Ordination and Women

For starters, a serious study of the question of ordaining women to the sacramental order of diaconate involves just about every branch of Catholic Theology—Scripture, History, Sacraments, Ecclesiology [or “the nature of the Church”], the evolution of Church Law or Canon Law, and I know I have forgotten several other segments of Church academia. By the way, the best summary of sacramental development through the twenty-first century remains Joseph Martos’ Doors to the Sacred: A Historical Introduction to Sacraments in the Catholic Church. Make sure you obtain the 2014 or most recent edition as a valuable reference in your religion library.
 
Perhaps the most useful way to organize the discussion is by looking at the questions piece-by-piece, so long as we remember that the whole is not always the sum of its parts.
 
SCRIPTURE: The New Testament was not written immediately after the happenings of Jesus’ life and death, but only some years later as the earliest Christians reflected upon life of Jesus and his impact upon them. Early Christians did not break from Judaism and for several decades worshipped in the Temple in Jerusalem under the aegis of the Jewish chief priests, men. Christians also celebrated a weekly meal commemorating the Lord’s resurrection. In 1 Corinthians 11, written in the mid-50’s A.D., Paul gives us an outline of this Resurrection feast that sounds quite like a primitive rendering of the modern Mass. But there is no mention of who would lead such a celebration, or who would preach or bear witness at these times. Paul was more engrossed in the segregation of rich from poor members at such meals in this Corinthian text.
 
St. Luke, writing a generation later in the Acts of the Apostles, points to a more distinct structure of preaching and other ministries in his commentary on the early days. In Acts 6, the Twelve were faced with complaints that bread distribution to Hebrew Christian women was more generous than those to Hellenist [Greek] Christian women. The Twelve respond with this: “It is not right for us to neglect the word of God to serve at table. Brothers, select from among you seven reputable men, filled with the Spirit and wisdom, whom we shall appoint to this task, whereas we shall devote ourselves to prayer and the ministry of the word.”
 
Interestingly, the text does not call these seven appointees “deacons” as a class, nor does it really distinguish these seven from the Apostles themselves, i.e., the Twelve. The Paulist Biblical Commentary [p. 1199 ff] actually suggests that the designation of special servants was written as a springboard of sorts for one of these seven, Stephen, whose fiery sermon before the Jewish Sanhedrin [Acts 6:8 ff] led to his becoming the first Christian martyr. Reading Acts makes clear that Stephen—and probably his cohorts—did not spend their days simply waiting on tables. Martos notes that the Stephen model of service to the poor and preaching continued until the third century when the number of converts required a bureaucracy, so to speak, of fulltime assistants to the bishop, which ultimately became a sacramental/liturgical state.
 
A text from Romans [16: 1-2] appears in recent Catholic writing as a possible example of a “woman deacon.” Here is the text in detail: “I commend to you our sister Phoebe, deacon of the church in Cenchreae. I ask you to receive her in the Lord in a way worthy of his people and to give her any help she may need from you, for she has been the benefactor of many people, including me.” I am a little uncomfortable with equating Phoebe’s role in the 50’s A.D. with what we understand today as a formal sacramental deacon, since today’s definitions of the Sacrament of Orders did not develop till well into the second, even the third, century. Moreover, Paul describes her ministry as one of direct service. As I think of it, one could argue that Phoebe was a prototype of what Pope Francis hoped his clerics in our day would be.
 
I should note here, though, that the Catholic Liturgical Press is turning out a 60-volume series of interpretations of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures from a feminist scholarship perspective. From the homesite: “The Wisdom Commentary series is the first scholarly collaboration to offer detailed feminist interpretation of every book of the Bible. The sixty-volume collection makes the best of current feminist biblical scholarship available in an accessible format to aid preachers and teachers in their advancement toward God’s vision of dignity, equality, and justice for all.” I have read St. Luke’s Gospel commentary from this series at considerable profit, and this style of scholarship does gently underscore the reality that the entire New Testament corpus comes to us from males.
 
But in the final analysis, given the social mores of people in the New Testament era, in the discussion of the diaconate it is probably more fruitful to examine the interpretations of Church life as the centuries unfolded.
 
THE WAXING AND WANING OF WOMEN’S MINISTRY THROUGH HISTORY
Some years ago, I was making retreat in a Trappist monastery when I caught sight of a woman monk in full habit. As it turned out, she was making retreat as I was—her community was on a different timetable--but the relationship of adults in monastic life raises interesting and enlightening questions for what might be possible as the Catholic Church evolves.
 
Monastic life did not evolve from the Sacrament of Orders. It evolved from Baptism, the primordial sacrament, and the consequent desire to live a life of fulfillment of the baptismal promises without the allurements and distractions of a lukewarm society. The earliest roots of consecrated life seem to go back to the 200’s and 300’s A.D. Certainly the fourth century was a watershed moment for flight from Rome and other cities, once the Emperor Constantine designated Christianity as the state religion and the Church acquired many of the “bad habits” of the rich, leisured classes. I believe it was St. Jerome, while he was living in Rome, who complained about rich women dressing their pet monkeys in gala costumes and bringing them to Mass. A deeply committed Christian would leave such an environment for the solitude of the desert or the mountains. Women and men appeared to have sought private, prayerful solitude in about equal numbers, and lived equally austere conditions to draw closer to God.
 
From Constantine’s era till the thirteenth century—roughly, a millennium—Christianity was enhanced and sanctified by the monastic movement, which by the Council of IV Lateran in 1215 thrived nearly everywhere in Europe. It is often overlooked that women equaled men in monastic lifestyle and enthusiasm. St. Benedict [480-547], founder of the Benedictine Order of monks, composed a monastic rule that remains the basis for monastic communities to this day. St. Scholastica, his sister [or colleague, depending upon a variety of Dark Age translations] founded the Benedictine Sisters, employing Benedict’s rule.
 
A fruitful study of monastic liturgical life would be immensely helpful here. Although some monasteries housed men and women, most were single sex. Did the abbess in a woman’s monastery perform the same rites her male counterpart performed in his monastery? That would include the “chapter of faults,” inaugurated by Irish monks, in which each monk at day’s end confessed faults and failures to the abbot and was blessed/forgiven. The chapter of faults evolved into the form of the Sacrament of Penance we use today. Did abbesses exercise this ministry? Continuing, who preached in women’s monasteries? Even allowing for the likelihood that Mass was offered less frequently than it is today, there were feasts and rites that called for preaching. And since we’re heading down this road, who actually celebrated Mass in monasteries of women religious?
 
On that last point, Benedict frowned upon male monks visiting female monasteries. As an example to all monks, he himself visited his sister Scholastica once a year, and returned to his monastery before nightfall. The two monasteries were a mere four miles apart, per his biographer St. Gregory the Great. I must think that, in those many confusing centuries we call the Dark Ages, if you told me the old Latin phrase mater artium necessitas [“necessity is the mother of invention”] was never invoked, I would have trouble believing it. We don’t know precisely how the varied times and circumstances were navigated across the Church. However, one of the outcomes of the Council IV Lateran [1215] was the order from Pope Innocent III that all parts of the Church clean up their acts [such as priests giving up their concubines.] Reforms of monasteries were mandated as well. Interestingly, Francis of Assisi attended this Council, and by the time of his death in 1226, the Poor Clares, the women followers of Francis’ way, were living a strictly cloistered life in the style we now understand the word “cloistered.” Male friars were free to move about and minister to the public without the constraints of the cloister wall.
 
AN AMERICAN MODEL: Limited time necessitates some generalities here, the main one being that from medieval times till “modernity,” however one defines that, most women in consecrated life were not public figures but rather “cloistered.” Preaching, the theological backbone of the diaconate, was not standard fare for the lifestyle and ministry of women religious.
 
The eventual establishment of the United States in the eighteenth century provided something of a clean slate for the Catholic Church. Granted, many Americans distrusted Catholics as “foreign agents” when our country was founded and for years afterward. If there was a single balm for this wound, it was the witness of Catholic religious women, who migrated across the Atlantic in growing numbers through the nineteenth century. Sisters migrated here from Europe, primarily Ireland, not to establish cloistered convents but to undertake public apostolic work, for which there was desperate need as Catholic immigrants came to American shores in ever increasing numbers. Beleaguered missionary bishops and priests in the U.S. were hardly disposed, for the most part, to restrain the public ministerial efforts and planning of communities of sisters who demonstrated remarkable versatility and dedication.
 
It is not always appreciated, for example, how many sisters served as nurses and comforters at nearly all the major battle sites of the Civil War. They served both Union and Confederate encampments while becoming something of a “Catholic face” to thousands of veterans. This ministry would expand to hundreds of hospitals in the U.S. well into the twentieth century. The other major ministry of women religious was education. In 1884 the Plenary Council of Baltimore mandated a Catholic school for every parish in the United States. As late as 1965 about five million minors were enrolled in Catholic schools, not counting collegiate and graduate contributions. And for the most part, it was women who “unpacked the Word of God” for the young baptized in the U.S. who grew up to become us. That sounds like existential Faith preaching to me. That fact must be worked into the discussion/equation.
 
One of the ironies of Vatican II was its efforts to address the priest shortage in the Amazon Basin and other distant parts of the world through the restoration of the permanent diaconate, married men who would preach, baptize, and perform marriages and blessings. Good intentions but the outcomes were quite unexpected. In South America, the ministry of “catechist” was already well established and evidently much respected, because there was no gold rush to diaconal ordination. Meanwhile there was a rush of older candidates in the U.S., such that the greatest concentration of permanent deacons in the world is found in the Archdiocese of Chicago, where 1400 men were ordained deacons since 1972, nowhere near the Amazon. A 2018 article from the Chicago Catholic reports that “about 99 percent of deacons work outside the church.” There is something wrong with that picture; I can’t quite put my finger on it, but in any case, discussion of the diaconate must begin with a thorough examination of the years since Vatican II alongside any other discussion on the diaconal sacrament.
 
MY THOUGHTS ON WOMEN AND ORDINATION?
 
I’ve probably written too much history here already, so I shoved all the books to the floor: it is just me with my thoughts. To start, it has been my good fortune through my life to have known, befriended, and worked with a number of women who would have made excellent Catholic priests, even bishops. In fact, one of my friends in the Lutheran Church has just completed her studies for the priesthood of her faith. I will be very interested in her observations about her new role. The least I can say is that the discussion about ordination is not a matter of character, skill, or spirituality.
 
Pope Leo XIV has expressed himself on the subject, and I do respect his judgment and the way he presents himself. He has made himself clear that the ordination of only men to the priesthood is a profound teaching of Catholic hegemony, i.e., the theological teachings of the universal Church. Our tradition has held that the maleness of the celebrant of the Mass is a necessary and integral component of the “outward sign” that gives a sacrament its power to save. That concept has been on my mind for many years.
 
On the other hand, the pope has expressed interest in key concepts regarding orders and lay church life. For starters, he is committed to the process of synodal meetings begun by Pope Francis in which the life experiences and challenges of all baptized Catholics are given voice. [Honesty compels me to say that many American bishops ignored the world-wide synodal process during its first phase a few years ago. I don’t think Leo will tolerate this neglect the second time around.]
 
Second, Pope Leo, when asked about women’s ordination, has been very clear that he does not favor the Church’s entanglements in the waves of trends and politics of secular society. In other words, the focus of the Synod will be the imitation of Christ and our struggles to live that baptismal consecration across the board, and not with national or regional social trends.
 
Third, Pope Leo has stated that before other questions are addressed, the Church must face the problem of clericalism, the excessive narcissism of many ordained men which poisons the wells of honesty and shared ministry whenever it rears its ugly head. See this excellent essay on clericalism from the New Hampshire Catholic paper, as fine a summary of clericalism as you will find. Clericalism over the years has damaged and hindered morale of many women’s religious movements, pastors and bishops so fearful of imaginary encroachments into their “territory.”   
 
Another good friend reminded me this week that the ultimate biblical definition of “deacon” is service—as in distributing bread among Hebrew and Hellene women per Acts 6. And my wife Margaret suggested to me that there might be a new rite by which lay men and women dedicate themselves to intense lives of prayer and charity. This is the kind of thinking and discussion that the Synod was intended to hear and provide wisdom for Pope Leo and his successors. I guess the thing for me to do, at my age, is to work hard for the younger generations that they may find a Spirit-filled Church eager to welcome their talents and charisms in ways we might not even imagine yet.