Controverted Questions

Woman in Christian Tradition
by George H.Tavard, University of Notre Dame Press, 1973, pp. 211-225.
Republished on our website with the necessary permissions

The baptized woman enters a realm of freedom in which she is in principle, freer than any other woman. The hitch, however, has always come from the practical impossibility, until our own day, of implementing this freedom in a world which does not yet recognize it. If the Church has already escaped the dominion of sin and death, the societies in which Christians live are still steeped in sin and death. It makes little difference at this point whether society is Christian or not. The institutions of Christian society are still dominated by the fall. The ideal society cannot exist in this world. No Christian can in practice enjoy the full freedom to which he or she is heir. No one can expect to enjoy it except in the never-never land of Utopia.

Two problems are raised by this dichotomy between the principle and its corresponding ideal, on the one hand, and the reality of societal life, on the other.

First, there is no theological reason, although there may be an abundance of empirical or political reasons, why the very structures of the Church should not try to embody the spiritual freedom of the children of God, which neither the secular nor the sacred polis can possibly implement. Yet, the Church progressively abandoned the principle of Christian freedom in its application to the life of women within its own ranks and concerns, and in areas that could conceivably have escaped secular prejudice and social pressure. Instead, it adopted the principle of harmony with secular society. The early Fathers indeed endeavored to guarantee to woman the possibility of spiritual freedom within the confines of the Church: to that effect they instituted and organized the ascetic way of life which later evolved into the religious orders of women as these survive today. At the very same time, the reversed process was taking place. Whereas the earlier Church admitted women to the important functions of prophecy and the diaconate, a number of reasons—among which we may note a reaction against licentiousness and heresy and the sheer weight of the secular, with its prejudices, customs, and legalities —induced the later Church to close to women all activities directly connected with the three functions of Christ as teacher, prophet, and king. Thus women have been completely eliminated from preaching, liturgy, and government. Though uneven, this process became totally effective with the disappearance of the medieval vestiges of feminine authority in the Church, the monastic foundations presided over by an abbess who counted monks and priests within her jurisdiction. Whatever motivations and justifications may explain the peculiar phenomenon by which the Church eventually closed doors which the Gospel and the early tradition had left open to women, the theological question is unavoidably mooted; can the adoption of secular standards ever be justified when it results in restricting the freedom of the Gospel? Both Protestant and Catholic thought have expressed the fundamental dignity of the Christian by reference to the tasks of Christ as teacher, prophet, and king. This is even basic to Vatican Council II's treatment of the theme of the people of God and of the laity. Yet women have not been admitted, nor did Vatican II plan to admit them, to any function in which teaching, preaching, or government are actively exercized. Not only has woman been ineligible for any priestly or hierarchial task; she has not even been allowed to do in the Church all that a layman can do, as witness the fact, whereas we have had "altar boys" for centuries, we have had no "altar girls" until quite recently, and this in only a few areas.

Second, the present moment in the evolution of secular society creates possibilities, opens up opportunities, and raises questions that could not be faced before. Modern society has gone a long way toward emancipating woman from male tutelage, although great distance still has to be travelled before men and women become truly equal and responsible in purely secular matters. The political evolution and the social emancipation of our times could have been foretold. The progressive adoption of permissive laws concerning divorce, remarriage, contraception, and abortion is not entirely surprising. Once the principle of the total equality of human beings has been accepted as a political basis, there is no justification for further practical restrictions on what a man or a woman may do. Biological research has changed the very nature of contraceptive interventions, thereby placing the problem of birth control in a light where one can arrive at philosophical or theological judgments other than were formerly justified. Patently, this evolution places before the Church certain inescapable questions, relating to the task and function of woman in the organism of salvation and to her legitimate Christian freedom in areas where total secular freedom will soon be available to her. In other words: should the Church continue to deny woman access to positions of authority, and specifically to the sacrament of orders? Can the Christian woman lawfully avail herself, as a Christian, of the sexual freedom that is now hers as a modern woman?

I will take these questions successively, beginning with the theological problem of ordination.

The problem of women's ordination may be looked at canonically. We then run into Canon 968 § 1: "A baptized male alone can validly receive sacred ordination." The canon by itself is not as impressive as the long history behind it. It does sum up twenty centuries of Church history, including the period of the New Testament. Exceptions regarding orders have been factual only in the two areas of the diaconate and of the quasi-episcopal jurisdiction of some medieval abbesses. Neither the priesthood nor episcopacy have ever been opened to women, except in early heterodox circles connected with gnosticism or Montanism. The argument of canonical precedent against the ordination of women to the priesthood is unimpeachable.

However, a purely canonical argument can never be ultimate in the theological field. What has never been done can still be done if good reasons militate in its favor. The Church has never ordained women. But she has not committed herself to never ordaining women.

The theological arguments against the access of women to the priesthood are striking by their very poverty. The patristic Church never raised the question. There were, of course, good reasons for this. The status of woman in the society of the times did not permit her to take up positions of authority. The Jewish background of the Church made it unthinkable. The Roman and the Greek world made it impractical. In such conditions, the possibility of a woman leading the congregation in prayer never became an option for the Church in general. What was possible for some Montanist circles might have been acceptable also to the great Church in limited sections of the Empire. The general access of women to positions of authority would have been a very different proposition. For this reason, women deacons never had a chance of heralding the advent of women priests.

The question was raised to an academic level of discussion in the intellectually free world of medieval schools and universities. The Scholastics faced it, showing in this less inhibition than most contemporary theologians. Nevertheless, their answer was negative: maleness belongs to the essence of the sacrament of orders.Thomas Aquinas understands this to derive from the nature of the sacrament, rather than merely from positive law. "Even should all the acts of ordination be performed, a woman does not receive the sacrament. For, as the sacrament is a sign, what is done in a sacrament requires not only a reality, but the sign of it. . . . Superiority cannot be indicated by the female sex since woman is in a state of subjection. Therefore, she cannot receive the sacrament of orders."(1) This follows from Thomas's opinion that woman is subject to man, both in the work of procreation, and, for her own guidance, in all other matters. In keeping with this, Thomas opines that women who held the title of deaconesses never actually received the diaconate. They simply performed works otherwise done by deacons, "like reading the homily at church."(2)

The same conclusion is reached in the early Franciscan school. For Bonaventure "it is the doctors' healthier and more prudent opinion that women not only must not or cannot be ordained de jure, but moreover cannot de facto."(3) This does not come "from the Church's institutions," but "from the fact that it would not fit the sacrament of orders." However, the reason given for such a sacramental impossibility is not woman's inferiority and subservience, but the mediating function of Christ, which can only be signified by the male sex: Man "alone can naturally represent this sign and can actually bear it through reception of the [sacramental] character."

The treatment of this question by John Duns Scot is particularly relevant. Duns Scot does not argue directly from feminine inferiority, like Thomas, or from the nature of the priestly function, with Bonaventure. The basis for his conclusion that a woman cannot be validly ordained is simply the ecclesiastical practice. This must derive from the will of Christ; for the Church would be guilty of a serious injustice if she took it on herself to forbid women access to such a great sacrament:

This is not to be considered as specifically determined by the Church, but it comes from Christ. The Church would not presume to deprive the entire female sex, without any guilt on its part, of an act which might licitly pertain to it, being directed toward the salvation of woman and of others in the Church through her. For this would be an extreme injustice, not only toward the whole sex, but also toward specific persons: if by divine law the priestly Order could licitly pertain to a woman, this would be for the salvation of [some] women and of others through them.

That Christ did not want woman to be ordained seems patent: otherwise his mother would have been raised to one of the degrees of the sacrament of orders. This restriction was in keeping with natural reason, since "at least after the fall, nature does not permit woman to hold a place of predominance in mankind." Yet the very scope of the injustice of antifeminine legislation in this matter makes Duns Scot recoil: the Church cannot possibly be responsible for it. Duns Scot of course does not ascribe an injustice to Christ: Christ has his own reasons, of which man is not judge.

The position of this great Franciscan shows that the contemporary question about woman in the Church was indeed raised in the later Middle Ages. On this point, Duns Scot was the first modern man, for he was the first to perceive the inherent injustice of a law that bans women from one of the sacraments of the New Covenant. Thus, the anthropology of Thomas Aquinas and the majority among the Schoolmen was not necessary to the Catholic synthesis. If indeed, woman is less fully human than man, only a fully human being can have access to the priesthood, where, standing before the community in persona Christi, he is destined to represent the one who is the perfect model of humanity. This sort of argumentation loses all validity in an anthropology which recognizes the full humanity of woman. Duns Scot's concept of the Church made it unthinkable for him that the Church could be responsible for such an injustice to womanhood. In this, Duns Scot indeed stood in the great Catholic ecclesiological tradition, which cannot attribute sin to the Church. The puzzling point for the contemporary mind is that his concept of God's omnipotent will made him accept the idea that God himself had decided the matter. The distinction between good and evil was commonly attributed to God's arbitrary decision in later medieval theology and reached final fruition in Calvin's extreme view of predestination.

Thus we reach a dilemma. Because we hold Saint Thomas's idea of God rather than Duns Scot's, we cannot attribute to God the decision to restrict priesthood to males. Yet, because we do not share Thomas's anthropology, we recognize the injustice that Duns Scot sees in the current discipline of the sacrament of orders. It remains to put the blame where Duns Scot could not put it: on the Church, or more correctly, on the men of the Church who have so far been unable or unwilling to rise above their social and psychological conditioning.

In keeping with the position arrived at in the last chapter, I cannot accept the objection drawn from the supposed relationship of woman to the Holy Spirit. The priesthood is immediately connected with Christ as high priest of his Church. On account of man's relatedness to Christ, only a man could be a priest, the tasks of woman coming under the aegis of the Third Person. Among contemporary authors, this remains the position of Jean Galot, who also sees in it the explicit will of Christ:

The women who followed Jesus to Jerusalem and who the day after will be so closely associated to his Passion are not invited to the first Eucharistic meal. The Master wants to entrust the eucharistic celebration only to the Apostles, and to them alone he addresses the words: Do this in memory of me. This is his deliberate will.(5)

Such a line of thought is based on a myth, the myth that the account of the Last Supper in the Gospels and in Saint Paul's first epistle to the Corinthians is a strict historical account of what actually took place in the upper room, rather than a projection of what the Christian communities were actually doing at the time of the writing. The safest thing that may be said here is that we really do not know what Jesus did at the Last Supper. Moreover, why should the practice of the primitive Church remain normative for all times unless it is supported by doctrinal reasons that have perennial value? Galot does find such a reason in the incarnation: "Now it is in a man that God willed to show himself in the incarnation; it is consequently in men that he wills to continue to show himself in the Church, according to his divine power."(6)

But this is a patent non sequitur. the fact of the incarnation of the Word in the man Jesus proves nothing whatsoever about a male priesthood within the Church.

Thierry Maertens, who authored a valuable study of woman in the Bible, prefers an agnostic conclusion: the question of the ordination of woman cannot receive an answer now.

The Christian ministry, particularly in the liturgical gathering, constitutes the most important step of the unique mediation of Christ. Can we conceive that a woman may someday fulfill this mediating function? It is not possible to answer this question. One could not even envisage it as long as society was built on the only mediation of the male. Today, the sociological and cultural conditions allow us at least to posit the question, but the answer rests with the Holy Spirit: he alone calls to the priesthood.(7)

This is not altogether satisfactory. For what shall we tell a woman who believes herself called to the priesthood by the Spirit? Obviously, the Church will not change her way of acknowledging the divine call to the priesthood unless theology feels able not only to ask the question which is already implicit in the social conditions of the times, but also to answer it affirmatively. Luc-Henri Gihoul, whose book on the subject tries to find an acceptable version of the "eternal feminine," concludes that the arguments against women priests are not persuasive: "We have sufficiently said that, in the present state of our knowledge, no scriptural, theological, psychological, social or other argument is apodictic or convincing."(8) His personal attitude, however, remains close to the agnosticism of Maertens:

As to the question of the admission of women to the priesthood, the problem is up in the air: partly because the arguments are false, partly because they are hardly relevant in view of the changed social and religious conditions, partly because they do not carry conviction. At any rate, a growing number of theologians are concerned about the weakness or the obscurity of the arguments hitherto proposed, and they foresee the day when it will be possible and necessary to reexamine the whole question completely. This will not come about by recrimination and pressure; it will only arise from the breath of the Spirit in the intelligence and the heart.(9)

In any case, Gihoul cannot be counted among the advocates of women's ordination: he prefers to wait for the Spirit to manifest his intentions more clearly.

During the last session of the Second Vatican Council, Jean Danielou, now Cardinal, summed up the only position that would seem compatible with the nonvalidity of the arguments against the accession of women to the priesthood:

It is my opinion that, immediately, and therefore before the end of the Council, the Church ought to authorize the ordination of deaconesses. As to the possibility of women priests, there is no fundamental theological objection to it.(10)

This position on deaconesses followed from the conclusion of Danielou's historical essay of 1961 on the "ministry of women in the early Church": "We have three possible ways of ordering the ministry of women: lay, clerical, religious. It may be said that all three are equally traditional."(11) In other words, the introduction of women into the clergy is just as traditional as the status of religious women or as the identification of women with the order of the laity. The accession of women to the second and third degrees of the sacrament of orders, the priesthood and the episcopate, would indeed go beyond historical precedent. But the diaconate, in the Catholic tradition, already belongs to the sacrament of orders. The deaconesses of the distant past effected enough of a breach in the wall of opposition to make it possible now to go further.

The access of women to all the degrees of the sacrament of orders logically tallies with the anthropology outlined in the preceding chapter. I also think that it follows from the study of the process by which the early Church began to liberate woman, applying to her the basic principles of Christian freedom, and then disenfranchised her in reaction against schismatic movements, against ambiguous situations, and against licentiousness. Let me briefly recall the outlines of the story.

Greek and Roman traditions rendered the age of the Fathers unfavorable to a systematic promotion of women. Yet from the early days women shared the burden of spreading the Gospel and were, for instance, "co-workers" with Saint Paul. The care of the closed gardens of virginity, to which the Fathers without exception devoted themselves, eventually had effects far and wide. The Middle Ages saw a remarkable, though limited, growth of feminine influence in the Church. Abbesses not infrequently wielded authority over monks. Women were counted among the great mystics. Neither the Church nor the society of France balked at the idea of an eighteen-year-old girl, Jeanne d'Arc (1412-1431), heading the French army against the English during the most famous episode of the hundred-years war. Condemned as a witch by an illegal tribunal in 1431, Jeanne d'Arc was rehabilitated by the Church in 1456, beatified in 1909, and canonized in 1920. Indeed, women featured prominently at many turning points of medieval history. Even in the so-called "Dark Ages." we may mention Radegunda (d. 587), retired queen of the Franks, wife of Chlothar I, who studied the Fathers' works at her monastery of the Holy Cross at Poitiers. Gertrude of Nivelles (abbess, 626-653) and Bertilla of Chelles (d. 705) were great abbesses. Gonzague Truc, who names these women in his Illustrated History of Woman, adds that Rabban Maurus (776-856) dedicated his commentaries on the books of Judith and Esther to the wife of Louis le Debonnaire (778-840) and that philosopher and theologian Gerbert d'Aurillac, who became Pope Sylvester II (pope, 999-1003), corresponded with Empress Adelaide (c. 931-999), wife of Emperor Otto I;(12) a number of other prominent women appear in this correspondence. At the end of the Middle Ages, Renaissance ladies like Vittoria Colonna or Marguerite de Navarre exercised a great influence, the first in the Oratories of Divine Love which flourished in Italy, the second among Reformist circles in France. Women remained influential in the Church in the seventeenth century, but Bossuet's crushing of Madame Guyon in the controversy over Quietism marked the end of their influence. Yet a new concern for the education of women was developing at the very time of Bossuet's triumph. In 1687 Fenelon published his pioneering Treatise on the Education of Girls, and the Jansenists strongly upheld the right of women to read and study the Bible. All in all, however, neither Fenelon nor the Jansenists could achieve the necessary breakthrough. Ecclesiastical antifeminism remained well-established.

If none of the theological arguments brought forward to justify this state of the matter has persuasive value, then we must squarely face the question: should not the tide be finally reversed? It is the conclusion of this book that all ecclesiastical disabilities of women should now be raised, that women should be admitted to all sacraments and to all positions of authority, ministry, and service. The freedom of the Christian, imparted to all in baptism, Should remove all man-made barriers between human beings.

Such a position neither threatens the traditional theology of the sacrament of orders nor denies the fact that the higher forms of it were never bestowed on women. Moreover, the problem today is no longer sacramental; it is Pneumatologjcal. It does not relate to who is or is not a fit subject for the reception of a sacrament. It rather concerns the theology of the Spirit. The ages which admitted women to prominence in the Church were strongly charismatic periods. As witness the reaction against Montanism, women were discarded from places of influence, discouraged from prophesying, and banned from the reception of the diaconate by fear of charisms. Yet if charisms come from the Spirit, no one may limit the Spirit's freedom to grant his gifts to whom he wants. The remedy of chaos is not obstruction; it is the all too neglected art of discerning the spirits.

On the one hand, the canonical and theological tradition, still embodied in Canon 968, § 1, that the male sex is necessary to the valid reception of the sacrament of orders, is a post factum justification of a common practice.lt is by no means a normative conclusion flowing from undoubted premises. On the other hand, the compelling argument for the ordination of women cannot be drawn from the secular conquests of the older feminist movement or the newer women's liberation movement. That women are achieving equality with men in the professional functions of modern society is irrelevant. Those who build their case for women priests or women ministers on the basis of feminine emancipation in society can never reach a persuasive conclusion. For we are not at this point dealing with society, but with the Church; and we should not base our views on political and social convenience and opportunity, but on the Gospel and on the dynamics of the coming Kingdom. Neither here nor anywhere else should the Church take the world as its norm. The norm should always derive from the Gospel. When she restricted women in the past, the Church followed society rather than the Gospel. I am afraid we would not be better off with the opposing decision today, were it still grounded in the same premise.

The true ground for change is that the Spirit may call whom he wants to lead his people. Indeed, those who associate woman with the symbolism of the sacred ought to go a little further and not stop at the symbol. Paul VI's assertion that woman "is, for us, mankind as adopting the best attitude facing the attraction of the sacred" cannot logically remain the last word concerning this matter. When woman is seen as "the sign of a goodness which appears to us as having no bounds, the mirror of the ideal human being as conceived by God in his own image and likeness,"(13) this recognition ought to extend to the women of flesh and blood who embody the symbol. The symbol can have meaning only if it is reflected in the actual life and place of women in the Church. This strengthens the conclusion already reached: the symbols given by the Spirit must not remain empty, any more than the Word spoken by the mouth of God must return to him void. There is a symbol only where there is a symbolic reality. The symbol is womanhood, and the symbolic reality is woman. The role of woman in the Ecclesia is that to which the Spirit calls her. And once the Spirit has been acknowledged, no one may reserve his assent.

In the perspective of the last chapters, woman has appeared to us as a human being endowed with a certain biological function and with psychological and existential opportunities implied in that function. At the level of symbolism, she has been seen as symbolic of human relationships by the very fact that the relationship between man and woman is the primary relationship of mankind. At the cultural level, it belongs to each woman to develop herself as she wishes within the spectrum of the possibilities open to her by the cultural environment; in modern society, it belongs also to her to enlarge this spectrum of the possibilities open to her by the cultural environment; in modern society, it belongs also to her to enlarge this spectrum indefinitely by joint action. In the context of the Christian faith, woman has the vocation of deepening and understanding her relationship to God and more precisely to the Persons of the Word and the Spirit, with the possibility both of finding in the divine archetype of all relationships the justification of her tasks and of questioning and challenging the cultural patterns in which she lives.

Such a perspective entails a doctrine about marriage and about love. This is not the place to develop it at length, as I have purposely restricted my topic to woman as such, not to all the problems that may be connected with womanhood. Marriage I cannot see in any way other than has been consecrated by the Catholic tradition, as a sacrament of the Christian life, permanent, indissoluble, monogamous as well as monandrous. It is a sacrament because in it the incarnational dimension of the Gospel appears at its most eloquent: the very personality of human being, body and soul, channels the grace and the love of God. Whatever inferiority between man and wife society has devised, there can be only equality in the Gospel. Contemporary movements which demand total equality for husband and wife do reflect a Christian ideal in spite of their secular inspiration. The community of man and wife in marriage cannot be defined alone or even primarily in terms of sex. It must be seen and experienced in terms of love and community so profound that they are expressed and built up through sexual union. Although Catholic theology has, until recently, stressed procreation as the primary purpose of marriage, in keeping with the Augustinian doctrine on the "goods" of matrimony, this purpose should be set in the broader context of a relationship of love which must be its own end to the very extent that love here below participates in God's very life. One cannot but welcome the contemporary concern for authenticity in sexual relations, for this corresponds to the intrinsic structure of Christian marriage.

It follows from the "high" conception of sacramental marriage which I am outlining that sex can have no meaning, sense, or direction outside of a permanent relationship and, for a Christian, outside of the participation in God which is signified by the sacramentality of marriage. Premarital and extramarital sex are tragic and self-condemning mistakes. The ideal of the virginal life does keep its traditional value as witnessing to a form of the love of God which transcends sexual relations. One need not speak of superiority or inferiority between virginity and marriage, a concern which is more quantitative and visual than spiritual. One should rather defend the equal value of both marriage and celibacy and their sanctifying power for those who are called to either of them.

Contemporary developments in society raise a number of problems that are unavoidable for those engaged in Christian marriage: problems of sexual behavior, birth control, divorce, the right to abortion. These pertain to the realm of moral theology, not to a theology of womanhood. To examine them from the happenstance of the Christian woman may indeed add a helpful dimension to moral judgment; yet such a horizon can change neither the basic principles nor the general conclusion to be drawn from them. The theology in question is embedded in a sacramental reflection on marriage no less, and perhaps much more, than on a natural law. This reflection again stands in need of a feminine accent. And if the conclusion of this book is correct—namely, that man and woman cannot be Christianly specified otherwise than as human beings—then the feminine accent in moral theology cannot alter any basic proposition concerning ethical behavior.

On the matter of birth control I have explained my stance elsewhere in reference to the encyclical Humanae vitae.(14) More recent literature has offered no convincing reason to shift the position which I formulated then. Briefly, the ethics of birth control cannot prescind from critically studying the morality of contraceptive methods, unless one makes exceptions to the principle that the end never justifies the means. I cannot see how such an exception can be made even in favor of some higher good,(15) for it would then become impossible to determine with any degree of probability what context would legitimate similar exceptions. In other words, acceptance of the exception nullifies the whole principle. And once the principle has been abandoned, the ultimate moral barrier to the manipulation of human beings has also vanished. There would be no qualitative difference between such a manipulation for the sake of birth control and that with which Adolf Hitler boldly experimented in his "ultimate solution" to the Jewish question. The classical objections of Catholic ethics, which Humanae vitae reasserted, remain valid. One may question, however, the extension of these objections to new means of birth control, working in a biological way, in which the distinction between nature and culture, necessity and biology is blurred to the point of extinction.

Secular woman's aspiration to freedom from unwanted pregnancy arises today from economic, demographic, financial, cultural, social, and psychological conditions no less, and perhaps more, than from selfish or erotic motives. On the one hand, I cannot see by what stretch of imagination those could be considered equivalent to basic Christian categories and commitments. On the other, concern for the Kingdom of God, which ought to be basic to all the faithful and which is central to Christian ethics, does not dispense the Christian woman from her responsibility and coresponsibility in, to, and with society. Accordingly, birth control ideas and ideals may be shared and, to an extent, endorsed by the Christian concern for a more spiritual and less selfish life. In view of the impending population explosion, of the dire straits of larger families in crowded areas, and of the growing sense of the integrity of the bodily relationship in the context of interpersonal love, birth control acquires the consistency and goodness which make it possible to view it as a Christian concern. The growing medical reservations about the side effects of birth control pills may well end up in wider recourse to mechanical means of contraception which, with classical Catholic ethics, I consider to be morally unacceptable. But ethical norms may never be derived from social facts. The freedom of the Christian woman, like that of the Christian man, can come to fruition only in the context of the order of justice, which is an objective order. It will be assisted in this area by further medical and biological research, not by the disregard of ethical objections.

This is obviously not the place for a full discussion of ethics. But it is clear from the preceeding pages that I regard situational ethics as morally wrong, intellectually absurd, and practically confusing. The morality of an action does not derive only from the situation; it depends on a total context which involves, besides the situation, the objective morality of the act that is to be performed and the personal intentions of the doer. It would be equally mistaken to make Christian ethics depend exclusively on any of these three elements, situation, object, and intention. The contemporary secular trend focuses on situation and circumstances; Protestant ethics have usually been focused on intention; classical Catholic ethics, while taking account of all three elements, has given pride of place to objective morality. Because ethics cannot be only a matter of a good intention, the question of an objective morality of the means of birth control must be taken seriously.

The systematic moral theology developed since the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries has therefore been focused on the three aspects of an action (the object of the act, the intention of the doer, the circumstances). A good act requires the goodness of these three aspects; an act is more or less evil (or less good), as one or more of these aspects is not good. This approach to the morality of an action, which is indispensable to teachers, counsellors, and confessors, does not exhaust the morality of the Gospel. The Christian who examines his behavior should first see himself in the light of the Gospel. The Christian call to perfection, "Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matt. 5:48), implies an invitation to daily heroism. The love to which the disciples are called is, like God's own agape manifested in the Lord Jesus, lived in self-giving. In other words, the life of the faithful should aim much further than the negative morality implied in the analyses of action by moral theology. From the point of view of the Gospel, Christian ethics is an ethics of the Kingdom, manifesting here below, in witness and anticipation, the perfection of the saints in God. In the light of this, one should assess one's own life and set goals of self-discipline and asceticism which are necessary to the self-purification needed of those who have heard "Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God" (Matt. 5:8).

Sexual ethics, and all the practical problems that modern life raises in relation to sex, must be placed in this eschatological perspective. Then, the problem no longer lies in determining the minimal morality of an act; it is to seek the Kingdom of God and its justice, and everything else, including the spiritual instinct to select the correct course of action, will be given from above. Indeed, the modern mentality, which gets most impatient with what it interprets as the hairsplitting of moral theologians, remains sensitive to a call to perfection even when it feels unable to answer it. The greatness of Pope Paul's encyclical Humanae vitae was its reiteration of this call to perfection implied in the Gospel; its weakness was a language that was hardly comprehensible to most contemporaries.(16)

After this remark on the ethics of the Gospel, need we examine the burning problem of abortion? The freedom to obtain legal abortions is certainly among the goals of the movement for feminine liberation today. For this reason it cannot be shunned. Yet we must approach it again from the lower point of view of a minimal morality rather than from the higher standpoint of the ethics of the Gospel. For it cannot be raised in the perspective of the perfection of the Kingdom to which we are called. It can only be faced in the twilight morality of the world in which we still live.

For moral theology, the current question is not whether abortion may be legalized, but whether Christian believers may have recourse to legalized abortion. The legalization of abortion is a social problem. On this point the groups which lobby against legalization of abortion often labor under a great deal of confusion as to the proper issue.

Be that as it may, the moral problem is relatively easy to solve in theory, whatever difficulties must undoubtedly assail those who have to make practical decisions in this area. The equivalence of abortion with murder, which may be read in the average textbook of moral theology, results from an oversimplification. Thomas Aquinas himself did not equate the human fetus with a human being before the infusion of a spiritual soul, a phenomenon which he believed to follow conception by several months. Voluntary interruption of the process of life cannot be identified with murder. It is exactly what the words say and no more: the ending of a process that would otherwise produce a new human life, a new human being. Thus the exact question is not: when is there a human soul? It becomes: when is there new life? When does the biological process of pregnancy produce a life which is no longer that of the mother only?

If the human fetus may be considered an organ of the mother, an abortion may be morally permitted according to the principle of subsidiarity, like any other major surgical intervention in bodily processes. As soon as the fetus can no longer be regarded as an organ of the mother, but must be seen as another being, then direct abortion by killing the fetus enters the category of the slaughter of the innocent. Admittedly, it may be remarked that the surgical intervention in question may directly affect the placenta rather than the fetus. In this case again, it would not qualify as killing, because the organ that has been directly interfered with can only be a maternal organ. The principle of subsidiarity may be applied to the excision of an organ for the good of the person of which it is a part.

Thus it would seem that relatively simple clarifications based on classical categories of moral theology may help to face the contemporary problem. It should go without saying that the use of freedom must be responsible, that weighty reasons alone may justify such a drastic action as an abortion, and that the burden of education and of self-discipline increases as technology and social permissiveness make more concrete freedoms available.

But one must still ask the fundamental question of the Kingdom of God and its call to perfection: are abortions compatible with the ethics of the Gospel? Can they have any meaning in relation to the eschatologjcal fulfillment to which Christians tend? Can an earnest seeker of the Kingdom stop along his way in order to obtain an abortion, and what would she gain thereby in relation to what alone is necessary, her progressive discovery of God in Christ? Such questions should be answered only in light of the coming Kingdom.

The spread of social and political freedom to the realm of marriage and family life shows clearly that mankind is at last on the verge of overcoming the two previous states in which men have lived, the matriarchal and the patriarchal organizations of society. The advent of woman to total social equality with man spells the doom of all previous types of civilization. Insofar as this permits the Christian woman to manifest in her way of life the internal and sacramental freedom she enjoys under the Gospel, this revolution of human mores is to be welcomed. Yet it goes without saying that one may remain critical of some forms already taken by the feminine liberation. This criticism need not entail a fight against the new mores, since these do correspond to some cherished principles and objectives; but it does mean a free refusal to share in some of the liberties gained by woman in the secular world. Thus, the principle of divorce and remarriage cannot be accepted in a Christian concept of the relationship between man and wife. The Christian should, on this point, struggle in favor of the possibility of divorce and remarriage in the eyes of the state, but reject the very thought of himself or herself adopting the successive polygamy or polyandry which divorce and remarriage amount to. The Church can never abandon her traditional belief in the permanent relationship of marriage.

This is not to say, however, that certain accommodations cannot be sought within the freedom of the Gospel. For instance, it is morally inconceivable— although this is the standard practice for both Catholic and Portestant missionaries—to break up the polygamous relationships of converts to whom prescription has in fact given natural and societal rights and duties that ought to be honored. At the other end of the spectrum, whereas the Church cannot admit divorce, she may consider new causes for annulments of marriage which would correspond to and derive from the psychological problems of contemporary men and women. Thus I can see no theological objection to interpreting the early breakdown of a marriage relationship as implying that there had never truly been a voluntary commitment to permanent marriage. Or: the long existence of an impediment of physical impotence suggests the possibility of a parallel impediment of psychological incompatibility, even though this may not always be discerned before the progressive collapse of mutual relationships. These questions cannot be solved here: they raise points of Canon Law, of moral theology, and of sacramental theology that need further study. It is sufficient for the purpose of this book to show in what direction the freedom of the Gospel as applied specifically to the status of woman in the Church, seems to be pointing.

The controverted questions briefly examined in this final chapter may well constitute the frontier of the next major turmoil in the life of the Catholic Church, following the attempt at self-reform initiated by John XXIII. Although these reforms may be far-reaching, there is no reason to envisage them otherwise than with serenity. Indeed, the anxiety and the panic that seized many in the wake of Vatican II have been immeasurably wasteful and have certainly not shown much depth of Christian conviction and of confidence in the God-given structures of the Church. I would suggest now that the liturgical reforms, the canonical adjustments, the institutional updating that have taken place in the last few years, and that are not yet completely effective, will be looked upon as elementary in comparison with the infinitely more thorough self-reform implied in the accession of women to the full freedom which they should enjoy in the Church. Even such a step as the introduction of a married clergy of the Latin rite would mean very little in terms of a reform of the Church as a whole: married men tend to be no less one-sided in their views and projects than single men. Sharing initiative, responsibility, and spiritual power with women would bring about much more altered ways of acting and thinking in both clergy and laity. It would undoubtedly have a cathartic effect that the halfhearted reforms of the last few years cannot possibly equal.

Should we balk at the idea of introducing into the already hard pressed Church such a leven of self-transformation? Yes, indeed—unless we believe that the Catholic Church today is still the Ecclesia to which the words of eternal life were entrusted, against which the gates of hell shall not prevail, and in which the Spirit dwells, leading it unto all the truth.

Notes

1. Summa theologica, Supplement, q. 39, a. 1; see Commentary on the Sentences, IV, D. 25, q. 2, a. 1, quest. 1. On the general question of the ordination of women, see P. R. Smythe, The Ordination of Women (London, 1939); V. Hannon, The Question of Women and the Priesthood: Can Women Be Admitted to Holy Orders? (London, 1957); M. Thrall, The Ordination of Women to the Priesthood: A Study of Biblical Evidence (London, 1958); J. Laplace, La Femme et la vie consacrée (Paris, 1963); James Alberione, Woman: Her Influence and Zeal as an Aid to the Priesthood (Boston, 1964); Ilse Bertinetti, Frauen im Geistlichen Amt (Berlin, 1965); Sister Vincent Emmanuel, The Question of Women and the Priesthood (London, 1969); Haye Van Der Meer, Priestertum der Frau? (Freiburg, 1969); Elsie Gibson, When the Minister is a Woman NewYork 1970)

2. Summa contra gentes, III, chap. 123.

3. Commentary on the Sentences, IV, D. 2, a. 2, q. 1.

4. In librum IV sententiarum, D. 25, q. 2, scol. 2 (Wadding, ed., Opera omnia, IX, 1639, p. 570).

5. Jean Galot, L’Eglise et la femme (Paris, 1965), p. 178.

6. Ibid., p. 181.

7. Thierry Maertens, La Promotion de la femme dans la Bible (Tournai, 1967), pp. 216-217.

8. Luc-Henri Gihoul, Femme, vocation de I’homme. Essai d’une théologie de la féminité (Brussels, 1965), p. 224.

9. Ibid., pp. 66-67.

10. Le Monde, 19-20 September 1965, quoted by H. F. (Henri Fesquet). More recently Yves Congar has supported the ordination of women to the diaconate, in his preface to the French version of Elsie Gibson’s book, Femmes et ministères dans l’Eglise (Paris, 1971), p. 11.

11. The Ministry of Women in the Early Church (London, 1961), p. 31.

12. Gonzague Truc, Histoire illustrée de la femme, I (Paris, 1940), p. 165.

13. Address, October 29, 1966, in La Documentation Catholique, 1966, 10. 1482, col. 1923.

14. “The Non-Encyclical on Birth Control,” National Catholic Reporter, October2, 1968.

15. Archbishop Denis Hurley, “A New Moral Principle: When Right and Duty Clash,” The Furrow, 17 (1966), 619-622; “In Defense of the Principle of Overriding Right,” Theological Studies, 24(1968), 301-309.

16. Jean-Louis Leuba, “La dynamique juridique post-conciliaire de I’Eglise Catholique romaine,” Verbum Caro, XXIII, no. 92, pp. 4-42. The Motu proprio “Ministeria quaedam,” of August 15, 1972, includes the provision: “In accordance with the venerable tradition of the Church, installation in the ministries of lector and acolyte is reserved to men.” This has caused consternation and occasioned protests. However, it should be obvious that the Holy See cannot reasonably alter the traditional discipline as long as a new theological consensus in favor of the ordination of women, and their admission to the ministries of lector and acolyte, has not yet clearly emerged.

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