Posted on 10/31/2009 2:50:48 PM PDT by NYer
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And back in the early 80s, I recall reading Butler's Lives of the Saints and being struck by just how much female saints outnumber male saints; I believe it is by about two thirds. And one cannot read the Latin Fathers for a reasonable stretch without coming across the notion that the Church is a woman. She is the bride of Christ and the Mother of Christians. As St. Augustine comments on the wedding at Cana: "The Lord, on being invited, came to the marriage. What wonder if He came to that house to a marriage, having come into this world to a marriage? For, indeed, if He came not to a marriage, He has not here a bride" (Trac. in Io. VIII).
The more a person is familiar with the fundamentals of Catholic theology, the more obvious it is that if priesthood had primarily to do with the talents and gifts of individual persons, women would be priests. To lead a school in the capacity of a principal or to assume public office has everything to do with the abilities, the talents, and the gifts of the individual person aspiring towards such positions (such as court judge or Member of Parliament). That is why there are female principals, judges, and political leaders, many of whom are superior to many of their male counterparts. And who would doubt that there are women who could in all likelihood preach a far more inspiring homily than does the average male priest today, or offer more practical and prudent counselling to couples going through marital difficulties? Why then are there not women priests?
The obvious answer is that priesthood does not primarily have to do with the talents and gifts of the individual priest. If a priest does not know that at the time of his ordination, he will learn that difficult truth shortly thereafter. If he refuses to take in the lesson, his days as a priest are numbered and he will inevitably leave the priesthood. For his priesthood has nothing to do with him.
Priesthood is the second greatest gift that every priest has received. Like his first greatest gift, namely faith, it is sheer gift, gratuitously given without having earned it or deserved it in the slightest. It is all about Christ, not about him. Christ is priest, and a priest is one who offers sacrifice. What is unique about Christ's priesthood is that he is both priest and victim, and the meaning of the ministerial priesthood is entirely concentrated in the priesthood of Christ, which in turn is concentrated upon his offering of himself on Calvary. It all goes back to Good Friday. Let me explain.
Every sacrament is a composite of both sign and word. Every sign that is sublimated by the sacrament already has a natural sign value. For example, the natural sign used in Baptism is water. The reason is that water is a natural sign of purity, cleansing, life, and death. We use water to clean ourselves and other things, and living things need water in order to survive and grow, and too much water kills; it is the most powerful and destructive force in nature. Water is thus the most apt sign to signify the imparting of the supernatural life of grace, supernatural cleansing and purification, and a spiritual dying to the old Adam and a rising in Christ. The words that render Baptism a valid sacrament are, "I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." Should a person have been baptized with milk, or vegetable oil, etc., the baptism would be considered invalid. This is not because milk and vegetable oil are inferior substances. Rather, they are not natural signs of cleansing, life and death. Milk naturally signifies nourishment, and oil naturally signifies wealth and strength. In fact, that is precisely why oil is the natural sign used in the sacrament of Confirmation, which is a confirming or strengthening of the graces received in Baptism. If a bishop were to anoint a child with acrylic paint, the sacrament would not be imparted.
The natural signs used in the Sacrament of the Eucharist are bread and wine, because these two substances have a universal significance. Visit any liquor store and the international division of the layout strikes one immediately: Italian, French, California, Ontario, etc. Every culture also has its bread: Italian, French, Portuguese, German, Middle East, etc. In other words, bread and wine are universal signs of nourishment. And the Church is ‘katholikos' (kata-holos) or universal, that is, of all nations. The New Covenant is an International Covenant, not a national one as was the Old Covenant. That is why the sacrament of the new covenant, the Eucharist, must employ signs that have an international significance, because the Eucharist is the food that sustains the universal Church and spiritually nourishes every believer who receives it. The reason this is so is that the Eucharist is no longer bread and wine. It is the substance of Christ's body and blood.
 That is why the Church maintains that she has no power to validly ordain women any more than she has the power to baptize a child with wine or oil, or validly anoint a person with acrylic paint or holy water. It has nothing to do with grades of perfection or an alleged superiority of men over women. It has everything to do with the sacramental symbolism of the priesthood. |
When the priest pronounces the words: "This is my body", at that point the substance of bread changes into the substance of Christ's body, while the accidents of the bread (quantity, place, posture, and its affective qualities such as colour, taste, odour, etc.,) remain the same. When he says: "This is my blood", at that very instant the substance of wine changes into the substance of Christ's blood, while the accidents of the wine (quantity, place, posture, and its affective qualities such as colour, taste, odour, etc.,) remain the same. That is why it looks like bread and tastes like bread. But the substance is something else entirely. For substance is really distinct from its attributes, which regularly change while the substance remains the same. Thus, it is logically possible for God to reverse the order if He so chooses, and Catholics believe that God works the miracle of transubstantiation every time Mass is said, by changing the substances, but leaving their accidental modes of being intact.
But if we pay attention to the words of consecration, we notice that there is more to this than what we've covered so far: "This is my body, which will be given up for you…This is my blood, the blood of the New and everlasting covenant, which will be shed for you and for all so that sins may be forgiven." The words of consecration are sacrificial. We receive the body of Christ that was given up for us two thousand years ago and the blood that was shed for us at the same time. Christ was only sacrificed once, but the body that we are given is the same body that was given up for us on Good Friday. That sacrifice is mysteriously and miraculously perpetuated throughout history wherever Mass is said, and so it is no exaggeration to say that to be present at an ordinary Mass is to be just as present at the foot of the cross as Mary and John were two thousand years ago. That is what is meant by the expression "the sacrifice of the Mass".
At the Last Supper, on the night he was betrayed, our Saviour instituted the eucharistic sacrifice of his body and blood. He did this in order to perpetuate the sacrifice of the cross throughout the centuries until he should come again and so to entrust to his beloved Bride, the Church, a memorial of his death and resurrection: a sacrament of love, a sign of unity, a bond of charity, a paschal banquet in which Christ is eaten, the heart filled with grace, and a pledge of future glory given to us. (Sacrosanctum Concilium, n. 47)
So what does this have to do with the ordination of women? A woman is a sign of creation and of the Church redeemed. A man is not. He cannot conceive new life within himself, nurture it for nine months and give birth to it. The Church is both bride and mother. Christ is bridegroom: "But the time will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast" (Mt 9, 16). The Church receives his word, his baptism, and his blood, and she generates sons and daughters of God in Baptism as a result of her union with him. But it was the bridegroom who gave himself up for his bride, the Church: "Men may offer to a bride every sort of earthly ornament, -- gold, silver, precious stones, houses, slaves, estates, farms, -- but will any give his own blood?" (Trac. in Io. VIII).
The image of a woman saying Mass obscures the fundamental symbolism of the priesthood; just as using wine to baptize a child would obscure what is taking place sacramentally in baptism. For the Mass is the sacrifice of Calvary re-presented in the here and now. The priest is acting not in his own person (in persona propria), but in persona Christi. Christ is the priest making the offering and the victim being offered, because the Mass is the sacrifice of the cross. It was not the Church, the bride of Christ, who gave herself up for him. But that is precisely what is being said when a woman, a sign of creation redeemed, takes bread in her hands and says: "Take this all of you and eat it, this is my body which will be given up for you".
That is why the Church maintains that she has no power to validly ordain women any more than she has the power to baptize a child with wine or oil, or validly anoint a person with acrylic paint or holy water. It has nothing to do with grades of perfection or an alleged superiority of men over women. It has everything to do with the sacramental symbolism of the priesthood. Those who have little difficulty with this are the ones who seem to have an appreciation for the importance and central place of symbol and ritual in the development, expression and communication of a culture.
Douglas McManaman. "A Concise Account of Why Women Are Not Ordained."
Reprinted with permission of Douglas McManaman.
THE AUTHOR
Doug McManaman is a Deacon and a Religion and Philosophy teacher at Father Michael McGivney Catholic Academy in Markham, Ontario, Canada. He is the past president of the Canadian Fellowship of Catholic Scholars. He maintains the following web site for his students: A Catholic Philosophy and Theology Resource Page, in support of his students. He studied Philosophy at St. Jerome's College in Waterloo, and Theology at the University of Montreal. Deacon McManaman is on the advisory board of the Catholic Education Resource Center.
Ping!
People keep looking for loopholes.
A woman can identify with every role and every symbolic aspect of Christ ('Shepherd,' 'Teacher,' 'Healer,' 'Fount of Living Water,' 'Wisdom.' etc.) except for one: and that is "The Bridegroom."
But it is exactly as Bridegroom that Jesus sacrifices himelf for his Beloved, his Bride, the Church. St. Paul calls this is "tremendous mystery":
(Ephesians 5:25, 31-32)
Husbands, love your wives,
just as Christ also loved the Church
and gave Himself up for her...
For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother
and shall be joined to his wife,
and the two shall become one flesh.
This is a tremendous mystery:
but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the Church."
So the one thing that a woman cannot be a bodily sign of, is being a husband. And that is the very aspect of Christ which the priest bodily represents.
At least, that's how I've come to see it.
Our culture is losing the whole idea of sexual significance: the symbolic and expressive meaning of being embodied as a man or a woman. I think if we really understood the many-leveled sense and sign-value of being male or female, we would grasp the "message about masculinity" which God gives us in the priesthood.
A woman can identify with every role and every symbolic aspect of Christ (’Shepherd,’ ‘Teacher,’ ‘Healer,’ ‘Fount of Living Water,’ ‘Wisdom.’ etc.) except for one: and that is “The Bridegroom.”
But it is exactly as Bridegroom that Jesus sacrifices himelf for his Beloved, his Bride, the Church. St. Paul calls this is “tremendous mystery”
______________
1. Well, if the women in the pew are supposed to be symbolic of the Church receiving the gift of Christ’s sacrifice, like a bride receives a gift from the groom, where does that leave the men in the pews? What are they symbolic of?
2. In the Anglican church, what do their women priests see themselves as doing when they are saying “do this in remembrance of Me?”
Not trying to cause trouble, just wanna know.
One is not to take this as sexually-literally, but every soul is an anagogical sense, feminine.
Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate,
1. Priestly ordination, which hands on the office entrusted by Christ to his Apostles of teaching, sanctifying and governing the faithful, has in the Catholic Church from the beginning always been reserved to men alone. This tradition has also been faithfully maintained by the Oriental Churches.
When the question of the ordination of women arose in the Anglican Communion, Pope Paul VI, out of fidelity to his office of safeguarding the Apostolic Tradition, and also with a view to removing a new obstacle placed in the way of Christian unity, reminded Anglicans of the position of the Catholic Church: "She holds that it is not admissible to ordain women to the priesthood, for very fundamental reasons. These reasons include: the example recorded in the Sacred Scriptures of Christ choosing his Apostles only from among men; the constant practice of the Church, which has imitated Christ in choosing only men; and her living teaching authority which has consistently held that the exclusion of women from the priesthood is in accordance with God's plan for his Church."(1)
But since the question had also become the subject of debate among theologians and in certain Catholic circles, Paul VI directed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to set forth and expound the teaching of the Church on this matter. This was done through the Declaration Inter Insigniores, which the Supreme Pontiff approved and ordered to be published.(2)
2. The Declaration recalls and explains the fundamental reasons for this teaching, reasons expounded by Paul VI, and concludes that the Church "does not consider herself authorized to admit women to priestly ordination."(3) To these fundamental reasons the document adds other theological reasons which illustrate the appropriateness of the divine provision, and it also shows clearly that Christ's way of acting did not proceed from sociological or cultural motives peculiar to his time. As Paul VI later explained: "The real reason is that, in giving the Church her fundamental constitution, her theological anthropology-thereafter always followed by the Church's Tradition- Christ established things in this way."(4)
In the Apostolic Letter Mulieris Dignitatem, I myself wrote in this regard: "In calling only men as his Apostles, Christ acted in a completely free and sovereign manner. In doing so, he exercised the same freedom with which, in all his behavior, he emphasized the dignity and the vocation of women, without conforming to the prevailing customs and to the traditions sanctioned by the legislation of the time."(5)
In fact the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles attest that this call was made in accordance with God's eternal plan; Christ chose those whom he willed (cf. Mk 3:13-14; Jn 6:70), and he did so in union with the Father, "through the Holy Spirit" (Acts 1:2), after having spent the night in prayer (cf. Lk 6:12). Therefore, in granting admission to the ministerial priesthood,(6) the Church has always acknowledged as a perennial norm her Lord's way of acting in choosing the twelve men whom he made the foundation of his Church (cf. Rv 21:14). These men did not in fact receive only a function which could thereafter be exercised by any member of the Church; rather they were specifically and intimately associated in the mission of the Incarnate Word himself (cf. Mt 10:1, 7-8; 28:16-20; Mk 3:13-16; 16:14-15). The Apostles did the same when they chose fellow workers(7) who would succeed them in their ministry.(8) Also included in this choice were those who, throughout the time of the Church, would carry on the Apostles' mission of representing Christ the Lord and Redeemer.(9)
3. Furthermore, the fact that the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God and Mother of the Church, received neither the mission proper to the Apostles nor the ministerial priesthood clearly shows that the non-admission of women to priestly ordination cannot mean that women are of lesser dignity, nor can it be construed as discrimination against them. Rather, it is to be seen as the faithful observance of a plan to be ascribed to the wisdom of the Lord of the universe.
The presence and the role of women in the life and mission of the Church, although not linked to the ministerial priesthood, remain absolutely necessary and irreplaceable. As the Declaration Inter Insigniores points out, "the Church desires that Christian women should become fully aware of the greatness of their mission: today their role is of capital importance both for the renewal and humanization of society and for the rediscovery by believers of the true face of the Church."(10)
The New Testament and the whole history of the Church give ample evidence of the presence in the Church of women, true disciples, witnesses to Christ in the family and in society, as well as in total consecration to the service of God and of the Gospel. "By defending the dignity of women and their vocation, the Church has shown honor and gratitude for those women who-faithful to the Gospel-have shared in every age in the apostolic mission of the whole People of God. They are the holy martyrs, virgins and mothers of families, who bravely bore witness to their faith and passed on the Church's faith and tradition by bringing up their children in the spirit of the Gospel."(11)
Moreover, it is to the holiness of the faithful that the hierarchical structure of the Church is totally ordered. For this reason, the Declaration Inter Insigniores recalls: "the only better gift, which can and must be desired, is love (cf. 1 Cor 12 and 13). The greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven are not the ministers but the saints."(12)
4. Although the teaching that priestly ordination is to be reserved to men alone has been preserved by the constant and universal Tradition of the Church and firmly taught by the Magisterium in its more recent documents, at the present time in some places it is nonetheless considered still open to debate, or the Church's judgment that women are not to be admitted to ordination is considered to have a merely disciplinary force.
Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church's divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32) I declare 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.
Invoking an abundance of divine assistance upon you, venerable brothers, and upon all the faithful, I impart my apostolic blessing.
From the Vatican, on May 22, the Solemnity of Pentecost, in the year 1994, the sixteenth of my Pontificate.
NOTES
1. Paul VI, Response to the Letter of His Grace the Most Reverend Dr. F.D. Coggan, Archbishop of Canterbury, concerning the Ordination of Women to the Priesthood (November 30, 1975); AAS 68 (1976), 599.
2. Cf. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Declaration Inter Insigniores on the question of the Admission of Women to the Ministerial Priesthood (October 15, 1976): AAS 69 (1977), 98-116.
3. Ibid., 100.
4. Paul VI, Address on the Role of Women in the Plan of Salvation (January 30, 1977): Insegnamenti, XV (1977), 111. Cf. Also John Paul II Apostolic Exhortation Christifideles laici (December 30, 1988), n. 51: AAS 81 (1989), 393-521; Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 1577.
5. Apostolic Letter Mulieris Dignnitatem (August 15, 1988), n. 26: AAS 80 (1988), 1715.
6. Cf. Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium, n. 28 Decree Presbyterorum Ordinis, n. 2b.
7. Cf. 1 Tm 3:1-13; 2 Tm 1:6; Ti 1:5-9.
8. Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 1577.
9. Cf. Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium, nn. 20,21.
10. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Declaration Inter Insigniores, n. 6: AAS 69 (1977), 115-116.
11. Apostolic Letter Mulieris Dignitatem, n. 27: AAS 80 (1988), 1719.
12. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Declaration Inter Insigniores n. 6: AAS 69 (1977), 115.
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