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PAGE 3—The Georgia Bulletin, February 3,1977
Declaration On The Question Of The Admission
Of Women To The Ministerial Priesthood
BY NC NEWS SERVICE
This is the text of the Vatican Doctrinal
Congregation’s “Declaration on the Question
of the Admission of Women to the Ministerial
Priesthood,” dated October 15, 1976, and
made public Jan. 27, 1977. It was approved
by Pope Paul VI and signed by Cardinal
Franjo Seper, prefect of the congregation, and
Archbishop Jerome Hamer, the congregation’s
secretary.
INTRODUCTION
The Role of Women
in Modem Society
and the Church
Among the characteristics that mark
our present age, Pope John XXIII
indicated, in his encyclical Pacem in
Terris of April 11, 1963, “the part that
women are now taking in public life ...
This is a development that is perhaps a
swifter growth among Christian nations,
but it is also happening extensively, if
more slowly, among nations that are
heirs to different traditions and imbued
with a different culture.”(1)
Along the same lines, the Second
Vatican Council, enumerating in its
pastoral constitution Gaudium et Spes
the forms of discrimination touching
upon the basic rights of the person
which must be overcome and eliminated
as being contrary to God’s plan, gives
first place to discrimination based upon
sex.(2) The resulting equality will secure
the building up of a world that is not
levelled out and uniform but
harmonious and unified, if men and
women contribute to it their own
resources and dynamism, as Pope Paul
VI recently stated.(3)
In the life of the church herself, as
history shows us, women have played a
decisive role and accomplished tasks of
outstanding value. One has only to
think of the foundresses of the great
religious families, such as St. Clare and
St. Teresa of Avila. The latter,
moreover, and St. Catherine of Siena,
have left writings so rich in spiritual
doctrine that Pope Paul VI has included
them among the doctors of the church.
Nor could one forget the great number
of women who have consecrated
themselves to the Lord for the exercise
of charity or for the missions, and the
Christian wives who have had a
profound influence on their families,
particularly for the passing on of the
faith to their children.
But our age gives rise to increased
demands: “Since in our time women
have an ever more active share in the
whole life of society, it is very
important that they participate more
widely also in the various sectors of the
church’s apostolate.”(4) This charge of
the Second Vatican Council has already
set in motion the whole process 'of
change now taking place: these various
experiences of course need to come to
maturity.
But as Pope Paul VI also
remarked, (5) a very large number of
Christian communities are already
benefitting from the apostolic
commitment of women. Some of these
women are called to take part in
councils set up for pastoral reflection, at
the diocesan or parish level; and the
Apostolic See has brought women into
some of its working bodies.
For some years now various Christian
communities stemming from the 16th
century Reformation or of later origin
have been admitting women to the
pastoral office on a par with men. This
initiative has led to petitions and
writings by members of these
communities and similar groups,
directed towards making this admission
a general thing; it has also led to
contrary reactions.
This therefore constitutes an
ecumenical problem, and the Catholic
Church must make her thinking known
on it, all the more because in various
sectors of opinion the question has been
asked whether she too could not modify
her discipline and admit women to
priestly ordination.
A number of Catholic theologians
have even posed this question publicly,
evoking studies not only in the sphere
of exegesis, patrology and church
history but also in the field of the
history of institutions and customs, of
sociology and of psychology. The
various arguments capable of clarifying
this important problem have been
submitted to a critical examination. As
we are dealing with a debate which
classical theology scarcely touched
upon, the current argumentation runs
the risk of neglecting essential elements.
For these reasons, in execution of a
mandate received from the Holy Father
and echoing the declaration which he
himself made in his letter of November
30, 1975,(6) the Sacred Congregation
for the Doctrine of the Faith judges it
necessary to recall that the church, in
fidelity to the example of the Lord,
does not consider herself authorized to
admit women to priestly ordination.
The sacred congregation deems it
opportune at the present juncture to
explain this position of the church. It is
a position which will perhaps cause pain
but whose positive value will become
apparent in the long run, since it can be
of help in deepening understanding of
the respective roles of men and of
women.
1. The Church’s Constant Tradition
The Catholic Church has never felt
that priestly or episcopal ordination can
be validly conferred on women. A few
heretical sects in the first centuries,
especially Gnostic ones, entrusted the
exercise of the priestly ministry to
women: this innovation was
immediately noted and condemned by
the fathers, who considered it as
unacceptable in the church.(7) It is true
that in the writings of the fathers one
will find the undeniable influence of
prejudices unfavorable to women, but
nevertheless, it should be noted that
these prejudices had hardly any
influence on their pastoral activity, and
still less on their spiritual direction.
But over and above considerations
inspired by the spirit of the times, one
finds expressed - especially in the
canonical documents of the Antiochian
and Egyptian traditions -- this essential
reason, namely, that by calling only
men to the priestly order and ministry
in its true sense, the church intends to
remain faithful to the type of ordained
ministry willed by the Lord Jesus Christ
and carefully maintained by the
apostles.(8)
The same conviction animates
medieval theology,(9) even if the
Scholastic doctors, in their desire to
clarify by reason the data of faith, often
present arguments on this point that
modern thought would have difficulty
in admitting or would even rightly
reject. Since that period and up to our
own time, it can be said that the
question has not been raised again, for
the practice has enjoyed peaceful and
universal acceptance.
The church’s tradition in the matter
has thus been so firm in the course of
the centuries that the magisterium has
not felt the need to intervene in order
to formulate a principle which was not
attacked, or to defend a law which was
not challenged. But each time that this
tradition had the occasion to manifest
itself, it witnessed to the church’s desire
to conform to the model left to her by
the Lord.
The same tradition has been
faithfully safeguarded by the churches of
the East. Their unanimity on this point
is all the more remarkable since in many
other questions their discipline admits
of a great diversity. At the present time
these same churches refuse to associate
themselves with requests directed
towards securing the accession of
women to priestly ordination.
Jesus Christ did not call any woman
to become part of the twelve. If he
acted in this way, it was not in order to
conform to the customs of his time, for
his attitude towards women was quite
different from that of his milieu, and he
deliberately and courageously broke
with it.
For example, to the great
astonishment of his own disciples Jesus
converses publicly with the Samaritan
women (cf. Jn. 4:27); he takes no
notice of the state of legal impurity of
the woman who suffered from
hemorrhages (cf. Mt. 9:20-22); he
allows a sinful woman to approach him
in the house of Simon the Pharisee (cf.
Lk. 7:37ff.); and by pardoning the
woman taken in adultery, he means to
show that one must not be more severe
towards the fault of a woman than
towards that of a man (cf. Jn. 8:11). He
does not hesitate to depart from the
Mosaic law in order to affirm the
equality of the rights and duties of men
and women with regard to the marriage
bond (cf. Mk. 10:2-11; Mt. 19:3-9).
In his itinerant ministry Jesus was
accompanied not only by the twelve but
also by a group of women: “Mary,
sumamed the Magdalene, from whom
seven demons had gone out, Joanna the
wife of Herod’s steward Chuza,
Susanna, and several others who
provided for them out of their own
resources” (Lk. 8:2-3). Contrary to the
Jewish mentality, which did not accord
great value to the testimony of women,
as Jewish law attests, it was nevertheless
women who were the first to have the
privilege of seeing the risen Lord, and it
was they who were charged by Jesus to
take the first paschal message to the
apostles themselves (cf. Mt. 28:7-10;
Lk. 24:9-10; Jn. 20:11-18), in order to
prepare the latter to become the official
witnesses to the resurrection.
It is true that these facts do not
make the matter immediately obvious.
This is no surprise, for the questions
that the word of God brings before us
go beyond the obvious. In order to
reach the ultimate meaning of the
mission of Jesus and the ultimate
meaning of scripture, a purely historical
exegesis of the texts cannot suffice.
But it must be recognized that we
have here a number of convergent
indications that make all the more
remarkable the fact that Jesus did not
entrust the apostolic charge(10) to
women. Even his mother, who was so
closely associated with the mystery of
her Son, and whose incomparable role is
emphasized by the gospels of Luke and
John, was not invested with the
apostolic ministry.
This fact was to lead the fathers to
present her as the example of Christ’s
will in this domain; as Pope Innocent III
repeated later, at the beginning of the
13th 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.”(ll)
The apostolic community remained
faithful to the attitude of Jesus towards
women. Although Mary occupied a
privileged place in the little circle of
those gathered in the upper room after
the Lord’s ascension (cf. Acts 1:14), it
was not she who was called to enter
the college of the twelve at the time of
the election that resulted in the choice
of Matthias: those who were put
forward were two disciples whom
the gospels do not even mention.
On the day of Pentecost, the Holy
Spirit filled them all, men and women
(cf. Acts 2:1; 1:14), yet the
proclamation of the fulfillment of the
prophecies in Jesus was made only by
“Peter and the eleven” (Acts 2:14).
When they and Paul went beyond the
confines of the Jewish world, the
preaching of the gospel and the
Christian life in the Greco-Roman
civilization impelled them to break with
Mosaic practices, sometimes regretfully.
They could therefore have envisaged
conferring ordination on women, if they
had not been convinced of their duty of
fidelity to the Lord on this point.
In the Hellenistic world, the cult of a
number of pagan divinities were
entrusted to priestesses. In fact the
Greeks did not share the ideas of the
Jews: although their philosophers
taught the inferiority of women,
historians nevertheless emphasize the
existence of a certain movement for the
advancement of women during the
imperial period.
In fact we know from the book of
the Acts and from the Letters of St.
Paul that certain women worked with
the apostle for the gospel (cf. Rom.
16:3-12; Phil. 4:3). St. Paul lists their
names with gratitude in the final
salutations of the letters. Some of them
often exercised an important influence
on conversions: Priscilla, Lydia and
others; especially Priscilla, who took it
on herself to complete the instruction
of Apollos (cf. Acts 18:26); Phoebe, in
the service of the church a Cenchreae
(cf. Rom. 16:1). All these facts manifest
within the apostolic church a
considerable evolution vis-a-vis the
customs of Judaism. Nevertheless at no
time was there a question of conferring
ordination on these women.
In the Pauline letters, exegetes of
authority have noted a difference
between two formulas used by the
apostle: he writes indiscriminately “my
fellow workers” (Rom. 16:3; Phil.
4:2-3) when referring to men and
women helping him in his apostolate in
one way or another; but he reserves the
title “God’s fellow workers” (1 Cor.
3:9; cf. 1 Thess. 3:2) to Apollos,
Timothy and himself, thus designated
because they are directly set apart for
the apostolic ministry and the preaching
of the word of God. In spite of the so
important role played by women on the
day of the resurrection, their
collaboration was not extended by St.
Paul to the official and public
proclamation of the message, since this
proclamation belongs exclusively to the
apostolic mission.
4. Permanent Value of the Attitude of
Jesus and the Apostles
Could the church today depart from
this attitude of Jesus and the apostles,
which has been considered as normative
by the whole of tradition up to our own
day? Various arguments have been put
forward in favor of a positive reply to
this question, and these must now be
examined.
It has been claimed in particular that
the attitude of Jesus and the apostles is
explained by the influence of their
milieu and their times. It is said that, if
Jesus did not entrust to women and not
even to his mother a ministry
assimilating them to the twelve, this was
because historical circumstances did not
permit him to do so.
No one however has ever proved -
and it is clearly impossible to prove -
that this attitude is inspired only by
social and cultural reasons. As we have
seen, an examination of the gospels
shows on the contrary that Jesus broke
with the prejudices of his time, by
widely contravening the discriminations
practiced with regard to women. One
therefore cannot maintain that, by not
calling women to enter the group of the
apostles, Jesus was simply letting
himself be guided by reasons of
expediency.
For all the more reason, social and
cultural conditioning did not hold back
the apostles working in the Greek
milieu, where the same forms of
discrimination did not exist.
Another objection is based upon the
transitory character that one claims to
see today in some of the prescriptions
of St. Paul concerning women, and
upon the difficulties that some aspects
of his teaching raise in this regard. But it
must be noted that these ordinances,
probably inspired by the customs of the
period, concern scarcely more than
disciplinary practices of minor
importance, such as the obligation
imposed upon women to wear a veil on
the head (1 Cor. 11:2-16); such
requirements no longer have a
normative value.
However, the apostle’s forbidding of
women “to speak” in the assemblies (cf.
1 Cor. 14:34-35; 1 Tim. 2:12) is of a
different nature, and exegetes define its
meaning in this way: Paul in no way
opposes the right, which he elsewhere
recognizes as possessed by women, to
prophesy in the assembly (cf. 1 Cor.
11:5); the prohibition solely concerns
the official function of teaching in the
Christian assembly. For St. Paul this
prescription is bound up with the divine
plan of creation (cf. 1 Cor. 11:7; Gen.
2:18-24): it would be difficult to see in
it the expression of a cultural fact.
Nor should it be forgotten that we
owe to St. Paul one of the most
vigorous texts in the New Testament on
the fundamental equality of men and
women, as children of God in Christ (cf.
Gal. 3:28). Therefore there is no reason
for accusing him of prejudices against
women, when we note the trust that he
shows toward them and the
collaboration that he asks of them in his
apostolate.
But over and above these objections
taken from the history of apostolic
times, those who support the legitimacy
of change in the matter turn to the
church’s practice in her sacramental
discipline. It has been noted, in our day
especially, to what extent the church is
conscious of possessing a certain power
over the sacraments, even though they
were instituted by Christ. She has used
this power down the centuries in order
to determine their signs and the
conditions of their administration:
recent decisions of Popes Pius XII and
Paul VI are proof of this.(12)
However, it must be emphasized that
this power, which is a real one, has
definite limits. As Pope Pius XII
recalled: “The church has no power
over the substance of the sacraments,
that is to say, over what Christ the
Lord, as the sources of revelation bear
witness, determined should be
maintained in the sacramental
sign.”(13) This was already the teaching
of the Council of Trent, which declared:
“In the church there has always existed
this power, that in the administration of
the sacraments, provided that their
substance remains unaltered, she can lay
down or modify what she considers
more fitting either for the benefit of
those who receive them or for respect
towards those same sacraments,
according to varying circumstances,
times or places.”(14)
Moreover, it must not be forgotten
that the sacramental signs are not
conventional ones. Not only is it true
that, in many respects, they are natural
signs because they respond to the deep
symbolism of actions and things, but
they are more than this: they are
principally meant to link the person of
every period to the supreme event of
the history of salvation, in order to
enable that person to understand,
through all the Bible’s wealth of
pedagogy and symbolism, what grace
they signify and produce.
For example, the sacrament of the
eucharist is not only a fraternal meal,
but at the same time the memorial
which makes present and actual Christ’s
sacrifice and his offering by the church.
Again, the priestly ministry is not just a
pastoral service; it ensures the
continuity of the functions entrusted by
Christ to the apostles and the continuity
of the powers related to those
functions. Adaptation to civilizations
and times therefore cannot abolish, on
essential points, the sacramental
reference to constitutive events of
Christianity and to Christ himself.
In the final analysis it is the church,
through the voice of her magisterium,
that, in these various domains, decides
what can change and what must remain
immutable. When she judges that she
cannot accept certain changes, it is
because she knows that she is bound by
Christ’s manner of acting. Her attitude,
despite appearances, is therefore not
one of archaism but of fidelity: it can
be truly understood only in this light.
The church makes pronouncements in
virtue of the Lord’s promise and the
presence of the Holy Spirit, in order to
proclaim better the mystery of Christ
and to safeguard and manifest the whole
of its rich content.
This practice of the church therefore
has a normative character: in fact of
conferring priestly ordination only on
men, it is a queston of an unbroken
tradition throughout the history of the
church, universal in the East and in the
West, and alert to repress abuses
immediately. This norm, based on
Christ’s example, has been and is still
observed because it is considered to
conform to God’s plan for his church.
5. The Ministerial Priesthood in the
Light of the Mystery of Christ
Having recalled the church’s norm
and the basis thereof, it seems useful
and opportune to illustrate this norm by
showing the profound fittingness that
theological reflection discovers between
the proper nature of the sacrament of
order, with its specific reference to the
mystery of Christ, and the fact that
only men have been called to receive
priestly ordination. It is not a question
here of bringing forward a
demonstrative argument, but of
clarifying this teaching by the analogy
of faith.
The church’s constant teaching,
repeated and clarified by the Second
Vatican Council and again recalled by
the 1971 Synod of Bishops and by the
Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of
the Faith in its Declaration of June 24,-
1973, declares that the bishop or the
priest, in the exercise of his ministry,
does not act in his own name, in
persona propria: he represents Christ,
who acts through him: “the priest truly
acts in the place of Christ,” as St.
Cyprian already wrote in the 3rd
century.(15)
It is this ability to represent Christ
that St. Paul considered as characteristic
of his apostolic function (cf. 2 Cor.
5:20; Gal. 4:14). The supreme
expression of this representation is
found in the altogether special form it
assumes in the celebration of the
eucharist, which is the source and center
of the church’s unity, the sacrificial
meal in which the people of God are
associated in the sacrifice of Christ: the
priest, who alone has the power to
perform it, then acts not only through
the effective power conferred on him by
Christ, but in persona Christi,(16)
taking the role of Christ, to the point of
being his very image, when he
pronounces the words of
consecration.(17)
The Christian priesthood is therefore
of a sacramental nature: the priest is a
sign, the supernatural effectiveness of
which comes from the ordination
received, but a sign that must be
perceptible(18) and which the faithful
must be able to recognize with ease.
The whole sacramental economy is in
fact based upon natural signs, on
symbols imprinted upon the human
psychology: “Sacramental signs,” says
St. Thomas, “represent what they
signify by natural resemblance.”(19)
The same natural resemblance is
required for persons as for things: when
Christ’s role in the eucharist is to be
expressed sacramentally, there would
not be this “natural resemblance” which
must exist between Christ and his
minister if the role of Christ were not
taken by a man: in such a case it would
be difficult to see in the minister the
image of Christ. For Christ himself was
and remains a man.
Christ is of course the firstborn of all
humanity, of women as well as men: the
unity which he re-established after sin is
such that there are no more distinctions
between Jew and Greek, slave and free,
male and female, but all are one in
Christ Jesus (cf. Gal. 3:28).
Nevertheless, the incarnation of the
word took place according to the male
sex: this is indeed a question of fact,
and this fact, while not implying an
alleged natural superiority of man over
woman, cannot be disassociated from
the economy of salvation: it is, indeed,
in harmony with the entirety of God’s
plan as God himself has revealed it, and
of which the mystery of the covenant is
the nucleus.
For the salvation offered by God to
men and women, the union with him to
which they are called - in short, the
covenant - took on, from the Old
Testament prophets onwards, the
privileged form of a nuptial mystery:
for God the chosen people is seen as his
ardently loved spouse.
Both Jewish and Christian tradition
have discovered the depth of this
intimacy of love by reading and
rereading the Song of Songs; the divine
bridegroom will remain faithful even
when the bride betrays his love, when
Israel is unfaithful to God (cf. Hos. 1-3;
Jer. 2).
When the “fullness of time” (Gal.
4:4) comes, the word, the Son of God,
takes on flesh in order to establish and
seal the new and eternal covenant in his
blood, which will be shed for many so
that sins may be forgiven. His death will
gather together again the scattered
children of God; from his pierced side
will be bom the church, as Eve was bom
from Adam’s side.
At that time there is fully and
eternally accomplished the nuptial
mystery proclaimed and hymned in the
Old Testament: Christ is the
bridegroom; the church is his bride,
whom he loves because he has gained
her by his blood and made her glorious,
holy and without blemish, and
henceforth he is inseparable from her.
This nuptial theme, which is
developed from the Letters of St. Paul
onwards (cf. 2 Cor. 11:2; Eph. 5:22-23)
to the writings of St. John (cf.
especially Jn. 3:29; Rev. 19:7,9), is
present also in the synoptic gospels: the
bridegroom’s friends must not fast as
long as he is with them (cf. Mk. 2:19);
the kingdom of heaven is like a king
who gave a feast for his son’s wedding
(cf. Mt. 22:1-14).
It is through this scriptural language,
all interwoven with symbols, and which
expresses and affects man and woman in
their profound identity, that there is
revealed to us the mystery of God and
Christ, a mystery which of itself is
unfathomable.
That is why we can never ignore the
fact that Christ is a man. And therefore,
unless one is to disregard the
importance of this symbolism for the
economy of revelation, it must be
admitted that, in actions which demand
the character of ordination and in which
Christ himself, the author of the
covenant, the bridegroom and head of
the church, is represented, exercising his
ministry of salvation - which is in the
highest degree the case of the eucharist
- his role (this is the original sense of
the word persona) must be taken by
a man. This does not stem from any
personal superiority of the latter in the
order of values, but only from a
difference of fact on the level of
functions and service.
Could one say that, since Christ is
now in the heavenly condition, from
now on it is a matter of indifference
whether he be represented by a man or
by a woman, since, “at the resurrection
men and women do not marry” (Mt.
22:30)? But this text does not mean
that the distinction between man and
woman, insofar as it determines the
identity proper to the person, is
suppressed in the glorified state; what
holds for us holds also for Christ.
It is indeed evident that in human
beings the difference of sex exercises an
important influence, much deeper than,
for example, ethnic differences: the
latter do not affect the human person as
intimately as the difference of sex,
which is directly ordained both for the
communion of persons and for the
generation of human beings. In biblical
revelation this difference is the effect of
God’s will from the beginning: “male
and female he created them” (Gen.
1:27).
However, it will perhaps be further
objected that the priest, especially when
he presides at the liturgical and
sacramental functions, equally
represents the church: he acts in her
name with “the intention of doing what
she does.” In this sense, the theologians
of the Middle Ages said that the
minister also acts in persona Ecclesiae,
that is to say, in the name of the whole
church and in order to represent her.
And in fact, leaving aside the question
of the participation of the faithful in a
liturgical action, it is indeed in the name
of the whole church that the action is
celebrated by the priest: he prays in the
name of all, and in the Mass he offers
the sacrifice of the whole church.
In the new Passover, the church,
under visible signs, immolates Christ
through the ministry of the priest.(2Q)
As so, it is asserted, since the priest also
represents the church, would it not be
possible to think that this
representation could be carried out by a
woman, according to the symbolism
already explained?
It is true that the priest represents
the church, which is the body of Christ.
But if he does so, it is precisely because
he first represents Christ himself, who is
the head and shepherd of the church.
The Second Vatican Council(21) used
this phrase to make more precise and to
complete the expression in persona
Christi. It is in this quality that the
priest presides over the Christian
assembly and celebrates the eucharistic
sacrifice “in which the whole church
offers and is herself wholly
offered.”(22)
If one does justice to these
reflections, one will better understand
how well-founded is the basis of the
(Continued on Page 7)
3. The Practice of the Apostles
2. The Attitude of Christ