Well, not quite. Last week the Catholic Theological Society of America passed a resolution that politely begged to differ. “There are serious doubts regarding the nature of the authority of this teaching,” the society held. “There is serious, wide, spread disagreement on this question not only among theologians, but also within the larger community of the Church.” It was the first time that any official body of Catholic theologians in the world had dared to question the pope’s judgment on women priests.
On the face of it, the society’s statement is neither brave nor brazen. Its stand is basedd on a report by six theologians (four men and two women), who were careful not to challenge the pope directly. Their target is a fellow theologian, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, head of the CDF, and the argents he gives from Scripture and church tradition for claiming that the exclusion of women has been infallibly taught.
The authors concede that at the Last Supper Jesus “ordained” only men to succeed him as apostles. But they doubt that his intention was to exclude women: Rather, the authors argue, the 12 men were chosen for “their symbolic role as ‘patriarchs’ of restored Israel”-that is, as successors to Israel’s 12 tribes. They also concede that various passages in the New Testament specifically proscribe the ordination of women. But they argue that this practice was followed not out of obedience to “the will of Jesus” but because of a common cultural conviction that “women are inferior to men and more easily led astray.”
The theologians are equally skeptical of Ratzinger’s appeal to church tradition. That, too, they argue, rests on a cultural belief that “women are by nature inferior to men” and “divinely intended to be subordinate to men in the social order.” But today, they note, the pope himself has defended women as equal in dignity to men. And, they contend, to speak as the church does of the genders being “complementary” merely masks persistent “patterns of superiority and inferiority, domination and subordination, rather than equality.” Morally, they claim, the church’s duty is to decide women’s ordination based on what is authentically Christian and to discard mere cultural baggage.
Meeting the tests: Is the current teaching infallibl@by Vatican standards? Since the pope did not claim to speak with the infallibility that comes with his office, the report argues, the teaching must meet other tests before it can be considered binding on all Catholics. The theologians argue that it fails tw@ of those tests: the bishops of the church have not been consulted for their opinions; and the laity are manifestly not of one mind about ordaining women.
But neither, for that matter, are the theologians. At its annual meeting in Minneapolis, the society voted merely to “receive” and publish the full report. The society has some 1,500 members, many of them laymen and women. Only 248 members were present; the vote was 216 for, 22 against and 10 abstentions. Some critics complained that the committee included only theologians who disagree with the pope’s teaching. “Those who felt the Vatican’s response is adequate ought to be on a committee created to consider if it is adequate,” said Sister Sara Butler, a theologian at Mundelein Seminary in Chicago.
Others charged that the report’s analysis of the Biblical and traditional texts was skewered by a postmodern “ideology of power.” Arguments for the ordination of women, said Jesuit theologian Matthew Lamb of Boston College, “tend to cast ordination as a means to attain power and status in the church in ways similar to gaining power and status in the careers and professions of liberal society.” Indeed, what neither side acknowledges is that a priest serves the church, a job that rarely commands high status. Unless, of course, he is appointed bishop- or elected to the one job in Rome where the buck used to stop.
