Of Arcs and Trajectories: Portrait of an Expatriate - Part Three: "Woman, what do you have to do with me?"

At the start, I need to fully declare my dissent related to the question of the non-ordination of women in the Catholic Church. I will write more on what dissent means to me later but for now, I feel the need to begin with what the church says about this. Because Jesus selected men as the 12 disciples, only men are capable of imaging Christ as "the head of the church." Because Jesus had the power as Christ to do otherwise but chose not to is the linchpin for the church's position, case closed.

In the Catechism of the Catholic Church, a compendium of doctrinal teachings that the church revised in 1994, the writing is very clear about the difference between the ordinary members of the baptized priesthood and those who are ordained. "The ministerial priesthood differs in essence from the common priesthood of the faithful because it confers a sacred power for the service of the faithful. The ordained ministers exercise their service for the People of God by teaching, divine worship and pastoral governance. (CCC 1592). The sense here is that male priesthood is simply de facto because the church declared it as such or as my dad used to say, "That's the way it is and that's the way it is." 

Over the centuries, the church has built ramparts upon its theology of the ministerial priesthood so that it is more protected from any challenges to its definition within its big "T" Tradition. The most notable claim is how the conferring of hands upon the priest by the bishop imparts an indelible mark or interior change in permanent character similar to how the worker bees of a hive feed a larvae what is called royal jelly, a richer food that bees produce, in order to produce a queen; a process that allows  an ordinary worker bee a singular and great fertility. To her credit, the church has more recently described the role of ministerial priest as one of service to others. Take note that nothing within the previous two paragraphs coming from the church indicates how males are somehow more apt at taking this royal jelly from the church than women in order to become super baptized members.

One way of claiming authority by the Apostles and those men who succeeded as apostles throughout the ages and up to this present day are by those words of Jesus in response to Peter's saying that Jesus was the Christ. "And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Whatsoever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." (Matthew 16:18-19). That same binding and loosing admonition returns just a few chapters later (18:18) so it is something the church has always held fast to as its right among men. 

I propose this question: what if the emphasis isn't so much upon the insistence that he faithful do what the church teaches in some authoritarian manner and instead is meant to depict a cause and effect reality? For example, if I were to exhort my wife saying, "This is how I see it and that's that!," she could either choose to accept the firmness of my stance and go along with it or she could contest my belief and engage me in a fight. Worse perhaps would be if she just ignored me and gradually began to dismiss my attempts to assert myself. I think these words of admonition by Jesus to those called the apostles are a warning of sorts: be careful what you deem fixed and certain because it will affect how others choose to follow, fight or ignore you. The other danger of clinging so fiercely to the authoritarian definition of that scripture is that it allows church teachings to become sacrosanct or chiseled in sacred stone that no one dares touch. What seems to offer protection has the same potential to forge a prison.

In 1633, Cardinal Bellarmine laid the holy smack down upon Gallileo for his new theory that the earth and other planets revolved around the sun instead of the earth. Bellarmine assailed him saying,"The doctrine attributed to Copernicus that the earth moves around the sun and the sun stands at the center of the world without moving from east to west is contrary to Holy Scripture and therefore cannot be defended or held." Similarly, is it not possible then that the church may have not fully taken in other truths that were meant to enliven and fully shape the body of Christ upon earth? 

So again it is my contention that the refusal to even discuss the possibility of allowing women to be ordained is a binding that unnecessarily cuts into the bodily circulation of the church's authority and public witness, thus compromising her health. I will close by sharing a very excellent article, Catholic Dissent: When Wrong Turns Out to be Right. To those who see me as aberrant and disobedient, perhaps you'll come away with a bit more understanding of how important those who have dissented have been in helping the church to grow. To those who are fearful of expressing any of their own heart-held dissent, perhaps you'll start on the road to living into your own experience and sense of how WE as church could be together.  

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