Ordination of women

Restriction of ordination to men

• The masculinity of the priesthood reflects at least two dimensions of masculinity: the masculinity of God, the Father, and the masculinity of Jesus, true God and true man.
• The Church judges that it cannot ordain women because Jesus did not ordain women.
  • Apostolic Letter: On Reserving Priestly Ordination to Men Alone (1994).

"Concerning the Teaching Contained in Ordinatio Sacerdotalis: Responsum Ad Dubium.

October 28, 1995

Dubium: Whether the teaching that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women, which is presented in the Apostolic Letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis to be held definitively, is to be understood as belonging to the deposit of faith.

Responsum: In the affirmative.

This teaching requires definitive assent, since, founded on the written Word of God, and from the beginning constantly preserved and applied in the Tradition of the Church, it has been set forth infallibly by the ordinary and universal Magisterium. Thus, in the present circumstances, the Roman Pontiff, exercising his proper office of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32), has handed on this same teaching by a formal declaration, explicitly stating what is to be held always, everywhere, and by all, as belonging to the deposit of the faith.

Carl Olson.

"If they can indeed 'reject' Magisterial authority, that same authority is, logically, powerless to ordain them in any real and meaningful way."

Arguments for the Ordination of Women

The argument from "injustice"

When I entered the Jesuits in 1973, I was in favor of women's ordination. I paid dues to some national organization (perhaps N.O.W.?), and attended a conference that favored women's ordination circa March 27, 1976. As the conference began, I supported the idea; by the end of the conference, I opposed it.

All of their arguments were based on treating the priesthood as something that is the property of the ordained. I saw that if this was true, and if women were included in the propertied class, the basic injustice of having first- and second-class (or privileged and underprivileged) Catholics would remain.

The argument that the ministerial priesthood is an injustice to women, because the ordained hold powers and property that the unordained do not, is not an argument in favor of the ordination of women but an argument for the abolition of the priesthood.

If it is unfair for some to possess a kind of property that others do not, it does not matter whether the elite are an all-male bastion or whether the club is open to both sexes. The argument for the ordination of women on the grounds of injustice are really arguments for the abolition of the priesthood altogether, as has been done in the vast majority of non-Catholic Christian sects.

Priesthood is not a piece of property that benefits the property holder at the expense of others. The powers that are given to priests to administer the sacraments and to rule as Vicars of Christ do not enrich them personally at the expense of the unordained. God does not love priests more than the laity nor are priests exempt from any of the standards applied to all of the disciples of Jesus.

Men and women are equal

Galatians: no slave or free, no male or female, no Jew or Gentile.

Transitive Fallacies

In mathematics, the transitive property of equations means that two variables that are both equal to a third are equal to each other:

A = C

B = C

A = B

I endorse this wholeheartedly in the realm of mathematics. It is a purely logical deduction from the understanding of what "equality" means in the abstract.

We can be led astray by constructing a sequence of ideas that resemble the mathematical equations but do not work as reasonable arguments.

All humans are created in "image and likeness of God."

A = C -- Men are human beings.

B = C -- Women are human beings.

A = B -- Men and women are equal.

Therefore, whatever a man can do, a woman can do.

It is true that "men and women are equal" in their participation in human nature and in their resemblance to God."

It is not true that "Men are women" or that "Women are men."

Counter-example

A = C -- Black is a color.

B = C -- White is a color.

A = B -- Black and white are the same.

This is simply false. Black and white are opposite colors; you cannot substitute one for the other. It is true that both are colors, and both are members of the same category, but from that kind of sameness, it does not follow that they are the same in all other respects.

Lack of acceptance proves the practice is invalid

If the male priesthood were from GOD, then all Catholics would agree with the teaching.

Not all Catholics agree with the teaching.

Therefore, the teaching is not from God.

Different qualities, different gifts

I'm not sure how I obtained this quotation. It does not seem to be on the internet in this form at present. I may well have done the typing myself, but, if so, I don't know whether I was copying a transcript or working from a tape.

I have edited the transcript very slightly to make what I think are reasonable corrections.

Mother Teresa, speaking on the TV program, "A Conversation with Mother Teresa of Calcutta" (NBC, 1976).

The Little Flower has given a very beautiful answer as to what a woman is. She said, "I will be the heart in the mother church." And so every woman is the heart of the family. The that she has to love and be compassionate and serve, no man can ever have. We, as women, can be equal to men if we have money, if we have brains; but I don't think a man can be equal to women in love and compassion. And so the role that we have to play in the world today as women is to spread love and compassion, first in our own home and then around the whole world.

And as religious, we are expected just to be another Mary. The Church expects us to be the handmaid of the Lord. And as for women to become priests--I don't think in the whole world there was or is or will or could be a better person to become a priest than Our Lady. Because she, she could have easily without any doubt been able to say, "This is my body." And yet Jesus didn't give her the power of being, of becoming a priest. She remained handmaid of the Lord. And as such on the day of her Frist Communion, that is at the Annunciation, when she surrendered herself as the handmaid of the Lord, her first action was to go in haste and serve. And that is our role, that we, the moment we receive Jesus in our lives, that we too go in haste and serve others.

Links

• Sara Butler, The Catholic Priesthood and Women: A Guide to the Teaching of the Church.
• Priesthood