Essay

A House Divisive

Can a loyal Catholic theologian, in good conscience, continue to maintain his membership in the Catholic Theological Society of America?

By K.D. Whitehead

In May, 1994, Pope John Paul II issued an apostolic letter entitled Ordinatio Sacerdotalis in which he re-affirmed with unusual solemnity the Church's unbroken 2000-year-old tradition of reserving priestly ordination to men alone. In this apostolic letter, speaking in virtue of the unique ministry conferred on Peter by Christ of confirming his brethren in the faith (cf. Lk 22:32), the Holy Father said that the Church's inability to ordain women "pertained to the Church's divine constitution" and thus was a teaching "to be definitively held by all the faithful."

It is hard to imagine what stronger or plainer words the Vicar of Christ could possibly have used to make clear that, as the Church's supreme authority in the matter, he considered his judgment that this was an irrevocable teaching of the Church's ordinary magisterium to be final and unalterable. More than that, given the previous history and antecedents of this particular teaching, as well as all the prayer and reflection that John Paul II personally invested in it, to imagine that the Holy Father could possibly have reached an incorrect conclusion on this matter--that he could be wrong about the Church's inability to ordain women--would surely amount to a practical denial that the Pope's office and authority are what the Church has never ceased to maintain that they in fact are. If Ordinatio Sacerdotalis is somehow not the Church's final and unalterable judgment on this matter, then it would seem that the Church is unable to render a final judgment, and in that case the Church would not be what she nevertheless undeviatingly continues to declare herself to be.

This may sound like an unduly strong and even stark conclusion, but it is hard to see how it could be a mistaken one. At any rate the burden of proof surely lies on those who do not accept it to show that it is not a true conclusion. Either Christ established offices in the Church able to decide doctrinal matters definitively for the Church or he did not. The Church herself insists that he did (e.g., Lumen Gentium, 24-25). And when, for example, holding such an office and exercising its authority, the Roman Pontiff decides a question, and declares that he has decided it--then it is decided. Period.

Nevertheless, in a society such as ours which currently both glorifies "dissent" on principle and also uncritically accepts feminist ideology and viewpoints, usually without examination or argument, Pope John Paul's decision denying the possibility of female ordination not only did not meet with universal acceptance, even among Catholics; it became the subject of intensified debate and contestation. In fact that debate became so heated that in November, 1995, more than a year and a half after the final word was issued in Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) in Rome felt obliged to issue yet another judgment in the matter, a "Responsum" ("Response") to a stated "Dubium ("Doubt") concerning the level of Church teaching involved in the ordination question.

The CDF Responsum stated that the Pope's teaching--that the Church had no authority to ordain women to the ministerial priesthood--belongs to "the deposit of faith" and has been "constantly preserved and applied in the tradition of the Church" and "set forth infallibly by the ordinary and universal magisterium." (emphasis added) This reference to the Church's infallibility--which has not been formally invoked in an official Church document for many decades--was no doubt consciously and deliberately chosen by the CDF in this case in order to make clear that theological debate on the subject of possible female ordination was closed.

A declaration of independence?

Nevertheless, in June 1966, the leadership of the Catholic Theological Society of America (CTSA) tranquilly proceeded to issue something called a "draft study paper" which implicitly denied the Pope's judgment in this matter. This draft study paper necessarily assumed--by the fact that it was prepared and issued at all--that the question of female ordination must, in the opinion of the authors and sponsors of the paper, remain in some sense a possibility and therefore still an open question; otherwise why devote further "study" to it?

In the face of the Church's solemn official declaration to the contrary, then, this CTSA paper served to re-open the whole debate on possible female ordination which Church authority at the highest level had gone to such considerable pains to declare closed. The issuance of the paper represents a cool and calculated assertion that the CTSA can arrive at its own decisions concerning Church doctrinal questions, regardless of the pronouncements of Church authority. The CTSA has evidently in effect asserted and acted upon its own "authority," as if it were somehow superior to and trumped the Church's authority in the matter.

The CTSA draft study paper also inescapably represents--at least for those members of the organization who accept it and "study" it and take it seriously as a legitimate theological exercise--an implied declaration that they no longer consider themselves among "the Church's faithful" as the Church herself defines the latter. For the Church's faithful are now strictly obliged to "hold definitively" the teaching of Ordinatio Sacerdotalis by the terms of that document itself, whereas this paper assumes that the teaching is still open to question and their "study" still serves a useful purpose.

The CTSA draft study paper is thus, among other things, a virtual declaration of independence from Church authority on the part of this North American theological society. The paper is not presented as any sort of manifesto or defiant and inflammatory document--theses nailed to the Church door, as it were. On the contrary, it is presented as just another routine theological study paper. It is sober and moderate in tone, even pedantic; it actually includes a formal claim that the CTSA wishes "to collaborate with our bishops in furthering the mission of the Church today"--much as a Ross Perot, for example, might declare that his real aim is to "collaborate" with the Democratic and Republican Parties in furthering the mission of American democracy. What is evident behind the moderate tone, though, is a CTSA agenda flatly contrary to the agenda of the Pope and the bishops in communion with him.

A carefully measured dissent

Prepared by a task force of three CTSA theologian-members--Jon Nilson of Loyola University in Chicago, Mercy Sister Margaret Farley of the Yale Divinity School, and Jesuit Father Francis Sullivan, professor emeritus of the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome--the draft paper is described simply as a document being sent out to all CTSA members for "study." After the requisite study has been completed, and appropriate comments and suggestions from CTSA members presumably incorporated into the text, the organization will then consider whether or not to "adopt" the paper.

Thus all bets are carefully hedged for the moment; the paper is not yet an "official" position paper; protestations of "loyalty" can always be made in response to any questions raised about the whole questionable exercise; it is only a study paper, after all, not a defiant declaration that the Church can ordain women. Meanwhile the organization can carefully monitor the reaction of the Pope and bishops, if any such reaction arises.

The CTSA seems pretty confident, however, that not even the calculated impudence represented by the issuance of a paper such as this--at a time such as this--will suffice to bring the Pope and the bishops to shout "enough" and institute disciplinary measures. So this theological society apparently feels free to disregard and even contradict the bishops whenever it feels so moved.

In any case, the document does not directly challenge Pope John Paul II's Ordinatio Sacerdotalis. Instead it focuses on the CDF Responsum, and claims merely to be considering the "criteria" by which a mere CDF document might presume to be able to label a teaching as belonging to the deposit of faith; the "criteria" by which the Church can be certain that a traditional doctrine has been taught infallibly; or those by which a perennial Church practice can be established as belonging to the divine constitution of the Church.

The Curia as the scapegoat

The authors of the CTSA paper artfully cite Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger himself as one of their authorities for the notion that "Church tradition" can and should be criticized by theologians in this way. In his contribution to a commentary on the documents of the Second Vatican Council, the future cardinal and CDF prefect opined that Church tradition must indeed by considered "critically." "There is a distorting as well as a legitimate tradition," Ratzinger wrote at the time--although it is unlikely that the future cardinal would have qualified something that had just been solemnly and explicitly confirmed by a reigning pope as any kind of a "distorting tradition." But it is precisely the point and aim of this paper, of course, to brand the Church's teaching against female ordination as nothing else but such a "distorting tradition."

However, the "criteria" which the authors of the paper claim to be trying to discern have surely already been adequately laid out in Vatican Council II's Lumen Gentium. Indeed, those criteria have been laid out there with sufficient clarity to render superfluous the stated task of these CTSA authors. Nor does it change anything to post the question in terms of whether or not the CDF is competent to decide and declare the level of any Church teaching; again, Vatican II laid out quite clearly in Christus Dominus 9 that the offices of the Roman Curia properly and legitimately act for the supreme pontiff in such matters. (One might have thought that the old dodge of pretending not to be criticizing the pope by criticizing his "advisors" had long since become passé, but apparently this cannot be assumed).

In any case, the CDF Responsum does not really claim independent "authority" in its own right but merely points to a papal document in which the Holy Father has made clear in his own words that the question has been decided. How can that obvious but inconvenient fact be passed over? How can the authors of the CTSA paper justify deflecting attention from that clear papal statement, merely by raising questions about doctrinal criteria or CDF competence? Our trained theologians do not tell us.

The whole artful exercise of preparing and sending out this paper for study to the CTSA membership is thus basically dishonest; it amounts to game playing and shameless manipulation. The aim of the paper is not merely to encourage further study about the ordination; its authors and sponsors have already long since made up their minds about that question. The real point that become obvious in this exercise is that their conclusions do not coincide with the authoritative conclusions which the Church, speaking for Christ, has reached.

Feminism in control

The aim of the CTSA paper is to register continuing open dissent from the Church's decision on the part of the theological establishment, and thereby to help keep the question open until some future pope or council, per impossibile, might somehow be persuaded to reverse it.

How has the Catholic Theological Society of America reached such a pass that it has now openly, albeit if carefully and guardedly, placed itself in open rebellion against authentic Church authority? The answer to this question appears to be: because of the influence of radical feminist ideology.

As everyone knows, the influence of feminism has been simply enormous over the past couple of decades, in the Church as well as in our society. This is not the place to catalogue the enormous harm which this feminist influence has done and continues to do in both the Church and society. Suffice it to say here that the authors and sponsors of this CTSA paper evidently accept feminist dogma on faith; they accept it to such a extent that, apparently because of it, they are quite willing to jettison the established Catholic doctrine that the pope can make doctrinal decisions binding upon the faithful.

No trained Catholic theologian can really be ignorant of the Church's criteria and procedures for ascertaining and proclaiming authentic doctrine binding upon the faithful. But these theologians, evidently, reject the Church's standards in this regard and affirm instead the modern feminist dogma that equality of the sexes necessarily involves sameness. According to that latter dogma, if men are able to be ordained, then women must be able to be ordained as well; if men are called to the priestly vocation, then women must hear that same call.

Naturally, however, the study paper frames the whole question in terms of justice. The paper calls the exclusion of women from the priesthood a matter of "unjust discrimination." Or again, the authors tell us: "Many within and outside the Church deem the refusal to ordain women as a distorting tradition, even to the point of infidelity to the Gospel." Well, many do not deem it so. Should we be governed by the majority opinion? Are we now supposed to be voting on what the Gospel and Catholic doctrines are supposed to mean and be?

It seems evident here that what constitutes "the Gospel" for the authors and sponsors of the CTSA paper is not what the legitimate authority of the Church may have decided after due study, reflection, and prayer--and with the promised assistance of the Holy Spirit as well. What seems to constitute "the Gospel" here is what "many within and outside the Church," heavily influenced by the modern ideology of radical feminism, "deem" to be the case. The premises on which this judgment is based are not really those of the Gospels; rather, they are those of the dubious modern ideology of radical feminism.

In no way do the authors of the paper establish, nor could they, that exclusion from priestly ordination really is an "injustice;" they take this idea from the secular culture without attempting to argue it. If only we could persuade these scholars to examine the "distorting tradition" of radical feminism as critically as they examine the teachings of the magisterium, life might be quite different!

No longer acting as Catholics

Insofar as they effectively deny the truth and legitimacy of Pope John Paul's decision against female ordination in Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, the authors and sponsors of this draft study paper are no longer really doing Catholic theology. The members of the CTSA who respond to the organization's call to study the paper, as if it were somehow a legitimate theological exercise, are similarly no longer engaged in Catholic theology. The organization itself has now knowingly sanctioned a project and a procedure which effectively means a declaration of independence from the authority of the Church. All this may in some sense still constitute "theology," but it is not Catholic theology. For the moment this organization has transformed itself into a fraternity of academics who recognize no ecclesiastical authority outside their own circle. It rejects, precisely, the Church established by Christ.

No organization capable of preparing and issuing this draft study paper can credibly pretend to be collaborating with the bishops in furthering the mission of the Catholic Church. Rather, the CTSA has now certainly placed itself at cross purposes with the mission of the Church, as the latter has been legitimately defined by those whom Christ has placed over the Church: the Pope and the bishops.

By now perhaps the question may even have occurred to some members of the CTSA itself: How can this organization honestly go on calling itself "the Catholic Theological Society of America?" More to the point, how can any real Catholic theologians in conscience continue to belong?

K.D. Whitehead, a former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education, is co-author of Flawed Expectations: the Reception of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (Ignatius Press, 1996).