The Catholic Register reports that nine women have recently been ordained, on the banks of the great St. Lawrence, as priestesses of the Roman Catholic Church—or of some schismatic tumor thereof. The newspaper takes its Catholicism straight, and quotes, with apparent approval, the evaluation of this event by Bishop Meagher of Toronto. I paraphrase his response: The women have not been ordained. The Church claims no authority to ordain women; that is what we learn from tradition and from the magisterium. Indeed the ordination of women would destroy the Church’s understanding of itself as the Bride of Christ, and of the priesthood as men who act, in the Eucharistic sacrifice, in persona Christi.
So far so good: though I miss any cogent exegesis of Saints Paul and Peter, not to mention any meditation upon the choice by Jesus of twelve men as his apostles. But the Bishop goes on to throw it all away, speaking not as a bishop or as a student of scripture, but as, well, a careerist. For he says that the women’s actions, utterly ineffectual as sacrament, are quite effective as a protest. We need, he says, to include more women at the highest levels of authority in the Church.
My question is simple. Why? I’m not being flippant. I am not easy with the laity shouldering the priesthood aside, relegating priests to a couple of quaint cultic functions with shiny robes and tassels. But what in the end is a “position of authority in the Church,” if not a Cross? Does the bishop want to say, “We need to subject more women to enslavement—to the good of the flock they must help us lead; and to the dread hazard they run, the hazard of their own eternal loss, should they fail to preach the word, or should they fall adrowse at their watch and the wolf carry the sheep away. We see, in fact, that the sheep will not be led unless women lead them, publicly; and thus despite the hardships they will incur, the calumnies, the rejections, the fearful asceticism of unceasing prayer—and despite the indispensable work that faithful women already do in their homes and in their neighborhoods—we must draft women into the officers’ ranks.” Nothing of the sort. He does not, in fact, have the good of the Body in mind; at most, only the good of a relatively small number of women who might be interested in the lieutenantcy. That is because he thinks, unconsciously no doubt, of the Church as an arena for personal fulfillment, for power, for a fine career. Thus the all-male priesthood strikes him as anachronistic, an embarrassment. He believes in it, but he cannot explain why.
Dunk the man in the Saint Lawrence to wake him up: he is a father, and the head of his household-flock. His loyalty to his Commander and his faithfulness to that flock should be his sole considerations. He speaks as if there were no Enemy prowling about with glaring eyes, night and day, seeking whom he might devour. In that felt bestial presence no sensible man will talk like a crepes-and-cheese-stuffed bureaucrat. And I have yet to meet a single woman, feminist or no, who while walking in the valley of the shadow of death would not be grateful to have a brave man and true, to hold the lantern in the lead.
Nor does the faithful woman—or layman—want to hear the Lord say, “Before I pass judgment upon you, see the souls who were lost because of what you thought were your good intentions. Obedience had been better.”
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