Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies Volume 18 Article 5 January 2005 "Can Women Become Priests?": A Catholic Feminist Perspective Susan A. Ross Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/jhcs Part of the Religion Commons Recommended Citation Ross, Susan A. (2005) ""Can Women Become Priests?": A Catholic Feminist Perspective," Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies: Vol. 18, Article 5. Available at: https://doi.org/10.7825/2164-6279.1338 The Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies is a publication of the Society for Hindu-Christian Studies. The digital version is made available by Digital Commons @ Butler University. For questions about the Journal or the Society, please contact [email protected]. For more information about Digital Commons @ Butler University, please contact [email protected]. Ross: "Can Women Become Priests?": A Catholic Feminist Perspective "Can Women Become Priests?" A Catholic Feminist Perspective Susan A. Ross Loyola University Chicago CAN women become priests? The answer to surrounding this question. this question depends on whom you ask. The ordination of women is not an For many Protestants, the answer is both yes issue unique to the present day. Questions and no. The only priest is Jesus Christ and regarding women's leadership in the all Christians share in that priesthood. As Christian Church have been around since its Luther wrote, we are all priests to one origins and, in the thirteenth century, another, but there is no special ministry of Thomas Aquinas and others considered the priesthood that makes one person distinct issue.4 But the ordination of women has from others. l There are pastors, people who . become much more pressing for Catholics in are called to' preach and lead worship, but particular in the last decades of the twentieth they are not priests. Luth~r, of course, did century and into the twenty-first due to the not consider women able to be pastors, but advent of the second wave of feminism and his followers (at least the non-Wisconsin or the ordination of women in many Protestant non-Missouri Synod ones) have thought and Jewish traditions. Although the otherwise.2 But. they are not "priests." For Vatican's 1976 Declaration on the Question an Episcopalian who considers hiin or of Admission of Women to the Ministerial herself in union with the American and Priesthood (Inter Ins ign iares ) gave _ a Anglican communions, the answer is yes, negative answer to the question, and although this issue has been a very divisive although this answer· has been repeatedly one within the denomination. At least three reaffirmed. by later Vatican documents, dioceses within the American Episcopal particularly Ordinatia Sacerdatalis (1994), a Church do not think this question can be majoritY of U.S. Roman Catholics supports answered affirmatively. Indeed, a number of the ordination of women~ The question former Episcopal priests have become remains very much alive in the early years Roman Catholic priests, largely because of ". of the twenty-first century. Some historical their opposition to women's ordination.3 But background is in order to give context to this then the Roman Catholic Church does not question. recognize the priesthood of the Anglican Communion. I will not address here the Historical Background issue of the Orthodox priesthood, which deserves a separate discussion. These are The question of women's ecclesial just a few of the complicating issues leadership (the meaning of the term Susan A. Ross is Professor of Theology at Loyola University Chicago, where she has taught since 1985. She is the author of Extravagant Affections: A Feminist Sacramental Theology (New York: Continuum, 1998), the co-editor (with Maureen A. Tilley) of Broken and Whole: Essays on Religion and the Body (University Press of America, 1995), and author of over 50 journal articles md book chapters on such topics as sexuality, feminist ethics, women and the sacraments, and embodiment. She is at work on anew book on women, beauty, and justice. She teaches in the areas of Christian Ethics and Constructive Theology and was named a Loyola Faculty Scholar in 2001. Journal ofHindu-Christian Studies 18 (2005) 3-9 Published by Digital Commons @ Butler University, 2005 1 Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies, Vol. 18 [2005], Art. 5 4 Susan A. Ross "ordination" was relatively unclear until the century, Thomas Aquinas considered the later middle ages) was raised as early as the issue and concluded, on the basis of his New Testament. The statements of Paul and theological anthropology, that women could the Pastoral. Epistles, some of which reject not receive the sacrament of Holy Orders outright women's leadership, seem to since they lacked "eminence of degree" indicate by their prohibitions that women (Summa Theologiae Suppl. Q. 39, a. 1). exercised some forms of leadership in the That is to say, Aquinas understood the early church. What this form of leadership person to be made up of form (soul) and actually was remains somewhat unclear. matter (body). For women, their inferior Some feminist theologians and historians form meant that they were incapable of have argued that women did exercise receiving the sacrament. This conclusion, leadership at table (e.g., Karen Jo Torjesen's based on women's ontological inferiority, When Women Were Priests and Elisabeth for many centuries remained a benchmark Schussler Fiorenza's In Memory_of Heri position on the issue. while others have been more reluctant to The Protestant Reformation shifted attribute official church leadership roles to the issue of ordination in a very significant women (e.g.,Teresa Berger's Women's Ways way, although the implications of this shift of Worship). 6 Part of the difficulty in would not be felt for at least three more assessing women's roles in the early church centuries. Martin Luther, with his principle is that the meaning of particular terms of "sola scriptura" (the Bible alone) argued ("orders," "deacons") has changed over that the only valid sacraments were those time. But there seems to be strong evidence that Jesus clearly instituted in the Gospels. that women held some sort of leadership For Luther, and' subsequently for other roles and that some women were designated Protestant traditions, only Baptism and the "widows," "virgins," and "deaconesses" in Lord's Supper (the Eucharist) clearly met s some official capacity. Sinc~ the earliest this criterion. The sole priesthood was that Christian worship was in the home, Teresa of Jesus, as evidenced in the Letter to the Berger has suggested, it is likely that women Hebrews. Luther's own conception of were included in the church's worship. ordained ministry, which was grounded in Other factors, such as social class· and New Testament models of ministry and customs regarding the separation of men and leadership, explicitly rejected the Roman women, were likely also part of the picture. hierarchical model, and his conception of By the early fifth century, however, it is vocation' expanded to include the likely that women were not included in the "priesthood of all believers." Some class of "leaders" of the church and did not Christians were called to church leadership, . preside at Eucharist. but all baptized Christians shared in the The medieval historian Gary Macy priesthood of Christ. Thus children and has explored the question of the ordination parents were priests to each other as were of women in the middle. ages. Macy argues wives and husbands. Despite this expanded that there is clear historical evidence that understanding of vocation, Luther believed women were 'iordained" to various that women's true vocation was m ministries in the medieval church motherhood. (deaconesses, abbesses, canonesses) and that The leadership of women became a these ministries had liturgical implications: reality in the Shaker and Quaker traditions. for example, abbesses heard the confessions For Shakers, Christ's revelation was 'not of the nuns in their communities. But Macy complete until it was also in the form of a also argues that the 'meaning of the term woman, which is how Ann Lee, the Shakers' "orders" remained somewhat fluid until the founder, understood herself. For Quakers, thirteenth century, and the connection of all shared in a common ministry; women orders with sacramental ministry was also a had been affirmed as spiritual leaders in the later developm~nt. 7 Later in the thirteenth tradition since the seventeenth century. The https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/jhcs/vol18/iss1/5 DOI: 10.7825/2164-6279.1338 2 ) Ross: "Can Women Become Priests?": A Catholic Feminist Perspective Can Women Become Priests? 5 question of women as preachers became an either to support or to deny the ordination of issue in the eighteenth and nineteenth women. The declaration itself centuries as various spiritual movements acknowledged this point. It also argued that (e.g., the two Great Awakenings) the tradition had never authorized the empowered women as well as men. 9 ordination of women. But since historical In 1854, a significant step was taken precedent was not a sufficient argument with the ordination of Antoinette Brown by against women's ordination, another key the Congregational Church, and over the point in the declaration's argument was the next 125 years the mainstream Protestant significance of "sacramental symbolism." traditions began to ordain women. According to this line of thought, because Presbyterians began ordaining women in the "Christ was and remains a male," it is 1950s and the mainline Lutheran churches important for the faithful to recognize in the did so in 1970. In 1974, another significant priest a resemblance to Christ.l! Further,' step was taken when eleven Episcopal because sexuality has ontological women were "irregularly" ordained by three significance - that is; sexuality is at the retired Episcopalian bishops. They thus core of one's being - Christ's maleness forced the Episcopal Church in the u.s.