Fools Rush In

The time has come to rush in where angels fear to tread, and start discussing the question of a celibate priesthood and female clergy. My own thinking is a little muddied, but not so much as I pretend sometimes, to avoid getting drawn in by an ideologue.

My comments should be prefaced. It is plain to me that many people who argue in favor of an end to celibacy or the ordination of women, do so not from a sense that history has miscarried, but out of animosity. Such people are Destructors, more interested in tearing down than in building up. They want an end to “the patriarchy” or male privilege, or whatever post-modern claptrap such people toss around. Those who want an end to celibacy are (surprise, surprise) often the same people who want to define marriage as something other than one man, one woman. The largest single reason I feel “muddied” is I want very much not to be allies with such people, who wish the Church harm.

Nonetheless, I do believe that holy orders, particularly Presbyter and Bishop, will be opened to women and married men, and I believe that result will be correct.

Let’s take celibacy first. The argument from history has been summarized by Emily Stimpson in recent weeks. For the sake of argument I will stipulate her entire history as true, though many scholars have contested specific parts of it, and it doesn’t confront the necessarily pragmatic facts that Rome very often tolerated wide divergence from policy, especially in the countryside. Nevertheless, the Pope inherits Peter’s throne, and Peter was married. Anything that came after was a historical graft onto the Body of Christ, and though it may be a true, necessary and valid graft, history is not consistently on the side of the celibates.

Even if it were, another problem looms. There are married Eastern and Roman Rite Catholic priests today. The married ones are by and large Anglican converts who have been “re-ordained” as it were. Nowadays, most exceptions are taken as a matter of course to “prove the rule” but for the life of me I cannot see how this one does not disprove it. If celibacy is necessary and married clergy are defective somehow, or less effective, then why are they permitted? One cannot help but feel that the rule is bent in favor of earthly politics: “We are stealing one from the Protestants, so we’ll let the married part slide.”

Any discussion of celibacy must start from the exceptional case of married clergy, rather than try to brush it off at the end. Until then, those in favor of mandatory, nearly exclusive celibacy are playing at mere casuistry.

Now, on to women. Again, the historical argument is the basis of the case, and it goes something like this: Jesus was a man, and he chose only men as his Apostles, and he was doing much more shocking things than picking women as Apostles, so that must have been deliberate. (Funny, but this argument is never trotted out for celibacy. How come?) The first problem is the Apostolic bit: it takes some pretty clever exegesis to get past Paul calling the woman “Junia” an “Apostle” (Romans, 16:7). (Cf. St. John Chrysostom: “O how great is the devotion of this woman that she should be counted worthy of the appellation of apostle!” Homily on Romans 16.) Paul also tells women to be quiet in Church, of course. But Paul started life as a Pharisee and a persecutor of Christians, and his choices can be taken to be more in line with his Judaic upbringing, in a way we cannot admit for Christ.

There is a more theological argument against women, hinging on the Eucharist, and the priest as symbolizing Christ, the bridegroom of the Church, and the communicants as the bride. (See my post here for my take on some of the flaws in this argument.) This argument, if true, certainly does argue against women priests or bishops, since they alone can perform the Eucharistic sacrament. But it says nothing about the Liturgy of the Word, which can be administered by a Deacon as well, and there is ample evidence that women were Deacons, the “other” holy order.

Once again, however, the exceptions come in.

Tertullian wrote around 204 in “On the Veiling of Virgins” that:
It is not permitted to a woman to speak in the church; but neither (is it permitted her) to teach, nor to baptize, nor to offer, nor to claim to herself a lot in any manly function, not to say (in any) sacerdotal office.
This leads some to argue (just as Emily does about celibacy) that the proscriptions are meant to curtail a practice that has been going on. (In fairness, Emily says such practices would have to be known to be illicit, since the proscriptions do not contain justification.)

Historically, some have argued that St. Brigid may have been a bishop (though others argue she was actually a pagan holdover, and neither a Christian nor a Saint at all). There is also the legend of Pope Joan, who is supposed to have given birth during a papal procession down the street in Rome still known as the Via Pappia (which means something like “Lady Pope Street.”) Joan’s ascension to the papacy, even if true, would clearly have been illicit, but it would still mean that apostolic succession runs through a woman.

Once again, however, even in our own age, we need not stand on history alone. Ludmila Javorova was secretly ordained a priest in the Roman Catholic Church in December 1970, to serve with several other women in the Czech underground church. Javorova was the vicar general of this group. The rationale for the exception here is much meatier than the converted Anglican issue (though one wonders why converted women pastors from the Anglican faith wouldn’t qualify for a similar exception as married men). Nevertheless, this exception would seem to invalidate the rule. If the crisis of communism in Eastern Europe was sufficient cause, why not the crisis of life in the West? Are there, even now, women being secretly ordained in China? Arabia? North Korea? If women are adequate symbols of Christ and sacramentally valid in extremis, what distinguishes (theologically, not rhetorically) those women from women in the West?

These existing cases must be dealt with honestly and at the beginning of any argument. (Again, in fairness to Emily, she does seek to take on Anglican converts: her own pastor is one, and she thinks the world of him. But it is ex post facto, not at the outset.)

For myself, I would like to see the diocesan priesthood open to married men, though not the orders. I don’t mean to invalidate celibacy: it is a great and noble thing, with a long and proud history, and it certainly serves all or nearly all the causes its supporters in mandatory form suggest. I have more than once been tempted to go get myself ordained an Anglican priest and “rediscover” Rome after the fact. So long as such practices are legitimate (if admittedly dishonest; hence I have not done so), our Church certainly seems to be arguing in less than full good faith.

And so with women. I am less persuaded that ordaining women is the right thing (much more muddied about this: the historical argument is actually a good deal stronger in this case than celibacy). But so long as the Church is going to say one thing and do another, the burden appears to be on them to prove that the existing system is the right one.

I honestly hope that neither situation changes very much in the next 20 years. Those who were brought up to a pre-Vatican Council Church have seen enough turmoil and tumult in one lifetime. Demanding such changes now seems to me to be a very selfish thing, however just the case.