ARTICLE

Any in-depth reflection on recent discussions of women's ordination will show that the issue is not at the periphery of Catholic belief. It is, indeed, central. It is connected to the sacral character of priests, the sacral character of sex, and the depth of gender differences in persons. It is connected to the Real Presence of Jesus in the Holy Eucharist; to the nature of revelation, of faith, and of the teaching authority of the Church. It also touches freedom of conscience, especially as regards religious belief. It is no wonder, then, that feminist theologians who were ardent proponents of women's ordination have moved on from that issue to the nature of worship and of God himself, thus taking the question to its deepest roots. The most recent papal document on the topic, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, recognizes these deep roots, stating once again that the reservation of ordained priesthood to men is decreed by God, taken up by Christ, given by him to the Apostles, and accepted from them by the Church. To change it would be to reject God.

The current Holy Father's theology of the body explains the connection between the Holy Eucharist and gender. It is rooted in the anthropology that is one of the major contributions of St. Thomas Aquinas to the Church, the hylemorphic view of the union between mind and body, spirit and matter, in each human person. A Platonic/Cartesian view identifies a person with his mind or spirit - in Plato's famous statement, "A man is a soul using a body." Modern materialism, on the other hand, has recently gone so far as to reduce biology to chemistry, and chemistry to physics, so that nothing exists in nature except particles of matter and their spatial arrangements. There is no soul, mind, or spirit. A man is just his body. As a minor 17th century philosopher put it, "The brain secretes thoughts just as the liver secretes bile."

Both of these seemingly opposite views biologize sex and gender and deny them any personal value. For a Platonist, personal life is wholly in the soul. To the extent that gender, sexual feelings, and sexual actions are relevant at all to the life of the person, they are detrimental to it. Modern materialism, on the other hand, denies any personal value to these physical aspects of our lives by denying personhood altogether.

The Thomistic Personalism of Pope John Paul II sees both matter and spirit, soul and body, as components of a single substance, the individual human person. In Aristotle's famous phrase, a man is "either a besouled body or an embodied soul." Matter and spirit intimately and deeply affect each other, so intimately that our very being as persons is conditioned by natural gender differences. Sexual desires and actions are an integral part of the spiritual activities of thinking and choosing by which we determine our very selves as persons. Sex and gender are thus personal, not merely biological. Nothing about us is merely biological, and nothing is merely personal. We are matter and spirit in all that we do and all that we are.

Gender Difference

It follows, then, that gender is a deep difference among us, not a superficial one like eye color or ability to play the guitar. The depth of the difference is evident in the story of our creation in Genesis. The first earthling (a generic term in the Hebrew) was superior to all the rest of creation in his ability to name the animals. He was commanded to subdue the earth. But in his superiority, he was alone, and that solitude was not good. He needed a helper like himself The second earthling (still the generic term) was his equal, yet not his clone. She was as different from him as anyone could be and still be his equal - his sexual opposite. He greeted her with the joyous cry, "Here at last is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh." That cry signalled what later came to be called the analogy of human nature in the two sexes. Men and women are equal but different, different but equal. We are equal in our human dignity, human rights, and human obligations. But we differ - differ significantly, personally -in our equality.

Gender thus pervades our personal identities. Metabolism, the fundamental process of our biological life, is gender-specific. Every weight-control program allows men hundreds of calories more each day than women of the same height and weight. Moreover, being male or female is not just a feature of our genitalia. Sexual differentiation marks every cell of our bodies, so that a trained biologist can take a cell from any part of a person's body - bone, liver, or, more importantly, brain - and tell whether it came from a male or female body. The brain, though, is our organ of perception. Brain cells, and the sex hormones which constantly bathe them, are gender-specific. Thus men and women perceive reality somewhat differently at the most basic level of seeing, hearing, and touching. The rest of our psychological life is built on these perceptions. And so, abstract thinking, reasoning, deciding, and choosing are all gender-specific as well. Men and women perceive, think, choose, and love somewhat differently.

Thinking, choosing, and loving make up our moral lives, in which we determine our very selves as persons. Thanks to our moral choices, we will either miss or attain our final destiny as persons. And our self-determination is all about love, the love of the two great commandments: "Love the Lord your God with your whole heart, your whole soul, your whole mind, and your whole strength. And love your neighbor as yourself." Jesus assured us that if we keep these commandments, he and his Father will come and live in us. He, indeed, came to be a man so that we might have that life, the life of the Holy Trinity, and have it abundantly. Love and life, then, are gender specific, not gender neutral. Gender is at the heart, the foundation, of Catholic life.

Biology certainly is not our destiny. But it does condition every aspect of our daily journey towards it, from digestion and excretion to participating in the Holy Eucharist. The feminist agenda is completely fundamental.

Gender and Catholic Art

One group of Catholic artists knew this now forgotten importance of gender, and knew its religious significance. They are the subject of a neglected work in the history of art, Leo Steinberg's The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion (Pantheon, 1983). In this lavishly illustrated book, which has an astonishing ring of truth to it, Steinberg takes account of several hundred paintings by Catholic artists which make the erect penis of our Lord Jesus Christ their focal point. Many of these are familiar to us from popular Christmas cards. They pointedly show the newborn, long-awaited Savior of mankind naked, on that "cold winter's night, that was so deep," while everyone else in the picture is dressed for the weather. He is, moreover, posed for an obvious display of his anatomically correct genitalia. The eyes of all are drawn there by the gestures of some of the observers -often his mother. Other paintings, reliefs, and sculptures show the adult Christ, while dead on the cross, with his penis flaccid. But risen, and/or ascended to his Father, he displays an obvious and glorious erection. Easter sermons preached at the Vatican during this same period contain similar references, such as puns about the flesh rising.

Steinberg wonders what to make of these artistic facts. His thesis is certainly not, as one student shouted at me when I tried to teach it to a class, "Just what you'd expect of a Jew - a pornographic Christ." His viewpoint is entirely historical and objective, even restrained. Having learned that during the period of the art in question, the humanity of Christ was being challenged by theologians, he concludes that, contrary to the usual Renaissance naturalism, the artists were making a religious statement. It was to the effect that, "Yes, he really did have what it takes to generate new life in human beings, and it was functional." In other words, God really did become a man. He didn't just pretend to do so, or appear to do so. Nor did he do so in some Platonic or Cartesian fashion, becoming a soul who found a body a useful instrument for a time, and then discarded it once the task of redemption was done. His male body is, for all eternity, part of his very identity as the God-man. His life-giving love for mankind was - is - gender-specific. For Jesus' gender is as central to his human identity as our gender is to us.

The illustration accompanying this essay tells us in artistic fashion that the Eucharist, which is fundamental to our Catholic life, is gender-specific. The Holy Eucharist is gender-specific because the human nature of its Priest and Victim, Jesus Christ, like any other human nature, is gendered. The drawing shows Jesus in the moment of his deepest abjection and most complete self-emptying, self-giving love, his free acceptance of his death. His dying was his choice. It was not the physical violence done to him by others - though that, of course, was essential. It was "a death he freely accepted," as we say in the Mass. He chose to love, to love his Father and, out of that love, to love us sinners "to the end." The artist tells us that Jesus, in the exact moment of the utter depth of his love, also reached the highest pitch of his desire to generate new human life. And that moment of most intense desire was also the moment of his fullest potency to do just what he desired. He wanted to, was able to, and did offer new life to sinners, even those who were then most directly causing his abjection. It was the Eucharistic moment. And it was as gender-specific, as sexual, as any moment of a man's life could be.

But the moment was not just a moment, soon over and done with, never to be done again. In fact, Jesus had anticipated it at the Last Supper, when he gave his Body and Blood to the Apostles, along with the command to "Do this in memory of me." In the centuries since, priests have done so, and still do. But their doing is not a repetition or renewal of the original Eucharistic moment. Nor is the action of Jesus mimicked, imitated, or represented in each Mass. His action was a unique and unrepeatable event, as is every human action. It cannot happen again. Nor is a priest "another Christ." He acts in the Person of Christ. But no one can be someone else. Rather, the unique human and divine love of Christ, freely accepting his death, continues even now, always and everywhere present. He has never taken it back. It is perpetual in him, as the human love of his risen Sacred Heart. And it is eternal in his divine will, the will of the Son, Second Person of the Blessed Trinity.

Sacramental Symbols, Gender and the Eucharist

What, then, does happen in the Mass? Quite simply, the perpetual masculine love of the God-man comes to be sacramentally present to us, in our time and place. In his omnipresent, eternal reality, he is not usually visible, tangible, or audible to us humans. In the Eucharist, he becomes just that - perceptible to our senses under the visible, audible, tangible features of bread and wine. The always-and-everywhere presence of Jesus, both God and man, is then real. But it is not a new presence. It is a new symbolizing, in a given time and place, of his constant presence.

Our seven sacramental symbols, however, have a special character. They are not just symbols. Each causes the reality that it symbolizes, and causes it precisely in and through symbolizing it. Hence the importance of the correct "matter" of each of our seven sacraments. For if the symbol is not accurate, the causality fails. The sacrament does not happen. Absent the symbol, absent the cause. And absent the cause, absent its effect. In a baptism, for example, we must use water or something close to it (say, weak tea, in an emergency), in order to accurately symbolize cleansing. Otherwise there will be no real cleansing from original sin. Were we to pour, say, used crank-case oil on a baby and say "I baptize you," nothing real would happen as far as sacramental cleansing is concerned. The baby would not be baptized. Even so, bread and wine must be used in the Eucharist, to accurately symbolize the body and blood of Christ. Were someone to say the words of consecration over, say, some poisonous substances, nothing real would happen as regards the Eucharistic presence of Christ. He would not, by the words of consecration, cause in us the new life he so ardently, and so potently, desires to give us. Absent the symbol, absent the cause. Absent the cause, absent its effect.

In the Mass, though, just as at the Last Supper, there is a second sacramental, symbolic but Real Presence of Christ in the person of the priest. At the Last Supper, Jesus was really present on the table, in the transformed substances that retained the appearances of bread and wine. But he was also really present as person, reclining at the table, his human and divine wills there loving his Father, freely accepting his death for us, loving us while we were still in our sins. Even so, in each Mass, there is a second Real Presence of Christ in the person of the priest who acts in the person of Christ. For he, too, is a sacrament - "matter" that has been transformed into a symbol that has the power to cause what it symbolizes, in and through accurately symbolizing it. The priest becomes, along with the bread and wine, a second location, in a given time and place, of the love of the Son for his Father.

The inability of the Church to ordain women lies right here, in the sacramental character of the Catholic priesthood. For our priests are not ministers - not just ministers, anyway. Much of what men do by way of ministry is doable by women, and to arbitrarily exclude women from ministry of this kind is indeed unjust, sexist, sinful, and wrong. Moreover, there is no problem about women being Protestant ministers. For ministry, whether Catholic, Protestant, or secular, is not a sacrament. Ministry is not gender-specific, and ministers are not sacred as God-given symbols that must cause what they symbolize in and through accurately symbolizing it.

But Catholic priests are sacraments. And so, candidates for ordination to the Catholic priesthood must be, in their very persons, valid matter, matter which can accurately symbolize the perpetually masculine love of the God-man for his Father. Priests do not have to be Jewish carpenters, or have blue eyes, or be able to play the guitar. These differences among people are superficial, peripheral to the spiritual life. But priests must be men, for gender is a deep, central difference among people. Ideally priests will have in their hearts the very same love for every man, woman, and child, that activates the potency and intense desire of our Lord and Savior to give us new life. But such love is not necessary to the sacramental symbol. Sinful priests can say valid Masses. All that the priest needs to provide is an embodied soul/besouled body in whom the masculine love of Christ might become sacramentally present. Women, with a different gender at the center of our personal identities, cannot be such sacramental matter. A bishop might, then, say the words of ordination over a woman. But nothing real would happen. The woman might say the words of a Mass. But nothing real would happen. And the reason would be the same in both cases: absent the symbol, absent the cause; and absent the cause, absent its effect.

According to a maxim of the Scholastics (not lacking in common sense, either), when something is received into something else, it is conditioned by the features of that into which it is received. Love is thus conditioned by the gender of the person in whose heart it exists. Masculine love cannot exist in a feminine heart. Women can do many other wonderful things. We can, indeed, through achieving feminine holiness do something better than being counterfeit priests. Canonized women are role models for those who do validly celebrate the Eucharist in the person of Christ. There is no injustice in reserving the ordained priesthood to men, then - only Catholic sacramental realism.

The Eucharist and Marital Love

Ludwig Krug's drawing portrays another aspect of that realism, and once again, gender is basic to the Eucharist. Pope John Paul II rightly refers to the Eucharist as the source of the Sacrament of Matrimony, which in turn is the source of families and, through families, of the Civilization of Love. There is, indeed, a most intimate connection between the Sacrament of Matrimony and the Eucharist. Jesus' love is the love of a Bridegroom for his Bride. The Mass itself, as his continuing free acceptance of his death, is a marital act. Indeed, it is the marital act of all marital acts. Unlike other references to the relation of Christ to the Church, such as Shepherd to sheep, King to subjects, and so on, the Bridegroom-to-Bride reference is primary and non-figurative. It is not a metaphor, but a literal statement that Jesus' love for us is marital. It is, of course, not sexual, not reproductive in a physical way. But the fact of divine marital love tells us something about the core essence of human marital love. Like our Lord's love for us, human marital love must be completely self-giving, free of any self-seeking - it must be unconditional, gratuitous, faithful, permanent, and given to no rivals.

Matrimony, then, as a sacrament, is a causal symbol of that primary, divine marital love. And human marital love is sexual. In fact, sexual intercourse is integral to the sacramental symbol. Those unfortunates who are impotent cannot marry. Couples who have said their vows but not yet consummated them do not yet have a fully ratified, sacramental marriage. They can have their marriage dissolved. And despite the craziness regarding human sexuality that pervades our present culture, the human marital relationship, which is a sacrament of God's love for us, must have partners of opposite sexes.

Thus heterosexual love is sacred, made so by God in the beginning. It has been made a causal symbol, a sacrament that causes what it symbolizes, precisely by symbolizing it. It becomes truly causal, then, when it is an accurate symbol of the divine marital love of Christ and his Church. And that love reaches its high point in Jesus' free acceptance of his death, the acceptance that is sacramentally enacted in the Eucharist. Catholic spouses find their love-making truly sacramental when they carry in their hearts the same love that Jesus carries in his Sacred Heart. That love is his free acceptance of his death, sacramentally symbolized in the Eucharist. Thus sacramental sex is one of our seven privileged ways, along with Baptism, Eucharist and Holy Orders, of participating in the inner life of the Three Divine Persons. And it is sacramental precisely as participating in the divine marital love enacted in the Eucharist.

God, being a Spirit, transcends sex and gender, and so God's love is not in any way sexual. The human love of Jesus, moreover, was, and still is, celibate. Yet sex is central to the human symbolizing of such love. The reason has been made clear by Pope John Paul II in his sexual ethics, especially in Love and Responsibility (written nearly a decade before Humanae Vitae, when he was a professor of ethics at the University of Lublin).

For the then Professor Wojtyla, the sex act is an item of body-language that naturally expresses the nuptial meaning of the bodies which enact it. It is, indeed, a natural symbol of the exchange of complete self-giving love. In the moment of sexual release, spouses give over to each other the two features of their psychology by which they have the dignity of being persons. That is, they eagerly yield to each other their self-awareness and, with it, their self-control. They fairly shout to each other, in a clear and dramatic symbolic action, "Take me, I'm all yours, I'm holding nothing back. Do with me what you will, from now on." Their body-language re-states their marriage vows. Moreover, it is no mere coincidence that the moment of self-giving ecstasy comes precisely through the activation of reproductive systems (rather than, say, digestive systems) and may move germs cells closer together so that a new little person might begin to be. The spouses thus make a statement not just to each other but to the child that may result. As a couple they promise him or her their permanent and faithful self-giving love as well. Thus is Matrimony the fons et origo of families. The marriage-act, as ecstatic, unitive, and life-producing, symbolizes in us the eternal, omnipresent, but invisible, intangible love by which our Lord freely accepts his death. An accurate symbol causes what it symbolizes.

The sacramental realism of sexual love grounds the entire sexual ethics of the Church. In Love and Responsibility, we find basic principles that limit morally right (which is but another way of saying "sacramentally efficacious") sexual activity to the loving intercourse of spouses that is open to the possibility of new life. Any other kind of sexual activity, even non-contraceptive intercourse of spouses that is selfishly motivated, violates the sacramental symbol. Thus masturbation, pre-marital sex, contraception, adultery, incest, pedophilia, and sodomy are all wrong. Even the more recent techniques for artificial reproduction, for which we might be tempted to have some sympathy, are wrong. And all are wrong for the same reason: they are fundamentally sacrilegious. They distort the content of a sacramental symbol, and thus empty it of any causal efficacy.

None of these actions can bring divine marital love into our hearts, thus allowing Jesus to give us the new life he so urgently wants to generate in us. For his potency awaits our informed consent. Nor can distorted sexual actions reveal for others the depth of divine marital love for us all. They are the exact equivalents of pouring crank-case oil on a baby in a sham baptism, of using poisonous substances as "matter" for a pseudo-Eucharist. They are like a bishop's speaking the words of ordination over a woman, or a woman's going through the motions of saying a Mass. Absent the symbol, absent the cause. And absent the cause, absent its effect.

Gender, then, is personal, not just biological. And personal life, being gender-specific, is biological. The masculine love of Christ for us sinners, potent for and desirous of giving us life in abundance, comes to us first and foremost in the Eucharist. There in his Real Presence he pours out his life for us. But he is really present in other ways, too, notably in priests and in families, the Sacraments of Holy Orders and Matrimony. Recent polls, confirmed by an abundance of anecdotal evidence, show that Catholics in America are divided almost 50/50 on whether to believe in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. Those who do not believe take the Eucharist to be a mere symbol, not the reality that it signifies. In many cases the disbelief is quite sincere, not a matter of dissent. Many who hold the "merely symbolic" view are priests who have been mis-educated and lay people, including Eucharistic ministers, who are victims of the collapse of catechesis in the past 30 years.

But this widespread disbelief is a fundamental tragedy in the life of the Church. For without the Real Presence, we also lose sacramental sex as the foundation of family life and, ultimately, of the Civilization of Love. It is no accident that the decline of belief in the Real Presence has coincided with the confusion over gender and the collapse of sexual morality in our culture, for these are intimately connected. If the Holy Eucharist is the Real Presence of the marital love of Christ, so that he generates new life in us by his loving acceptance of his death, then sex is sacramental. But if not, then not. And if not, we are the most wretched of men.

Mary Rousseau is professor of philosophy at Marquette University and a frequent speaker on college and seminary campuses around the country.