Responses to Rome
Cahill, Lisa Sowle
Lisa Sowle Cahill Lisa Sowle Cahill is professor of theology at Boston College. Her Sex, Gender, and Christian Ethics will be published this year by Cambridge University Press. In my judgment, the...
...It has been reported that the authors of the document apparently intended that it reverse public opinion not only in the United States, but in countries like Germany and Austria, where petitions favoring women's priestly ordination have recently been signed by millions of Catholics...
...Yet arguments about the infallibility of the ordinary magisterium are, in the nature of the case, dicey, due to ambiguity about the degree of agreement necessary to constitute the requisite unanimity...
...Rather, the CDF and the pope maintain that the prohibition against the ordination of women presented in Ordinatio is the infallible teaching of the ordinary magisterium...
...Some opponents of women's ordination will be confirmed in their own views and encouraged in their condemnations of others, leading to further polarization of "orthodox" and "dissenting" Catholics...
...My fear is that as these young people mature they will not even bother to be angry with or work to change a church which is so blatantly irrelevant to their personal and social aspirations, and to their intimations of spiritual transcendence...
...Or could it be symptomatic of a radically new consciousness in the church regarding the status of women, whose inferiority was once taken for granted...
...Some supporters of women's ordination, especially those for whom Vatican II is a formative memory, will be increasingly angry at the church for what is regarded as further betrayal and intransigence...
...If unanimity erodes, was the teaching previously infallible, but afterwards not...
...We tell our daughters and our sons that they can be anything they want to be, so long as they have the requisite talent and determination...
...We, their parents and teachers, and even the church in many of its evolving ideas and practices, have taught young men and women to participate cooperatively and with equal mutual respect in family and society...
...Other feminists have ceased to care about ordination in an institution from which they are already so thoroughly alienated that they are seeking innovative forms of Catholic ministry and liturgy where their gifts are recognized...
...Those of a more stoic temperament will regard this as just another cross to bear while awaiting the slow fruition of seeds planted by Vatican II...
...Few who accepted the idea of women priests last September will be turned around by October's pronouncement...
...For example, there are reports that women were ordained in Czechoslovakia during the years of Communist repression...
...the fact that changes in teachings have risen and will arise in determinate historical eras...
...Theoretically, the "ordinary magisterium" may be infallible when and if the body of bishops worldwide has always taught the same thing...
...The CDF evidently aims to warn supportive theologians into silence, and to motivate the silent majority of bishops to take a hard line with dissenters...
...Of particular note is the fact that church documents themselves while remaining finally ambivalent on the status of women, have to a remarkable degree supported these changes...
...In my judgment, the CDF's responsum is an authoritative but noninfallible interpretation of Ordinatio sacerdotalis...
...Ordinatio sacerdotalis did not itself explicitly claim infallibility, and is not now said to be infallible in its own right...
...and the fact that the very nature of a question like the ordination of women can differ substantially by social setting...
...unclar-lty about how unanimity is to be tested, particularly if the Vatican avoids acknowledging divergent views...
...Did it ever happen in the past...
...But what really worries me is the reaction of the younger generation, including college and high-school students, as well as little girls and boys of altar-server age...
...How are we to know whether we are disputing a teaching just prior to or during an era of change...
...Papal writings, including Familiaris consortio, Mulieris dignitatem, and the "Letter to Women" preceeding last fall's UN conference in Beijing, have promulgated women's rights in documents addressed to traditional societies and to developing nations as well as to Europe and North America...
...In sum, the responsum may be "authoritative" insofar as it represents the position of ecclesiastical authorities who command respect, but it is not infallible in itself, nor does it even claim to be...
...But it is extremely unlikely that the document will fulfill these aims...
...Are there a number of bishops in sympathy with this apparently isolated instance...
...The social roles of women and our own expectations about gender equality have changed so drastically in the twentieth century, at least in the industrialized democracies, that there is no turning back the tide...
...If any of these questions can be answered in the affirmative, the very grounds on which such ordinations are said to be "infallibly" prohibited by the ordinary magisterium are called into question...
...They will simply walk away...
Vol. 123 • January 1996 • No. 2
