5. No Conflict Between the Will of Christ & of the Church

An Argument Against Priestesses

"The prohibition against women priests in not the will of Christ, only of the Church."

Ah, here it comes out. Any attentive student taking a reputable ecclesiology course would know this statement is wrong. No doubt it emerges from a shallow interpretation of the incarnation. Christ is present in his sacraments and in us to different degrees and in various ways. Christ is alive and guiding us through his Church, especially through the shepherds appointed for this purpose and protected by the Holy Spirit. You would deny Christ his presence in the sacrament of the Church. Tradition, a mainstay of Catholic teaching and practice, along with Sacred Scripture, shows us the will of God. In this matter, and the Holy Father's statement bears this out, the will of the Church is that of Christ. I doubt the Lord would leave us in the dark upon such a serious matter for two thousand years. Those who disconnect the groom, Christ, from his bride, the Church, readily fall into error and disobedience. [While the comments are not saved here, the author of the false postulate accused me of a "pathetic rationalization."] However, this was only done to sidestep a genuine rational discourse.

How dare you make yourself the arbiter of truth? Your supposition is a lie that profanes the priesthood and the nature of Christ. Yours is the sacrilege. Once you reconsider doctrine, like many of our Protestant brethren regularly do, everything is open for grabs. What is true is always true. You contend that Ordinatio sacerdotalis is not infallible and only definitive as long as it is not superceded. But, doctrinal truth builds on truth, not retraction. Christian epistemology is not ultimately subjective but objective. Truth is not what I want it to be, but what is. The Holy Father could no more change this teaching about priesthood than he could say that Jesus did not rise from the dead. The fathers of the Church taught that a Pope who fell into heresy would cease being Pope. Thankfully, the providence of God has given special care to the successors of Peter. You seem to reduce the Pope's veracity to dogmatic statements. And yet most Catholic teaching is taken for granted. For two thousand years, in the East and West, it has been popularly held that only men could be ordained. The Orthodox hold this to be true. The Catholic bishops in union with the Holy See have similarly concurred. It has been and still is in most places, well received. When a teaching is universally held and taught as necessary, it becomes a full expression of the Universal Ordinary (as differentiated from Extraordinary) Teaching Authority (Magisterium). Such teachings are held infallible without the need for further dogmatic decree. Thus, as my mind recalls classes on the sources of Christian doctrine presented by Fr. Avery Dulles, the traditional basic premise must be taken for granted.

There are many levels of lesser tradition and structures for which the process of rumination upon the will of Christ in the Church is legitimate. Regarding faith and morals, including the institutions established by our Lord himself, there exists a special intimacy between Christ and his Church. As I said before, you can make distinctions, but not divisions. The Church is sinful because it is composed of weak men and women; the Church is holy because it is the primordial sacrament of Christ. Christ "submits" to the Church? Well, yes in that Christ named Peter the "rock" upon which he would build his Church, a Church to whom he gave the KEYS TO THE KINGDOM. This kingdom breaks into our world through the world's encounter with the Church. This process will not be complete until the Parousia. It is for this reason that something like slavery, which some critics note, was hesitantly tolerated. The seeds for its eradication were already sowed in the Scriptures and in our tradition. Ancient slavery was often limited to definite time-tables and some even gave themselves voluntarily into this institution to improve their lives or to raise income. Conquered peoples were often made slaves like the indentured servants in colonial America. Much of the race hatred and inhumanity to man that epitomized American slavery was only to evolve later. It was in the face of this that the Church did raise her voice. The Pope fought nations on the issue of enslaving the indigenous populations of the New World and was eventually victorious. Most in Medieval society were forbidden to make slaves of Christians. The followers of Islam were allowed to be taken into such servitude with the understanding that it be used as a temporary means to bring them to Christ. Having said this, such policies were not understood as being directed from the Church's institution by Christ. They represented practical decisions of churchmen in the ever-changing world. The Catholic religion did not create slavery. It entered a world wherein it was already a facet of civilization. The teachings about equality in grace (for salvation), the brother- and sisterhood of all Christians, the rights and dignity of all peoples-- these were notions that sought to modify slavery and which finally lashed out against it entirely. But, the seed was already planted. Fr. Charles Curran in his debate with Rome, which he always insisted was less a confrontation over morals as it was over ecclesiology, also cited slavery and in addition, the revised teachings on religious liberty, in his attempt to do for contraception, homosexuality, and abortion, what you [in other posts] persist in trying for women's ordination-- legitimizing dissent. He even went so far as to argue that theologians represent a parallel Magisterium alongside the Pope and bishops. Do you? One of the things you both fail to consider is that the Church is not prescient. She is a prophet for hailing the kingdom, but not a fortune-teller.

While not really topical to this response, I will ramble for a moment on a few of the side issues. The doctrinal development that would lead to a renunciation of slavery, to a toleration and exultation of democratic states, to religious liberty over (but not against) the idea of a state faith; all this took time, and reflected new situations and settings. For the Church to expound upon these issues at its very foundation would be like a Roman Centurion riding in a modern tank. Much of the strategies of old could be called into play, but the technology, just as the cultural development, took time. In contradistinction, the Mass is still the Mass and the priesthood is still the priesthood; just as human nature and the natural law continue to be in force. The world might change, but any scholar of humanity would tell you that men do not. The kingdom of Christ comes not by our hands but by the mysterious providence of God expressed in the Church. Nothing any of us may do, good or evil, will change this. Protestants in turn-of-the century America endorsing the merits of the Social Gospel movement realized too late and to their dismay that the reign of God cannot be manipulated. We may cooperate with God, but we cannot hope to master him. Some thought education would give us a more intensely moral people; instead, we ended up with some of the most intelligent crooks the world had ever seen. Learning perfects our minds, but we are principally made better by grace.

Likewise, women priests would not solve all the ills and ministry shortages in the Church. Such an institution would make us no better or holier, either. Indeed, if it is not the will of God, which unbroken authority and living tradition attests, then it would endanger the many individuals and the faith of those who might otherwise belong to the Lord. Yes, I think we can take it for granted, short of any supernatural event to the contrary, that the priesthood as we now have it does express the immutable will of Christ.

[The critic with which I argued had also brought up the inquisition.] As for your introduction of the inquisition into this discussion, it would require another letter entirely to soundly refute. The collaboration of the Church with political states has always been more or less unsatisfactory. The inquisition, as in places like Spain, took on a life of its own, even against the correctives of Popes. There is no excuse for torture and there is nothing in the Church's deposit to give it approbation. As for the penalty of death for heretics, and again the Church did not speak with a uniform voice upon this, and the older punishment was simply excommunication and exile, it is all too easy for us to judge the past from the comfort of our nice easy chairs of today. A few recent studies show that the atrocities of the inquisition were much exaggerated.

But remember too, there was much fear regarding the expansion of Islam and nations wanted a united front, and this included religion. It is unfortunate that people's zeal would entice them to unsavory measures in preserving Catholic religion; however, as in Spain, the enduring Catholic faith is a reminder that God still writes straight with crooked lines-- to borrow a cliche for myself. Sir Thomas More-- the saint in the play, A Man for All Seasons-- espoused that a man who causes spiritual death should be liable to the same punishment as a man who causes physical death-- execution. He may have been wrong, but he was a man of his own times. He spoke upon an issue open for debate. Would we not say that such a discussion would not go far today? Sure. Similarly, the debate about women priests, and it was only a short-lived one, is for all intensive purposes over in the Catholic Church. Those who publicly dissent on this issue should not be surprised if they find themselves treading the path of the Protestant Reformers.

"Appropriate prayer and reflection will bring us to the truth of women's ordination."

Yes, those who want to reconsider women's ordination should make recourse first to prayer. However, no so-called private revelation can be claimed against the movement of the Holy Spirit in the teaching Church. And while time will further illumine this question, I suspect God's will as now evoked in the Church's status-quo will be further substantiated. Is it a matter of turning the clock against centuries of so-called sexism from the hierarchy? No, we must follow the second step after prayer, obedient religious assent. This is what the Church understands by "listening." However, like the spoiled child, who refuses to take no for an answer from his mother, you would have individuals and groups continue in posing dissent only thinly veiled as "honest questions". For the Church to "turn around" on this issue would be to turn her back on Christ himself. You are confident that God will do this "impossible" thing for you and yet I suspect that it is indeed, impossible. The very request suffers from an inner contradiction, that God would will to do what he does not will to do. It is like the nonsensical puzzle that says, if God is all powerful, can he make a rock too heavy for him to lift? If you answer yes, then he cannot lift the rock and is not all powerful. If you answer no, then he cannot make such a rock and is not all powerful. As with the question of women priests, it is non-sensical and best never asked.