Blessed is the Kingdom

Seeking The Kingdom In All Things

New Podcast: Women in the Church

In our most recent podcast, Jim and I decide to weigh in on a somewhat controversial topic in the Church today, that being the ordination of women in the Catholic Church. With last week’s discussions on married deacons, it seems to fall right in line with recent patterns. You can listen to it here.

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This entry was posted by on Monday, January 24th, 2011 at 12:50 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

About The Author

Fr. Christian is the pastor of St. Thomas the Apostle Church in Lenoir City, TN.

Comments

  • http://nowealthbutlife.com Rae

    Mwaha. I loved it.

    Josh was in the same room while I listened. After, I asked him if he liked it. He said yes. I said “but didn’t you disagree with it?” He said yes again. Then he said that it was very well done and that he couldn’t disagree with it much since you “kept positive assertions to a minimum.”

  • Fr. Christian Mathis

    Well, I am glad to have friends who can disagree and still be supportive. All I can do in this case is to answer the question as best I can, which was, “Do you think the Church will ever ordain women?” I don’t think that they will. Can people hope that one day the Church will? Sure. Do I think it excludes women from power? Only if women let that be the case. Is it difficult for women to feel empowered in the Church sometimes? From what I hear, I would say yes.

    Mostly, I think it is good to talk about issues rather than to run from them. Hopefully the podcast will open up some good discussions on how we can all be servants within the Church. Men, women, ordained & laypeople.

  • http://happyentanglements.blogspot.com Mark G.

    Father, you bring up a few good points, especially about the conversation normally being about power. You bring up many good examples of women of authority in the Church. But you also ignored the power of women to be mothers, wives, sisters, & aunts in forwarding the kingdom of God within the home. They are the ones that traditionally have taught the Faith to the children.

    Your should not dismiss so quickly the importance of the priest being configured to Christ even as to gender. Many feminists are quick to say a soul is a soul; only the bodies are different. John Paul II’s theological/philosophical reflections seem to point to the truth that our bodies & souls are so integrated & interpenetrated that we can & should speak of male souls & female souls – all as part of our unified personhood. To compare that aspect of our human nature to being fat or white is equating substance to accident, to use Thomas-speak. You & I are deeply & profoundly defined by our maleness, not so much by our whiteness or tanness or fatness or skinniness or other transient.

    St. Paul does make a solitary reference to deaconess. That they helped with baptisms seems certain. That they were the wives of deacons is probable. That they were “ordained” is not only improbable, but impossible. One is only ordained to the sacrament of Holy Orders, which it tripartite in nature, but really one sacrament. The matter for Holy Orders is a man on whose head are laid the hands of the bishop. Women who sadly run off & “get ordained” are excommunicated only partly out of disobedience; I understand it to actually be for committing the sacrilege of simulating a sacrament.

    Other than the single, very obscure reference by Paul, is there any other evidence in the Scripture or Tradition about this? Is there any commentary by the Fathers or Doctors of the Church that support the ritual consecration of women in the sacrament of Orders? How do the Orthodox view this matter?

    My concern? Seems I heard a very wise & faithful friar say that an attack on the priesthood is an attack on the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, which of course, is the very heart & soul of the Church.

    Again, a lot of sound points here – especially Jesus’ own personal election of men for apostleship – but Sacradotalis Ordinatio is a definitive teaching of the Ordinary Magisterium that commands the obedience of any other article of the Faith. It may very well be that people will continue to think & talk about this; but it is not very helpful if the discussion leads people to conclude that this issue is still up for grabs, especially on something that touches right down to the heart of the Faith. Remember your own homily, Father – no priest, no Mass, no Eucharist.

    Assume the Church is right & then go find out why.

  • Fr. Christian Mathis

    Mark,

    Thanks for your thorough reply. I will attempt to address the issues you have brought up here.

    First of all it isn’t that I was trying to ignore the many ways that women express their faith, so much as I was attempting to answer the question presented, which was, “Do you think women will be ordained in the Church?” There are certainly great examples of both lay men and women who give great service to the Church outside of holy orders.

    My issue with the gender argument is that it really just isn’t a good argument. Both men and women have been created in the image and likeness of God and God transcends gender. Certainly Jesus was a man, but it seems to me that to make the argument that one must be a man in order to be configured to Christ, then only men can be baptized for the same reason. I agree that there are profound differences between women and men, but this just simply is a poor argument against women receiving this sacrament. I believe there is a stronger case to be made elsewhere.

    I do understand that the law of the Church today forbids the ordination of women, but the evidence of the early Church ordaining women is pretty strong. I know that there are those who claim that it was a different thing altogether, or that it was simply a minor order, unlike the three major ones, but do not agree with those who make this claim. St. Paul makes one explicit reference to women deacons. He also really only has one explicit reference to how the Eucharist was celebrated. This is in response to abuses of the people of Corinth. Just because there is limited reference shouldn’t deny the fact that there was some special role that these women played.

    You ask if there are other references in Scripture or Tradition. Yes, there are other references. We might begin with this canon from the Council of Chalcedon.

    “A Woman shall not receive the laying on of hands as a deaconess under forty years of age, and then only after searching examination. And if, after she has had hands laid on her and has continued for a time to minister, she shall despise the grace of God and give herself in marriage, she shall be anathematized and the man united to her.” (Chalcedon, canon xv)

    This canon implies not only service to the poor and assistance with baptism, but a laying of hands. It also implies a pledge of celibacy on the part of a deaconess.

    There is also the Didascalia Apostolorum that describes the roles of deaconesses in assisting at baptism and in going to certain houses. It mentions among the early deaconesses of the Church, Mary Magdalene, Mary the daughter of James and mother of Jose, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee. It does, however, limit the ministry of them to women.

    It is interesting that you brought up the Orthodox.. My assumption would have been that they believed similar to us in that at one point there were women ordained deaconesses and that later this fell out of practice and that now holy orders are open only to men. Then I came across this: http://westernorthodoxy.org/pdf/restored.pdf

    The document that most convinced me of the actual ordination of women as deacons however is the Barberini Codex that contains the 8th Century rites for the ordination of both deacons and deaconesses in the Byzantine Church. Because it contains both rites, they can be compared. This article–

    http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&context=ionut_mavrichi

    makes the case that a good argument can be made from the way this rite was celebrated, that it really was on the same level as the men. This is the same ordination rite we looked at in the seminary when discussing the historicity of deaconesses.

    A couple of final thoughts. To ask the question of whether or not women will ever be ordained is not an attack on the priesthood. It is a question that can be asked with respect or disrespect. With regards to John Paul II’s Sacradotalis Ordinatio, I agree that it should be respected, but as for those who claim that it is infallible teaching, I am not so sure. The requirements to meet that criteria are that the Pope declare a teaching ex cathedra, and it has to be widely accepted by the Church. In this case, there are still many who respectfully continue to engage in dialogue over this. There are others who choose to blatantly not follow the current practice of the Church and who are openly defiant. My own observations are that these are two radically different groups.

    As I stated in the original podcast, I don’t believe that we will ordain women and since we have never apparently ordained women as bishops or priests, it seems unlikely this will ever happen. But I can’t see into the future either.

  • http://happyentanglements.blogspot.com Mark G.

    Thanks for the references, Father. I look forward to studying them.

    With respect, I don’t see any confusion with men-Holy Orders / all-Baptism. That is simply the description of the purpose & scope of each sacrament as Christ instituted them. All are called to join the Body of Christ; from them some men are called to serve the conversion & sanctification of the rest. They do not conform one to Christ in the same way nor for the same reason.

    Regarding the pope, an ex cathedra proclamation – like Munificentissimus Deus by Pius XII – is not the only way an infallible teaching can be made. I asked Fr. Triglio, co-author of Catholicism for Dummies, about this specific question of the authority of S.O. He said this was the case of an infallible teaching being promulgated by the Ordinary Magisterium. Here is the conclusion of S.O.:

    “4. Although the teaching that priestly ordination is to be reserved to men alone has been preserved by the constant and universal Tradition of the Church and firmly taught by the Magisterium in its more recent documents, at the present time in some places it is nonetheless considered still open to debate, or the Church’s judgment that women are not to be admitted to ordination is considered to have a merely disciplinary force.

    “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.”

    When the pope declares a teaching as Peter, it seals the deal, so to speak. I have never read or been taught that anyone else has to accept it or like it. Peter does not teach simply to ratify the desires of the Faithful, & the Truths of the Faith are not determined by vote. The reason this teaching is given – as John Paul II states in S.O. – is specifically because there is a grave, persistent, & widespread error that requires correction.

    My concern with your podcast is that it leaves open the idea that this is really a matter of discipline that might be reconsidered sometime and that the current teaching need not be definitively held by the faithful. Or at least that’s the way I heard it.

    My concern with the topic in general – aside from the aforementioned concerns – is that it is a huge distraction at a time when the Faithful should be uniting against a corrupt age & getting busy with the work of God. Consider the Anglican communion – this kind of devilish chaos results when we look to human wisdom & the spirit of the Age instead of divine teaching, when we turn inward on ourselves instead of toward Christ.

  • http://nowealthbutlife.com Rae

    I feel the need to chime in here because I was one who asked Father Christian about the ordination of women to the diaconate on Twitter. It troubles me to see Catholics call it invalid when it is practiced by at least one Church whose orders we view as valid, and I wanted to know what Father Christian thought.

    “My concern with the topic in general – aside from the aforementioned concerns – is that it is a huge distraction at a time when the Faithful should be uniting against a corrupt age & getting busy with the work of God.”
    Just want to toss in the thought that maybe being open to truth and not dogmatically stating things that aren’t dogma, is a way that a pastor is called to lead in getting busy with the work of God and uniting the faithful. I, for one, take Father Christian much more seriously now for recognizing the messy facts about ordination of women to the diaconate.

    The idea that priests should ignore the truth and those of us puzzled by facts in favor of uniting conservatives smells of human wisdom to me. I don’t agree with all of Father Christian’s personal opinion, but I can respect it as such since he isn’t trying to shut down the faithful who don’t happen to meet his preferred style.

  • http://ifnecessary--usewords.blogspot.com/ Ashley Siferd

    Even with all of this interesting dialogue, podcast, and my female gender, I still want to be a priest.

    Just because someone says “NO” doesn’t mean people still can’t dream or think about it, as far-fetched as reaching that dream may seem.

  • Alice Krause

    Fr. Christian:

    Thank you for addressing the “elephant in the pew.” Women’s role in the church today is a very serious issue.

    Women do not look at the issue as a “power” issue; we are not in competition with the ordained. It is a JUSTICE issue, and that is what women focus on.

    I see it as this simple: All of the sacraments should be available to every person if he or she is called. That is not true today, as Holy Orders is denied to women. There are 3 levels in Holy Orders open to men — deacon, priest, bishop. The Catechism states that the sacraments “were all instituted by Jesus Christ our Lord.” I do not think that Jesus intended the church to discriminate against half of the Body of Christ and not allow their participation in all the sacraments.

    The Spirit works in women, as well as men, leading them to the fulfillment of their callings. Women are denied the special graces granted in serving as a deacon, and the church is denied the unique spiritual abilities of women who are called by the Spirit to that type of service. Imagine if it had happened to you!

    Your generation will look around and see few women in the church as our daughters and grand-daughters turn their back on the church that does not value and respect their total being. The only prejudice they experience is in their Catholic church.

    “Blest are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall be satisfied.” It will take ordained men to stand up for the women and not be afraid to do so. Thanks for being a stand-up priest in initiating this dialog.

  • Fr. Christian Mathis

    Mark, Rae and Ashley,

    Thanks for the comments. It is my hope to have good discussion at this blog and this topic certain allows for it. It is a messy thing to try to give an answer on such a controversial topic. All I can do is my best to present from my limited knowledge where the Church has been and where it is now. Where it goes in the future is not for me to predict, though I do think it highly doubtful the Church will change its practice on this one.

  • Fr. Christian Mathis

    Alice,

    You were in my mind when Jim and I were recording this podcast. I have to be honest with you that I do not think that the current practice is going to change any time soon, if ever. But I also do not think people like yourself are going to simply stop talking about it.

    I will say this, however. As someone who has considered marriage and who went through the formation to prepare for ordination, there is a difference in the sacrament of Holy Orders. As long as one is considered free to marry, they have a right to receive this sacrament. The same could be said of Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist, etc. Holy Orders is a sacrament where one must be called. The Church has never considered it a right that any Christian can simply ask to be ordained.
    Even the references that I have made in previous comments shows this when they call for candidates, whether men or women, to be tested before being called to orders.

    I am not convinced that the sole place where women feel prejudice is within the Catholic Church. It seems to me that the Church has a history of holding women in high esteem. There are many places still today where women’s wages are less than those of men. I would consider that to be wrong. Just one example.

    Anyway, thanks for the comment. I appreciate the dialogue with you and others who have commented here.

  • http://avowofconversation.wordpress.com Macrina Walker

    Father Christian, Reading your comments here makes me rather regret that I am not able to connect to your podcast (I’m pretty sure the problem is my computer as it clearly has a glitch that needs to be checked up).

    I don’t know if you read Deacon Stephen’s blog Khanya, but if you don’t you may be interested in his recent post What is a priest? and also an earlier one on Women’s ministry. Neither are directly concerned with whether women should be ordained, but the do discuss important issues that seem to float in the background of these discussions.

  • http://happyentanglements.blogspot.com Mark G.

    Rae, I apologize for sounding too “my way or the highway.” It’s often hard to communicate the right tone & temper on a blog.

    Don’t read me as saying that there was never & cannot now be an order of Deaconesses. The Church has had orders of all kinds – religious, catechumens, widows, penitents (I’m actually hoping this one comes back – I’ll be the first to join!). So, should the Church decide to bring back an order of Deaconesses, I’m all for it. However, it truly seems impossible that it would be a participation in Sacred Orders. I can’t really apologize for upholding “constant & universal” Church teaching & encouraging others to do the same.

    There is still plenty to say about the role of women in the Church (& men, too!), which is the title & general subject of the post. One can’t help but note that women dominate religious education, parish committees, & office staff at most parishes. Also, my experience with catechesis is that mothers need stronger tools to teach their children the Faith & help their families become saints. If this doesn’t happen, the rest is just navel-gazing, anyway.

  • Mary

    Dear Father Mathis,
    I did not agree with your implications that the priesthood could ever in theory at least be opened to women, since the current and previous pope have said the Church has no authority whatsoever to do it. That seems to me to forever settle that point.

    In line with this, I did agree with your point that I have never heard anyone else make, but which I have often thought myself, that Jesus was radical. He clearly did just as He chose to do, regardless of public opinion – He angered a lot of people with “radical” “new” ideas and actions, and utter love of mankind was always at the root of everything He did.

    So if Jesus chose only men as His apostles, it was not because He feared breaking any taboos or shocking the public. He did exactly as He intended. Who are we to question what the Lord does? We only can trust that He acted as He did out of love for us. For us women to say that Jesus must not have meant what He did, for Justice’s sake, is ridiculous in the extreme. God is justice. And all power does rest in Him.

    The first person to ever know Jesus was coming into the world was a woman. The only one who shared flesh with Jesus was a woman. The first person the Resurrected Lord appeared to was a woman. Mary Magdalene is called “Apostle to the Apostles.” The Most Holy Virgin Mary is Theotokos – “God Bearer”. Truly, Jesus has blessed us and honored us.

    I agree with you, Father Mathis, that the Church honors women more than any other Christian church, or any other religion, and more than any other group. What other groups have feast days for women? Name one holiday in America based on the birthday or anniversary of a woman. What other churches and faiths have sculptures and icons of women all over their houses of worship? What other faiths recognize women as Doctors of the Church? What other faith has as its first member, a woman (Our Blessed Mother Mary)? What other faith teaches that the greatest human to ever live, aside from our Lord, was a woman?

  • http://www.ironiccatholic.com IC

    I’m one of the few women I know who thinks the priesthood ought to be restricted to men alone, primarily on the strength of the configuring to Christ element rather than the males disciples element.

    To me, it is less about men, women, and leadership than it is about the Eucharist and the centrality of liturgy. I say this as a card carrying Catholic Worker who is the Catholic Social Teaching nut on campus. The Eucharist rightly celebrated is at the heart of that–and that configuration is not accidental.

    I also have to say that for years I wanted to be a priest. This culminated in a breakdown at a monastery, crying and screaming at God, why do you want me to be something I can’t be? But it became clearer, slowly, over time–what I admitted to myself I wanted was to give my life entirely to God. I immediately translated that into “I want to be a priest.”–because that was the only way I saw in the Catholic Church to express this. THAT is one of the prime failures of the Catholic Church in the USA–that people don’t realize the scope of vocations, the universal call to holiness, and that whatever vocation God has crafted for you is the perfect one, the one that makes you happy, the “most important”. I don’t want to say all women are like me!–but I do wonder how much of this vocational confusion is a confusion of deepest desires. We need more spiritual direction than doctrinal analysis.

    I have heard Catholic women (esp women who ultimately do ordination through Womenpriests, etc.) say they seek ordination to provide power balance and leadership by women in the Church. But anyone seeking ordination for power (male or female) has got it completely, entirely wrong.

    My two cents.

  • Fr. Christian Mathis

    And the conversation continues……

    Thank you for the links Macrina, I will give them a look when I have some time.

    Your point about women having a huge role in the Church is well taken Mark. Just this morning I saw a young mother come into our chapel with her toddler son and physically show him how to make the sign of the cross when they entered. That is probably the most important role one can have, teaching our children.

    I appreciate your thoughts Mary, especially your stance on Jesus as a radical. The fact is that he did have women among his disciples and chose twelve men to be his apostles. He certainly broke enough other taboos that he could have chosen a woman to be among the twelve had he so desired, yet he didn’t. That should tell us something.

    Thanks for the reminder that we are all called to holiness, IC. I agree that many times we don’t read our own desires correctly and I noted in the podcast that many times those women who express the desire to be ordained see it as being about power. Priests are given a great deal of authority, but it is for the sake of service, not power. Christians are not supposed to be engaged in a power struggle with one another. Do some priests use their authority as a way to obtain power? Yes, unfortunately they sometimes do, but I agree with you that those men have not understood what their priesthood is supposed to be about. Christ’s power came primarily through his accepting crucifixion.

    One more thought is my experience having attended mass on occasion in the Anglican tradition with a woman serving as priest is that something did not feel right about it. This is, I know, totally subjective on my part, but it just didn’t feel right. One might argue that it didn’t feel right to me simply because it is something I had never experienced, but it could also be a deeper truth that caused me to feel uncomfortable.

    The thing that is difficult as someone who is serving as a priest is to try to express what I do believe, which is the priesthood is not something that one takes upon oneself. One way we see this today is that not every man who presents himself as a candidate is ultimately called. The Church tests them first. This is not in my mind an issue of justice, but of discernment.

    Anyway, glad that people are engaged in this discussion. Thank you for your participation!

  • Sherry Weddell

    I guess I can’t listen to your podcast anymore?

  • Fr. Christian Mathis

    You should still be able to listen to it. There is a link above. If it doesn’t work you can go to http://www.sthomaslc.com and listen at our parish website. Let me know if you have trouble.

  • http://www.fromthepulpitofmylife.blogspot.com/ Ruth Ann

    Thanks for posting this. This is the first time I’ve listened to your podcast. I tend to prefer to read than to listen. But I did listen as well as read the above comments.

    My thought on this has to do with “being called.” It also has to do with Jesus granting authority to the church to bind and to lose.

    I presume that being called means being inspired by God first, and then, as you said, having that call tested or confirmed by the Church to which Jesus gave authority. If the Lord does not want women to be ordained as priests, which seems clear from comments already posted, then why would he “call” them? My thought is that God would not call them. If that’s the case, what is it that makes some women feel that they have been called to be ordained? Are they delusional? Are they confusing what they want with what God wants.

    I don’t know the answer. But I do think that God wouldn’t really call a woman to be ordained if God doesn’t want women to be ordained.

    What I would like to see is an opportunity for women to preach, officially preach, at Mass.

  • http://www.fromthepulpitofmylife.blogspot.com/ Ruth Ann

    P.S. Is the statue in the photo St. Catherine of Siena?

  • Fr. Christian Mathis

    Thanks for your comment Ruth Ann.

    Yes, that is Catherine of Sienna, one of those women who did great things for our Church.

    I agree that being called is am important part of knowing if one should be in the role of priest. There has to be a discernment of the call as well. It may have already been stated in the comments here, but it is good to note that not all men are called to priesthood. Holy Orders isn’t a sacrament that one simple requests.

    Thanks for adding your voice to the discussion.

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