Gender & priesthood The Orthodox are not ready to ordain women priests-far from it But they think it is wise to keep talking about the matter
Garvey, John
OF SEVERAL MINDS JOHN CARVEY GENDER & PRIESTHOOD The Orthodox keep talking After the recent Roman declaration that Catholics must regard it as infallible, a matter of the "deposit of faith,"...
...it will discourage many who stay...
...One Catholic priest, a conservative on this issue, said to me, "When they do these things, don't they understand that we are the people who have to mop up after them...
...According to the letter of Vatican I, this should not have been able to happen...
...Catholics have argued that Honorius meant well and was trying to be an orthodox Catholic, but this is silly: no heretic sets out to be wrong...
...In any case, a questioning of infallibility may have unsettling effects, but if honestly done it will be all to the good...
...And the attempt to invoke infallibility will cause the most serious questioning of the concept of infallibility since it was argued-and accepted-by Vatican I in 1869-70...
...as an Orthodox I think papal infallibility is a heresy...
...The declaration tries to end a discussion that really needs to happen, and it will not succeed in doing this...
...I believe that Rome meant to head off the prospect of some crazed bishop ordaining women and presenting Rome with an Anglican situation...
...Orthodoxy is considered a more conservative church than the Catholic church by many people...
...If it were only the latter, it could be changed...
...A defender of the Vatican statement could point to these things, with some justice...
...The question will obviously not be solved in this column...
...No doubt it disheartens advocates of capital punishment to see it increasingly challenged by bishops and the pope, and racists left the church during the sixties...
...The major question is whether this is something as essential to priesthood as bread and wine are to the Eucharist, or water to baptism...
...Even theologians who oppose the ordination of women have acknowledged that Orthodoxy must come up with better arguments than the current ones...
...But the problem goes deeper than that...
...If it is the former, better arguments than "Jesus chose only men to be apostles" need to be offered...
...I told him that although we may never see women priests in Orthodoxy, we would at least not call it an infallible truth...
...There is a possibly apocryphal story that when the English Catholic historian Lord Acton returned from Rome after the declaration of infallibility he was asked if he would leave the Roman Catholic church, and he answered, "Just because the pope has changed his religion, I see no reason to change mine...
...It will lead some people to leave the Catholic church...
...But there is an element of truth to at least one aspect of the argument: Jesus' male-ness may indeed be essential to what priesthood is about-but if so, why not his Judaism, which was absolutely essential...
...And if this was transcended in the understanding that the Israel of God now includes Christians, why is this same expansion not applied also to gender...
...Another interesting and insufficiently explored area is the fact that many of the proponents of women's ordination oppose any sense of hierarchy (however gendered), which certainly goes against the stream of Christian tradition...
...I think it can be safely said that the great majority of Orthodox would oppose the ordination of women...
...it will hearten people who already agree...
...The truth of a statement does not depend on how a great many people, even well-intentioned but wrong people, feel about it...
...Finally, is the priest meant to be an icon of Christ in a unique way-that is, aren't all human beings, male and female, meant to represent the fullness of the mystery of the Incarnation...
...it must be considered, and a significant minority of Orthodox theologians support either the ordination of women or the serious consideration of the question...
...The argument made by some proponents of women's ordination that if priests are "icons" of Jesus, then only Jews under the age of thirty-three can be ordained, is frivolous...
...or whether it is a matter of church discipline, like fasting laws or the age of ordination to the priesthood...
...But if this is what Rome intended, it could hardly have dealt with it in a more ham-handed and insensitive way...
...This is a matter of simple honesty...
...The more serious consequence is that it tries to end a discussion that needs to happen...
...But some bishops have made it clear that the question is not just a Western problem...
...The idea that people might be discouraged, might leave, is not in itself a strong argument...
...according to some accounts, a few women may have been ordained in Czechoslovakia, during the Communist persecution of religion...
...When we talk about this issue, we are talking, often, about more than this specific issue...
...On a more serious level, Acton also said that the defenders of infallibility would have a hard time with the case of Pope Honorius, who- speaking from the chair of Peter in matters of faith and morals-proclaimed the monothelite heresy to be true, and was condemned by a later council...
...This was meant lightly on both sides, but the Roman declaration will have very serious consequences, none of them intended by Rome...
...If the restriction of priesthood to men is maintained as essential, reasons involving the symbolism involved in gender will have to be made more compelling-for example, the apparent arbitrariness of fatherhood, its lack of obvious necessity, may have to be discussed...
...OF SEVERAL MINDS JOHN CARVEY GENDER & PRIESTHOOD The Orthodox keep talking After the recent Roman declaration that Catholics must regard it as infallible, a matter of the "deposit of faith," that only men can be priests, a Catholic friend asked if my Orthodox parish had gained any new members...
...The latter result is fine, as far as I am concerned...
...None of these are the truly important consequences...
...The ordination of men only to the priesthood certainly has the weight of tradition behind it, and for Orthodox this is one vital element-but there are others...
Vol. 123 • January 1996 • No. 2
