Where does it say…
I’m really curious about this one… In the comment stream on a friend’s posting, someone stated:
However the Church cannot just change the rules just to play fair and reverse the playing down of the relevance of women’s ministry. The fact is that women cannot be ordained priest, not my words but the words of God through His Church.
The commenter says these aren’t his words, but God’s. I’ve been looking in the Bible for where it says, “Thou shall not ordain women.” I haven’t found it.
Is it in there, or is this something new God said? Or is from some volume that didn’t make the canon of scripture, perhaps? Help me here…
The funny thing is, doing this search revealed something interesting. Ordination as a whole is a human invention. There were priests of various sorts in the old testament, sure. But the whole bishop, priest, and deacon thing, was all after Christ ascended. We created that. And given that Christ also came to fulfill the law, and was pretty critical of the existing Jewish authorities… Maybe none of us should really be ordained.
But when you get right down to it, Jesus did call women and give them jobs, and so did people in Paul’s time… So if we aren’t going to throw out ordination all together, why are we excluding women?
July 29th, 2006 at 1719
Outside the post, let me add something: I’m not attacking those who feel this way. I am not being sarcastic. I am actually genuinely curious. When someone says that God’s Word is thus or this other thing, I generally try to track that down. In this case, I was unable to, and need help.
While any response is unlikely to change my mind on women’s ordination (though one never knows), it will deepen my understanding of fellow Christians. And anytime that happens, I am enriched.
July 31st, 2006 at 022
Mark_J, i posted this in the comments on Jane’s Blog.
I completeness them here for completeness.
—————
Well, Mark_J, now you’re opening a can of worms, which it wouldn’t be fair to spout all over poor Jane’s blog comment spot. She’s sick enough of reading me and my militancy. I shall endeavour to be brief.
Scripture (namely in Paul’s letters to St Timothy, I Tim iii specifically)tells us that a priest (episkopos used interchangeably with presbyteros)is absolutely expected to be male.
The Gospels point to an unequivically male Christ whom the priest represents at the altar and according to St Paul (I Cor xi.7) women cannot make that reflection.
(Please note that Christ has to be male for both sexes to be involved in the Incarnation.)
I confess quite humbly that I am no Bible scholar and others better than I have put their arguments forward, but I have sufficient understanding of the Tradition upon which Anglicanism and Episcopalianism are built to know that God has not, and does not now ordain women.
If it were true that women were to become priests, then why have they only been introduced in the last 30 years. Why should the philosophical changes of last century take precedence over the previous 19?
Certainly the allowance of Gentiles into Christian society was given directly by divine intervention to both St Peter in the Acts and St Paul elsewhere who certainly criticises St Peter for regarding Gentiles as second class citizens. Thus the great acceptance of anybody as a Christian slave free, Jew, Gentile, male, female. This is where Galations iii.28 fits in.
This has not happened with the priesthood of women. There has been no Divine Revelation to the whole Church, rather it has been a philosophical fashion to be inclusive and thus chuck out the doctrines of the Church one by one. By far the overwhelming majority of us believe the ordination of women to be wrong to be wrong and a schismatic issue which puts up barriers between Christians. You may say that we are the ones causing difficulties, but we haven’t changed our doctrine and remain on the same course as we did before.
You also made a comment that ordination was purely a human construct. Then I suggest you read St John xx.19-23 and see the behaviour of the Lord, then Acts vi.1-7 to see the pattern being maintained. Ordination is a Sacrament after all.
Now, after all this, Jane. Further to filling up your blog comments with this, I should also like to apologise for my terse little comment about you not taking the business seriously. I’m sure that insofar as it is possible you are acting with integrity in the theology that you have. However, your idea that stones can cry out, albeit perfectly biblical still means that they cannot be baptised. Likewise for all your preaching and teaching and praising God, I regret that you still cannot be a priest.
I have no wish to close this on a negative note. I sincerely wish you well and hope that the barriers between us may come down soon.
July 31st, 2006 at 024
“I completeness them here for completeness”?
Ach, pillock that I am!
Should read: “I copy them here for completeness!”
July 31st, 2006 at 116
The key to solving this puzzle is that Dr Munn wrote ‘not my words but the words of God through His Church‘ (emphasis mine).
As you know, Catholics don’t believe in sola scriptura (and indeed nowhere in scriptura does it say that) so ‘I can’t find it directly in the Bible’ isn’t the answer.
Also it’s not a question of feeling.
Regards,
John Beeler
July 31st, 2006 at 802
It really comes down to the fact that men have historically oppressed women and benefit by doing so. So long as people of any sex and/or creed feel they are better than others, and especially when they believe it is divinely inspired that they are so, then you’ll get this sort of attitude. Oh, I’m sure this person doesn’t believe he thinks that he’s better than women. But his desire not to see them ordained is a de facto admission of this belief.
And I come at this from the perspective of one who has no claim to know what God said or didn’t say. I’m just a lay person, attacking this from the position of historicity, not religious doctrine, dogma, or thought. I’ll leave that up to the people who’ve studied religion. But damn if it doesn’t sound like the usual typical “I’m better than you” crap. Makes it even worse when it’s “I’m better than you because God said so.” Give me a break.
July 31st, 2006 at 1148
If you regard a priest as being “better”/”holier”/more authoritative than an ordinary human being, or as somehow “closer to God” then your remarks might be very well pertinent. In this day and age, the laity are often better-informed than the priest!
However, ordination is not about making people better than others. It’s not because women are in anyway inferior to men that they cannot be priests, it’s because they are different from men.
Their ministries as Christians differ from those of men. There may be other forms of God’s grace other than Sacraments that only women can do (and you can bet your boots that childbirth is one of them, if that is not a miraculous grace of God, then I do not know what is), and to its shame the Church has not explored these in as much depth as the Priesthood.
However, should the church ordain women just to “redress the balance”? Isn’t that actually more patronising to the ministry of women?
July 31st, 2006 at 1308
I was not going to get involved in this. Was not, was not, was not. It does no good. You can’t change people’s minds, be they narrow or wide, through blog comments about these issues. And no way in the wide, wide world of sports (movie reference, Mark) can you ever accomplish anything useful by getting involved in controversial conversations about religion or politics.
But, War., your comments to me are polite and I appreciate that. So, respectfully, I submit that you are wrong. You wish to equate physiology with calling and brain power? Next you’ll be telling me that women aren’t as smart as men (no, I’m not really suggesting you will, but the argument falls along the same lines).
Other than childbirth, which is a very obvious physiological difference, how do you KNOW what women can do that men can’t? How do you KNOW? I’d like to know, because I am a woman, and darn if I don’t think I can do just about anything a man can do, aside from the obvious and aforementioned physiological things. If the church should be exploring women’s ministries, which are different according to you, where do they start? What are women’s ministries? Potlucks and child rearing? (I’m not trying to be a smarty pants, but I don’t think you know either and I’m just tossing out what, until recently in our history, have been traditional women’s roles.)
Be careful when you speak of difference. Women are different than men why? Because we have one set of genitals and you another? The argument of difference has been used historically for very evil things, has it not? I don’t think I need to remind you of all the times and places this has occured. Just open a history book.
I am not arguing with you about religion. No doubt you know more than I on the subject. But I’m telling you that from the very depths of my heart and soul, created by the same God that created you, I feel no inferiority to you or any man. Gender politics and patriarchal control are a societal construct. We could just as easily be living in a matriarchy, in which case you’d be telling me how women have been controlling men and their access to the Creator for the last several millenia. Who’d be different then?
Again, I thank you for being polite to me in your comments. These sorts of conversations, especially conducted via computer, can quickly get inflammatory. I mean you no disrespect, and I don’t doubt you are probably a nice and well-meaning person, but I think you are wrong. Your reasoning, at least, is faulty. Doesn’t mean you may not be right about men and priesthood (I don’t think so), but you’ve shown me no empirical evidence to back up the point. It’s all opinion and conjecture. Obviously, we aren’t going to change each other’s minds. Aloha and mahalo.
July 31st, 2006 at 2134
Dear mwlrh,
of course you are at perfect liberty to think that I am wrong, and I sincerely pray that you always have that liberty, and may continue to voice your objections as eloquently as you have.
I always try to live with the possibility that I am wrong.
How do I know? Through the testimony of God through the Church. It’s part of my faith. It’s a consequence of what I believe, and a consequence of what the majority of Christians world-wide and throughout history believe.
I have been, and still intend to do so, making a study of the ministry of women which I believe has as much integrity and worth as men. I do not believe that it is pot luck and childbirth, but something much more integral to the whole of society, perhaps so much that it’s difficult to see through sheer scale.
I should honestly pray that you should not feel inferior to anybody male or female (quite clearly you are not), and we could spend our time debating “what-ifs” which as Aslan says would do us no good at all.
Men and women are different, but they share a common humanity. As long as that is truly recognised, then I believe the innate respect and love that human should have for human would prevent any form of exploitation or oppression. That is the goal of the Church.
No, we won’t agree. But then, perhaps that is something to rejoice in that we have the ability to disagree quite profoundly and yet remain civil, if not amicable in our wranglings.
Aloha and mahalo.
August 1st, 2006 at 437
Outside the theological arguments, what I find most obviously spurious is this:
“If it were true that women were to become priests, then why have they only been introduced in the last 30 years. Why should the philosophical changes of last century take precedence over the previous 19?”
If we were meant to discover electric light and the power of flight, why didn’t it happen before the late 19th/early 20th century? Because we were blind to the possibilities, lacked knowledge that enabled us to employ for the first time natural properties that have existed for far longer than millennia.
Just so, we have been sadly blind until very recently to how small the differences between male and female capabilities are. Some still don’t see it. Hormones are strange and mysterious things, with profound effects on human development, but I’m unaware of any that, aside from pathology, make someone unsuitable to minister to their spiritual siblings.
If the only measure of an idea’s worth is its age, then what authority should the Bible have had when it was first codified in written form? How about when it was circulating as various regional oral texts? How about when henotheism first came into vogue in segments of the population? Or animism?
(Heck, to go to logical if absurd extremes, if you want an idea with legs, take prostitution. If the Epic of Gilgamesh is any measure, the sale or barter of sex is about as old as religion itself, and every attempt to eliminate it through argument, faith, or force has so far failed. And yet we know it to be an institution that by its nature and by the ways in which it is so far inevitably practiced, causes harm–an idea that I suspect is not much older than the written Hebrew testament.)
If the only measure of the power of religious traditions is age, then every tradition you have crumbles under some amount of examination. The establishment of priesthoods and hierarchies, the construction of churches, the study of theology, it all has an age. And like it or not, the text, the time, and the theology any given person selects rests on an arbitrary decision about how far back to go, what to keep and what to change.
I’m not saying it’s necessarily a negative–the practice of religion is pretty hollow without that arbitrary acceptance (it’s more kindly called faith)–but arbitrary it remains.
I don’t believe God wrote the Bible, or that even if it was divinely inspired, it survived the transmission with less than serious corruption. Heck, I have serious questions about the existence of God. But I believe that if there is a God who gave us the Bible, it also gave us reason to apply in its reading, indeed to question its contents if we saw fit.
I believe that, like it or not, priests are authority figures, given perceived power in a constructed hierarchy, and that any authority must be constantly questioned to prevent abuse. I believe that questioning the restriction of authority to a single gender is a proper exercise of the reason God may or may not have given us, our right and our duty, and that changing the priesthood on the basis of reasoned examination something that a putative reason-bestowing God would bless.
August 1st, 2006 at 821
Tim,
you speak of technological advances, and all well and good. However, what has changed about humanity? Absolutely nothing. Take a look at the Middle East and see what they are doing with modern technology – exactly what Cain did to Abel in the book of Genesis. Humanity, in however many years of existence, simply is still the same as ever.
Since Christians believe in the Communion of the Saints whereby we are united with all those Christians who have gone before through the loving mercy of God in the very act of Communion, to suddenly turn and say “no, you were wrong because you were speaking in the 15th Century” is nuts. Christian dogma has a completely Historical basis, although the dogma is proclaimed afresh in each generation. That dogma doesn’t change because God hasn’t changed, and neither have we, so no 15th Century, 17th Century, 20th Century or 25th Century thought is going to take predominance. It’s the same Christianity, the same God, the Same Christ, the same Resurrection, and the same Eucharist.
Indeed, many of us believe that there is only One Mass taking blace in Eternity, and that all the Masses on Earth are part of that. All the more important to be true to the basis of that Communion.
August 1st, 2006 at 838
Thanks for your views, War, though I still submit that your conclusions are faulty. Tim, in fact, has a very good argument for why that is the case, in my opinion.
How do I know? Through the testimony of God through the Church. It’s part of my faith. It’s a consequence of what I believe, and a consequence of what the majority of Christians world-wide and throughout history believe.
The appeal to God/nature/authority is a very old logical fallacy. I cannot argue with you beyond this point. The brick wall of belief (I don’t mean that negatively; it’s simply a metaphor), and the suppostion that your interpretation is not only correct but shared by a majority of Christians (begging the question), puts an effective end to our discourse.
OTOH, you are correct in your statement that we should rejoice in our ability to disagree civilly. Humankind has not always done so, have they? Indeed, they still do not when it comes to matters of religion. One only has to turn on the news to see the results of dogmatic entrenchment.
Something else I submit to you, though it will not of course change your opinion, is that the arguments you suggest for excluding women from the priesthood have also been used historically to exclude them from other professions in which men did not want to share.
Becoming doctors, lawyers, and even the right to vote were once denied women with a stridency more appropriate to kindergartners. The argument often involved an appeal to God, as in God has said women are unfit for these things. Those men were ultimately proven wrong. Why can’t you be? Indeed, you can, and already have in many denominations. No doubt there were old doctors and lawyers who never accepted their female colleagues. No one remembers who they are or why it even mattered.
It’s been fun, actually, engaging in this conversation. In one respect at least, you have exceeded my expectations of what this conversation would be. I do appreciate the civility. And, I think we’ve probably beaten the dead horse enough. Live Aloha.
August 1st, 2006 at 841
Hey, all, I just wanted to pop in briefly and say thank you for continuing this discussion. I’m happy to let it go on as long as it wants, and am enjoying hearing so many sides, some theological some not, on this particular issue.
I’m not sure if I’ll have a response to this at any point. The real reason I posted it was just to listen to all of you, and that’s working just fine!
I do whave a question for War/Tim: Even though humans may not have changed much since Cain and Abel (though I’d probably argue that we have, in many ways), Tim, weren’t you saying that it was our understanding of ourselves that has changed?
August 1st, 2006 at 1014
Right, Mark: I don’t think people have changed fundamentally, just that our understanding has deepened. Hence my metaphor about science: aerodynamics have always been around; it just took us this long to grasp what we could do with them. Just so, women have always had the potential to be what men have been in society, from laborers to leaders, but for some reason, it took us millennia to figure that out.
You talk about the disastrous uses of technological advancement, and you’re right to raise the question. But I’d ask a question in return (one of the few ways in which I resemble Jesus). Should we freeze to death because fire can be used to kill? Should we cease the use of airplanes because they can be used to kill?
I say no. I believe what we need to do is not arrest the progress of technology, but apply ourselves more passionately and thoroughly to using it correctly. With apologies to mwlrh for a dehumanizing twist on my methaphor, regarding female priests as a novel technology, yes, there are potential dangers, namely the upsetting of many Christians. But like mwlrh, I refuse to concede all, or even most, and especially not forever, and as with fire and airplanes, I refuse to see potential misuse as a reason for rejection, and think instead that it’s a reason for education of the technology’s users.
I think I understand what you’re saying when you say that the dogma remains the same but is proclaimed afresh, but I disagree that spiritual/apostolic continuity is the same thing as real-world consistency in belief and practice. I’m getting pretty far out on the thin theological branch I occupy, but I think that at both coarse and fine levels of detail, that’s fallacious.
August 1st, 2006 at 2300
I’m afraid, I don’t even agree that our understanding of ourselves has deepened. Medical Research keeps telling us one thing such as eggs are good for you, then it reverses that decision. Likewise, we were told by psychiatrists that to recall a traumatic event in our lives would bring healing, now they are saying that it is more damaging to do so. Trying to understand ourselves without God is a waste of time. This is effectively the content of the book of Ecclesiastes, and Freudian psychology, modern physics, and many other ways of thought that we are using today were deliberately designed to replace God, and ironically all have discovered that they might need God after all.
St James warns us about being blown hither and thither by any old wind of doctrine, and for the most part scientists are realising that indeed those in previous centuries perhaps understood more than we had given credit to. Think of the Aztecs and others. Where is their technology? Sadly it is crumbling to dust, along with their horrid practice of human sacrifice.
I’m afraid that to see women priests as an innovative technological advance is dehumanising, and contrary to the idea of priests in the first place. If we argue considering women priests as an technological innovation, then we are essentially working outside God’s intention and building another Tower of Babel.
It is the episcopacy that forms the apostolic succession (continuity, as you put it), and the priesthood follows from this. This continuity ensures that the Church remains in the world, but St Paul reminds us that it should not be of the world, nor conform to the standards of this world (Roman xii.2). The Church is designed to be anachronistic because it is not of the world. I personally find that the fact that people regard the Church as irrelevant rather cheering because it demonstrates that non-conformity with the “real-world”. The Church worships the Helige Geist not the Zeitgeist, and who gets to say what the real world is? It is because of the real-world’s inconsistency with the practice of belief and practice that it is in a mess. If it were consistent, people would not be suffering as they do.
No, the arguments about women priests are different from women doctors, lawyers, judges et c. Even though arguments against have been unsound (actually made by Protestants appealing to misreadings of scripture and to (guess what) the philosophy of the time) such professions do not require the level of continuity with God, these are professions of the world, the priesthood, as I mention above is in the world. The Church has not objected to these professions: the arguments are not mentioned in the Tradition, nor are they truly Scriptural, thus it is unreasonable. The priesthood of women is, however, objected to in the Church Tradition as intimated from Scripture.
Yes, in argreement with mwlrh, we reach an impasse. I have put forward my arguments as best I can, but at the end of the day lies that brick-wall of belief. I admit, I could be wrong. However, I do not believe I am. Our argument for and against women priests has reached the level of our understanding of what reality is and how in tune the Church should be to that reality, and that is too large for a comment board.
August 2nd, 2006 at 1437
Yeah, this has been interesting to say the least. But I wanted to toss this into the works: Baptist churches have been ordaining women for over a century.
I’m just sayin’. No, not the SBC, but the congregationalist move makes it possible for women to be in ministry without checking it with a bishop or other oversight. A congregation can discern the Spirit and step up.
If these did not sing, even the rocks would cry out…If rocks can praise God…
August 3rd, 2006 at 425
Lately Episcopalians of certain churchmanships (which we can call ‘Broad’ for convenience) have been slamming conservatives, Catholic or non-, as schismatic, congregationalist, etc. for following the larger church past and present on this and other matters but today I read a congregationalist argument for it.
(Getting ready to duck for cover…)
So which is it then? (Does the Spirit only speak to congos that want to do what the secular world approves of?)
Like ‘conscience clauses don’t make sense’ (and in a way they don’t)/follow the new rules or else vs ‘let’s stick together and dialogue ’cos no-one’s got the whole truth’ (also in a sense true). (Not an issue in hierarchical churches that don’t pretend to be democratic, such as the great churches of Catholic Christendom, whose view on the issue is well known enough not to be mentioned in this comment.)
Same question as above.
August 3rd, 2006 at 624
(edited by author)
So, what do we do in the midst of a progressive culture when the practices of the church do not also “progress?” YF, that is how I rephrase your question. I recognize that Baptists are too culture happy. PoMo, Mo, X, Y, Boomers…we culturalize the gospel to death. I get it. It’s a huge problem. But I am not certain that ordaining women is the same dynamic as progression or secularization.
One of the things where we likely part ways is the assumption that the Spirit is done revealing God’s will to the world. Or, as another side to the coin, that we are done understanding and interpreting that revelation. And, though I grant you that 2000 years is a good long time for understanding God, is it anything in the face of the eternal One?
I do not believe God to be cruel enough to not want us to understand. Nor do I believe that we are called to so cruel as to preach misunderstandings as equivalent to damnable statements.
I believe in the ordination of women. Why? Well, I do not believe that the specific gender of the Man Jesus, and thus the ascended Lord Christ to be a necessary particular in my salvation. So, I disagree that the priest is to signify Christ, gender/sex/genetalia included, because then somehow Jesus masculinity is salvific. Femeninity is thus not salvific. This was the belief of the desert fathers and mothers, for example. Mary of Egypt constantly bemoaned her own gender, hoping to be more like Christ…thus male. Some of the desert mothers became more masculine and thus admirable.
You can make Mary arguments if you like, but she did not save us and is no co-redemptrix. C’mon. Get real. Honor her. Love her. Please do! We need her. Ask her to pray for us like we would with any saint. But, please don’t get all co-redemptrix on me. Sorry…that was a rant. *breathes* You may not go there at all.
So, if signification in the priesthood at the altar is salvific, what is it then that is signifies? How do you, YF, understand that? For this is where I see the true issue at hand. I do not see Jesus’ gender as part of the salvific equation. His sacrifice and resurrection, most certainly. But cannot a woman signify sacrifice and resurrection?
Okay…I know it has been the teaching of the True Church for a long-ass time. And, honestly, I think history matters. I am not interested in chucking it because it is old. I am interested in re-negotiating the debate because in the bosom of Christ stand the saints, including those who started this ball rolling two thousand years ago. I am arguing with Paul, Chrysostom, and anyone else willing to pray for me…as I do for them.
Pax vobiscum, good sir!
August 3rd, 2006 at 1236
First of all I agree with what Dr Munn has written so far. Humanity has ‘progressed’ nowhere near as much as one might think and fallen human nature is exactly the same.
Second, IIRC Catholics and indeed all orthodox Christians believe that revelation ended with the death of the last apostle; all that follows is commentary. Our interpretation, our understanding does grow but of course doesn’t contradict itself; otherwise Jesus’ promise that he’d be with us alway, even unto the end of the world would be a lie. Something taught unchanged for 2,000 years is probably so for a reason.
Third, equality = complementarity and not necessarily interchangeability. And indeed there is equality as Dr Munn’s comments show as does Alice Linsley’s post here. (In fact tomorrow much of Eastern Orthodoxy commemorates St Mary Magdalen as ‘equal to the apostles’). If somebody exchanged your wife for a man I dare say you’d have something to say about it!
Fourth, why are you bringing up ‘Co-Redemptrix’? I never did and in fact am not keen on defining it as doctrine. It’s only opinion, something that can be understood as orthodox but requires lots of explaining to make it so. Because of that I don’t think it’s worth it, even though such things are fun for scaring the Protestants!
Its obvious meaning at face value, which isn’t its real theological meaning, is heretical!
Fifth, a go at answering your Big Question, Tripp. It ties into the third point. In Catholic theology as you allude to, the priest acts in persona Christi to make Christ’s one Sacrifice present sacramentally. Not only does that rôle exclude women but some men as well. Nobody has the right to be ordained (nor, as I think Dr Munn has pointed out, is pleading the Holy Sacrifice the only ministry that counts for anything). Not only must the priest be a man, which has a spiritual as well as physical character, but a complete (not a eunuch), unmutilated man to act as Christ sacramentally. My own father confessor almost lost a limb as a child; by a miracle he is a priest today.
There’s also the analogy of Mass and Communion (as I wrote to Fr Young in his blog), and of Christ and the church, to marriage. Some (can’t remember exactly who right now) have remarked on the homosexual aspect of having a feminine Christ as priest for the bride of Christ, the church. Which may be fine for the heterodox
. But not for Catholics.
Sixth, your last ’graph seems to go against the spirit of Larry’s post; how does such a flippant attitude towards our holy mother the church help the genuine ecumenism you and I claim to believe in as sacramentalists?
…anyone else willing to pray for me… as I do for them.
Be assured you’ve got that from me, Tripp.
Et cum spiritu tuo.
P.S. How did you go back and edit your comment here in WordPress? I don’t see that option when I’m in one of these blogs.
August 3rd, 2006 at 1716
Hey.
Re: editing…I asked the author for the favor. The first attempt was not quite English. I’ll admit I used English vocab, but you know how these things go…
The Co-Redemptrix thing was a rant. I am sorry if I went too far. And I was not really thinking of you in relation to that particular discussion. But it is, sadly, where I have to go if I am to understand the doctrine of a mascuine priesthood.
I learned something new from you…that the revelation ended with the death of the last apostle. Interesting. That is the first time I have heard that. Hmm. Ha! Maybe I skipped that day in church history.
in persona Christi is an interesting doctrine for the Baptist to encounter. Christ is the example. And we have a relationship with Christ. Also, we are to act as Christ, all of us. Thus any can serve at the altar no matter the ordination status. This revealed kingdom of priests is how we all embody Christ. As we are all in the Body, we all embody Christ in Christ’s fullness.
Limiting the priesthood to the male is not really an issue of equality to me…not in the sense of feminism or what have you. It is absolutely connected to how I understand the Church’s responsibility to embody all of Christ…and for all to be sanctified. If we are all to be fully divinised, then I want to make less of the particularity of Christ’s gender. To be divine like Christ means we all must perform the actions of Christ. This means that all are priests…all believers.
This would push even the Anglicans around…perhaps even some of the liberals. Heh. Sorry, Mark. Maybe not you. But I am aware that it is this theology, and something about the apostolic succession, that keeps the ECUSA from honoring my ordination.
August 3rd, 2006 at 1828
I learned something new from you…that the revelation ended with the death of the last apostle. Interesting. That is the first time I have heard that. Hmm. Ha! Maybe I skipped that day in church history.
I think I sense a point of view coming out.
AFAIK this is standard Catholic stuff.
August 4th, 2006 at 110
I would just like to throw my pennorth into the debate here which I am pleased to see has not degenerated into the mutual trading of insults that one so tragically finds discussions on this matter descending into.
As a Catholic can I first begin by prefacing what is to follow by two comments: firstly, that were the pope in communion with all the college of bishops in ecumenical council to declare infallibly that the church could not declare women to be valid matter for the sacrament of holy order on the grounds that “we’ve never done it so we can’t do it but we have no explanation why” then of course I would submit to such a decision, although a God who does something arbitrarily without giving a reason seems more like the nominalist God of Ockham than the God of Aquinas et al; and secondly, I have no time whatsoever for people who seek to use this whole question as an excuse for schismatic activities such as illicit ordinations or the setting up of independent congregations, not least because such rending of the seamless robe represents a monumental failure of charity, without which the Church is nothing.
Nonetheless I find the various positions outlined (both here and elsewhere) in favour of the proposition that “a woman can NEVER be valid matter for the sacrament of holy order” problematic.
There is much talk, sometimes, I am afraid so say, patronising waffle, about the “unique vocation of women” which is separate from the vocation of (some!) men to holy orders. Yet when pressed, such persons are generally unable to delineate a clearly ECCLESIAL function that can only be carried out by actual biological females in the same way that, it is asserted, only actual biological males can be vaild matter for the sacrament of holy orders. Everything that is asserted as womanly, e.g. the contemplative life, symbolising the Bridal dimension of the Church, symbolising the Marian dimension of the Church etc. etc. turns out, on closer inspection to be also performable by men, but everything that is asserted as inherently manly, such as representing Christ at the altar, can only be performanble by actual men. This male sexuality is deemed to be polyvalent, such that a male can assume either the role of the Bridegroom at the altar or the Bride in the congregation, but this polyvalency is denied to the woman who can ONLY symbolise the Bride in the congregation. This is manifested by the fact that a male monastic community with a priest among their number is completely self contained, whereas a female monastic community must ALWAYS import a priest from outside to offer Mass for them because they cannot ordain one of their own to offer the eucharistic sacrifice for their community. This IS inequality, because it is saying that there is nothing ecclesially that a man cannot do, but that there IS something ecclesially that a woman cannot do, namely receive the sacrament of holy orders. The only woman who is NECESSARY to the Church on this view is the All-Holy Mother of God, to bring the God-Human into the world: after that the Church (which reproduces not physically but by baptism), could exist in all its fullness entirely composed of men, who could perform all the roles required. Since such a view is absurd and, frankly insulting, (because it implies that women bring nothing to ecclesial reality AS WOMEN), its proponents then slip into arguing that childbearing and biological motherhood is the role of the woman in the church. But this merely recreates the problem a step further up the spiral of argumentation, for it now says that while the man has open to him either lay biological fatherhood or spiritual ordained fatherhood, the woman has only open to her lay biological motherhood. It also ignores the long tradition of lay but spiritual fatherhood offered by countless male monastics as well as the lay but spiritual motherhood offered by countless female monastics, as well as forgetting the fact that the Church reproduces by baptism not by breeding and that childbearing is not a specifically ecclesial activity as such. (This goes some way to explaining both the familiolatry and lack of vocations to the female religious life in Catholic neocon circles). The logical implications of such a view would be a Church made up of celibate men all of whom were ordained, and women all of whom were virgin mothers. You cannot have essentialism when it comes to female sexuality and genderbending when it comes to male sexuality.
The absurd comments of Hans Urs von Balthasar comparing the Passion of Our Lord on Calvary to an ejaculatory male orgasm as his best argument for saying why only men can be ordained must be mentioned if only to discard it as bizarre quasi-pagan rubbish that belongs back in Canaan.
On the question of eunuchs, while I am conscious that the East has generally taken a far more serious view of the Levitical purity regulations than the West, I am sure that one could find examples of eunuch deacons, priests, and bishops. Whatever happened to the dominical utterance “blessed are the pure IN HEART for they shall see God”, or “blessed are those who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven” (and I know we have understood this as celibacy and not as castration!). Origen, for all his complex thought, was ordained, and he had castrated himself I believe so as to better concentrate on his scholarship. So clearly the testicles aren’t the issue, it must be the penis that really counts. But surely the point of Our Lord’s penis was that it was a Jewish, circumcised penis (which we commemorate every New Year’s Day), not that it was a penis per se? Our Lord assumes humanity, that is human nature as a whole in the incarnation (for in the hypostatic union there is no person of the man Jesus, rather there is the one person of the Son in two natures) not masculinity as such. Or is a respondent to this point going to assert that human nature is displayed more perfectly in the male than in the female?
The hypostatic union is already both Bride and Bridegroom from the moment of Jesus’ conception, which is why we talk about the womb of Our Lady as the holy of holies and the bridal chamber. The Incarnation is itself a consummated marriage in which the male and the female are already one flesh inseparable, which is why to be in the presence of the Lord during His earthly ministry and even now, is to be at a wedding feast (hence why, to the discomfort of the Pharisees, Jesus always seemed to be banqueting!). In Christ Jesus there is no male or female, not because they are obliterated in their distinctiveness, but because they are wholly one in Him, and all enmity between them has been put away for ever. Christ is one flesh with His Church from the moment of his conception, such that the Church is both Body and Bride, and, since the Church is “female”, Christ thus “has” a “female” “body”. This all gloriously metaphorical, but not any the less gloriously real for all that. (This is why Jesus never married, if you’re listening Dan Brown devotees, because He was already married, to His Bride the Church, from the moment of His conception, and could never give himself to another: while in one sense Our Lord was a celibate, in another sense he was far more married than any of us could ever hope to be).
I have much else I could say on the subject of the use of masculine and feminine language to describe the first hypostasis of the Trinity and the question of theism vs pantheism and the problem of “ecofeminism”, but this post is already rather long. I would just like to end by recommending a book called No Women in Holy Orders: The Women Deacons of the Early Church, by one John Wijngaards, which reviews the manuscript evidence for the rites for the ordaining of women deacons used for several centuries in Byzantium, and shows them to be indistinguishable from the rite used to ordain male deacons, as well as refuting point by point the arguments of Martimort and others that such roles were not real ordinations. If you can stomach some of the modernist sounding rhetoric it’s a good read, and in my opinion unanwerable.
I hope all this provokes comment.
August 4th, 2006 at 401
Of course I understand the priesthood of all believers and only Christ is a priest in himself. As one Anglican writer has put it when any Christians talk about priests plural or ‘Fr Smith, our priest’ we are using shorthand. But the sacramental priesthood – ministerial priesthood in Vatican II-speak – is prefigured in the Old Testament of course, the temple priesthood and sacrifices with exacting requirements. All that is changed now of course but Catholics say not abolished. Jesus said he came not to abolish but to fulfil the law.
August 4th, 2006 at 948
Why is it then that the fulfillment of the law is that the whole Body of Christ is priested, corporately and individually? I think that the current RCC statements, as I understand them at least (limited there, I know) lack vision.
August 4th, 2006 at 1049
Obviously I don’t see the conflict or lack of vision you do in having the sacramental priesthood as a subset of the priesthood of all believers. A basic Catholic/Protestant difference.
August 4th, 2006 at 1142
Yeah, you are right. I have a hard time wrapping my mind around the subset. Why have priests within the priesthood? It seems, I dunno, redundant spiritually. As I pray to Christ and not to a priest (very old argument there), why this difference.
It is not an authority issue for me. I am not concerned about someone being my spiritual father or mother. That sounds like a good thing to me. But if the sacrament is the church and vice versa, why would all of us not be able to perform the liturgical sacramental life of the church…all parts?
Are we speaking of giftedness? Perhaps? Some are preachers, teachers, ventriloquists…I know. But the issue of priesthood is different. All may teach. All, at least in the protestant west and in the East, may preach. All may pastor. All feed the poor and clothe the naked. But not all may lift the wine and bread. This seems hapazard and, as well articulated as you make it, clumsy.
I dunno. This is, I am sure, a dead horse.
Peace and all good things to you, sir!
August 4th, 2006 at 1209
To that I’ll add what I first wrote to Larry – gosh, nearly a year ago! – on my approach to these things including this thread’s original topic.
Everything is subordinated to the goal of that overarching wholeness, of being in the Una Sancta…
Which Larry seeks. And I think you do. As do I.
Cheers.
August 4th, 2006 at 1217
“Why have priests within the priesthood?”
Let’s check the Greek for I Peter ii.9. The phrase for Royal Priesthood is basileion hierateuma yet the Greek for priest (as in the sense of ordination) is presbyteros.
The hierateuma,/i> is the priesthood in the jewish sense of the word, whereby the Church offers prayers to God on behalf of the world and this forms part of the Lord’s command to “love one another as I have loved you” whether the object of that love be Christian or not.
The presbyteros is a man who has been set apart by God for the purpose of administering the Sacraments to the Church whereby the Church may continue to be the Church. So yes there is a priesthood within the priesthood in the sense of presbyteroi within the hierateuma.
The presbyteros is the one who stands in for Christ at a focal point in the Mass where Christ the High Priest offers Christ the Sacrifice and the presbyteros reflects the being of Christ through his praying of the Eucharistic prayer. It can only be the person whom God selects as presbyteros hence the need for ordination, it needs to be a man since St Paul tells us that man reflects God, but woman reflects man. I find that rather elegant. Not tidy.
It’s important that the Church should not never be a tidy Church because of the nature of God being incompatible with sinful humans and that this was the necessity of a sinless human being with both Human and Divine natures. It is the presbyteros who reflects this in the Mass.
August 4th, 2006 at 1224
Rabbits! There’s always one HTML symbol that you miss, isn’t there?
August 4th, 2006 at 1726
Yes, yes. And this is why there is still a holy of holies in many liturgical traditions…a rood screen at the very least or an iconostasis. The separation of God and man with someintercessor being necessary. But is this not what Jesus came to undo?
The Gospel of John is scandalous in this arena. Manna is no longer for the chosen, but through Christ salvation is offered to the whole world. As the Body of Christ (that we be all believers), we are offered and we receive that offering. We are blessed and we bless. The particularity of the presbyteros is interesting, but is a, I believe, a holdover from Temple worship…and perhaps an unnecessary one. Yes, I am a bad baptist. I am thwarting the written word. But I think Peter’s thoughts push Paul in the wrong direction. I think it makes too much of man and not enough of Jesus.
There is no Ark.
There is no Temple.
Unless the Ark is the heart of the believer and the Temple is her body. Our body, according to Ephesians, and thus the Body of Christ is what is holy. The ordering of such a, yes I will say, benevolent hierarchy still puts someone between me and the Trinitarian godhead. I do not come to God through the priest, but through Christ…who is the one in the bread and wine and who is gathered around it.
blah…sorry, a bit of a rant there…usless and I am sorry…
This is how I understand the use of the Greek in Peter. The passage refers to Exodus 19:4-6 where the people of Israel are both a holy nation and a royal priesthood. If Peter’s letter is for the Gentiles, the pagan believers, than it is their priesthood that is undone and all are both a holy nation and a royal priesthood. The priest and the person of the nation are the same. The priesthood is not a subset but another name for the same people. The use of the Greek is to do for the pagan what God did for the slaves he freed from Egypt. The parallel is a passover parallel…and the rest falls like dominoes in my mind.
We are a nation of priest…a royal people…we are the body broken and the body that is Christ praying for the redemption of the world.
You see, somehow for me, and this is an honest question, I lose that role if the priesthood belongs to a subset of people. I am less a member of the body, less a participant and a recipient of the salvation of God. The synonyms in Peter are to encompass all possibilites of understanding for the hearer.
You are the nation.
You are the priest.
You are the body broken on the cross.
August 4th, 2006 at 1840
But where has that approach led? Everywhere from Jerry Falwell – likewise in the Baptist tradition
– to Jim Jones!
Without the grace of the sacramental priesthood (and through it, the Sacrament), to quote you from one of the three simultaneous com-box conversations we’ve been having, ‘we have perhaps established a culture of protest. We live to disagree. We exist to schism. This particular dynamic troubles me. It is atomizing and hyper-individualist’.
Takes more than happy thoughts to stop that happening.
August 5th, 2006 at 056
But has the priesthood prevented schism? No more or less than the priesthood of all believers. The priesthood, bu its own admission before the Reformation, had become The Eucharist Club. Occular communion?! This was simply an attempt to get people into church…people who felt they could never be as pure as a priest. Though not the teaching of the church, it became the belief of the people by witnessing the priesthood. What is the corolary to that today? I don’t know. Where is the sin in the system?
The trick is not in finding a hierarchical structure to keep us “in the tradition.” Nor is it, as I may want to do, to applaud some communitarian effort. There is the sin of individualism and cult fetishism in that system. I know it. Falwell is a great example. Oy veh have we gone nuts there. I will pay for his sins when I Go before God. “You know Jerry was a Baptist, right?”
“Yes, Lord. To whom must I appologize?”
I digress…It is early.
No, it is for us all, corporately and individually, to be Christ-like.
Theosis.
Where we disagree, I hope, is simply how to get there. If that all our argument is, then we may be in a better situation than I though.
And my how I wish I had taken a breath before writing the first 2/3 of my previous comment.
August 5th, 2006 at 358
Of course I see what you’re getting at but yes – look how remarkably well the post-’Reformation’ Roman communion (for all its modern problems) and certainly the Orthodox communion have held up. Only a few splinter schisms for various reasons but no systemwide failures like Protestantism’s shattering into thousands of pieces. In France for example you had apostasy from the church but not a breaking-up of the church.
(Before Communism and its aftermath levelled the pitch there were few and small home-grown Russian Protestant-like groups. Granted the tsarist state had something to do with that but in a country that big it’s still remarkable that the Reformation never happened there.)
An hierarchical structure, a system, by itself doesn’t do the trick – witness the Anglican Communion including ECUSA today or for that matter Rome functionally now after Vatican II, houses divided against themselves. Nor does state coercion (I believe in religious liberty rightly understood as a relative good). The church is both hierarchical and charismatic/mystical, and that grace of the Holy Spirit comes uniquely (but not solely!) through the priesthood and other sacraments.
(Expecting Larry to pop in… perhaps singing the ‘Kheruvimskaya’?)
Regarding the mediæval abuses, abusus non tollit usum. ‘Receive in the state of grace and fasting’ ≠ only receive once a year ’cos you’re not as good as the priest! If you’re not prepared, etc., ocular Communion (spiritual Communion) is a way to go. Of course it’s not a permanent substitute for regularly communing!
No, it is for us all, corporately and individually, to be Christ-like.
Theosis.
True but how? I could decide to climb Everest without the right hooks and lines but that would be silly. Well, to Catholics that’s what trying to reach theosis on your own without the right gear and support crew – sacraments, the priesthood – looks like.
Where we disagree, I hope, is simply how to get there. If that all our argument is, then we may be in a better situation than I thought.
I think so.