The Catholic Church and the ordination of women

FROM the time the Church realized that it was her vocation to be "the Assembly" — qahal — of God in the New Testament, it was always understood that bishops, priests and deacons are men. This has nothing to do with a culture-bound discrimination against women. It is part of the Church's self-understanding in the light of the Tradition left by Jesus, the Lord, and the Apostles that followed him. There certainly were women who followed Jesus and ministered to him — and there is no denying the fact that Mary of Magdala was the "apostola apostolorum" ... the apostle to the apostles, for having announced to the incredulous apostles the joyful news of the Lord's Resurrection. But that is just the point! Women have been and can be of tremendous service to the Church. The service they do can be crucial and of tremendous importance, but this does not require them to be ordained ministers. The mentality that the only meaningful service is that of ordained ministry is the error of “clericalism.” Without doubt, the Catholic and the Orthodox Churches trace their origins to apostolic times — the unfortunate split that would make them two different ecclesial communions would come only later — and neither have ordained women to Sacred Order. In 1976, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith taught in “Inter Insigniores”: “The Catholic Church has never felt that priestly or episcopal ordination can be validly conferred on women. A few heretical sects in the first centuries, especially Gnostic ones, entrusted the exercise of the priestly ministry to women: This innovation was immediately noted and condemned by the Fathers, who considered it as unacceptable in the Church. It is true that in the writings of the Fathers, one will find the undeniable influence of prejudices unfavorable to woman, but nevertheless, it should be noted that these prejudices had hardly any influences on their pastoral activity, and still less on their spiritual direction. But over and above these considerations inspired by the spirit of the times, one finds expressed — especially in the canonical documents of the Antiochan and Egyptian traditions — this essential reason, namely, that by calling only men to the priestly Order and ministry in its true sense, the Church intends to remain faithful to the type of ordained ministry willed by the Lord Jesus Christ and carefully maintained by the Apostles.” One of the most definitive of magisterial pronouncements was “Ordinatio Sacerdotalis” (1994) of St. Pope John Paul II: “Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church’s divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32), I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful.” In 1995, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, at the time with then-cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as its prefect, clarified the status of John Paul II’s pronouncement in “Ordinatio Sacerdotalis.” The Congregation taught that what “Ordinatio Sacerdotalis” held in respect to the ordination of women “demands definitive assent as part of the deposit of faith” on the part of all believers. In the Church of the 21st century, women have had increasingly significant roles in the central governance of the Church. Many of the Roman dicasteries have women religious and lay women occupying positions of responsibility. That they are not ordained is completely immaterial to the importance of their service to the universal church. The same thing is true in local and particular churches. It is my position that the question of the admission of women to Holy Order should be considered a closed question — as definitive and as unchanging as the doctrine that a valid marriage can be contracted only by a man and a woman. Rather than considering this a barrier to women’s active participation in the life of the Church, it should be the impetus for discovering creative ways of active involvement in the life of the Church. At the Graduate School of Law of San Beda University, I am happy that a growing number of our students are taking interest in the canon law subjects that we offer — canon law, being genuine law with a tradition and a heritage in many respects more cohesive and consistent than other legal systems — and with a veritable corpus of jurisprudence. It is this kind of feminine “activism” in the Church that is certainly welcome — and is, at the same time, a repudiation of that “clericalism” that counts ordination as the requisite of genuine contribution to the life of the Church. rannie_aquino@sanbeda.edu.ph rannie_aquino@csu.edu.ph