This is a summary of Cardinal Ratzinger's commentary on Pope John
Paul's letter, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, which appeared in the 2
July issue of La Civilta Cattolica a theological journal
published by the Jesuits in Rome.
I. Seeing the document in the context of recent magisterial teaching
The pope is not proclaiming some new doctrine. Rather he is confirming
what the entire Church East and West has always known and lived in
faith. The Church has always seen and recognized the Twelve as the
normative model for the entire priestly ministry
and the Church has been subject to this model from the beginning. These
twelve men are tied to the mystery of the Incarnation in such a way that
they were ontologically changed to truly be real and living images
(icons) of Christ.
Two factors in our era have led to the ever-increasing questioning of
the Church's certainty in this matter: (1) Reading Scripture
independently of the living tradition of the Church in a purely
historicist manner and (2) the symbolic clarity of the body of our human
nature, is being replaced by a functional equivalence of the sexes. The
former factor has placed the question of the institution of the
priesthood simply as an historical question with no clear original will
or intent and which could therefore be seen as developing in a
substantially different manner. Thus the criterion of the institution of
the priesthood loses its validity and a functional criterion can be
substituted. The latter factor sees the question only as a
matter of discrimination against half of humanity rather than looking at
it as a matter of a bond with the mystery of the priesthood's origin.
The essential contents of the Tradition are contained in the declaration
from the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Inter
Insigniores, published 15 October 1976, with the approval of Pope
Paul VI. (1) The Church does not consider herself authorized to admit
women to priestly ordination. The believing Church reads and lives the
Scriptures not in some historicist construction, but rather, in the
living community of the People of God of all times. She knows herself to
be bound by a will which preceded her to an institution. This will,
which preceded her, is the will of Christ, expressed in the fact of the
choice of the Twelve. (2) In Mulieris Dignitatem pope point out
that Christ acted thus in free and sovereign manner. (3) In
Christifideles laici, the pope reiterates that in not ordaining
women the Church has always seen the free and sovereign will of Christ
in calling only men to the priesthood. (3) The Catechism of the
Catholic Church takes up the same doctrine that the Church has
called only men (viri) in forming the college of the twelve
Apostles and the Apostles did the same when they chose their successors
and collaborators. The Church sees herself bound to the will of the
Lord.
II. The reason for this new intervention of the magisterium
The pope intervened again because of the ever increasing doubts and
discussions being voiced about this question. These never-ending doubts
and discussion are linked to a unilateral conception of infallibility as
the only binding form of decision in the Church and the documents cited
previously have been relativized. The popes letter has an explicit
finality: to remove all doubts. The priesthood according to the Catholic
Faith is a sacrament, that is, not something invented for pragmatic
reasons, but something coming from the Lord, which the Church is bound
to.
III. The fundamental reason for the doctrine expounded and some
aspects relative to its ecclesial sense
There are two levels in the Church's position: (1) The objective
doctrinal foundation of the truth is to be found precisely in the will
and example of Christ, which resulted in His choice of the twelve
Apostles, the fruit of a night of prayer with the Father and therefore a
gift of the Father. {Footnote 1 (p.63) cites an article by W. Beinert.Dogmatishce
Uberlungen zum Thema Priestertum der Frau, in the Theologische
Quartalschrift 173 (1993) pp.186-204, which attempts to relativize
this choice of the Twelve by the Lord. Cardinal Ratzinger responds to
the arguments of this article. Beinert seeks to demonstrate actions of
Jesus which were not normative:(a) Although Jesus was very human, he did
not free from servitude the servant of the centurion. Cardinal Ratzinger
responds that because Jesus omitted to free the servant cannot be put on
the same level as the positive choice of Jesus to call the Twelve, which
is one of the primary acts of the Lord in the New Testament. Mutatis
mutandis, analogically one would give the same response to Beinert's
claim that while Jesus championed celibacy for the sake of the Kingdom,
he chose the married Peter to lead His flock.}
(2) The second level of the Church's doctrinal position is the fact
that the will of Christ is always the will of the Logos, a will with
meaning. It is not something positivistic or arbitrary. The new document
of the pope limits itself for the most part to
the first level without dismissing the importance of the second.
The Church has something to learn from the modern understanding of human
nature, but the modern world has to again learn from the wisdom which in
the tradition of the Faith is conserved and which cannot be done away
with simply by labeling it an archaic patriarchalism. Where one loses
the link with the will of the Creator and thus within the Church the
link with the will of the Redeemer, functionality easily becomes
manipulability. The new attention to the women's movement which is the
justified point of departure ends quickly in despising the body.
Sexuality is no longer seen has an essential expression of human
corporeality, but is presented as secondary characteristic which
ultimately has
no meaning.
To return to the first level, the pope is the guarantor of the Church's
obedience to the will of the Lord. Bishop Leonard of the Anglican
communion noted four developments in Anglicanism which dissolve the
essential structure for a dialectic of an Anglican concept of Church.
The fourth of these developments was the power given to the General
Synod of the Church of England to determine questions of doctrine and
morals by majority vote as if
in such matters truth can be determined in this way. The Church of
England rejects the doctrinal authority of the pope, but the Synod seeks
to exercise a magisterial function which theologically has no foundation
and which in practice pretends to be infallible.
Even in the Lutheran Church in Germany there is opposition to majority
decisions regarding church matters practically declared necessary to
salvation forgetting that the magnus consensus the Reformers
declared as the supreme instance of consensus consisted in doctrinal
agreement with Scripture and the Church catholic. (See R.Slenczka,
Diakrisis 14 (1993) p.187.
IV. Methodological presuppositions and the authority of the text
At this point other objections are advanced: for example, Scripture does
not teach this doctrine clearly. One can go back to different practices
which seem to relativize or annul this conviction of the Tradition. In
Paul's Letter to the Romans, 16:7, a female Apostle Junia is named along
with her husband Andronicus. Or there is the deacnoness Phoebe. Cardinal
Ratzinger responds by saying that these assertions are hypothetical and
have limited relation to the truth. The real question is: "Who
interprets Scripture?" Where do we get our certainty about what it
means? If we just look to a purely historicist interpretation and
nothing more we cannot get ultimate certitude. The conclusions of
historical research are by their very nature always hypothetical: none
of us were present. The Scriptures can become a foundation of a life
only when it is entrusted to a living subject, the same living subject
from which the Scriptures were born. They have their origin in the
People of God guided by the Holy spirit, and this subject has never
ceased to exist. The Second Vatican Council has expressed all this in
the following manner: The Church draws her certitude from everything
revealed and through Sacred Scripture alone. (Dei Verbum, n.9)
According to this vision Scripture, Tradition, and the Magisterium are
not to be considered as three separate realities but the Scriptures read
in the light of the Tradition and lived in the faith of the Church.
The Tradition of the Church has always recognized in the choice of the
Twelve the act of Jesus which gave birth to the priesthood in the New
Testament, seeing in the Twelve and in the Apostolic ministry of the
Twelve the normative origin of the priesthood.
With respect to the doctrinal weight of the pope's letter, the Cardinal
points out. In the letter it is explicitly said that which is affirmed
has to be held definitively in the Church. The
pope is not proposing a new dogmatic formula, but he is confirming a
certainty which in the Church has been continually lived and affirmed.
In technical language one would have to say: one is treating here of an
act of the authentic ordinary Magisterium of the Supreme Pontiff, of an
act therefore not definitive or solemn ex cathedra, even if the
object of this act is the declaration of a doctrine taught as definitive
and therefore not reformable. This means—as
the Note of the Presentation of the document underscores—that
it is proposed not as prudential teaching nor as a more probable
hypothesis, nor as an operative suggestion, nor as a simple disciplinary
disposition, but precisely as certainly true doctrine.
V. The present context of the teaching
The pope points out that it is necessary to avoid all discrimination in
the Church between men and women recalling the fact that the Blessed
Virgin was not ordained. This certainly
does not mean she enjoyed any less dignity or any type of discrimination
with respect to women. To say this credibly there has to be a further
clarification on the nature of the
priesthood. In the present cultural context ordination is understood as
decision-making-power. If in fact this was the essence of ordination it
would be difficult to understand why the exclusion of women from
decision-making and therefore from "power" in the Church would not be an
act of discrimination. The "power" of the priest is not as
decision-maker exercising veto-powers in faith and morals against the
will of the majority. The power of the priesthood is to fix the point
where the will of the majority ends and obedience begins: obedience in
confronting the truth, which does not come from voting. Anyone who reads
the New Testament carefully will find that nowhere is the priest
described as decision-maker. Such a view of the priesthood can only come
from a purely functional society in which everything is determined by
us. The reception of the sacrament is renunciation of self for the
service of Jesus Christ. The logic of worldly power-structures is not
sufficient to understand the priesthood.
Of course, we have to examine our conscience. Unfortunately there are
not only holy priests but also equivocators in whom the reality of the
priesthood seems to be reduced to decision-making and power. Here is
necessary the great responsibility of education in the priesthood and
spiritual direction. Where one's life does not render witness to the
word of faith, but rather disfigures it, the message will not be
understood.
Certainly men and women are equal especially in the universal call to
holiness; all the rest exists in the Church as a means to holiness. What
has to be avoided is any type of Manicheism which reduces the body to
something irrelevant, something purely biological, thus depriving
sexuality of its human dignity, its specific beauty, seeing the human as
some kind of asexual abstraction.
This cannot seriously be seen as an obstacle to ecumenism. The pope's
letter expresses the obedience of the Church to the biblical word lived
in the Tradition and it precisely defines the limits of the Church's
authority. The teaching guareentees the integral communion with the
Oriental Churches in understanding the Word of God and in the sacrament
which builds up the Church. This is no new controversy with the
communities originating with the Reformation. The conviction of the
Catholic Church and the orthodox churches hurts no one. Rather this
should draw attention and reflection on urgent problems: the relation
between Scripture and Tradition, the sacramental structure of the Church
itself, and the sacramental character of the ministerial priesthood.
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