On the eve of the beatification of Pope John Paul II*, I’d like to examine what I think will be his most lasting legacy, the apostolic letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis. This is the one where he infallibly and irrevocably declared:
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.
It is a brief letter that the Pope gave in 1994, and it’s clear that he considers the intellectual heavy lifting to have been already accomplished in the 1976 Inter Insignores and the 1988 Mulieris Dignitatem. The arguments in these documents are lengthy, but their core thesis** is this: that Jesus did not ordain any women as Apostles, and the Church today must follow his example. While the first part of this statement is of unknowable historical accuracy, and the latter part of it asserts the dubious necessity of following a negative example, I’d like to call attention rather to two other claims in the documents: that (A) Jesus ordained only men by his own choice, but not because of the common inequality of women in his day, and (B) the Church claims to maintain the dignity of women because of its continuing practice of male-only ordination.
To point (A), the apostolic letters do point out the many examples of Jesus talking to women, which was shocking to the sensibilities of his day: conversations with the Samaritan woman, the woman suffering hemmorages, the sinful woman in Simon the Pharisee’s house, the adulteress of the “cast the first stone” incident, and perhaps most importantly the fact that Mary Magdalene was the first to see the risen Christ in the Gospel of John (whence the haunting words of the Easter sequence: Dic nobis Maria / Quid vidisti in via?). Jesus clearly was flouting social norms in his interactions – so then why did he “ordain” only men to the Apostolate? The letters seem to bend over backwards to avoid acknowledging that this question could even arise, which may be an indication of how much the authors disliked the possible answers to it.
To point (B) I would like to quote a bit from Mulieres Dignitatem:
Rereading Genesis in light of the spousal symbol in the Letter to the Ephesians enables us to grasp a truth which seems to determine in an essential manner the question of women’s dignity, and, subsequently, also the question of their vocation: the dignity of women is measured by the order of love.
Pope John Paul quotes directly the second chapter of Genesis, which tells us that woman was created for Adam “as a helper fit for him,” as well as referring to the fifth chapter of Ephesians, where wives are told to be subordinate to their husbands. Things like “the dignity of women is measured by the order of love”, and “the truth about woman as bride” are roundabout and diplomatic ways of saying that God’s intention is that a woman’s proper role is always as follower, never as leader. Inter Insigniores reiterates this by quoting one of the medieval Popes:
as Pope Innocent III*** repeated later, at the beginning of the thirteenth century, ‘Although the Blessed Virgin Mary surpassed in dignity and in excellence all the Apostles, nevertheless it was not to her but to them that the Lord entrusted the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven.’
Translation: even the best person that ever lived, aside from Jesus, was still not as fit for leadership as a man.
So why is it that I think this Ordinatio Sacerdotalis will be JPII’s lasting legacy? It’s because, unlike the two previous documents from which it draws heavily, it decides the question of the ordination of women not just for today, but for all future generations. Thanks to JPII, the Church can’t ever disconnect itself from Ordinatio Sacerdotalis without abandoning the Vatican I structure of papal infallibility completely. As the equality of women continues to grow worldwide, and indeed as women perhaps become dominant in the West, the medieval ideas of gender to which JPII has attempted to eternally shackle the Church may confine it to an intellectual ghetto from which it will not escape. I hope that this never comes to pass; as I’ve said before, despite its failings I think the Church is a tremendous force of good in the world, and to let all that be cast away by a decision like the one in Ordinatio Sacerdotalis would be a great shame.
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*This is totally off-topic, but I have two personal anecdotes about this Pope. The first is that my father only visited the Vatican once, and it just happened to be on May 13, 1981, the day Mehmet Ali Ağca famously shot the Pope. The second is that that my cousin, who was kissed by the Pope in St Peter’s square earlier that same day, would often remind his nun teachers in grade school (to no avail) that they couldn’t order him around – he’d been kissed by the Pope!
**A secondary reason in Inter Insignores: Christ was a man, and the priest stands in persona Christi. The argument that the priest also stands in persona Ecclesiae is dismissed.
***Who, by the way, started the Fourth Crusade, which ended up sacking Constantinople.
This was a good read. I enjoyed it.
And though a complete outsider, I’ll agree that women ought to be able to be ordained as priestesses. Pointing to the fact that Jesus did not select for his apostles any women and therefore must have intended against women in the priesthood is just as fallacious an argument as pointing to the very same Jesus who did not select any Arabs or [other races of the time who surely would have visited Judea and which still exist today in some pure form] and saying that this precludes modern-day Arab Catholics [or other Catholics of a pure racial lineage “shunned”/”ignored” by Christ during his time on Earth] from donning the robes of priesthood. Obviously the Church does not do the latter (…? See, this is where I should not talk with such authoritative tone about things I am hardly an authority on! lol), so I see no reason why it should feel the former is not permissible too.
But of course my 5-minutes-thought-of armchair example lacks the eloquence of yours. 🙂 As I said, yours was a good read.
Your remark calls to mind the similarity between this debate and the debate in the early church over whether Christians should associate with Gentiles who didn’t follow the law of Moses (specifically circumcision, and dietary laws). It took three visions from God of a blanket from heaven covered in various “unclean” animals and God saying “Eat up!” to get Peter change his mind on that point. Perhaps something similar is needed for our modern successor to Peter?