A way forward for us Catholics?
[Online version updated December 2022, though I haven't tried to
integrate it with what happened at our Plenary Council.]
Dr Virginia Miller, "A Ministry of Mary? The Question of the Ordination of Women Revisited in Light of the Theology of Complementarity", Chapter 14, pages 181-197, of the collection Leaning into the Spirit: Ecumenical Perspectives on Discernment and Decision-Making in the Church, edited by Dr. Virginia Miller, The Most Rev'd Sir David Moxon and The Rt. Rev'd Prof. Stephen Pickard (Palgrave, Macmillan, Cham, Switzerland, November 2019). Reviewed by Gregory Moses.
This is one of the articles that I read as part of my Coronavirus reading list. I would like to give a review of the article. And then, writing this time as a sometime parish priest, I would like to share with the readers of The Swag some thoughts provoked by the content of the article.
Dr Virginia Miller is an Anglican theologian and Biblical scholar based in the Centre for Public and Contextual Theology, Charles Sturt University, Canberra. The collection of which it is Chapter 14 is a publication coming out of papers delivered at the Fourth International Conference on Receptive Ecumenism held in Canberra in November 2017, but somewhat edited with some extra bits. The book was launched also in Canberra in February this year by Archbishop Christopher Prowse, who made what seemed to me to be favourable comments on this very paper. Hopefully the collection is or will be soon available in good theological libraries.
Dr Miller has recently (2016) written a book arguing that women can achieve equality in the Church by means of ordination. In this article or chapter, in what is obviously an ecumenical outreach to us Catholics knowing our situation, she makes use of a psychological model developed in the previous work in relation to the notion of Complementarity, different but equal. "The general finding of this article is that women can also achieve equality in the Church without the possibility of ordination. This finding is important in terms of ecumenism, given that the ordination of women has stalled ecumenical progress" in so far as the Catholic Church refuses to ordain women (p. 181).
Dr Miller firstly acknowledges that in theory or verbally at least the Catholic Church is committed to ensuring that justice is done to women in the Church. On the other hand, as she strongly argues, in concrete fact, our governance and liturgical performances and all kinds of other things in our present lives as church, contribute strongly to a core unconscious apprehension of the world which thoroughly undermines what might be our best intentions.
On the other hand, while she has little trouble (in my opinion) in demonstrating that in concrete everyday fact we are not doing justice to women in our present Catholic Church, she does think there is something to be said for the Theology of Complementarity. I think so too. I think our 'progressives' themselves are not entirely consistent about this. For example, when people argue that there should be more women on boards of companies and corporations on the grounds that statically and overall the board as a whole is likely to have gifts that it wouldn't otherwise have. This is Complementarity.
So what to do? Many people in the Church, including the Catholic Church, believe that justice for women will be realised with the ordination of women. On the other hand this seems to have been comprehensively ruled out. Dr Miller notes two main arguments used in justification: firstly that Jesus chose only male Apostles; and secondly, a priest, as in persona Christi, must have a natural resemblance to Christ, who in fact was a man.
I have always thought both arguments were rather silly. Among my old Banyo Seminary colleagues I am noted for my spontaneous response, What would Jesus have had to have been if he wanted both?! Given her previous book Dr Miller probably thinks so too. But for the sake of ecumenical outreach she seems to be prepared to let the arguments go though to the keeper. For my reflections I will do that also.
If we really are committed to doing justice for women in our Church, then, the only way forward is to find new roles for women which, though different and complementary, are in every way equal, not just theoretically but symbolically, visibly, and visible to people's unconscious apprehension, all the little and sometimes big cues, as well as to the conscious gaze.
By way of suggestions for how this might be done, she thinks that a new role for women in our Church that is both just and grace filled might best be modelled on the role of Mother Mary. She then goes on to sketch briefly something of how a ministry of women modelled on the role of Mary, firstly in our Liturgical life, and then in our Pastoral life, might look, before concluding with some reflections on what significance doing something like this in the Catholic Church might have for the Ecumenical Church.
Before I finish the review part of this paper: not long after reading the article but unconnected to it, just another item on my Coronavirus isolation reading list, I happened to be reading the text of Pope Francis' response to the Amazon Synod, Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation "Querida Amazonia". Imagine my surprise to discover some paragraphs towards the end which would seem to indicate that Pope Francis might be on the same page?! See particularly paragraphs 99-103, under the heading The strength and gift of women. Read it for yourself, see what you think. Of course, neither Dr Miller nor Pope Francis can be held responsible for the thoughts provoked in me by the article, which I go on to express below!
[December 2022: even more interesting might be Pope Francis'
recent interview with America Magazine published
online November 28, 2022, in which Pope Francis distinguishes
between what he calls the Petrine principle, which rules
out ordained ministry for women probably on the typical grounds
mentioned above, and what he calls the Marian principle, reflecting
the spousal nature of the Church "where the Church sees a mirror
of herself because she is a woman and a spouse". Francis
then went on to note that the theology of the Marian principle is
unfortunately not well developed and needs to be developed
further. In this context, maybe Dr Miller is precisely doing
some of this necessary theological work for us! Francis also
distinguishes a third way, the administrative way, which
is open equally to men and women, and which Francis has recently
used in order to bring numbers of women into the Vatican
bureaucracy.]
So probably well worth a read if you can get a hold of it. And possibly something that might be fed into the deliberations of our Plenary Council?
The thoughts I would like to share are provoked by the article as a whole but particularly by a paragraph on page 193 on liturgical roles. Let me quote this at some length:
"Therefore, it would seem that women must be included in the Mass, but in what manner can they be incorporated into this liturgical celebration, in a way that is equal in dignity and truly represents the ministry of women in the Gospels? It could be that the representative of Mary walks alongside the representative of Christ, speaks in the service and is equally attentive to the Eucharist - however this may be interpreted. It is important to keep in mind that this role must not do an injustice to women, so the role cannot reinforce the patriarchal idea that women are inferior to men. The sense of inferiority is not reduced by the visible representation of women as readers or altar servers, or even as ordained deaconesses as these roles are not central to the Eucharistic celebration, or in the case of ordained deaconesses they are lower in the hierarchy of the Church..."
Firstly though a bit of logic. If you really think, Christ was a he, so anyone acting in persona Christi has to be a he, then by parity of reasoning you should also accept The Church is a she, so anyone acting in persona ecclesiae has to be a she. I think it is more than a parity of reasoning argument. I think it is an a fortiori argument. It is not by roles typical of adult males like being a human husband or a human father that Jesus redeems us, but as a human being, one like us. This is implicit in the Creed, in the use of the Latin word homo and in the parallelism between the propter homines and the et homo factus est. As our Canonists know very well, Latin has a perfectly good word for adult male human being, and any ambiguity that might still remain is taken away by the parallelism. On the other hand the roles performed by Holy Mother Church, like the roles of Holy Mother Mary on whom the church is modeled, are intrinsically feminine.
On the other hand I admit that I am being a bit playful, particularly as you already know what I think of the first argument Christ was a he etc. ("rather silly"). Also there might be holes in the a fortiori logic. Like the Church is the Bride of Christ. Though I am not sure us priests want to go there, our in persona Christi doesn't go that far! But compare Pope Francis, paragraph 101 above. And of course it only adds to the strength of the parity of reasoning argument - not only Holy Mother modelled on Mary and sister of sister churches but also Bride, as well as being referred to in our prayers always as a she.
In any case you don't have to go along with it. All that is needed is a desire genuinely to do justice to women in the church, in a way that takes account of Dr. Miller's insights. And/or like both
Dr Miller and Pope Francis suggest, for this purpose to have a ministry (Francis might prefer the term 'role') modeled on the ministry of Mary e.g. at the Marriage Feast of Cana.
The thought I had by way of one thing we might be able to do fairly quickly, even before the Plenary Council, is along the lines of subtly reshaping the role of Commentator into something more like a spokesperson for the assembled community (and in this manner performing a ministry modeled on that of Mary). And then to make sure that all Commentators happen to be women. Something like the following:
The Commentator gets up before Sunday mass and does the normal commentating stuff, but before telling people to stand says something like, "On your behalf, I now (or, "as always") welcome into our midst Fr. So and So (or, "our Parish Priest", or "our Bishop"), to lead us today in our celebration of the Sacred Mysteries." Instead of, Our celebrant today is...!
The Commentator or local community spokesperson, possibly wearing some ensignia of office, then joins the Entrance Process, either alongside the priest as Dr Miller suggests or leading the procession in, just behind the cross bearer. The latter might better reflect the complementary but equal role, not a ministry within the service alongside the other ministers and therefore less than the priest, but someone who so to speak calls the celebration into being.
The Commentator then joins the Readers on the sanctuary, a local custom I have seen in lots of places. But whereas the Readers go back to their places once they have performed their roles, the Commentator stays up there for the whole mass, as she still has other things to do.
Just prior to the Pray, brothers and sisters the Commentator gets up again, and says, talking directly to the priest, "Father, would you please now lead us here assembled in giving thanks to the Lord our God?" The people take this as their cue to stand, and then the mass proceeds quite smoothly I think you will find, as if this was a normal part of the liturgy. Though, if you want, in order to make the intrusion more natural the Commentator could first inform the assembly what Eucharistic Prayer we will be praying.
The mass then proceeds in the usual manner until after the Prayer after Communion. If there is going to be a lay minister of communion standing alongside the priest giving out communion, maybe that could regularly be the Commentator. Everything in this is symbolism and implicit cues.
After the Prayer after Communion, the Commentator gets up, asks people to please be seated, and then reads out the Parish and local community notices. - the (female) Commentator, not the priest. At the end of the notices, addressing the priest, she says something like, "Father, would you please call down God's blessing on us, before we go our separate ways?"
Then she walks out alongside the priest in the procession.
The next step is quietly to give the job of discerning Commentators to the Pastoral Council and the Finance Council, rather than just the person who does the rosters. They would be looking for feminae probatae (who don't however have to be old!) with enough of a profile for the community in question to be comfortable with the person speaking on their behalf in the liturgy. They would be striving to discern at least one for each Eucharistic community, more than one if they have more than one weekend mass. I can think of quite a few people in my previous parishes on the Atherton Tablelands who would fit smoothly into the role.
The parish priest and other clergy could be involved in the discernment process, particularly if they have been there a while and have a good knowledge of who is who. But they would not have a veto. After all, the communities don't get to have a veto as to who they get as parish priests!
A further small symbolic step would be to add a space for a third signature on official parish or local community documents.
This is in addition to whatever else we might be able to do.
One other thing we can do already
is to get our own people, our sister churches and the
general public, including media traditional and social, used
to seeing church spokespersons who happen to be women, and
to direct them to such people. This is instead of just
dishing up the parish priest, or the bishop, or the head of
the Bishops Conference. Once again it is the symbolism and
implicit and unconscious cues: we may be able to fool
people's intellect but we can't fool their psyche.
[In the light of Pope
Francis' recent interview published in America Magazine,
referred to above: were I still operating as a parish priest,
I think I would just go ahead and, parish willing, try to
implement these little changes!]
This kind of thing might have the effect, eventually, of putting us in our place. But this place, to speak and act sometimes in persona Christi for the sake of our communities, is something we can hardly ever do in a worthy fashion, even when we are operating at our best. Like the Gospel says, we are but unworthy servants. This is more than enough for us to handle, there is no need for us to do or be everything.
Further Note (in the way of Let Us Dream) [Not
part of the Review Article, added, in this version, 1st
September 2021.]
There might be at least two ways forward beyond this, and a third move which might help but which is independent of the question of women's ordination. In fact, all three are probably good ideas whether or not we ordain woman presbyters.
First Way: the first way would be to continue on the lines above in the direction of two complementary roughly equal sources of power within the church, namely in persona Christi and in persona Ecclesiae.
One source of power would be or would derive from the provision of a special ministry of service in persona Christi. This would be a service of priests and bishops, clerical and hierarchical projecting mostly a masculine face (though I really think only for symbolic reasons). This service would be episodic in nature, as required, and mostly ad intra, a special important service to the church assembled and dispersed. Every fully initiated Christian is called to be heart and mind and hands and feet of Jesus in the world and to each other, baptised into Christ, anointed as priest prophet and King, receiving the Body of Christ in order to be the Body of Christ. But there are special ministries needed so that this can happen.
The other source of power would be deploying the variety of gifts nourished by the first service, including ministries for projecting and representing and speaking on behalf of the Ecclesia, the Christian community, the Bride of Christ, at every level. This would be lay, egalitarian and more democratic sounding though reflecting the variety of gifts rather than a question of numbers, and, once again for symbolic reasons just as strong or stronger, would project mostly a feminine face, and would be both ad intra and ad extra. It would be on this level more than on the clerical level that the Ecclesia gets to project itself to and into the world. This is the face we show to society and community as a whole - very different to what is at present, through partly made possible by the deployment of the other source of power.
Of course, it is not enough for this second kind of power to be there and to be roughly equal: it must visibly and symbolically be see to be there, and be seen to be at least equal in dignity and efficacy. Indeed, to start with in order to redress the present imbalance it needs to be a little bit predominant?
(B) Second Way: a second way would be to allow women (back) into the Deaconate and then to restore the Deaconate to a modern equivalent of the status it had in the first five centuries.
Ordaining women as deacons is still very much an open question among us Catholics. There seems to be enough historical evidence to make this more of a question of political will than anything else, even if the evidence is not absolutely probative. The problem is to do this in such a way as not to make our clericalism problem worse. Women deacons are still clerics, and as with men deacons if not carefully done their ordination could lead to a clericalisation of some ministries already being performed by lay persons. Pope Francis seems to see this as a problem, and one of the issues involved for example in ordaining or not ordaining married men. But maybe it is no more of a problem than making men deacons...
Apparently in the first five centuries the Deaconate was a genuine competitor for power with the Presbyterate. The two greatest of the ancient popes, Leo the Great and Gregory the Great, were both advanced from the rank of deacon. Deacons ran the diocesan ministries on behalf of and relating directly to the bishop (like St Lawrence the deacon), constituting together a sort of diocesan cabinet, whereas presbyters took the place of the bishop where bishops couldn't themselves be present, more like local governors. There is still a remnant of this in our present liturgy: when the bishop comes to town, presbyters take a back seat, whereas deacons continue to perform the same ministries. This is so even when the presider is the Pope.
Once again it is important to avoid clericalisation. I am not thinking of replacing the various directors, for example, roles being well performed by professional women and men chosen in a professional manner according to merit. You don't replace the directors, you replace the Vicars! Or the role of the Vicars. Except maybe the Vicar for Clergy, which could alternate between a priest and a deacon.
Or can even this level of governance be replaced by lay people? Like may have happened recently in the Diocese of Cairns. Fr Neil Muir, who was effectively Vicar for Everything except Clergy, was made rector of the present incarnation of Banyo Seminary. His administrative roles in the diocese, it seems, have been given to a lay person, Dr Bill Dixon, who was previously Executive Director of Education. This could easily have been a lay woman. However, maybe he is more like a Super Director or an Executive Director General than a Vicar?
A better example might be the Diocesan Pastoral Team in the Archdiocese of Adelaide 1986ff, including a Religious Sister and a married lay woman, alongside the Vicar General, which Archbishop Faulkner set up to assist him in the governance of the diocese.
However, the Deaconate route would also work, and might be easier to institutionalise?
Further down the track we then quietly drop the transitional Deaconate.
This move, which should be doable with just a bit of political will, while a bit in tension with the first, if well done may not be inconsistent with it.
(C) A Third Move: a third move, which probably needs to happen anyway but which would also do something towards advancing equality, would be to move our governance structure from absolute monarchy to our own churchy variety of constitutional monarchy - like Australia or Canada or Britain, but doing it our own way. This is an idea canvassed among others by Robert Fitzgerald, one of the Commissioners of the Royal Commission.
In very broad brush terms, from the fourth century, after Constantine and the Roman Empire more or less took over the church and structured it like the Roman bureaucracy, until the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries, the church and society in general moved more or less in tandem with each other. Inspiration went both way, with governance structures at least in the same ball park. Following the end of Christendom, and consequent on the split between clerics and laiics which gave rise to modernity, society in general moved on, into more or less democratic constitutional monarchies and republics. Whereas we in the Catholic Church got left as Renascence absolute monarchies, both the church as a whole and individual dioceses, and even parishes to some extent.
The value of opting for a constitutional monarchy is that is requires hardly any changes in formal legalities. What changes are the culturally embedded conventions for operating inside that formality.
There would be one major difference I think. In our constitutional monarchy, the Governor General or the Governor acts on the advice of his or her ministers. With very few exceptions having to do with reserved powers the Governor or Governor General is not involved at all in the coming up with the advice. That all happens in the parliament or the meeting of cabinet. Whereas in the church, the bishop or the priest or community leader wouldn't be just a rubber stamp at the end but would typically also play a role in the deliberations leading to the formulation of the advice, making their own education, experience and wisdom a gift to their community alongside the gifts of the other people involved.
I think a lot of parishes and dioceses are already well on the way to something like this. Just tweak it a little bit, and embed it to the point where it is not disrupted by a change of leadership. The bishop or priest or whoever plays an active role alongside the other members of council in coming up with the advice of their councils, but having played that role then in the ordinary course of events acts on that advice.
I imagine something like this will likely happen at our plenary council. Even though the bishops alone have a deliberative vote, in the present circumstances they would have to be very brave indeed to go against the consensus of council as a whole. First the bishops participate in the council, then they rubber stamp what the council has come up with.
I wonder if Synodality, which is a big buzzword at the moment with Francis, is a name for something along similar lines?
The effect of this move would be to relativise the problem posed by not ordaining women bishops or priests. But it is something we need to do anyway.
Some Reflections on the Third Move: it might need a bit more tweaking?
In theory this is all very well. My experience as pastor in the last twelve years of full time ministry (before I retired, hurt), however, would cause me to want to add something. We need full, conscious and active participation of every confirmed Christian not just in our liturgy but in the whole of church life and our outreach to the world. But we could do without the politics and struggles for power endemic to our democracies? If there is a way of doing this... There may not be of course, but it would be good if there was.
What we need are "culturally embedded conventions
for operating inside the 'legal' formalities" specifically
directed to dealing with the problem of power and struggles for
power. We have strong and unambiguous gospel mandates for
doing just this, both in the Synoptic Gospels ("This is not to
happen among you...") and in the Gospel of John (washing each
others feet), and also in the Epistles of Paul ("Have this mind
in you which was in Christ Jesus..."). It is about time we
took these Dominical Commands with the seriousness with which
they were obviously meant.
Part of this is to re-conceive the role of the pastor specifically and always to include the provision of a certain service. The key administrative role of a pastor or community leader might be to occupy the constitutional fictional space of formal power for the very sake of keeping the space of power as such or real power as empty as possible. And acknowledged and affirmed and assisted by the people for the very sake of performing such a service for the sake of the community. They need to keep the space of power as such empty both of their own power and of that of anyone else! Or, depending on what we mean by power, maybe we should say, as dispersed and widely distributed as possible? Where power is the capacity to be involved in the making of decisions, rather than overtly or covertly being number one, ruling the roost, king of the castle, "lording it over...". This service is part of what justifies Christian/Christ-like leadership in the first place and why we appoint such people, to try to ensure that "this [does] not happen among you".
All important leadership decisions for the parish or pastoral area outside the day to day of their own specific ministries are made by the pastor/leader-in-council, interpreted as above, with 'council' shifting with the area of concern.The fundamental convention here is that people affected by a decision should have, and feel that they have, some kind of role in making it, with mechanisms provided for this purpose.
In respect of the variety of gifts and ministries in the parish: a thorough deployment of the Principle of Subsidiarity, given a lot more than lip service, something close to legal effect. If you want to make decisions, take on a ministry, discerned and claimed in accordance with your gifts. In the normal course of events, the pastor or leader allows the people and groups involved in various ministries in the parish to get on with their business, affirms and supports them in this rather than trying to take their place.
To keep an eye on this would be the joint responsibility of the parish leadership and e.g. on the parish level the members of the Pastoral Council.
A practice of regular parish and community assemblies and deanery assemblies feeding into and drawing from diocesan synods and assemblies, to make policies applying more broadly, should also help, alongside the usual councils and groups to be found in a typical flourishing parish.
Even the very best of setups however can be so easily destroyed. We would have to be very careful to train and appoint leaders actually capable of being like this. There is no substitute for being open to the Spirit, holiness, trying to have the mind of Christ, who came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for the many... And even that is not always enough.
There would need to be
structures and processes in place to ensure that pastors and
other leaders and pastoral councils were performing that
service and the whole service. Pastoral supervision, already
getting to be in place, might help with this, to help pastors
and others better perform their roles. But not enough by
itself I think. "Everything happens in such a way as is only
to be expected in the circumstances." (= my motto). From which
Murphy's Law, whatever can go wrong will eventually go wrong,
follows as a corollary. It can't be just left up to the
giftedness and good will of the pastor, or the coworkers or
parishioners for that matter. But this can't be entirely
eliminated as a factor? At least not this side of the
Eschaton.
I suppose the bottom line here is, we will never be perfect
but we can probably do a fair bit better than we have at some
times in the past.
This is all very difficult.
To work this stuff out, to get our governance right, is why we
have plenary councils, relying on well researched and closely
argued preparatory documents like The Light of the
Southern Cross. The above is just my more
intuitive tuppence worth.
Combining this with the first way above: the two roughly equal complementary sources of power would each need their structures and processes for the sake of avoiding and/or recovering from the various pathologies by which they might be afflicted. Though the second mentioned source of power, of its very nature as described above, might be easier to keep free of such pathologies?? Probably.