Of the many battles raging within the increasingly beleaguered Anglican Communion today, women’s ordination is perhaps the most conspicuous. In saying this I do not mean to imply that the question of whether women can be validly ordained as priests is the pivotal issue facing Anglicanism in the 21st century; its allowance is merely a symptom of a more general breakdown in agreement within the communion’s ranks about what is and isn’t orthodox Christianity. Nor am I asserting that the subject has garnered a more significant amount of media attention than have others. Even the Episcopal Church’s 2006 enthronement of Katherine Jefferts Schori as the first female Anglican bishop received far less coverage than its appointment of Gene Robinson to the same office in 2004.
Rather, what I intend by my words is simply that a person’s gender is far more readily apparent than his or her religious beliefs or sexual proclivities. In the Anglican Communion, where liturgy is still of paramount importance in many sectors, the beliefs of priest and congregation don’t necessarily become transparent (with notable exceptions) until one hears the homily or attends a Sunday school class; the Nicene Creed sounds the same whether one affirms its doctrines in a traditional manner or not. If this is the case with doctrinal adherence, how much more so with sexual orientation-which, unless it’s the flagship issue of the priest or parish in question, may not be mentioned at all? The sanctioning of women’s ordination wasn’t the only revision in doctrine and practice to have occurred in the Anglican Communion in the 1970’s. Yet it must certainly have been the most visible sign that a change had occurred.
For this and other reasons, then, the years immediately following the Episcopal Church’s 1976 General Convention were a time when a significant number of priests and laity left mainstream Anglicanism, finding refuge in the various continuing Anglican movements or else converting to Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy. The Continuum doesn’t, to my admittedly rather limited knowledge, have a liberal wing advocating women’s ordination: considering its origins, a movement in that direction would be highly unlikely. Likewise, I haven’t heard of any similar rumblings within the Orthodox churches (though, again, I’m no expert on such matters by any means).
Then there’s the Roman Catholic Church, which has had, for several years now, a small but vocal contingent of believers actively campaigning for the cause in question. Every so often religious and secular news outlets run stories about illicit ordinations of women-usually performed by unnamed bishops in non-Catholic settings-provoking the usual expressions of dismay and glee from traditional and progressive Catholics, respectively. The Vatican has always been dismissive of these ordinations’ legitimacy but apparently considers the underlying sentiments of their participants to be subversive enough to warrant an apostolic letter and several official excommunications, among other measures taken.
Several authors far more learned than myself have written extensively on this subject. I am neither competent to do so nor desirous of diving into its murky theological waters. If I were to intentionally arouse the consternation of my audience, I would want the topic of discussion to be something I knew more about.
That said, I would like to preface what follows by pointing out that women’s ordination should only be an issue for Christian communities professing to believe in the sacraments. When I was still a Protestant, I believed that the pastor’s primary duties were preaching and pastoring. Since I didn’t doubt the competence of women in either capacity, I had trouble seeing what all the fuss was about with regards to whether a woman could pastor a church. I’ve since come to understand that the question of whether women can be priests is, at least in theory, a question of ontological ability, not fitness for leadership.
So the issue at hand is whether women are able to be validly ordained and confect the sacraments. What I’d like to point out here is this: the reason feminists are up in arms about not being able to consecrate the Host or hear confessions isn’t because these are enviable tasks in and of themselves. The life of a priest, as that life is intended to be, isn’t something one wishes for; it’s a calling. I, for one, admire those who’ve taken on the cloth. I am not, however, covetous of the task to which they’ve been assigned.
A Catholic priest is said to be acting in persona Christi-that is, standing in for Christ, the High Priest-when he performs his duties as priest. What was Christ’s life like while He was here? It was not a life of earthly glory, of political influence or ostentatious wealth. No, His life was short and filled with pain. He was rejected by much of His family and friends; in the end even those who had loved Him as teacher deserted Him, and many (though certainly not all) of his own people cried out for his execution. He was hated for who He was; ultimately, he was killed for the same. This is what being a priest entails-not that this will necessarily happen to every man who becomes a priest, but that is what one opens oneself up to in taking that path.
So why the fuss over an all-male priesthood? Two reasons immediately come to mind. First of all, this particular issue fits in uncomfortably well with Western culture’s traditional exclusion of women from certain roles, especially those requiring education and entailing leadership. The second and more important point is how these two phenomena, the unfair banishment of women from the public sphere and the justifiable restriction of the priestly life to men, have been intertwined in the course of history. From the time of Constantine to within the last 150 years, the Church has held an incredible amount of temporal power: the authority to coronate or depose emperors, for instance. When being a Catholic priest has meant an opportunity to influence whole nations, to live in wealth, to obtain pleasures undreamed of by the average peasant, of course there have been those who have taken on the role with the wrong intentions. The upshot of this has been a power structure-an earthly authority-dominated by men.
Yet this isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. If one is offered a bishopric, one is expected to decline first, then accept: the desire to progress through the ranks of the Church is actually considered to be sinful. A friend of mine, a Jesuit seminarian, once told me that the Church has been at its best historically when under siege. There have always been saints, of course: no amount of corruption in the earthly organization could destroy that. Yet now we are likely to see popes and priests in high places who live as saints on earth, whereas by the time of the Renaissance-think of Alexander VI, the paragon of a corrupted clergy-that idea had become almost laughable.
My point in saying all of this is that, in terms of earthly glory, there shouldn’t be any difference in being a man versus being a woman. As priests men are indeed given a level of authority in the Church that women aren’t. But what kind of authority is it? For 99% of clergy, it’s the authority to counsel tormented souls in the confessional and see the dying off to the next life. At the highest levels, it is the authority to combat heresy on the level of proclaiming dogma, the authority to bear the weight of Church unity on one’s shoulders and suffer on its behalf.
None of these are terribly attractive duties. There is definitely glory to be had in them, but it’s the sort of glory that is fundamentally mixed with pain.
We are all called to serve God in this life. Hand-in-hand with this is a call to suffer, to complete the work of Christ on the Cross. At its heart a priest’s life is a life of suffering, an agony allotted specifically to men. I am in awe of the way a woman’s body can bear and bring forth new life, yet the task of childbearing is not one I envy women in the least. Whether we are priests, or else husbands and wives, monks and nuns-whether we are consecrated virgins or lifelong wanderers uncertain of our vocation until death: each of us is granted a special pain through which, if we accept it, we will be redeemed. The least we can do in these short lives we’ve been given is to not covet the pains reserved for others
The image is of Pope St. Martin I. What follows is a passage on St. Martin from the wonderful book Saints & Sinners (2nd ed.) by Eamon Duffy:
“In June 653 [the Exarch of Italy] succeeded in arresting the Pope in the Lateran basilica, where Martin had had his bed placed for sanctuary in front of the altar. Chronically ill and savagely maltreated by his gaolers (at one stage, while suffering from dysentery, he was held for forty-seven days without being allowed to wash), Martin was taken to Constantinople. There he was jostled by a hostile crowd, and charged with supporting [the former Exarch] Olympus’s rebellion and even of corresponding with the forces of Islam. The real reason for Martin’s arrest, his defiance of the emperor over the monothelite question, was kept out of the show-trial proceedings, since the regime wanted to avoid raising dangerous issues of theological orthodoxy. With the whole weight of empire against him, only one verdict was possible, and the Pope was duly found guilty of treason. He was stripped of his vestments, dragged in shackles through the streets and publicly flogged. Separated from the small band of clergy who had travelled with him to Rome, he was deported to the Crimea where he died in September 655 from the hardships he had endured.”
Nice post. I just need to correct you by saying that Ms. Schori was installed as the primate of the Episcopal Church in 2006. She was already the Episcopal “bishop” of Las Vegas, and the ECUSA was “ordaining” women since the 1970’s, including the consecration of bishops.
I posted this on another blog, and I hope it might clear up and echo some of the themes you touched on here:
I can’t give a definitive answer on why only men can be ordained either, and we will never “know” the answer as we moderns are accustomed to absorbing information, but a lot of our problem lies in our inability to think symbolically. For example, if someone were to ask me why are bread and wine used in the Eucharist, I would reply that just as many grains come forth to make one loaf, and many grapes to make wine, so the Church, the Body of Christ, is constituted by people from all nations coming to be deified and united to Christ in the synaxis of the faithful. That is why it has to be what it is. And as Muslims from all the world have to pray in Koranic Arabic from the seventh century, so all Christians have to use the elements that Christ used at the Last Supper. Even the cultural context, the “accidents” of that all-important event, are sacred.
I recently finished reading a book on the Neoplatonic philosopher Proclus that I think indirectly inspired a thought on the masculine nature of the Christian Divine. In the first Neoplatonic triad, just below the One, there are three figures named for the ancient Greek gods: Kronos-Rhea-Zeus. Kronos, of course, is the Father. Rhea is the Mother, and Zeus is the Demiurge. Anyway, I think that our calling God Father and only Father has something inherently to do with creation ex nihilo. That is, in other systems, the world is eternal, and the feminine is the primordial “goo” by which the Demiurge makes the world. In Judeo-Christian thought, God doesn’t need “eternal goo” to make His world. He is completely transcendent, without a mediator when He creates, and absolutely independent. That is why there is no feminine in God, and that is why the feminine (the Mother) is an inappropriate symbol for God. Our mother, the Church/Mother of God, is a creature, created and not uncreated. She is infinitely below God.
Perhaps in this way can we can understand what St. Paul said of woman being the image of the glory of man, and man being an image of the glory of God. God is Father, and thus can only be represented by a man. Just as the Son is the image of the Father, so the male priest is the image of the Son. That is why women can’t be priests. But hey, that’s just my stab at it.
As for people jumping at the chance to be priests, they need to read St. John Chrysostom’s apology for his flight when they threatened to ordain him. Like the shaman in the ancient world, the calling to be a priest is to be feared rather than coveted. Perhaps that is the reason why ordinations were traditionally done on penitential days in Rome, particularily Ember Saturday of Advent.”
I’m afraid that my knowledge of Greek philosophy (not to mention Neoplatonism) is rather limited, so I hope you’ll indulge me by answering a few questions with regards to your comment.
First, you made reference to the first triad below the One. Is the One comprised of the triad (Kronos-Rhea-Zeus) or something entirely independent?
Secondly, if Rhea is the eternal substance from which the world was made, and Zeus is the one doing the making, what is Kronos’ role?
Finally, are any of the figures you’ve mentioned roughly analogous to God the Father? Or is the comparison not worth making?
These questions are more for my own curiosity than anything else, though. I think that I understand what you’re saying in the broad sense: God the Father doesn’t need a feminine component to create. That is to say, he is generative of his own accord and doesn’t need to impregnate a female counterpart to make the universe. Do I have you right?
In any event, thanks for your corrections and clarifications, Arturo. I’ve gotten a lot out of reading your blog, and I gladly welcome your insights here.
The One is the absolutely simple, beyond multiplicity in the Neoplatonic system. The first triad or procession from the One, that is the first form of multiplicity, is the intellectual triad that I have spoken of here. Kronos is the Father, sufficient unto himself, unproductive, contemplating himself eternally, and making nothing. He is absolutely transcendent in philosophical terms. [It should be pointed out that the Roman name for Kronos is Saturnus (Saturn) from which we get the name of the planet. For the ancients, Saturn was the highest sphere of material existence before one transcended the realm of matter to ascend into the spiritual realm; it was the border between the material and the spiritual. Ficino said that philosphers tended to fall under the influence of the planet Saturn which caused melancholy in these types of contemplative people. The Pythagoreans recommended that you should wear white to cheer yourself, sing songs, etc. to counter-balance its influence, though this is neither here nor there.]
Rhea is the Mother, that is, the female archetype in the divine in which all life and motion potentially exists. She is prior to motion and order. It is the Demiurge (Zeus) who comes forth from Rhea who gives order and harmony to things. In the end, the best (but far from accurate) analogous figure in Christianity to Zeus would be the Logos Theou, or Word of God, that is, Jesus Christ.
Thus, I would argue that God in the true and final Judeo-Christian revelation very deliberately excludes the feminine as having some sort of analogous existence in God since God created all things from nothing (ex nihilo) and has absolutely no dependence on Creation since it is not an emanation from Him as it is in the Neoplatonic system. God says very explicitly in the Old Testament that He does not eat of the sacrifices that He is offered, He does not need them. All analogies fall short when compared to God, but the analogy of fatherhood is far more accurate since the father brings forth children not out of himself, but out of another. He can reject the child, he does not have the deep emotional attachment to the child that the mother naturally has. In this symbol, then, the idea that there is absolutely no necessity in God is best articulated. God adopts the cosmos through the human race in Jesus Christ out of sheer love and free will. If the feminine were somehow in God, this idea would be somewhat distorted in my opinion.
But that is just a stab in the dark. We can’t really know these things, but I think that we need to try to understand it for our own benefit. I admit that some of it might be reaching a bit, but take it for what it is.
Indeed, we cannot know the nature of God in the way that our materialistic society tends to conceive of knowing. Yet I’m reminded of one of Jonathan Prejean’s insightful statements over at Crimson Catholic, that “what defies explanation sets the foundation for our understanding”; one could also say that the aspects of our universe we least understand are its most important components. We’re seemingly the only society whose intellectuals have forgotten this truth, the disastrous consequences of which have honestly been apparent for awhile now.
Thanks for the further explanation. Honestly, I’m getting to the point where I appreciate a good shot in the dark as much as if not more than a jargon-littered philosophical treatise. The former at least seem to accomplish something.