At a recent meeting in a Catholic institution, a man argued that women cannot be priests because they would be lying when consecrating the bread and wine. Since their body is female, and Jesus was male, he contended that a woman priest cannot honestly say "this is my body" and "this is my blood." Apart from the fact that those words of Eucharistic consecration refer to the body of Jesus, and not to the body of the priest, this kind of superstitious thinking would be laughable if it were not for the fact that the same kind of patriarchal mindset is destroying the planet we inhabit. The patriarchal gender ideology of male supremacy morphs to a patriarchal delusion of human supremacy over nature that is plundering natural resources worldwide. As many scholars have been convincingly arguing for more than fifty years, religious patriarchy is a source of inspiration for human behavior that assumes the planet to be a "free lunch."
When Jesus chose the twelve male apostles to represent the patriarchs of the twelve tribes of Israel, was he mandating that only males could follow them in apostolic succession? No, that would be a literalist reading of the gospel texts that is no longer credible because it emanates from the patriarchal culture and the anthropologically false sex/gender binary whereby women are "defective males."
Twenty centuries after the redemption, the patriarchal gender ideology of male headship and sex/gender binary continues to exclude women from sacramental ordination in the Catholic Church. It is time to leave behind the conflation of revealed truth and patriarchal gender ideology; it is time for the hierarchy of the Church to exemplify the redeemed "unity on diversity" of man and woman by ordaining women to the ministerial priesthood. Such "unity in diversity" extends to the entire community of creation; for humans are an integral albeit unique part of creation, not separate and superior to other species.
Theologians are notorious for insisting on unity and ignoring differences when it serves their purposes, and equally adept to making distinctions when there are none, and for the same reason. Patriarchal theologians thus insist in the original unity of man and woman in one and the same human nature, but studiously fall back on male essentialism when upholding cultural aberrations such as the exclusively male priesthood in the Catholic Church.
Ordinatio Sacerdotalis is not a dogma of the Catholic faith. It is a gagging order to suppress discussion, and an admission that we are still prisoners of patriarchal gender ideology and patriarchal theology, but apostolic succession is not dogmatically masculine. By the power of the keys, the church can and should ordain women to the ministerial priesthood. The following points for meditation are based on study of the Theology of the Body and the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
1. Jesus Christ is the Redeemer, God made flesh, not a patriarch.
2. God the Father is a person, but not a male.
3. God the Son is a person, but was not a male before the incarnation.
4. God the Holy Spirit is a person, but not a male.
5. The Trinity is a communion of persons, not a patriarchate.
6. The "Son of Man" is God made flesh, not a patriarch.
7. All men and women are fully consubstantial in one and the same human nature.
8. Bodiliness and sexuality are not simply identical.
9. Being a body-soul is more fundamental for human nature than sexuality.
10. The body is a sacrament of the entire person, but is not the entire person.
11. The priest acts in the person of Christ, not in the masculinity of Christ.
12. All men and women are ontologically homogeneous in their whole being.
13. All men and women are of the same flesh in their somatic structure.
14. The complementarity of man and woman is enabled by their consubstantiality.
15. All men and women are fully consubstantial with Jesus Christ as to his humanity.
16. For the redemption, the masculinity of Jesus is as incidental as the color of his eyes.
17. Jesus Christ is the Bread of Life, not the male of life.
18. The substance of the Eucharist is BODY, not XX or XY chromosomes.
19. The substance of the Eucharist is FLESH, not testosterone.
20. The Church is "one, holy, catholic, and apostolic," but not necessarily patriarchal.
21. Patriarchy is a disordered attachment to the supremacy of masculinity.
22. The Church is a communion of persons, not a patriarchate.
23. The Church is the body of Christ, not a woman with a male head.
24. The Virgin Mary is the "type" of the Church, not a woman with a male head.
25. The Virgin Mary precedes the sacramental economy as Mother of the Eucharist.
26. The Marian dimension of the Church precedes the apostolic dimension.
27. Apostolic succession is contingent on redeemed flesh, not on masculinity.
28. The nuptial mystery of Christ and the Church is not a patriarchal marriage.
29. Canon 1024 is an artificial contraceptive and abortifacient of female priestly vocations.
30. Catechism 1577 reduces the priesthood of the New Law to priesthood of the Old Law.
31. Catechism 1598 declares that ordaining only males is a choice, not a dogma.
32. The exclusively male priesthood makes invisible the "feminine genius" in Christ.
33. The Christian/Catholic/Orthodox faith is not intrinsically (dogmatically) patriarchal.
34. The conflation of patriarchal gender ideology and Christian doctrines is a disgrace.
35. Institutionalized ecclesiastical patriarchy is an abuse against Christ and the Church.
36. It is time to discard the patriarchal scaffolding that obscures the Catholic faith.
37. Male headship is an ancient but entirely artificial cultural custom, not natural law.
38. After the resurrection, nothing requires that apostolic succession be exclusively male.
39. The first "transubstantiation" in history happened in the Blessed Virgin Mary's body.
40. Transubstantiation can happen via women ordained to act in persona Christi.
Saint Thérèse
(1873-1897)
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"What is not assumed is not redeemed." Humanity is male and female, not male or female. For the redemption, and the sacramental economy, what really matters is the body-soul humanity of Jesus, not simply his masculinity; for the New Law, what matters is that the Word became flesh, not that Jesus is male. The Church should stop defending culturally biased doctrines and allow Christ to call women to the priesthood and the episcopate. Two thousand years aborting female vocations to ordained ministry, due to cultural inertia and a false theological anthropology, is more than enough for pastoral reasons, and also for reasons of social and ecological justice.
Pastorally, the signs of the times are crystal clear. It is increasingly self-evident that a patriarchal church cannot evangelize a post-patriarchal world. Except for rigid patriarchal regimes like the Taliban, the active participation of women at all levels of leadership and responsible authority is now commonly recognized as being for the common good. Forty reasons have been listed above to support the enhanced communion, participation, and mission of all the baptized, including women, in today's world. It is noted that the forty points proposed above for consideration are based on the Theology of the Body (natural homogeneity of human flesh, male and female; natural homogeneity of man and woman in their whole being), not in any kind of revanchist feminism. In the Catholic Tradition (with a capital T), ordained priests are "icons of Christ" because they are ordained, not because they are male.
Socially, it is not hard to discern the nefarious consequences of patriarchal gender ideologies. Irresponsible parenthood is #1. Population overshoot is enabled by surplus energy but is always latent in patriarchal societies where "manhood" is measured by the number of children a man "contributes" via one or several women. Until rather recently in presumably Christian societies, domestic violence and rape were tolerated, and guilt often attributed to "seduction" by the victims. What about slavery? Historically, it started with women in sexual servitude, and then extended to men defeated in battle. Bodies at the service of bodies. Even today, there are millions of people who are practically (if not actually) slaves, victims of patriarchal economic systems (both capitalist and socialist). Abortion is another case in point. If female vocations to the life-giving sacramental priesthood are systematically aborted because women cannot "image Christ," then why not abort when pregnancies are rationalized as undesirable for any other "legitimate" reason?
Ecologically, population overshoot is the primary driver of ecological overshoot. Climate change is already emerging as a symptom of climate injustice (the poor are the most affected) but this is just the tip of the iceberg. Air pollution (indoor and outdoor) is already causing millions of preventable deaths. Water pollution is killing people. Polluted food is killing people. Cancer rates have been increasing. Biodiversity is decreasing. Forests are burning. Agribusiness keeps pushing for more food production while millions have no access to the food produced and often wasted. Greenpeace and Extinction Rebellion are signs of hope, but the patriarchal system of industrial hegemony marches on, enabled by the power of fossil fuels but ultimately driven by the patriarchal desire for domination over the universal feminine -- Mother Nature. Economic growth has become a secular religion, a cultural idol, the golden calf. It is time to recognize that the Christian patriarchy has been a significant cultural driver of the Anthropocene.
Gender relations shape the world. What is the "sense of the faithful" when it comes to patriarchal doctrines on human sexuality? Let us pray that the forthcoming 2021-2023 synod will be more than byzantine discussions about pious platitudes within ancient patriarchal boundaries. Young people today don't believe in patriarchy as natural law, let alone divine law. A patriarchal church cannot be an effective instrument of Christian leadership in a post-patriarchal world, and it is hard to imagine that a critical mass of "ecological citizens" can emerge without the active engagement of one billion Catholics. And without ecological justice, there can be no social justice either. For a new civilization of
human solidarity, and for an integral ecology, it is time to let go of patriarchal abstractions about human sexuality. It is time to let go of our inordinate attachment to patriarchal religious doctrines that do more harm to Mother Nature than all the fossil fuels combined. Then we can become integrally pro-life, which is the essence of ecological wisdom.
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