What struck me less was not the reporting but the particular nature of the theological sound bytes that filled the piece. They were more illuminating than usual and thus appeared more true.
For instance, here's what Jonathan Baker of Pusey House has to say,
“The question now,” he told me, “is whether our quest for unity with Rome can ever be filled institutionally—and is the ordinariate of Benedict XVI’s proposal the answer?” He thought it might be: “The reason for an all-male episcopate is that it’s the tradition of the Church. The tradition is the tradition. Let’s reflect on it. Not ‘Let’s find the theological justification.’ The priest is the sacramental representative of Christ as the High Priest, and . . .” He didn’t finish the sentence: “and Christ was male.”
He didn't finish the sentence? I'm not sure what to make of this. But I'll proceed under the hypothesis that he actually finished with the premise that Christ was male. In that case, let's break the argument down.
1. Tradition is tradition. The reflexive property of eternity. A bit further down, Diarmaid MacCulloch, Professor of the History of the Church at Oxford has this to say about tradition:
“The historical against-women argument about twelve male apostles—it comes from the early years of the Christian era and the spectacles put forth by the male leaders, who had wanted to be the ones to ‘see’ Christ first. By the end of the second century, a male leadership had emerged, and after that it became the ‘men were what the Holy Spirit intended’ argument and then the ‘tradition of the church’ argument. It was specious.
With all due respect to Professor MacCulloch, until a dusty papyrus with the minutes of the secret church council to deny the apostolate of the BVM et al. comes to light and goes on a thirty-two city tour with Elaine Pagels, I am not sure there is any reliable witness to claim an intentional power grab by male followers of Jesus. It's possible that such a tradition arose from concerns about the flightiness of women (II Tim. 3:6-7) and a variety of other misogynistic tropes, but an argument of polluted tradition has no firm justification beyond a few manuscript alterations (e.g., Junia becomes Junius in Romans 16:7).
Instead, we are left with the tradition is the tradition. Why are we not satisfied?, Father Baker asks. MacCulloch has something to say about, "a doctrine of the Holy Spirit." I wonder if the idea is that without ecclesiastical innovation, there is no reason to have a Holy Spirit. Or is the problem really that the lust for innovation is the infection of scientism and related elements of progressivism into Western civilization. That those who maintain tradition cannot justify their worth in our ever-advancing scientific/technological/consumerist society. (Deneen has a point in most of his particular examples. He is the kind of thinker who might be tempted to apply his ideas to this problem but wrongly, I think.)
We are not satisfied because tradition in this case has the form and nature of a statute (חֹק), that is in the technical sense as it is translated in the Pentateuch. Tradition becomes an inscrutable and inalterable prescription of God. I abhor statutes. Even the Jews abhor statutes. That is why there is an Oral Torah and MIshnaic and Talmudic literature. I think I remember that Calvin likes them, because he believes that there are laws our nature is incapable of understanding. But otherwise, tradition is allowed to remain until it is questioned and if it is questioned, it only may be sustained so long as it has positive justification.
2. The priest acts in imagine Christi and Christ was male.
The continued endurance of this argument boggles my mind. It depends on the utter inability of the Universal Magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church as presently received by the Pope to think of Jesus's sex/gender in terms beyond Luke 2:21. But let's be clear, even if the Scriptures were absolutely unanimous on the exclusive maleness of God the Son and Jesus Christ (and they're not, read Eusebius for one key traditional example), the witness of the Catholic creeds suggests that Jesus's maleness is a secondary characteristic of His Incarnation:
Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed:
ἐκ Πνεύματος Ἁγίου καὶ Μαρίας τῆς Παρθένου καὶ ἐνανθρωπήσαντα.
Ex María Vírgine, et homo factus est.
Athanasian Creed:
Est ergo fides recta ut credamus et confiteamur, quia Dominus noster Iesus Christus, Dei Filius, Deus [pariter] et homo est. Deus [est] ex substantia Patris ante saecula genitus: et homo est ex substantia matris in saeculo natus. Perfectus Deus, perfectus homo : ex anima rationali et humana carne subsistens. Aequalis Patri secundum divinitatem: minor Patre secundum humanitatem. Qui licet Deus sit et homo, non duo tamen, sed unus est Christus. Unus autem non conversione divinitatis in carnem, sed assumptione humanitatis in Deum. Unus omnino, non confusione substantiae, sed unitate personae. Nam sicut anima rationalis et caro unus est homo : ita Deus et homo unus est Christus. Qui passus est pro salute nostra: descendit ad inferos: tertia die resurrexit a mortuis. Ascendit ad [in] caelos, sedet ad dexteram [Dei] Patris [omnipotentis]. Inde venturus [est] judicare vivos et mortuos. Ad cujus adventum omnes homines resurgere habent cum corporibus suis; Et reddituri sunt de factis propriis rationem. Et qui bona egerunt, ibunt in vitam aeternam: qui vero mala, in ignem aeternum. Haec est fides catholica, quam nisi quisque fideliter firmiterque crediderit, salvus esse non poterit.
In the Chalcedonian Definition, the view rejected is that the one born of the Virgin Mary is not an anthropon einai and that he is born of the Virgin Mary according to his anthropoteta .
Based on these usages that refer to Jesus in terms of his humanity rather than his maleness ( vir or aner ) in concert with assertions that is for humans in general (according to the same usage) that Jesus came to save and humans in general that Jesus will judge, we must conclude that an all-male priesthood justified under this particular argument affirms the incapability of women for at least one of these three: sin, salvation, and judgment. And even in this case, Jesus can be purely male in terms of a secondary characteristic.
It rather puts the position of Andrew Burnham, the Bishop of Ebbsfleet into necessary context:
Certain things are unalterable. You can develop women’s ministry in a normal way, but you can’t change ministry or the episcopate any more than you can bread and wine. What remains is Jesus’ choice of twelve men. The Catholic priesthood is successor to the Jewish priesthood. A gracious patriarchy. The only apostolic themes in the New Testament are men. I have followed the teaching of the Church.
This is a degenerate (ambiguous) statement but telling in its degeneracy. (The bread and wine do change after all.) The only justification of an all-male priesthood that does not depend on inaccurate stereotypes about women, Christological errors, or denial of the gender-indiscriminate efficacy of Christ's saving work is that the Catholic priesthood is a successor of the Jewish priesthood. Which is true only in part, because as the Letter to the Hebrews tells us, Jesus wasn't a descendant of Levi or Aaron (according to patrilineal assessment of priestly descent). If Jesus were a true successor of the Jewish priesthood, he only could be a descendant of Levi or Aaron through his mother. That's why the Letter to the Hebrews asserts that Jesus was called to priesthood de novo as a priest of a more perfect covenant, the order of Melchizedek, to which Episcopalians admit everyone through baptism. (And I suspect other catholic churches do, too.)
The most telling argument is the one that sounds most misogynist,
John Broadhurst was already mourning the loss of strong father-figure priests, swept away by the petticoats of an “overly feminine” clergy that was “not equipped for service in the kind of neighborhoods where people get stabbed in the middle of the night and a priest has to get up and drive to the hospital to administer last rites.” In a war between the petticoats and the happy-clappies, he thought the evangelicals would win.
I know many women priests who would go willingly into bad neighborhoods and do drive a few nights per week to the hospital to succor the dying. Just as women can be excellent shepherds of sheep, they can be excellent shepherds of Christians. The risk of the overly feminine clergy is not that they will be bad at their jobs but too good. That if you believe stereotypes about women, you might believe they are more skilled in helping and healing. They just might be better pastors. The male/female gender ratio of priests in the Church of England is expected to reach parity in 2025. You make the call.
I would like to be charitable. I would like to believe in all controversies that the position of my opponents arose from truth and virtue. But reading an article like this makes such a belief entirely too hard to sustain.
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