The following article, by Father John Parsons* , was prompted by an attack upon the Church's teaching on the Sacrament of Holy Orders. The attack, launched by the Australian Provincial of the Society of Jesus, Fr Bill Uren, in the columns of "The Canberra Times", argued that women should be ordained to the priesthood. The same paper subsequently published this reply.
QUEEN VICTORIA'S favourite Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli, once said, "All sensible men are of the same religion," and when asked what it was replied, "Sensible men never say."
He may have been merely indulging his wit, but, in the light of his own religious philosophy, set forth in his novel Tancred (1847), he probably meant "Semitic monotheism", or the lowest common denominator accepted by Christians, Jews and Muslims. He also says somewhere that "God has only ever spoken to one race, and in one place: to the Semites, and in the desert," since all three religions trace their origins thither. Disraeli was no pillar of Christian, or any other, orthodoxy and his assent to those parts of Anglicanism not believed in by the Caliphs of Cordoba was somewhat vague, but his remarks are very perceptive nonetheless.
For there is indeed a great gulf fixed between the timeless and pantheistic universalism of the philosophical religions of the East, and the sharp and shocking particularism of the Semites in the desert. "Dizzy" has much to teach those nominal Catholics, a Jesuit provincial among them, who are now more distinguished by their public criticism of the Holy See than by their defence of its teachings.
Consider the truth in Disraeli's paradox. Christianity, Judaism and Islam all teach the existence of one Creator of all that is. They refer to the deity in masculine imagery and believe He has revealed Himself at statable times and places, through real historical individuals. They believe in inspired Scriptures, which transcend the flux of time and bind the faithful to the end of the world. They believe in personal immortality and deny the reincarnation of souls. They believe God will bring the world to an end, to be followed by divine judgment, heaven and hell.
In short, they believe in a particular; dogmatic, divinely revealed religion resting upon the authority of the God Who reveals, and not upon the philosophical prowess or social convenience of the recipients of the revelation. It is no wonder then that mediaeval Christians, though often engaged in military contests with Islam, regarded it as a heresy rather than as something entirely foreign to their own religion.
For those nominal Catholics who now wish to introduce the ordination of women as deacons, priests and bishops, it is not papal infallibility (accepted only by Catholics) that is the problem. Nor is it the infallibility of general councils, and of the Church at large (accepted only by Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox). Nor is it the binding character of Scripture (accepted by Catholics, Orthodox and traditional Protestants). The real problem for Catholics with 'advanced views' is the whole historic character of the Catholic religion and of Christianity itself. It is the very notion of a divinely revealed, authoritative and unchangeable body of doctrine that they really find indigestible.
Historical particularity
What they are objecting to is the gritty, inflexible and historically particular side of Catholicism, which it shares with old-fashioned Protestantism, orthodox Judaism and Islam. In 1907 Pope St Pius X condemned the proposition that "The Catholicism of today cannot be reconciled with genuine knowledge unless it is transformed into a sort of non-dogmatic Christianity, that is, into a broad and liberal Protestantism," but it is such a transformation that the Australian Jesuit Provincial Fr Uren, and others like him, want.
They seem not to realise that to shift Christianity from its traditional dogmatic and revealed basis, and to open it up to a sensible, open-ended reformulation, in accordance with prevailing politically correct ideas, is to abolish its divine claims, and to reduce it to a philosophical tradition like Platonism or Hegelianism. It is to change it from a religion (in the Semitic sense) into a philosophy.
The essential "scandal of particularity" cannot be avoided when dealing with these Semitic religions. They really do teach that God has intervened in history and conferred an absolute status upon certain beliefs, rites and practices, which from an anthropological point of view one could see as merely part of the endless flux of human cultural change.
If one cannot, on some basis or another, make the mental leap from that flux, to a divinely introduced stability, then the game is up for revealed religion of any sort.
Conversely, once one has made such a qualitative leap, the whole matter has to be looked at in a new light.
Relativities made absolute
One then ceases to be shocked or surprised at being committed to beliefs and practices that rest upon principles higher than human reason, and which may be at odds with the fashions of a particular culture. Once one admits divine intervention, for example in the institution of a sacred rite that can only be performed with bread and wine made from wheat and grapes, it becomes meaningless to complain that the deity would have done better to institute a rite using milk and dates.
This is no slight upon date palms. It is simply a recognition of the specific character of the religion one believes God has revealed.
One remains free to speculate about why bread and wine were divinely chosen, (and that is the function of theologians) but the fact that they were chosen is simply a given, resting not on our ability to show that it must be so, but on the authority of God decreeing that it shall be so, (and the proclamation of that tradition is the role of popes and bishops).
What a genuine believer in revealed religion cannot say is that God botched it, because He was trapped by the particularities of history. All the Semitic religions believe in the providential arrangement of history by God, and a divine intervention in human society at a point which God sovereignly determines. It is thus perfectly sensible for a non-believer, but absurd for a Christian, to say that Christ was trapped by the conventions of his time, either in choosing bread and wine for the Christian Eucharist, or in choosing only men to celebrate it. Anyone who can, so to speak, swallow the camel of belief in the deity of Christ, will not strain at the gnat of believing that Christ's actions in these matters are instances of that divine absolutising of the relativities of human life, through which God condescends to communicate with man.
Conversely, those who believe Christ's action in calling only men as apostles was either accidental and unreflective, or else socially determined, do not really regard Christ as God. It is only logical for them, in the Jesuit Provincial's words, to take their place "outside the institutional Church".
As to the use of papal infallibility regarding the ordination of women, it is clear that since the Eastern Orthodox Church takes the same view as Rome on the matter, the papacy and papal infallibility (which the Eastern Orthodox reject) are not the essential issue.
I remember once being told by an Anglican clergyman who was serving as the Archbishop of Canterbury's representative in Rome of an embarrassing scene at the Lambeth Conference of 1978, during a debate on women's ordination. The Eastern Orthodox observer, a Greek, rose to address the gathering: "Look at yourselves," he thundered, "four hundred Anglican bishops; and whom do you represent? You represent nobody but yourselves. How can you talk about ordaining women? You must teach the women to be chaste and silent in church. If St Basil the Great or St Gregory were here they would not negotiate with you. No, rather would they pronounce over you the prayer of exorcism!" Alas, this spirited assertion of tradition went unreported in The Times's account of the session.
It does nonetheless serve to illustrate that the Pope and Cardinal Ratzinger are merely the polite and softly spoken bearers of a message which others put more strongly, and of which they themselves are not the masters. They are faithful servants of the tradition in which they sincerely believe. The Pope is convinced, in his own words, that "the Church is not authorised" to ordain women and that he is bound by an obligation to uphold the tradition. Reject Christianity by all means if you will, but do not complain when its adherents seriously believe it, and do not attempt to insinuate that they should not state their beliefs loud and clear, and energetically uphold them if they are in positions of authority.
On the other hand, I will admit as one commentator has remarked, that "an odd feature of the present infallibility ruling is that it came from the Vatican Congregation (for the Doctrine of the Faith, formerly and less cumbrously called the Holy Office) rather than the Pope". After all, everybody agrees that the Holy Office is neither infallible in itself nor an infallible spotter of infallible statements by the Pope. So what is the use of papal infallibility if the Pope never attaches (and he never does) a label to his pronounce-ments, saying: "This one is made by me in my infallible capacity."
The traditional Catholic answer to this is to say that one must judge from the style and content of the utterance whether or not it fulfils the criteria for an ex cathedra and therefore irreformable decree as laid down by the First Vatican Council in 1870.
I know theologians who believe that Pope John Paul's very solemn and formally worded definition of 1994 concerning women and the priesthood does in fact meet all these criteria and that it is therefore an ex cathedra definition.
Cardinal Ratzinger (who is never infallible) says on the other hand that it is not, but insists that the teaching in the statement is certainly and unchangeably true. How can Ratzinger logically maintain this?
He can maintain it because, in Catholic teaching, there are three ways in which the Church can infallibly establish some doctrine of faith or morals, as being part of what the apostles handed on. One is through an ex cathedra papal definition; one is through a definition by a general council of the bishops of the Church; and the third is by the universal day-by-day teaching of those same bishops when spread throughout the world and carrying out their teaching functions in their cathedral churches and elsewhere from year to year. The great majority of Catholic teaching rests on this third authority, which is called the "universal ordinary teaching" of the Church, and is just as binding and certain as any conciliar or papal definition.
Authority of tradition
The fuss about papal infallibility is really somewhat beside the mark, since the Eastern Orthodox and Catholic Churches both believe in the infallibility of this universal ordinary magisterium (i.e., teaching function) and most of their doctrine rests upon it. After all, up to the fifth century nobody had formed the concept of a general council of the Church, and until the Council of Trent (1545-1563) very little doctrinal ground had been covered by conciliar definitions. The Eastern Orthodox reject the whole idea of an infallible Pope as strongly as the Reverend Ian Paisley does, but are still quite dogmatic about their positions on the basis of this traditional and universal ordinary magisterium.
A binding unanimity
Even if a doctrine contained in the original apostolic message is only implicitly held by the bishops of the Catholic world, but is held with moral unanimity by them as the depositories and witnesses to the apostolic tradition, their successors to the end of time are bound to that position. This is the point that Cardinal Ratzinger is at pains to make. It is not just papal ex cathedra definitions that are binding on the faith of Catholics.
Much more important, fundamental and far-reaching, is the content of the ordinary universal magisterium down the centuries.
If the bishops of the third or the thirteenth century would have said, if asked, that it was contrary to the apostolic order of the Church to ordain women, it is logical to say they implicitly held the view that has now been spelled out.
The Holy Office's recent decree on the impossibility of women's ordination is thus quite logical in saying that the Pope regards his pronouncement of 1994 as reiterating the position adopted down the ages and therefore already infallibly established. Whether or not that pronouncement constitutes an ex cathedra definition is a matter traditional Catholic theologians will continue to debate, without thereby calling into question the certain and permanently binding content of the decree.
From the point of view of realpolitik, what any dispassionate observer can now see is that no future pope could attempt to reverse the decision about the ordination of women without provoking a schism in the world-wide hierarchy, as happened in the Anglican Communion, and it is that, almost above all else, that some very highly placed persons in the Roman Curia are determined to avoid.
A feminine red herring
Women deacons, be it noted, are just as much a red herring as women priests. The 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church lays down that by divine institution, the sacrament of order (that is, the essential ordained Catholic ministry) consists of three degrees: bishop, priest and deacon (Para 1554). It then asks the question:"Who can receive this sacrament?" and answers that "only a baptised man validly receives sacred ordination" (Para 1577).
The deaconesses and male sub-deacons, who anciently or recently functioned in parts of the Church, received incorporation into an order or grade of church personnel outside the divinely instituted sacrament of orders. The ancient order of deaconesses could be revived, but those who received it would not be the female equivalent of deacons.
The "leading Australian Catholics, reportedly including a bishop" who are said to be raising the possibility of women deacons, are thus vainly repeating the cycle of argument that I once heard from a bishop regarding the ordination of women priests. It was, he said, merely a canonical, not a theological matter; the Pope could change it all at the stroke of a pen. The Pope himself has now told us he has never had, and can never have, authority to do any such thing.
If more attention were paid to tradition, and less to current fashion,
Australians would have clearer and more logically consistent leadership,
whether from provincials of religious orders or others, in upholding the
old religion.
(* Father John Parsons is the full-time pastor of St Brigid's traditional Mass congregation Canberra, Australia. His address is: 69 Argyle Square, REID, ACT 2612. Tel: 06.247.4039.)
