The Ordination of Women: Divinely Prohibited or Inevitable Development?
In 1921 in celebration of the victory of women’s suffrage the Women’s Party presented a statue by Adelaide Johnson of Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton to the U. S. Congress. The inscription describes achieving the vote as “one of the great bloodless revolutions of all time that liberated more people than any other without killing a single person.” Eighty eight years later the great revolution, now global in scope, and with a larger agenda, continues its liberating trajectory and its effects are being registered in the domestic, political, economic, cultural and religious spheres in spite of opposition and set backs still being encountered. When will the women’s movement be regarded as having been successful? Asked that question, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, at present the sole woman on the U.S. Supreme Court, said in effect: when the percentage of women in the professions is the same as their percentage in the population. Women, of course, are half the human race but they are still far from being half of all the professions and, we may add, vocations.
In the Catholic Church women are, thankfully, disproportionately present in a variety of ministries but there are, officially at least, no women priests, or bishops, and while the door is slightly ajar for the ordination of women as deacons, we are told that their ordination as presbyters and therefore as bishops is prohibited by divine law evidenced in the constant practice of the Church since, and including, the time of Jesus.
In A Call to Action (1971) Pope Paul V1 said that criticism of existing society in light of utopian perspectives “provokes the forward-looking imagination both to perceive in the present the disregarded possibility hidden within it, and to direct itself toward a fresh future” (#37). Let us now look at our Church in light of utopian considerations:
Consider the enrichment the people of God would receive from frequently hearing women’s perspectives on the Gospel in weekly liturgies. And consider for a moment: how transformative it would be if half the priests and bishops in churches and dioceses all over the world were women, if half the curia in Rome were women, if the next pope might be a woman, if half the Vatican nuncios were women? Wouldn’t it matter immensely if half the personnel including the nuncio on a rotating basis, representing the Vatican at the United Nations, were women? Would Vatican policies, especially concerning women and reproductive rights in developing countries be what they are today if half the personnel representing the Vatican were women? If half the church’s power holders and policy makers were women and if Church governance were truly collegial would a narrow sexual agenda be lifted up as the church’s dominant concern? Would we be told by some including some bishops that birth control restriction to natural means and an absolute prohibition of abortion, trump war making and social justice concerns in national elections especially in countries engaged in predatory wars for access to energy resources? What this exercise in imagining shows is how patriarchal the church is in its power structures and central liturgical ministries and the immense reforms needed in Church life and structures.
The vehemence of the opposition to the ordination of women, even the discussion of it publicly, suggests that admission of women to all ministerial and power controlling roles is seen as a threat to the entire patriarchal power structure which has been carefully constructed for over a millennium. Women’s presence at all levels in that structure would help to begin its unraveling in ways analogous to how voting and civil rights for people of color threatened white, mostly male, political power structures in the USA especially in the South in the sixties. The USA now has a black president and the state of Georgia has a black woman as Supreme Court justice just to cite two important examples.
Presumably, women as presbyters and bishops, would be found on a spectrum conservative, centrist, liberal and liberationist in numbers broadly similar to men but still their presence in the ordained ministries and all offices, would, I believe, make enormous differences. For one thing the Church by denying women full co-equal rights in all areas of Church ministries and decision making offices offers, at least indirectly, support to governments and others who wish to confine women to subordinate or second-class status in all areas where they should be fairly represented. Dan Maguire says: “The Church’s exclusivism gives
Paul Surlis 1684 Albermarle Drive, Crofton, MD 21114
wordless blessing to the multiple exclusions that pervade our sexist societies[1]” Moreover, the Church’s own public image and witness in all areas of social justice and civil, social and other rights is undermined. And this is not a mere cosmetic matter as the term image might suggest. Rather it is a theological issue of significance to the very meaning of the Church which in the Second Vatican Council described itself as the “ universal sacrament of salvation” (Gaudium et Spes ch., 4 #45, Lumen Gentium ch., 7 #48). Any sacrament is deficient if the sacramental sign is deficient and a church claiming to be a universal sacrament of the whole human race is deficient if half its members are not accorded the possibility of full, co-equal presence in all ministries and offices in that church.
The Jesus Movement
It is generally recognized today that Jesus initiated a reform movement within Judaism rather than setting out to found a new religion. The Jesus movement was innovative, indeed revolutionary, in its admission of women to membership on an equal basis with men. “ There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” These words from Gal 3:28 express the egalitarian ethos of the Jesus movement.
The exclusion of women from priesthood is sometimes justified on the basis of there being no women among the Twelve. However, this argument is unsustainable. The Twelve were symbolic of the reconstitution of the twelve tribes of Israel and should not be thought of as bishops ( or episcopoi). The circle of apostles was wider than the Twelve and included Paul, Barnabas, Andronicus and Junia. Rom 16:7 describes Andronicus and Junia as “outstanding among the apostles.” Jesus scandalized his disciples by his dealing with the Samaritan woman who was regarded as ritually unclean. He revealed his Messiahship to her: “I who speak to you am he” and she went, acting as an apostle to summon the people of her city to meet Jesus (John 4: 7-30). Jesus learned from the Syro-Phenician woman that his mission was not exclusively to Jews but should embrace non Jews also (Mark 7:25-30.) Mary Magdalen was called the “Apostle to the Apostles” by Thomas Aquinas and later by Pope John Paul 11, because of her primary role as witness to the Resurrection. Professor.Sandra Schneiders writes: “The Twelve are immortalized as the foundation of the church. As such they have no successors; they are members of a wider group which was never all male”[2].
A most important fact concerning Jesus’ practice is to recognize that the argument that Jesus did not ordain women at the Last Supper is beside the point, he ordained no one then or at any other time. Jesus did not perpetuate among his followers the institution of cultic priesthood based on temple service. James P. Mackey writes: “No document in the bible shows any knowledge whatever of there being priests amongst the officers of any of the communities of Jesus- followers”[3]. In 1Peter 2:9 all Christians are called ‘a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people’ as such they did not need special priests to act as mediators.
Schillebeeckx states: “Throughout the development of the ministry in the New Testament one striking fact is that the ministry did not develop from and around the Eucharist or the liturgy, but from the apostolic building up of the community through preaching, admonition and leadership. No matter what different form it takes, ministry is concerned with the leadership of the community: ministers are pioneers, those who inspire the community and serve as models by which the whole community can identify the gospel. For the New Testament, there is evidently no special problem as to who should preside at the Eucharist: we are told nothing directly in this connection.” Schillebeeckx further comments that “the Eucharist is Jesus’ parting gift to the whole community” and that “there are no biblical grounds anywhere for a sacral and mystical foundation to the ministry of the Eucharist[4]. He sees it as evident that leaders in the community, and not just anyone, presided at the Eucharist which in this way was connected to ministry. At this time it appears that ordination was implicit in having a leadership role and did not require special authorization or ceremony[5].
Raymond Brown writes: “There is no compelling evidence for the classic thesis that the members of the Twelve always presided when they were present, and that there was a chain of ordination passing the power of presiding at the Eucharist from the Twelve to missionary apostles to presbyter bishops. How one got the right to preside and whether it endured beyond a single instance we do not know; but a more plausible substitute for the chain theory is the thesis that sacramental ‘powers’ were part of the mission of the church and that there were diverse ways in which the church (or the communities) designated individuals to exercise these powers” [6]
Women in Ministry
According to the understanding of ordination prevailing in the early centuries women were ordained or appointed to a role and served in all areas of Church ministry. Based on an exhaustive study of engravings Ute Eisen in 1996 wrote: “It is clear that women were active in the expansion and shaping of the Church in the first centuries: they were apostles, prophets, teachers, presbyters, enrolled widows, deacons, bishops and stewards…In short, to the question of whether there were women officeholders in the church’s first centuries our study returns a resounding answer: yes![7]. Elizabeth Schuessler Fiorenza examines the work of women in the early church’s missionary movement with special reference to the house churches where women often were leaders and where Eucharist was celebrated. Women in mission work were co-equal with men including Paul whom they initially preceded in this activity.[8].
In 1982 Giorgio Otranto “suggested that women had actually functioned as priests in Italy and Brittany in the fifth and early sixth centuries.” The evidence Otranto relied on was a letter of Pope Gelasius 1, dated 494 in “which the pope condemned allowing women to officiate at the altar. A similar condemnation was sent to bishops in Gaul to two Breton priests who allowed women to serve at the altar with them. Otranto also adduced epigraphical evidence in support of his claims[9]. As late as the twelfth century rituals exist for the ordination of abbesses and their roles included hearing their nuns’ confessions and absolving them from their sins in a manner similar to that of bishops and priests.[10] And, as is well known, in the Celtic church in Ireland abbesses exercised jurisdiction over their convents and surrounding territories while bishops and priests administered the sacraments.
Two Councils and Priesthood
I wish to look very briefly at the Council of Elvira and the Council of Chalcedon and what they said about priesthood. Elvira, a small provincial synod assembled at the beginning of the 4th century (c. 303 or 309) is sometimes said to have mandated celibacy for the clergy but this is incorrect. What it advocated was continence; it forbade not marriage but the sexual act within marriage for clergy. Elvira took place some years before Constantine issued a proclamation of religious tolerance in the Edict of Milan in 313 C.E., enabling the Christian religion to be practiced publicly. At Elvira we see the formerly persecuted Christian sect emerging as an establishment power. The bishops acting as a ruling elite with absolute power, devoted much attention to regulating the sexual conduct of the laity as well as of the clergy. For example, a woman who flogged a slave girl to death in what appears to have been a sadistic rage, is given a lesser penalty than a woman who had an abortion, various types of marriage are forbidden e.g., to Jews or priests of the Roman Empire. What is going on here is a community struggling to define its identity and its power, and the clerical caste as it has now developed is exercising its control over lay members of the church and especially over women.[11]Moreover, mandating continence for clergy within marriage reflects a cultic view of priesthood and a deep suspicion of sexuality as polluting because involving contact with women. The teaching called Manichaeism arrived in the Roman Empire shortly before the Council of Elvira. Manichaeism regarded women and sexuality ambiguously as creations of an evil deity and advocated sexual renunciation at least for its elect and appears to have influenced Elvira. In summary we may say there was widespread sexual anxiety and confusion permeating society before and after Elvira. E. R. Dodds writes that “contempt for the human condition and hatred of the body was a disease endemic in the entire culture of the period…I incline to see the whole development less as an infection from an extraneous source than as an endogenous neurosis, an index of intense and widespread guilt feelings” [12]. In widespread dualistic systems woman and the body were regarded as suspect if not downright evil, hence the continence demanded of Christian priests, and the punitive, controlling attitudes directed at women during this time. Laeuchli argues that the “faithful were in such crisis that they welcomed clerical control.”[13]
The undercurrents of sexual malaise briefly described here have had long lasting, negative influences on views on sexuality, marriage and women in the Catholic Church and in cultural and social domains influenced by religion.
The Council of Chalcedon in 451 condemned as invalid absolute ordination that is presentation of candidates not recommended by or committed to a community. Yet today we are on the verge of absolute ordination and the severing of the connection between candidates for ordination to ministry, especially of bishops and priests may be one root cause of problems we have witnessed with sexual abuse when no sense of accountability to communities or victims was felt by abusers and some bishops who concealed what was happening by transferring suspects to new parishes secretly.
A New Definition of Ordination
The First Lateran Council (1123) mandated celibacy for the clergy in the west, the first ecumenical council to do so. One strategy used to put an end to a thousand year tradition permitting clerical marriage was a radical assault on women who were not only described as evil but who were frequently demonized. The utterly intemperate language used of women by Peter Damian beggars belief. He called women “…appetizing flesh of the devil…poison of the minds, death of souls…companions of the very stuff of sin, the cause of our ruin. You, I say, I exhort you women of the ancient enemy, you bitches, sows, screech-owls, night owls, she-wolves, blood suckers.[14] Small wonder that power over the Eucharist is at this time confined to men who would be contaminated by sexual contact with such evil creatures as women.
The Third and Fourth Lateran Councils (1179 and 1215 respectively) brought about a decisive shift in the understanding of ordination. Whereas in the early Christian centuries appointment to a leadership role in the community was the decisive element, now in the second millennium as a result of the Lateran Councils, there is a new emphasis on the spiritual power conferred on the ordained priest to change the bread and wine into the body and blood of the risen Christ and the conferring of this power takes priority over appointment to a community. Schillebeeckx sees this as a personalizing and privatizing of ordination and a move away from the more communal earlier understanding of ministry. The Fourth Lateran Council “declared the Eucharist can be celebrated only ‘by a priest who has been validly and legitimately ordained”[15] This is not a complete break with earlier tradition but it does represent a narrower, more juridical focus and the change was brought about for mainly social and legal reasons not for theological ones. This entails, he argues, that now in our time the “earlier ecclesial view of the ministry should have priority over the conception which has been regarded as official since then.” [16] However, the view of the Fourth Lateran Council has prevailed in the church since then and it is the one still operating in official magisterial documents and in the view of many believers. This view of priesthood stresses the change in being, or ontological change, that accompanies ordination. Once this view became established theologians and lawyers quickly argued that women can not change bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ and hence they cannot be ordained. Moreover, the argument continued, according to this understanding of ordination, women have never been ordained, and for all practical purposes the history of women’s ministerial roles in the early centuries and in the first millennium was deleted from historical memory, and treated as if it never existed. This is one other example of women, who were major actors in historical processes, being excluded from historiography or the written record. Of course, the writers of the historical record were usually men.
Today it continues to be assumed that women can never be ordained to be priests or bishops in the Catholic Church and that one decisive argument in favor of this position is as we saw, that women were never ordained in the past and were not present at the Last Supper when the Twelve Apostles were ordained. This was the principal, though not the only, reason leading Pope John Paul 11, following Paul V1, to declare that the issue of the impossibility of ordaining women was definitively established and should no longer be discussed publicly by Catholics ( Apostolic letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, 1994). The then head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Ratzinger, now Benedict XV1, declared this position infallible but he was quickly reminded by theologians that the conditions laid down in Church teaching for an infallible declaration had not been fulfilled and the claim of infallibility has been dropped .
Saying Yes to the Ordination of Women
At one level then the arguments for the ordination of women represent a return to the earliest tradition and the understanding of ordination as the whole process by which the community selects a candidate for service to the community and in which the charism for presiding at the Eucharist is granted by the Holy Spirit to the community which confers it on the person being ordained. The gifts of the Holy Spirit are given to the holy People of God, the church. They are not given to a male hierarchy to be dispensed by them exclusively to other males chosen according to now obsolete criteria. In terms of appointing a person to a position of service to the community or a leadership role there is no inherent obstacle to the ordination of women and as we hear frequently today women already serve in a variety of ministerial and leadership roles in parish communities.
As far as ordination understood as power to change bread and wine into the body and blood of the Risen Christ is concerned the most substantive argument against women being able to effect this change, is that sacramental theology requires a “natural likeness” between the signum or sign and res that which the sign represents, and the nature of priesthood. Men, as men, are said to posses this likeness to Christ who was a man but women do not. However it is mistaken to locate this likeness exclusively in the male sex dimension. There is the more basic fact of common humanity and also, surely, what Jesus asks of followers including priests, should be located in love and service not in gender. The gospel of John has no institution of the Eucharist in its Last Supper account. Instead John presents Jesus washing the feet of the disciples, this was a role traditionally reserved for slaves and women but Jesus adopts it to signify the importance he attached to service for all his disciples (John 13:3ff).
Several theologians today rightly stress that baptism is foundational for all ministry that of the people of God in general and that of clergy also. Women have always been admitted to baptism; today as in the first millennium, they should also be admitted to ordained ministry on a co-equal basis.
Much of what women demand is summed up in the statement ‘women’s rights are human rights.’ And while no one has a right to priesthood, women who experience a call to priesthood and service have a right to have their vocations treated in ways co-equal to those of men. I am well aware that many women are skeptical of joining priesthood in the church as it is organized and administered at present with its top down, hierarchical structures under an absolute monarchy that arrogates all power executive, legislative and judicial to itself. But that is a separate, if related, set of issues. My concern is to argue that there are no compelling reasons why women should not be deacons, priest, bishops and pope in a community symbolizing and working for the reign of God which Jesus announced and inaugurated in his person and ministry, and in his death and resurrection.
Paul Surlis, May 1, 2009,
1684 Albermarle Drive, Crofton, MD 21114
Paul Surlis was ordained at Maynooth in 1961. From 1975 until 2000 he taught moral theology and Catholic Social Teaching at St. John’s University, New York. He retired in 2000 and moved to Crofton MD where he is involved in research and writing.
[1] The Exclusion of Women from Orders: A Moral Evaluation” in The Moral Revolution: A Christian Humanist Vision, (Harper and Row, San Francisco, 1986), 139.
[2] “Did Jesus Exclude Women from Priesthood?” in Women Priests: A Catholic Commentary on the Vatican Declaration, ed. Leonard Swidler and Arlene Swidler (New York: Paulist, 1977), 230
[3] Jesus of Nazareth: The Life, the Faith and the Future of the Prophet, ( The Columba Press: Dublin, 2008), 271
[4] ” Edward Schillebeeckx, Ministry: Leadership in the Community of Jesus Christy, ( Crossroad: New York,1981), 30
Paul Surlis, 1684 Albermarle Drive, Crofton, MD 21114Evolution, September 11, 2005 24 th Sunday in Ordinary Time.
Today I want to say a few words on evolution, the bible and our faith. I want to address two main questions: Must the book of Genesis with its account of creation in six days be taken literally and does that mean we cannot accept evolution? Secondly, is it correct to describe the hurricane Katrina as an act of God or a punishment sent by God as many people are doing?
The book of Genesis is the first book in the bible but it was by no means the first book written. In fact it is later than several other books. The word genesis means origins and the book of that title is a religious interpretation of the origins of the universe, of the heavens and of human beings, of evil and suffering and it offers a story in which these profound questions are explored through symbols and myth. The questions of origins of life, of persons and of the universe are shrouded in the mists of space and time and they are best explored from a religious point of view through myth and symbols which indicate that we are in the presence of mystery. Symbols and myth contain truth but the ultimate truth is profound and beyond our reach in terms of fully understanding it and many approaches are needed to give us insights.
Someone defined a myth as “a story about the way things never were, but always are.” So, is a myth true? Literally true, no. Really true, yes.
The intent of the author of the creation story is to present God as creator of all things and to present the Sabbath as a day of rest, a day to be kept holy; perhaps because, among other things, it commemorated the liberation of the Hebrews from Egypt a foundational religious event in Israel’s history. And the lesson is: If God rested after the work of creation we, too, should make the Sabbath holy. Workers, and particularly slaves and animals, need a day of rest. In presenting the creation story the author took for granted the prevailing theory of the universe and used it as a framework but he was not teaching that framework. The people at that time thought the heavens or firmament were like a basin that was inverted. The waters of chaos were above the basin or firmament. The sun, moon and stars hung on the underside of the firmament and the earth was a flat disc floating on water.
When we accept that the author was teaching a religious understanding of life and origins and not teaching science then we see that we are not bound to an acceptance of a literal understanding of the creation account.
After thousands of years science has in fact determined that life as we know it developed through the process we call evolution.
When religion is true to its own sources and method and science is true to its method of investigation, proposal of theories and openness to new data, there can be no contradiction between science and religion. Each proposes truth according to its own method and in its own sphere of competence, and religious truth and scientific truth do not contradict each other.
The bible is not one book, it is a library of books and it contains many kinds or genres of writing from history to poetry to short stories to parables and sometimes myth. The bible is word of God expressed in human language. It is word of God in human words and to understand the message we have to use tools of critical interpretation.
Pope John Paul 11 said that evolution is no longer a mere hypothesis and acceptance of evolution is compatible with Catholic faith. We are grateful for that statement as it saves us from some of the interminable bickering going on today about creationism or intelligent design much of which is based on a false, literal interpretation of Genesis.
The universe appears to be about 14 billion years old and life evolved from the innate fertility of the universe and from the interplay of chance and necessity. Elements in our bodies including carbon and mineral traces appear to have come to earth from exploding stars in the cosmos, perhaps meteors brought them here and they facilitated the development of life and of human life. We are made of stardust quite literally. The universe is dynamic and contains within it the creativity of God but this does not entail that God micromanages the processes as intelligent design claims. St. Augustine had a theory similar to this 1500 years ago. God in freedom continuously creates a universe that reflects God’s freedom in the evolutionary process towards greater complexification.
St. Thomas Aquinas laid the groundwork for accepting contingency or chance as within God’s creative power. The current head of the Vatican observatory said: “Chance is the way we scientists see the universe…It is not chancy to God, it’s chancy to us.”
Events like Katrina, volcanoes, tsunamis, storms, tidal waves are produced by the evolutionary process but not directly by God. Sometimes destructiveness comes from failed human planning or failure to overcome barriers like poverty and race which we have ample resources to remedy. It is never correct to refer to such catastrophies as an act of God or a punishment sent by God. Such expressions convey the impression of a callous, punishing God that drives some people from religion.
God permits the world to be what it will be in its continuous evolution. God allows and loves but does not micromanage. Far from our faith being threatened by evolution we can say it is enriched by it. We can joyfully embrace the genuine findings of modern science and prayerfully study how they enhance and enlarge our very limited understanding of God. Religion in turn answers questions of purpose and meaning the why questions that are outside the province of science that answers the how questions.
Paul Surlis, Seton parish, September 11, 2005
[5] Schillebeeckx, Op. cit., 30
[6] Raymond Brown, Priest and Bishop( Paramus, N.J.:Paulist Press, 1970), 41.
[7] Women Officeholders, 224, cited by Gary Macy in: The Hidden History of Women’s Ordination: Female Clergy in the Medieval West, ( Oxford University Press, 2008) 18.
[8] In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins ( New York : Crossroad, 1983), 160-199.
[9] Macy, Op. cit., 14-15.
[10]Ibid., 82-83, passim)
Paul Surlis, 1684 Albermarle Drive, Crofton, MD 21114
[11] Sam Laeuchli : Power and Sexuality: The Emergence of Canon Law at the Synod of Elvira, (Temple University Press, Philadelphia, 1972), passim.
[12] Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety Cambridge, 1965), 35-37)
[13] Op cit., 107
[14] PL 145, 410, cited by Anne Llewellyn Barstow: Married Priests and the Reforming Papacy: the Eleventh-Century Debates ( The Edwin Mellen Press: New York, Toronto, 1982), 60-61
[15] Ministry, 54.
Paul Surlis, 1684 Albermarle Drive, Crofton, MD 21114
[16] Ibid.
Paul Surlis, 1684 Albermarle Drive, Crofton, MD 21114
Paul Surlis's Blog 
July 14, 2009 at 10:00 pm |
Father Surlis after reading your post on ordination of women, I still couldn’t quite figure out if you are for or against the ordination of women.