In a recent CBS-60 Minutes interview, on Pentecost Sunday this year (May 19, 2024), Pope Francis firmly answered in the negative the question from Norah O’Donell whether women could be ordained as Deacons in the Catholic Church. Pope Francis elaborated that many roles were open to women that might fall under the name of Deaconess, but the conferral of Holy Orders on women was not possible.
Rather than re-hash all the arguments of why that is so, a summary of a lecture entitled “Priesthood and Gender” delivered by Avery Cardinal Dulles on April 10, 1996 follows. The lecture is found in Church and Society; The Laurence J. McGinley Lectures, 1988-2007 published by Fordham University Press, New York, 2008. The lecture examines the apostolic letter from Pope John Paul II, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, issued on Pentecost Sunday 30 years ago (May 22, 1994), which reaffirmed the infallible teaching that “the Church, in fidelity to the example of the Lord, does not consider herself authorized to admit women to priestly ordination.”
The convergent Argument holds that the four components that sustain the Church’s teaching that Holy Orders cannot be opened to women are found in: the Bible, tradition, theological reasoning, and magisterial authority.
The Practice of Jesus Christ to give presbyteral and episcopal authority only to men, not women reflected Jesus’s decision unconstrained by the traditions of Judaism. (Note that Jesus had on numerous occasions accorded to women status that Jewish tradition did not give them.)
The Early Church likewise did not extend the authority for designating apostles (bishops and their vicars, priests) to women, though the Early Church was no longer an entirely Jewish community of believers but one that included a diversity of cultures, including some that allowed priestesses.
The Church, from the earliest days to the present, has denied the ability of the Church to ordain women; the question of whether the Church has the authority to ordain women has come up several times over the history of the Church and after consideration always been rejected.
The argument that Jesus was subject to cultural conditioning in His making his decision to only confer Holy Orders on men does not hold up given Jesus willingness to engage with women as equals of men. The early Church followed this lead while opening up many ministries outside of Bishop, Deacon, and Presbyter to women.
The Church has never rested it opposition to the ordination of women on faulty misunderstandings of human biology and personality traits derived therefrom. Even Thomas Aquinas did not use the faulty Aristotelian understanding of the differences between male and female in his arguments for an exclusively male priesthood, and acknowledged, as all Catholics do, that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was the greatest of saints, but not the person to whom Jesus entrusted the keys of the kingdom.
As an icon of Jesus Christ, the priest must re-present the male person of Jesus lest the symbolic understanding of Christ as the Bridegroom and the Church as the Bride is damaged or lost.
Reserving ordained priesthood to men only is not a sign of discrimination, for the ministerial priesthood does not confer personal superiority on a person but is a call to humble service. Distinct roles in the Church are no more unjust than God reserving the high calling of bearing children to women alone.
Among non-Catholic Christian communities, only Western Protestant Churches, and those Anglican communities strongly influenced by secular ideologies and/or Protestant ones, have ordained women. The Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Churches guard the sacred and ancient tradition that Holy Orders is divinely reserved to men.
Whereas the Church has always held everywhere by all that women cannot be ordained to the ministerial priesthood, the teaching has the standing of an infallible teaching of the Church even though it has not been formally declared such as were the dogmas of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption. The teaching is part of the Deposit of Faith, and therefore must be given assent by all Catholics.
Will this settle the matter for Catholics who think that the Church should more and more reflect secular society’s ever-changing and ever-changeable norms? One suspects it depends on whether one sees the Church as a divinely established institution or as just another socio-political humanly created artifice.
Always an interesting yet uncomfortable topic. Good enough to give birth to the man-god, but not good enough for the highest echelons of the church…something seems off…
I learned something.