WOMEN IN THE CHURCH: WOMEN, ORDINATION AND TRADITION

...Because the analogy with the Old Testament male priesthood seemed to require a Christian priesthood that is also male, attention came to be focused on the maleness of Jesus Christ rather than on the common humanity which he has taken upon himself in the incarnation...

...Once the notion of a Christian priesthood developed, the eucharist came to be looked on in terms of a sacrifice offered by the sacred priesthood that acts in Christ's place...

...The canonical statement of this incapacity is still with us today, just as Gratian (c.1147) left it to us in his holy compilation of canon law: "Only a baptized male may validly receive holy orders" (canon 968...

...By looking at the ministry of women as revealed in early church orders, the development of clerical celibacy and the emergence of a Christian priesthood, some significant conclusions can be drawn about the ordination of women and about the nature of Christian ministry and priesthood...

...In the first place, the difference between Tradition (the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the church) and traditions (diverse forms of the expression of this Gospel) must be recognized...

...Whenever this counterbalance is lacking, liturgy tends to become an end in itself and to create a priestly caste to serve it...

...What is important to notice in this material is the relatively rapid restriction of the role of women to spheres in which the male ministers of the sacraments could not or would not function...

...Secondly, the people of God must not be divided by the hierarchy and domination of priestly caste or any other barriers...

...The history of canonical legislation in this early period is an impressive witness to the difficulties of trying to impose continence on the already married clergy and to require celibacy of those seeking ordination...

...The most basic of these is the argument on which Archbishop Joseph L. Bernardin relied in the statement he issued on behalf of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops just prior to the Detroit Ordination Conference last November: "Throughout its history the Catholic Church has not called women to the priesthood...

...Yet in that action a church with which we have strong ecumenical ties and theological affinities has rejected a line of argumentation shared by most Roman Catholic opponents of women's ordination...

...It is to the East that we have to look for suggestions about deaconesses today, for with relatively few exceptions, the order never caught on in the West, though the deaconess or abbess of a community of religious women performed a number of quasi-liturgical functions...

...Before inquiring into the specific historical and theological evidence it is necessary to ask about its limitations and its role in current theological argument...

...While subject to some kind of ordination, the deaconesses clearly were subordinate to the deacons, not to mention the presbyters and bishops...

...In regard to the ordination of women, exploration of the interaction of three developments in the early church is particularly fruitful...

...Deaconesses assisted at the baptism of women, did some instruction of female converts, visited and sometimes anointed sick women...

...and on the other hand, not every wind of change is the breath of the Spirit...

...We cannot expect, therefore, that the question of whether women can and shall be ordained now can be answered on the basis of whether they were or were not ordained then...

...Few if any developments in the course of this history are final...

...Early attempts to require celibacy of the clergy were related to a growing spirit of asceticism that manifested itself in the church at the end of the period of persecutions...

...3:16, 1 Tim...

...3. The emergence of Christian priesthood...

...Christian priesthood thus developed as exclusively male and tended to hold itself over against the Christian people...

...An inherent male suspicion of women seems to underlie this disciplinary development, and alongside it is a questionable theological image of woman as inferior and secondary in creation, proven weak and easily deceived in the Fall, and subject to man in the punishments meted out afterwards (cf...

...But it is exactly at this point that further examination of the process by which discipline and doctrine have developed and influenced each other in regard to the ordination of women is most necessary...

...For the interaction of the three developments sketched here has led to results that are neither desirable nor definitive...

...The former has an ultimacy which the latter lacks...

...On this model there was obviously no room for women in the cultic ministry...

...What I hope this sketch of historical-theological method and evidence suggests is that there is very good reason to reform the canonical requirement and the theological rationale that led to consequences such as these...

...2:llff...

...As we try to do this, we must remember that every ministry derives ultimately from Jesus Christ and is in an important sense different from his final and only priesthood...

...This is possible when eucharists are on a weekly basis, but difficult when daily...

...An earlier NCCB report to which he appealed made essentially the same point: "The constant practice and tradition of the Catholic Church has excluded women from the episcopal and priestly office...

...Whether this understanding is essentially Catholic, however, is another Francine cardman is a Roman Catholic professor of church history at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington...

...Along with the development of clerical celibacy and the limitation of women's ministry, the emergence of a Christian priesthood served to keep women in their place and away from the clergy...

...Rather it is a more subtle process of drawing analogies and tracing lines of influence, searching for insights into the general direction and significance of particular developments, and attempting to discern where faithfulness to these basic insights and to the thrust of the Gospel might lead us today...

...What do we know about the ordination of women in the church's history...

...What is most striking in all three of these areas is the way in which disciplinary developments tend to take on theological justifications which in turn help to reinforce the particular practice and enable it to become a "tradition...

...The importance of the question for the Roman Catholic Church does not, of course, arise from or depend on the General Convention's action...

...The canon and its theological justification (questionable in itself) reflect a dubious view of ministry-priesthood as dominance, a view which Vatican II at least implicitly rejected when it spoke of the church as the people of God...

...This simplistic argument is inadequate both as history and as theology...

...in church they were doorkeepers for the women's entrance and also saw to it that good order was maintained during the liturgy, particularly at the kiss of peace...

...By recognizing the historical nature of the church and its practice and tradition, we can avoid the kind of reverse determinism that canonizes the past so that whatever has in fact happened is seen as divinely intended, both then and for all time...

...Prior to the Episcopal General Convention the Anglican-Roman Catholic dialogue in the United States concluded that a change in practice in regard to the ordination of women would not lead to termination or abandonment of the goal of these discussions...

...Both statements reflect an understanding of tradition and historical development that is uncritical and in an unfortunate sense typically "Catholic...

...In light of these consideration, it is indefensible to argue against the ordination of women on the grounds that this has been "the constant practice and tradition of the Catholic Church...

...Alongside these general cautions about the use of historical argument are two that are specific to the discussion of women's ordination...

...And it falls far short of that insight into the essence of the Church that impelled Cardinal Newman to become a Roman Catholic: "In a higher world it is otherwise, but here below to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often...

...But reflection on the church's practice and tradition suggests some of the outlines of this development...

...The question is twofold...

...What can it contribute to the discussion of the ordination of women...

...The implication of the canon-that women are unable to perform sacramental ministry because they are defective in dominance-creates a curious situation...

...The important question, however, is whether this is the only understanding of Christian priesthood available in either that period or this...

...For we cannot simply reduplicate the church of the New Testament or patristic era-indeed, it would be difficult to find one model of the church that fit either of these times, much less our own...

...Removed from service and fellowship (diakonia and koinonia), the clerical caste that serves the liturgy comes easily to speak the language of power and domination, of hierarchy under the guise of service...

...continual continence is necessary and celibacy has been considered the only way to assure it...

...In this light it would be well to ask a further question: is it desirable that all ministries in the church be ordained or sacramental in the present formal sense...

...1. The ministry of women...

...To take the practice and tradition of the church seriously, therefore, does not mean either to fossilize or to ignore it...

...The shape of future developments cannot be predicted...

...The development of clerical celibacy was accompanied and in part facilitated by a rather ambiguous attitude toward marriage and sexuality...

...Altar service requires ritual purity, particularly abstention from intercourse before offering the eucharist...

...Reform of this sort is but the next stage in the unfinished process of the church's development...

...What can this tell us for today...

...Although priesthood in itself need not have sexist consequences this effect was almost a foregoing conclusion in the context of the Judeo-Christian patriarchal culture of the time...

...The historical and theological developments that have excluded women from ordained priestly ministry have had serious consequences for our understanding of priesthood and sacraments...

...This cannot help but intensify the discussion and focus it on the nature of the arguments that would continue to exclude women from priesthood in the Roman Catholic Church...

...Faithfulness to the Tradition is not the same thing as faithfulness to traditions...

...The outcome was obvious: women are to be kept away from the male clerics, not only at home but also in church...

...Here Christianity's long love-hate relationship with Judaism was also operative: if the priests of the old law abstained for a time, how much the more should the priests of the new and true Israel exhibit perfect continence...

...Can this be accomplished unless we can see women as well as men celebrating the sacraments, preaching, praying, and serving the people of God...

...First, while it is important to know what the ministry of women was in this early period and how it was regarded, it is equally important to realize that this knowledge does not finally determine our present decisions...

...While virginity seems always to have been valued as a Christian virtue, it assumed more importance with the rise of monasticism and other forms of institutionalized asceticism...

...By opening the church to the kind of reform necessary to permit it, can the ordination of women lead, paradoxically, to the declericalization and de-hierarchalization of the church...

...Fear of the association of female priests with female deities seems to have acted further to exclude women from the official ministry of the church, though no such qualms were expressed in regard to male priests and deities...

...Rather, as with any other historical body, the church has moved through history with a heartening degree of uncertainty, looking for the final working out of God's purposes...

...92, 1; suppl., 39, 1...

...For it ignores one of the most basic elements of sacramental theology: the efficacy of the sacraments does not depend on the "worthiness" (however conceived) of the minister, but on the power of God through Jesus Christ...

...Should we not also be looking for ways to take seriously the priesthood of all believers, recognizing that ordained or sacramental priesthood and ministry is only a specialized expression of the general ministry of the whole church...

...Both have to do with the kinds of questions that can profitably be asked regarding the New Testament and the early church...

...WOMEN IN THE CHURCH WOMEN, ORDINATION AND TRADITION FRANCINE CARDMAN Avoiding the reverse determinism that canonizes the past With the September decision of the General Convention of the Episcopal Church to ordain women to the priesthood after January 1977, discussion of women's ordination in the Roman Catholic Church has taken on added urgency...

...Finally, in regard to the old but very present problem of the disunity of the churches, must concern for ecumenism mean the delay or denial of the ordination of women...

...This is in part why the discussion of women's ordination (or of any other break with "tradition") stirs up such passionate responses...

...Almost all the currently popular arguments against the ordination of women rest on historical-theological rationales that are unsound either as history or as theology...

...The question of the ordination of women to the priesthood will take on increasing importance in the Roman Catholic Church...

...Progress or development in any area of the church's life has never been direct and unswerving...

...There was a subsequent confusion of the virtue of virginity, particularly in its monastic expressions, with the qualities necessary for church office or orders...

...To approach the material in this manner implies that the interpretation of the practice and tradition of the church and the application of this interpretation to present questions is not a matter of direct translation from one period to another...

...The relationship between disciplinary development and theological rationale deserves notice here...

...matter...

...Similarly, we have to beware of trying to impose the terms of the present discussion on material that will not admit of them...

...Although there is an important sense in which the eucharist is a sacrifice, several undesirable effects arose from concentrating almost exclusively, as much popular theology and piety has done, on the sacrificial aspect of the eucharist...

...This attenuated understanding of the incarnation led to the view that women are unable to represent the male Christ in the eucharistic sacrifice...

...The entrenchment of such a "tradition" then makes it as difficult to question its theological defense as to question the practice itself...

...It was also quite easy on this view to lose sight of the uniqueness of Christ's priesthood and to forget that he was the last and only high priest, who passed through the heavens, entering once and for all into the sanctuary, achieving eternal redemption with his own blood, the lasting sacrifice for sin (cf...

...What can we learn about ordination and priesthood from the historical and theological development of the early church...

...If difficulties nevertheless arise in this and other instances, then, might not the burden of blocking ecumenical advance rest with those churches that refuse to ordain women rather than with those that do or soon will...

...2. The development of clerical celibacy...

...First, women and men need to see in the church the real meaning of the ministerial expression of the priesthood of Christ, namely the representation of the fullness of redeemed humanity, male and female, that has been taken up in Christ...

...The so-called "Vincentian canon"-that what is true and to be believed is that which has been believed everywhere, always, and by everyone-has always been a theological ideal rather than a reflection of historical reality...

...Even this limited role of the deaconess soon declined into unimportance...

...In the East, the order of widows existed alongside of and sometimes blended into the order of deaconesses...

...Rather, the real fruits of historical and theological reflection will contain the seeds of the future...

...Historical and theological "evidence" does not stand on its own and provide us with answers to present-day questions...

...Theological and doctrinal formulations change, discipline develops...

...The discussion of women's ordination raises in an acute way the question of how to interpret and apply the church's "practice and tradition...

...The use of concepts that are anachronistic when applied to the early period of the church-asking, for instance, whether women had a real "sacramental ordination" to "major or minor" orders-will not yield any very helpful results...

...Modeled on the Old Testament levitical priesthood though superseding it, the concept of a Christian priesthood gave rise to the notions of sacred places and objects, ministry at the altar of sacrifice, and holy orders as sacral (as distinguished from sacramental) priesthood...

...The very nature of the traditionary process should convince us of this...

...These consequences are perhaps best recognized in Thomas Aquinas's explanation for the exclusion of women from sacramental ministry and orders: women are by their very nature inferior to men and hence are incapable of representing the kind of preeminence that orders signify (ST, la...

...Nowhere is this more apparent than in the situation which provoked Vincent of Lerins to formulate his canon of truth in opposition to the recent "errors" of the holy doctor Augustine...