Brothers+

Months ago I indicated that I had yet to see a
convincing argument for women's roles in the Church
and commented that "Mercifully no one has asked me to
defend the position of our communion in regard regard
to women in orders."  If one were to question me in
that regard, I've decided to launch into a Tevye's
song in "Fiddler".  When asked "Why" by his daughters
he would sing, "Tradition!  The FAther!."  That should
send them running for cover.

I know, appealing to Tradition is not going to be
perceived as a logical answer, but it is the only one
I have.  I quoted Bp Kallistos Ware who in 1997 said,
"If there are certain things within the Church that
women cannot do, we must give a reason– not just say
it has always been so and it will always be so. We
must give a reason."  Mea Culpa Bp Ware, as the
following debate reveals, logic runs thin on this
subject.

In view of our recent re-run of the topic here, I
found the following from a Roman Catholic Blog of
interest.  These are comments from the ladies.  Again,
quoting Tevye, "Its enough to cross a rabbi's eyes!"

These letters and many more came from a stimulating
exchange in First Things August/September 2003.  If I
remember correctly, when questioned on the issue
JPII's response was something to the effect "over my
dead body."  Now that has been accomplished, what will
the RC's do?

Charles+
}"-------------------------------------------------------

In “Ordaining Women: Two Views” (April), Sarah
Hinlicky Wilson writes that “if the female cannot
represent Christ because of her femininity, it is hard
to understand how Christ in his masculinity can
represent her in his death and resurrection.” 

It is not the case that a “female cannot represent
Christ because of her femininity.” That is an
incorrect answer to the question, “Why can a woman not
be ordained?” Any woman can represent Christ precisely
because of her femininity. Most significantly, the
Virgin Mary, through her grace-filled femininity,
represents Christ as the penultimate model of
submission to the will of God. What a woman cannot do
because of her femininity is act in persona Christi as
the person through whom Christ’s saving grace is
directly communicated to the faithful through the
sacraments of the Eucharist and reconciliation, as
Jennifer Ferrara competently explains. <snip>
"=========================================


I read with curiosity the exchange between Jennifer
Ferrara and Sarah Hinlicky Wilson concerning the
ordination of women. While both writers made some
persuasive points, it is distracting to argue over
shoulds, shouldn’ts, roles, traits, obligations,
rights, etc. The issue is not really how women should
behave in private or public life. The issue is: Does
gender matter? Does gender add something to our
humanity? Does femaleness make it literally impossible
for a person to be ordained?
To answer no to these questions is to stray from the
precision of incarnational faith into dangerous
territory, joining company with the many through the
ages who have said Jesus is only seeming God, seeming
man, or who have denied the hypostatic union.
Let’s start by considering the fiat of the Virgin
Mary. Here we have a real, live woman, approached by a
real, live lover (the Holy Spirit), who conceived a
real, live child. I think we can assume that her fiat
was above all a sexual response to the Holy Spirit.
Her reply was not the dutiful “Yes, you know best,
whatever you say” that is often depicted. It was an
ecstatic assent, given with body and soul. Certainly,
in Mary we can assume a perfect concordance between
spirit and flesh; but her response, and its fruit, was
no less physical than spiritual. The incarnation comes
about through the specificity of the female sexual
response.
A man may spiritually “give birth” to spiritual fruit,
but only a woman could physically give birth to the
Word made flesh. By analogy with Mary, although it may
be harder to discern, can we not assume that there is
something uniquely male about Christ’s salvific role?
The doctrine of the Virgin Birth tells us that all of
Christ’s human nature is inherited from his Mother.
She could not have passed him the y-chromosome
necessary for maleness. We must infer, then, that his
maleness was given by his Father along with his
divinity and not as part of his human genetic makeup.
Jesus’ maleness is not an attribute of his humanity
but of his divinity. (Conversely, when Eve was created
from Adam, Adam’s x-chromosome may have been
duplicated, or supplied by God in an additional act of
creation.)
Jesus’ masculinity is a supernatural attribute which
nevertheless has a physical effect on his human
nature. It gives a spin to his human nature. His
maleness is the locus of the union between his
humanity and divinity. Whatever vein of speculation
one chooses to mine, it is clear: his maleness is
somehow a key to the hypostatic union.
In our perennially Arian way, we repeatedly
shortchange both the physical and the spiritual. The
physical is considered “merely” physical, the
spiritual belonging to a plane of higher truth. On the
other hand, only the physical is thought to be
“literally” true, while spiritual truths are seen as
mere metaphors. But both are equal in value, although
one is ontologically prior—there is nothing “mere”
about the physical realm, the flesh taken on by our
Savior. And spiritual truths are no less literally
true than physical ones. Both are literal—one
physically, the other metaphysically. Both are
metaphorical—the physical is a metaphor for the
spiritual, and vice versa. Both matter.
June McIntosh
Mercersburg, Pennsylvania

"---------------------------------------------------
The masculinity of Christ does indeed explain why
women cannot be ordained to the priesthood, but not
for the reasons enumerated by Jennifer Ferrara.
Nothing about Christ can be understood apart from the
fact that God chose incarnation as His response to
original sin. Thus, women cannot be ordained priests
because priests image Christ as the sacrificial lamb
of God, as the ones who have committed their lives to
representing Calvary though the Eucharist. The
Eucharistic Calvary signifies not only human atonement
for human sins stretching back to Eden, but also the
restoration of the human loves and friendships
sundered in Eden through original sin. 
In Eden, the race lost not only its unity with God but
also the unity between man and woman. As a result,
Christ had two missions: the humanitarian mission of
restoring unity with God and the gender mission of
restoring heterosexual unity. The humanitarian mission
of restoring unity with God required that the lamb of
God be fully human and fully God. Accordingly, since
women are as human as men, God could have incarnated
as a woman. A female Christ could have restored the
human race to its original unity with God. It is not
Christ’s humanitarian mission that required Christ to
be male.
The maleness of Christ is rather required in order to
restore the unity between men and women destroyed by
original sin; for as Genesis 3:16 states: “Your desire
will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”
This passage indicates three gender consequences of
original sin: the excessive desire or obsession of
women for their men, male domination over women, and
sexual inequality. Freeing the human race from these
consequences of original sin constitutes Christ’s
gender mission. 
These consequences are significant. In his letter “On
the Dignity and Vocation of Women,” John Paul II
identifies male domination with chauvinism and blames
it for the many ways in which women suffer
discrimination and lack of proper appreciation for
their equality and dignity. Chauvinism as a
consequence of original sin necessitated that the
Christ be a man. For due to chauvinism, a female
Christ would not have been recognized by men as being
their Lord, their Rabbi, their Savior. Christ
exemplified sacrificial love, which chauvinism
identifies as a weakness and as a peculiarity of
women; according to chauvinism, maleness is about
strength, independence, power, and control. Not so,
taught Christ; rather, masculinity is for the sake of
pouring out one’s life for another in love, not for
the sake of self-gratification and domination.
Fallen women also needed Christ to be incarnated as a
man—and not only to teach men a lesson. Original sin
weakened femininity to the point where it blinded
women to the truth about their desire for love.
Original sin derailed woman’s transcendent passion for
God with an egocentric passion for man—for a Mr. Right
able to satiate desire. Fallen woman thus assumes
either that Mr. Right will be perfect as promised by
fairy tales or that accommodating his chauvinism and
domination will be the sacrifice that enables her to
be loved. Thus woman needed not only to be freed from
the harms of chauvinism but also from the misdirection
of her desire. Women needed to learn not just that
there can be only one perfect man, Jesus Christ, but
also that men need not be chauvinistic. If Christ had
been incarnated as a woman, these lessons would have
been untaught. 
If Christ had to be incarnated as a man in order to
fulfill his gender mission, then it is not possible
for women to undertake this mission. If it is not
possible for women to undertake the gender mission,
then it is not possible for women to be ordained
Catholic priests. For the Catholic priest images
Christ in his gender mission as well as in his
humanitarian mission. This is particularly the case
since the Catholic Church was founded as the remedy
for original sin. Thus if the Catholic Church were to
ordain women her priests would not be able to image
the gender mission of Christ. But since the effects of
original sin continue even unto this age, there is
need for priests to image the gender mission of
Christ.
Furthermore, since the refusal of the Catholic Church
to ordain women is grounded in the gender mission of
Christ, it is a refusal that promotes sexual equality.
It is important that the Church promote sexual
equality—for two reasons. First, it is through sexual
equality that the harmful inequities resulting from
original sin are countered. Secondly, as John Paul II
points out, it is only when spouses recognize and
appreciate the equality of the other that they are
able to appreciate properly the other’s spousal gift
of self. Without this appreciation, marriages fail to
properly image the loving equality of the Trinity. But
we are made in the image of God and we love best when
we love as God loves.
Therefore, it is in the interest of promoting sexual
equality and Trinitarian love that the Catholic Church
forgoes ordaining women. By so doing, she proclaims
both the importance of Christ’s male incarnation and
the need to image his gender mission. This
proclamation, in turn, witnesses to the ongoing
effects of original sin and the need to counter those
effects by relying upon the grace and wisdom of
Christ.
R. Mary Hayden Lemmons
Associate Professor of Philosophy and Catholic Studies
University of St. Thomas
St. Paul, Minnesota

"---------------------------------------------------------
Jennifer Ferrara replies:
R. Mary Hayden Lemmons rejects the reasons I give for
restricting the priesthood to men, but does not
respond at all to the content of my essay. Instead,
she proposes a novel thesis of her own, one for which
she provides no evidence from Scripture or tradition. 

I am unaware of any basis for her claim that Jesus was
on a gender mission to restore the heterosexual unity
destroyed by original sin. True, men’s dominion over
women is a result of the fall, but men and women
continue to be united in marriage. By God’s grace
received through the sacraments, husbands and wives
can be equal partners in a marriage based upon a
radical giving of self on the part of both spouses, a
giving that results in mutual submission. However, the
roles of men and women are not the same, but
complementary. This diversity within unity lies at the
heart of the nuptial mystery proclaimed throughout
Scripture. For instance, Ephesians 5:21-33 says that
New Covenant wives are to be subject in everything to
their husbands as the Church is subject to Christ,
while husbands are to sacrifice themselves for their
wives as Christ did for the Church. The priest is a
symbol of the gift of Christ’s love for his bride, the
Church.

Prof. Lemmons ignores this beautiful imagery and
instead, using sterile words that could only emanate
from the academy, says the priest “images Christ in
his gender mission.” In the end, her own rationale
suggests it might be time to ordain women. If Christ
has been on a gender mission to overcome the effects
of chauvinism, he has been largely successful in
Western democracies, at least. Certainly, priests no
longer need to be male in order to be taken seriously
as rulers and managers of the Church. Those who
recognize the God-given inherent differences between
men and women and their importance for the Church and
society will want to reject Prof. Lemmons’ arguments
and stick with the traditional teachings of the
Church.

Pastor Gregory Yeager says he followed me up to the
point where I said Roman Catholic priests who avoid
having a relationship with Mary run the risk of
becoming narcissistic. Let me clarify: I did not have
Protestant pastors in mind when I made the statement.
I was addressing the problem of celibate priests who
are in danger of leading lives divorced from the
feminine. The crux of the argument is that men and
women have a symbiotic relationship: men learn how to
become receptive, and therefore holy, from women.
However, if Pastor Yeager was indeed with me up to
that point, I would think he would be eager to partake
in the characteristically feminine, self-giving
receptivity of the Marian fiat (“Let it be done to me
according to your Word.”), which lies at the heart of
a spiritual relationship with her.
Since Andrew Van Sant was kind enough to recommend a
book to me, I wish to return the favor and suggest he
read Manfred Hauke’s comprehensive Women in the
Priesthood? (Ignatius, 1988). If he does, he will see
that the iconic argument for the male priesthood is
neither recently developed nor without substantial
witness from Christian authors of both the patristic
and medieval periods, including those of Eastern
Orthodox lineage.

With regard to Patricia Coyne’s interesting proposal,
perhaps she does not know that the Catholic priest
also acts in the person of the Church, that is, as
representative of the whole Church, but he does so, as
Inter Insignores observes, only “precisely because he
first represents Christ, himself, who is the Head and
Shepherd of the Church.” Protestant pastors, however,
do not claim to represent either Christ or their
churches in this sacramental way.

-----------------------------------------
Sarah Hinlicky Wilson replies:
The exchange of articles with Jennifer Ferrara, and
now of letters with readers, has been for me a most
instructive exploration into the nature of debate. 

First, a few specific responses. Mark Chance, Father
Matthew Kowalski, and Gil Costello criticize me for
not accepting Roman Catholic anthropology or
sacramentology. For that I offer no apology. I would
like to note that I do indeed think that Jesus’
maleness has theological significance, but that is
another article. June McIntosh and R. Mary Hayden
Lemmons present midrashic interpretations of Christ’s
masculinity, which, though interesting in their own
way, are otherwise unfounded in Scripture and
tradition. Mark Wyman caricatures my argument in
misleading ways that would be tedious to enumerate.
Pastor Peter Speckhard complains because I did not
write the article he wanted—one that is primarily
scriptural in nature. This is for the simple fact that
I was writing in response to Ms. Ferrara, herself a
Roman Catholic, and as the letters from other Roman
Catholics amply demonstrate, they are overwhelmingly
more interested in questions of gender ontology than
scriptural warrant. I certainly could provide a
scriptural case for the ordination of women, but it
would not be convincing to such a reader, since I,
like Martin Luther, am not a scriptural inerrantist. 

Of course, these brief rejoinders will persuade no one
who was not already persuaded by the initial article,
which raises (to me) the more interesting question:
What makes an argument persuasive? And who is allowed
to debate? Note the following features of these
letters. I am charged with making bald assertions, and
yet refuted with further bald assertions. I am labeled
a Gnostic despite the fact that I argue for a
flesh-and-blood biology instead of an ethereal
ontology of gender. Because I discuss the nature of
ordination, I am indicted for treating it as “an
invention of the Church, which can be remade as
desired.” Indeed, for engaging in a theological
argument at all, I am accused of being a “liberal
Protestant” who puts her own judgments above
Scripture, tradition, pope, and council. My simple
request for charity is treated as a shameless play for
cheap grace, and the philosophical principle of
charity in debate—presuming the best in one’s
opponents’ arguments rather than the worst—is handily
ignored by my respondents. 

All I have done is amass arguments from Scripture,
tradition, and plain reason regarding the ordination
of women. That is what theology is and does. Any
doctrine to which the Church holds was not handed down
from on high, pristine and complete, but was developed
and debated by the Church’s theologians over
centuries. True doctrine stands up to genuine
challenges. Here, however, I have encountered no
meaningful response to either the trinitarian or the
Christological arguments, and the responses about
gender only further support my thesis that unclear
thinking and mystical befuddlement surround the issue.
So did I cause offense by the content of my argument,
or by the fact that I made the argument at all? 

I presume no greater certainty about the validity of
ordaining women than the risk of faith allows. I’m
with Gamaliel on this one: “If this plan or this
undertaking is of human origin, it will fail; but if
it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them”
(Acts 5:38-)