Editorial Responsum dubium
Steinfels, Margaret O'Brien
Responsum dubium When the Vatican archives for 1995 are opened, we hope that they will show that the pope and his advisers went through as much anguish in deciding to issue the latest statement...
...But the form of exercising papal authority manifest in this statement may prove even more serious and destabilizing for the church itself...
...If this plea is to result in anything more than a purely mental exercise in squaring the circle, then pope and bishops must display a willingness to make real changes-to reconfigure church governance, for example, so that ordination is not a condition for holding real offices with real authority...
...We hope that the archives will show that Pope John Paul II and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger were fully sensitive to the crises of faith they were about to provoke...
...to public figures who would persist in a quiet Catholicism but feel unable, with integrity, to identify themselves visibly with a church so much at odds with their own convictions...
...to the individuals who would seek spiritual homes elsewhere...
...It is a question that the bishops, whose own teaching role has been passed over in this and other instances, ought to have been asked...
...That women are definitively excluded from ordination will seem the most troubling claim...
...Responsum dubium When the Vatican archives for 1995 are opened, we hope that they will show that the pope and his advisers went through as much anguish in deciding to issue the latest statement ruling out the possibility of ordaining women as many conscientious Catholics will undergo in encountering it (see box, page 6...
...A commentary from the Vatican advances the same argument: Catholics should hold firmly with one hand the church's teaching that men and women are fundamentally equal and no less firmly with the other hand the church's teaching that Jesus intended the priesthood to be an exclusively male office...
...Even those who accept that Jesus did not ordain women (or that he ordained men), and who accept that the tradition has not authorized the ordination of women, are left with this question: In an age when the talents and genius of women find ever-richer expression in the life of society, why can these talents and that genius never be expressed as priest or bishop in the Catholic church...
...Were any of them consulted ahead of time by Rome...
...It will require prayer and reflection...
...The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith's statement cites Jesus' injunction to Peter to confirm his brethren in the faith, a classic text in Luke for defining the papal office...
...Holding both, the faithful should forge ahead in search of a deeper understanding of both the priesthood and of women's role in the church...
...How can the "brethren" of Luke 22:32 (the bishops) be confirmed by the pope in this teaching if in fact they have not been consulted...
...We hope that the archives will show that pope and cardinal recognized the serious obstacle their decision would raise to those struggling to maintain the Catholic identity of institutions like universities and hospitals where many professionals already believe that automatic acquiescence in any exercise of church authority is incompatible with personal dignity and the open pursuit of truth...
...We hope that pope and cardinal felt obliged to act fully cognizant of the body blow that they would deliver to the authority of the papacy itself and maybe even to the concept of infallibility...
...They understood, we hope, that the affection and inspiration so apparent during John Paul's recent visit to the United State already coexisted with a distressing readiness to treat his teaching office as purely, advisory...
...Even these reforms will not relieve the consciences-or the pain-of those conscientiously convinced that women are also called to priestly office...
...The congregation's statement asserts that the teaching is founded on the "written word of God" and says that the doctrine has been taught universally by the bishops in accord with Vatican II's Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen gentium 25...
...Definitive assent to this statement, as to Ordinatio sacerdotalis itself, will be a test of faith for many-and on more than one count...
...And how can they discuss the matter if they cannot freely inquire into the sense of the faithful...
...But that claim seems open to question...
...At the time of Ordinatio sacerdotalis, we observed, "John Paul is quite certain, although not infallibly certain, of the inherently masculine nature of the Catholic priesthood" (Commonweal, June 17,1994...
...Not really...
...to the wounds on the body of Christ that would result...
...This is a question about the future...
...And how can they be consulted if they have not been permitted to discuss the matter...
...Has that changed...
...We hope that the authors also had in mind the passage in Luke where Jesus warns against laying burdens on people that are hard to bear...
...It will at most give them and all of us in the church an opportunity to reexamine our premises under new circumstances and in the light of evidence that the church's highest authorities are determined to be as faithful to both of these teachings (gender equality and gender exclusivity) as they require the rest of us to be, no matter the consequences for the status quo...
...Comments on the congregation's statement by several prominent American prelates show that they were all too aware of these destructive consequences and would like to forestall them...
...There is a second troubling question...
...Rather than close one question, as the pope undoubtedly wished, his congregation's statement has opened a host of others...
...It will be a heavy burden...
...On the ordination question, Archbishop Anthony Pilla, newly elected president of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, insists that different roles in the church do not make women and men unequal...
...What indeed is their teaching role in this or any other matter concerning the ordinary and universal magisterium...
...to those who would continue to carry out church ministries but with a gnawing reservation and a germ of cynicism planted in their hearts...
...it has only become foggier...
...Different gender roles cannot provide a cloak for restricting the exercise of authority in the church exclusively to men...
...Women should be named full members of the College of Cardinals, prefects of congregations, members of diocesan curias, and so on...
...to the young people who would shrug off the whole episode as another sign of the church's irrelevance...
...Precisely what form of authority is being exercised here...
Vol. 122 • December 1995 • No. 21
