church until the twentieth century. The principle of the continuity of tradition in the Church means that the magisterium, its ruling authority, perceives itself as maintaining and preserving unbroken custom and practice in this as elsewhere, using some of the same arguments and citing many of the same authorities today as the mediaeval scholars did in their own writings. Canon law from its earliest forms explicitly reserved ordination for baptized men, which is still the case, constituting the official teaching contained within the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
In the twentieth century, certain roles previously open to men only were gradually permitted to women, though not everywhere around the world. These functions included singing in church choirs, reading during the Mass, acting as ‘extraordinary’ ministers of the Eucharist for taking Holy Communion to the sick and for distributing the hosts during Mass when necessary, and serving as acolytes on the altar.
As women’s emancipation became a political issue, and the call arose in Western democracies for gender equality, the challenge to the exclusion of women from priesthood in the Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches became more vigorous. The St Joan’s International Alliance, a Catholic association calling for women’s suffrage and an increased role for women in the Church, was founded in London as early as 1911 and its members and others wrote and campaigned for equality for women inside and outside the Church throughout the twentieth century, as they still do, along with many other groups. The campaign in the Catholic Church for the ordination of women, encouraged by the success of its Anglican counterpart, was re-energized in the 1970s and 1980s and continues still, despite the restatement of the ban by Pope John Paul II which demanded an end to the discussion. Following a quieter period under Benedict XVI, who had long been a staunch opponent of women’s ordination, there is now a greater sense of freedom since the advent of Pope Francis in 2013, who has shown himself open at least to a more prominent and effective role for women in the Church.
The primary headings under which this topic is discussed today are those of gender equality, equality of position before God, justice and the full use of the gifts and talents of all human beings at the service of the Church today.
It is clear that the value of taking a historical perspective on the issue of women’s ordination in the Church is relevant to the modern debate precisely because the Church itself resorts to tradition and centuries-old practice to underpin its stance, despite asserting that it does not subscribe to the misogynist attitudes expressed in some of the mediaeval writings on this issue.
The chapters that follow will therefore closely investigate the foundations of the present prohibition on the ordination of women in the Roman Catholic Church and seek to establish the origins of some of the reasons put forward at the present time as being beyond discussion and debate. It is important to clarify the basis for such an important and controversial discussion, the effect of which is so profound on women themselves and on the Church in general. If the present prohibition is said to be based on Scripture (on the actions of Jesus of Nazareth in history) and on the arguments proposed by the scholastic theologians in the Middle Ages that placed the debate into an academic context, then it is necessary to clarify the context and the reasoning used. It is also necessary to cast light on three areas that have not been brought together before, notably: the language used, in terms of translation and access to texts; the male imagery said to be a paramount obstacle to a female priesthood; and the issue of the exclusion of women from the sanctuary, a rarely-mentioned and yet crucially important factor in the discussion.
Footnotes
[1] Canon 1024 (1983): ‘Only a baptized male (vir) can validly receive sacred ordination.’
[2] Catechism of the Catholic Church (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1994) §1577: ‘“Only a baptised man (vir) validly receives sacred ordination”. The Lord Jesus chose men (viri) to form the college of the twelve apostles . . . The Church recognises herself to be bound by this choice made by the Lord himself. For this reason the ordination of women is not possible.’
[3] Anne Marie Pelzer, St Joan’s International Alliance: A Short History 1911–1977 (Brussels: 1977), also published in the Journal of St Joan’s International Alliance (1992): 1–16 (translated from French by Françoise Awre).
[4] Paul VI, Declaration ‘Inter Insigniores’ (15 October 1976), in CDF, From ‘Inter Insigniores’ to ‘Ordinatio Sacerdotalis’ (Washington, DC:/United States Catholic Conference of Bishops, 1996) p. 25.