Why Not Women Priests? A Rejoinder
Professor of Moral Theology
Redemptoris Mater Seminary
Yona, Guam USA
On August 4, 2005, the PDN published a reply to my earlier explanation of why the Catholic Church cannot ordain women as priests. The writer of the reply did not find my explanation convincing, needless to say. What he found was a failed attempt to cover up the hidden agenda of the Catholic Church. “The hidden agenda here of the Catholic Church – whose persons in power are all males – is also obvious to anyone who cares to open his or her eyes; namely, to exclude women from any meaningful form of equality and to all the male members to continue to enjoy their own privileges.” I shook my head when I read that and said to myself. “Written by someone who has never been a priest!”
Here is the answer of someone who has been a priest for almost forty years.
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The French philosopher Paul Ricoeur has said that the philosophical leitmotif of our age is suspicion. Our question of “Why?” has within it the search for the “hidden agenda.” If he is right, it may explain why some today think that the Catholic Church’s failure to ordain women priests is a power play “to exclude women from any meaningful form of equality and to allow the male members to continue to enjoy their own privileges.”
The first obstacle that we have to overcome in trying to make the Church’s practice understandable is to get people to question their presuppositions. There is a built-in advantage of thinking badly about those who disagree with me. It means that I never have to let my own presuppositions to be challenged. What are some of the possible presuppositions that need to be challenged in this case?
The first is that the priesthood is to be equated with power. If you look in the Gospels, you will find that Jesus links discipleship (and a fortiori, ministry) with service. “If you want to be great in the kingdom, be the servant of the others. If you want to be the greatest, be their slave.” It may come as a shock to some, but a priest is ordained to serve, not to dominate others.
Another presupposition is that equality is to be equated with power to impose one’s own will on others. Anything short of this is not a “meaningful form of equality.” A look at the Epistle to the Romans tells us that the sacrament of Baptism, the sacrament of equality par excellence, is an inclusion into the death and resurrection of Jesus, who came not do to his will, but the will of the Father. The mission of the Church is to make visible that death has been overcome, by entering into the cross. Only then can the world be rescued from the cynicism that destroys faith in a Father who loves me and will not abandon me no matter what happens. This is the core of the Christian life.
The second obstacle that we have to overcome is the fact that we live in a culture that has lost an understanding of a sacrament. A sacrament is a visible, material sign of an invisible reality that makes that reality present in a given situation. God has willed to make himself present to us through the visible world. The first sacrament to appear chronologically is marriage. But the reality to which it pointed only became apparent later, in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In that event Jesus espoused to himself his bride, the Church. The marriage of those who have entered into the death of Jesus in baptism becomes a sign of the marriage of Jesus and the Church. The man, because of his male gender, becomes the sign that makes present the bridegroom Jesus Christ. The woman, because of her female gender, becomes the sign makes present the bride of Jesus Christ. This is the reason why the Catholic Church cannot recognize divorce in such a marriage. Both parties share and make visible the marriage of Jesus and his Church.
In my earlier letter I said that “the assembly of baptized believers is a sign of the bride of Jesus.” Forgive me. I misspoke. The assembly of baptized believers is not a sign of the bride of Jesus. It is the bride of Jesus. Sacramentally, only a married woman can be the sign of the bride of Jesus. This is why, if in a given situation all the women should leave, the men that remain are till the Church, the bride of Christ. But not one of them can be the sign of the bride of Christ. This is the reason why there cannot be a sacramental marriage between persons of the same gender. It would not be a visible sign of the marriage of Christ and the Church. Sex is serious business for many reasons, but above all, because it is sacramental.
Because of the service that he performs for the church in the celebration of the Eucharist, the priest is ordained in another sacrament to be the sign of Jesus the Bridegroom. Only a man, in virtue of the sacramentality of his sex, can to the visible sign of the invisible reality. This is why only a man can be ordained a priest.