Conclusion

by Sr. Vincent Emmanuel Hannon

from the Question of Women and the Priesthood, Geoffrey Chapman 1967, pp. 139-141.
Republished on our website with the necessary permissions

It is an unquestionable fact that the disqualification of women for holy orders is a part of Catholic opinion and practice. Yet this is a subconscious belief, so to speak, something taken for granted rather than a conviction based on solid principles. The Church has never seriously asked itself if a female priesthood is theologically possible. Catholic commentators and theologians deny that this is a possibility, basing their arguments on St Paul’s epistles and the fact that Christ did not confer his priesthood on any woman. The scholastics in particular gave further support to the prohibition by emphasizing woman’s inferiority and consequent inability to receive the sacrament of orders, which places the ordained in a state of eminence. Arguments for the fittingness of woman’s exclusion from this sacrament were formulated in abundance, but the general approach of the patristic and scholastic theologians was negative, in the sense that their chief concern was merely to preclude even the theoretical possibility of a female priesthood. This defensive preoccupation was understandable in the early Church, plagued as it was by heretical extravagances. In the Middle Ages the Marcionite or Collyridian threat did not exist, but the status of woman had not improved and the scholastic theologians had inherited the patristic approach to this question. We have noted the similarity in the arguments of St Thomas, St Bonaventure, Scotus, Durandus, Soto, Vasquez, Billuart and St Alphonsus. Since then, for the most part the question of women and holy orders has not been a concern of theologians. On the other hand, commentators on sacred scriptures have continued through the intervening centuries to interpret the Pauline texts as without question excluding women from holy orders. It is difficult however to see how such certainty can have been reached without a consideration of all the factors concerned, and in this theological issue, without the expression of the Church’s infallible teaching. That the Church has made no such statement is clear. In default of this, it is equally unintelligible how some authors (1) can unhesitatingly aver that this is a matter of divine law and therefore decisive. Their position seems defensible because of the constantly repeated and unanimous opinion of the fathers and scholastics, but when it is evident that Catholic tradition itself does possess a precedent, in the order of deaconesses, this whole subject is seen in an altogether new light. It has not been conclusively proven that the deaconesses did not receive sacramental ordination, and there is a strong probability to the contrary. The burden of proving that deaconesses did not in fact receive sacramental ordination bears on those who deny that this was the case.

Finally it can be stated with confidence that the question of a female priesthood is open to free discussion and calls for further investigation before it can be declared as having been decided once and for all by divine law. The final word must rest with the magisterium of the Church, which is the pillar and the ground of truth. She alone with confidence can ask the question: ‘Is the participation of women in the priesthood possible under the Christian dispensation?’ for she alone as the Bride of Christ has within the depths of her own life the answer, which can be formulated and finally expressed only when serious reflection has been given to this question.

1. ‘Dom Cabrol in The Tablet, 16 March,1918; C. Lattey, S.J., Reading in First Corinthians, London, 1928, pp. 142-143; Mgr C. Cronin, Christian Priesthood or the Sacrament of Order, London, 1930, p. 83; M. C. Journet, The Church of the Chord Incarnate, London, 1954, P. 90; J.Crehan, ‘The Ordination of Woman Priests’ in The Clergy Review, v XLVIII, No. 1, January, 1963, P 48. Cf. also K. Rahner, S.J., Mission and Grace, vol. II, London, 1964, p. 72; Gino Concerti, ‘La donna a il Sacerdozio’, in L’Osservatore Romano, 8-9 November, 1965.

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