Dear Eco,
Yes, again it fell to you to initiate our dialogue. I don’t suspect there are ideological reasons for designating who begins, but rather practical considerations. I had a number of commitments abroad during the month of September, and it’s possible the editors found you easier to reach. For my part, I’ve been formulating a question to ask you and will hold it in reserve for the next round. It’s a question I don’t have an answer to, and I find no help even in the “oracular” function that you’ve noted is often mistakenly attributed to clergymen. At best, oracular powers are the province of prophets — but prophets are sadly rare in this day and age.
The question I have in mind for you concerns the layman’s ethical foundation. I would so like to think that the men and women of this world have a clear ethical basis for their actions. And I’m convinced that many people do act honestly, at least in certain circumstances, without having a religious foundation to fall back on. Yet I cannot understand how they ultimately justify their actions.
I’ll put this line of questioning aside for the moment and reserve it for the next letter — if indeed I get to go first — and turn now to the reflections you’ve proposed on the “hot topic” of women in the clergy. You state that as a layman you respect the position of religions on the principles and problems of natural ethics, but only if this does not impose behaviors on a nonbeliever or on believers of another faith that are prohibited by the laws of the state. I am in complete agreement with you. Any external imposition of principles or religious behavior on the nonconsenting violates freedom of conscience. I’ll go even further and say that when such restraints took place in the past, in cultural circumstances different from those of today and for reasons that no longer apply, the religious body should rightly make amends.
This is the courageous position taken by John Paul II in his letter celebrating the year 2000, entitled The Approach of the Third Millennium, in which he says: “Another painful chapter which the children of the Church cannot revisit without a spirit of repentance is the acquiescence, during certain centuries in particular, to methods of intolerance and even of violence in the service of the truth. ... It is true that to judge history correctly one must give attentive consideration to the cultural conditions of the moment. . . . But extenuating circumstances do not exonerate the Church from its obligation to feel deep regret for the weakness of many of its sons. ... A lesson for the future emerges from these painful moments of the past, one that should compel every Christian to hold strictly to the golden rule set forth by the Church Court (Dignitatis humanae 1): Truth does not impose itself except by its own truth, which suffuses the mind in a simultaneous softness and strength’” (no. 35).
I would, however, like to make an important refinement to what you say regarding the “laws of the State.” I agree with the general principle that a religious body should act in accordance with the laws of the State. Conversely, the lay community does not have the right to censor a believers way of life as long as he remains within the framework of these laws. But I think (and I’m sure you’ll agree) one cannot speak of the “laws of the State” as though they were absolute and immutable. Laws express the collective conscience of the majority of the citizens and such collective conscience is subject to free exchange of dialogue and alternative proposals, behind which lies (or can lie) profound ethical conviction. For this reason it is obvious that political movements and even religious bodies can try to democratically influence the tenor of laws they find do not correspond to an ethical standard that might indeed derive from religious practice but might also be shared by all citizens. The delicate game of democracy provides for a dialectic between opinions and beliefs in the hope that such exchange will expand the collective moral conscience that is the basis of orderly cohabitation.
It is in this spirit that I welcome your “hot topic”: the denial of the priesthood to women in the Catholic Church. You correctly position the question as that of a rational layman wishing to understand why the Church approves or disapproves of certain things, though in this case it is a theological problem, not an ethical one. We are concerned here with understanding why the Catholic Church — and along with it all of the Eastern Churches, meaning all the churches that claim a two-millennium-long tradition — continue to adhere to a specific cultural practice according to which women are excluded from the priesthood.
You say you have not yet been able to find persuasive doctrinal reasons to explain this, though you respect the Church’s autonomy to decide such a delicate matter. You also express your confusion regarding the interpretation of the Scriptures, the so-called theological reasons, the symbolic reasons, right up to the biology tracts, before examining acutely certain passages of St. Thomas in which even this man of “extraordinary good sense” seems to indulge some rather inconsistent arguments.
Let’s consider each of these points with equanimity, although I will not attempt to engage in an involved discussion of the more subtle points — not because I dislike them or because I consider them superfluous, but because I fear that by doing so in this public context well lose our readers. I am already wondering if those readers not well acquainted with the Scriptures, and even less so with the writings of St. Thomas, have been able to follow all that you’ve said on the subject so far. But I am pleased that you have referred to these texts both because I am so familiar with them and because I hope it might encourage some curious readers to at least leaf through them.
Let’s start with Scripture. You first bring up a general hermeneutic principle, according to which texts are not interpreted literally or from a fundamentalist point of view, but rather by considering the time and circumstances in which they were written. I completely agree with this principle; the exigencies of fundamentalism can only lead one racing down a blind alley But I would object to your assertion that a fundamentalist would be disconcerted by the laws you cite regarding the hair and beards of priests.
You mention Ezekiel 44:20 and Leviticus (I think you are referring to Leviticus 19:27-28 and 21:5; see also Deuteronomy 14:1) to point out the contradiction that emerges from a literal interpretation of the texts: an unshorn beard for Leviticus and a short haircut for Ezekiel. To me (and to many other interpreters) it would appear that on this matter of detail (cited here only as an example) Ezekiel does not seek to contradict Leviticus. The latter is concerned with prohibiting certain rites of mourning probably of pagan origin (the text of 21:5 should be translated “do not shave the head, nor the sides of the beard, nor make incisions in the flesh” and Ezekiel is likely making reference to that same practice). I say this neither to defend fundamentalism nor to promote any particular hairstyle, but rather to demonstrate that it is not always easy to know what the Bible means in certain particular cases, nor to decide whether a given argument speaks to customs of the time or indicates a permanent condition of the people of God.
As concerns our present discussion, those who have looked to the Bible for arguments promoting the conferring of priest- hood on woman have always run up against difficulty.
What can I say about arguments that might be considered “theological,” such as your hypothesis that rice and saki might have been the elements of the Eucharist if “by some inscrutable divine plan, Christ had been incarnated in Japan”? Theology isn’t the science of possibility or of “what might have happened if. . .” Theology can only begin with the actual, historical facts about revealed truth and attempt to understand them. For example, it is indisputable that Jesus Christ chose the twelve apostles, and beginning from that fact we must determine every other form of the Church’s apostolate. This isn’t a matter of trying to find a priori reasons, but rather accepting that God communicated in a specific way and through a specific history, whose particularity still determines what we do today
I agree with you that symbolic reasoning, as it has been employed until now, is not convincing. You rightly note that Christ conferred high privileges on the women who followed him and appeared first to them after his Resurrection. In opposition to the laws of his time, Christ offered distinct messages concerning the equality of the sexes. All of this is a given fact from which the Church must, in time, draw useful lessons, for we cannot think we have already taken all the strength we can from these operative principles. And any archaic biological argument has certainly long been obsolete.
This is also the reason why even St. Thomas, who was a man committed to doctrine as much as a man of enormous common sense, yet who could not move beyond the scientific conceptions nor intellectual habits of his time, was not able to propose arguments that would be persuasive to us today. I will not follow up on your subtle analysis of various passages of the Summa, not because I don’t find it interesting but — again — because I fear our readers won’t follow. Nonetheless your analysis demonstrates that St. Thomas was somewhat conflicted by diverging principles, and strained to find reasons for the Church’s practice although aware himself that he was not entirely convincing. The principle “sexus masculinus est nobilior quam feminus” [the male sex is more noble than the female] (Summa III, 31, 4, ad primum) was a stumbling block, and on one hand he accepted it as evident in his own time, and on the other contrasted it with the privileges Christ and the Church accorded to women. To us, this principle belongs to the past and that is why any theological reasoning derived from it is invalid.
But, you will ask me, what does this all add up to? A very simple and very important thing: a Church practice that is profoundly rooted in tradition, and that has not really been deviated from through two millennia of history, is linked not solely to abstract or a priori reasoning but to something that maintains its own mystery. The fact that many of the reasons gathered over the centuries justifying why the priesthood is accorded only to men have lost their validity today, while the practice itself endures forcefully (think of the crisis provoked by the inverse practice, outside the Catholic Church, in the Anglican communion), tells us that we are up against not merely human reason but the Church’s desire not to betray those redemptive events that gave rise to it and that derive not from human thought but from the very will of God.
Our pontiff is deeply concerned with two important consequences of this. On one hand, the role and presence of women in all aspects of Church life and society must be realized, far beyond the degree to which it has been previously. On the other hand, our understanding of the nature of the priesthood and ordained ministers must be more profound than ever before. Permit me here to cite some very important words from Vatican II: “Our comprehension of things as well as received words is growing, either through the reflection and study of believers who mediate upon them with their hearts (see Luke 2:19 and 2:51), or through the experience conferred by a deeper knowledge of spiritual things, or through the teachings of those who by episcopal succession have received the power of truth. Over the course of centuries the Church has tended continuously toward the fulfillment of divine truth, until the words of God come to be realized through it” (Dei Verbum no. 8).
The Church recognizes therefore that it has not yet attained full understanding of the mysteries it lives and celebrates, but looks with confidence to a future that will permit it to live the fulfillment, not of the simple expectations or desires of humans, but of the promises of God himself. Along this journey, it will not deviate from the practice or example of Jesus Christ; for only by remaining completely faithful to him in exemplary fashion will it comprehend the implications of the liberation that, as St. Thomas reminds us (by citing St. Augustine), in utroque sexu debuit apparere: “It was ordained that the Son of God should receive his body from a woman . . . for thus was all human nature ennobled. This is why Augustine says, The liberation of man must manifest itself in both sexes’” (Summa, III, 31, 4).
Carlo Maria Martini