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Published: June 1, 2008

Neither despotic nor patriarchal – just faithful

The teaching that women cannot be priests is infallible

Notes from a Cultural Madhouse

By Christopher Zehnder

It has been 14 years since Pope John Paul II issued his controversial apostolic letter, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, declaring that the Church has no authority to ordain women as priests. Though the pope issued the letter “in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance,” doubt about women’s ordination continues unabated. It still seems a matter open to debate.

The decree issued last week by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith will do little to still the debate. The decree – that “both he who has attempted to confer holy orders on a woman, and the woman who has attempted to receive the said sacrament, incurs in latae sententiae excommunication, reserved to the Apostolic See” – is an important and welcome sign that the Holy See is exercising its role as pastor as well as teacher. However, it will be perceived in many circles as just another exercise of a raw, despotic, “patriarchal” power by the Church, to keep women down.

Many indeed will claim this. But others more moderate will speak in respectful tones of the Church’s “authentic” teaching -- of the need to listen thoughtfully to magisterial teaching -- while they gut the teaching of its authority by appealing to “conscience” and to queerly conceived notions of the “development of doctrine.” Such moderate folk might disapprove, even publicly, of attempts to ordain women, but only because such attempts are “not yet approved” by the Church. The unspoken assumption is, of course, that the Church eventually will approve women’s ordination; that the Church’s teaching that women’s ordination is not possible is a teaching subject to change.

Catholics who so opine like to point to the fact that Ordinatio Sacerdotalis is not an ex cathedra statement. If it is not ex cathedra, so the reasoning goes, it is not infallible. If it is not infallible, it is not irreformable. And if it is not irreformable, it can change. The assumption, of course, in all this is that the only infallible papal teachings are ex cathedra ones.

Josef Cardinal Ratzinger, however, has disagreed with this assumption. In a Responsum ad dubium asking whether the teaching on woman’s ordination found in Ordinatio Sacerdotalis “is to be understood as belonging to the deposit of faith,” the then-prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith answered, yes. In explanation, he wrote: “This teaching requires definitive assent, since, founded on the written Word of God, and from the beginning constantly preserved and applied in the Tradition of the Church, it has been set forth infallibly by the ordinary and universal Magisterium.”

In this Responsum, Ratzinger pointed to a little understood truth – that the Church teaches infallibly not only when she speaks through ecumenical councils or through solemn (ex cathedra) papal decrees, but when she exercises the “ordinary and universal Magisterium.”

What is the “ordinary and universal Magisterium”? It is a mode of teaching that involves both the pope and the bishops. It is distinct from an ecumenical council; for, as the Second Vatican Council’s “Dogmatic Constitution on the Church” (Lumen Gentium) says, the college of bishops teach infallibly when, “even though dispersed through the world, but still maintaining the bond of communion among themselves and with the successor of Peter, and authentically teaching matters of faith and morals, they are in agreement on one position as definitively to be held.”

How that agreement manifests itself may vary; the council defines no necessary formula for it. Traditionally, however, reception of a teaching by the bishops of the world, without formal protest, has been seen to constitute agreement. It has never been a matter of tallying votes, as if the bishops formed a parliament. Rather, episcopal approval can be the simple acquiescence of the college or order of bishops to a papal teaching. Whether the bishops personally agree with the pope is of no account. What is important is whether, in their official capacity as the successors of the apostles, the bishops receive papal teaching as the teaching of the Church.

Whatever the personal opinions of each and every bishop on women’s ordination might be, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis has been received by the college of bishops throughout the world. This alone doesn’t mean the document contains infallible teaching; other things must be present – i.e., the teaching must clearly be reiterated teaching with roots in tradition and it must bind the faithful to a definitive assent of faith.

In Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, Pope John Paul clearly indicates that he is teaching in accord with tradition and not introducing an innovation when he says, “The teaching that priestly ordination is to be reserved to men alone has been preserved by the constant and universal Tradition of the Church and firmly taught by the Magisterium in its more recent documents.” Yet, was he binding the faithful to a definitive assent of faith?

This is an important question, for how a pope states a teaching indicates how he expects the teaching to be received. Again, as Lumen Gentium says, “Religious submission of mind and will must be shown in a special way to the authentic magisterium of the Roman Pontiff, even when he is not speaking ex cathedra; that is, it must be shown in such a way that his supreme magisterium is acknowledged with reverence, the judgments made by him are sincerely adhered to, according to his manifest mind and will.” The Council then adds that the pope’s “mind and will in the matter may be known either from the character of the documents, from his frequent repetition of the same doctrine, or from his manner of speaking."

In saying, "the judgments made by him are sincerely adhered to, according to his manifest mind and will," the Council declares that one is to give his religious submission of mind and will to the degree demanded by the character of a magisterial statement. If the pope is clearly speaking as the successor of St. Peter, declaring a matter having to do with faith and morals, and binding the faithful to a definitive assent to his decision, his “manifest mind and will” is to teach infallibly. For how can one expect another to give a definitive assent of faith to anything but the truth?

If we look at Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, we can see that this is precisely what the pope is doing. The defining paragraph reads thus:

Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church's divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful.

It is clear from this passage that the pope was addressing a matter of faith (“a matter which pertains to the Church’s divine constitution itself”) and that he was speaking as the successor to St. Peter (“in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren”). But the clinching passage is that “this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful.” In Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, Pope John Paul II was exercising his supreme teaching authority in a non-solemn (non-ex cathedra) fashion to define a teaching of the Church; namely, that “the Church has no authority whatsoever” to ordain women to the priesthood.

In declaring this teaching, the pope was only, as we Americans say, “doing his job.” The pope is not the supreme autocrat of the Church; though his authority is absolute, it is only so within limits set by the One whom the pope serves as vicar. One of these limits – and, perhaps, the most important one -- is that of truth, divinely revealed truth. The pope may only declare what he has received as the truth. In the case of Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, the truth is that only men may serve as priests. In declaring this, Pope John Paul II was not acting the despot, patriarchal or otherwise, but as a faithful and careful steward and caretaker of his Master’s goods, His gift to His faithful in the Church.

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