Sexual Order and Holy Order

"Christ sent the Apostles to do His work just as He Himself had been sent by the Father. Through the Apostles Christ ordained bishops to be successors and sharers in this same consecration and calling . . . . . . The priestly office, joined as it is to that of the bishop, shares the authority by which Christ Himself builds up, sanctifies and rules this Body. That is why those ordained to the priesthood require, in addition to the basic sacraments which made them Christians, a special sacrament through which, anointed by the Holy Spirit, they are signed with a specific character and portray Christ the Priest and are thus able to act in the person of Christ our Head."

- Vatican II, Decree on the Priestly Ministry and Life

"The example of Jesus is readily quoted: the novelty - the daring, even in relation to the customs of His time - that marked His attitude towards women. Although women do not receive the call to the Apostolate of the Twelve and therefore to the ordained ministry, they are nonetheless invited to follow Christ as disciples and co- workers. The women who had accompanied Jesus from Galilee are present at the Cross (Lk 23 : 49); they witness the burial of Jesus and are present again on the morning of the resurrection (Lk 24 : 1 - 10). It may be rightly said: if the witness of the Apostles founds the Church, the witness of women contributes greatly towards nourishing the faith of the Christian communities. We cannot change what Our Lord did, nor His call to women; but we can recognise and promote the role of women in the mission of evangelisation and in the life of the Christian community."

- Paul VI, Address to the Committee for International Women's Year, 18th April 1975

Nihil obstat:       Francis J. Bartlett           Censor

Imprimatur:        David Norris V.G.           Westminster, 20-VI-1975

The Nihil obstat and Imprimatur are a declaration that a book or pamphlet is considered to be free from doctrinal or moral error. It is not implied that those who have granted the Nihil obstat and Imprimatur agree with the contents, opinions or statements expressed

Sexual Order and Holy Order

Edward Holloway STL

The Church through the ages has always taught that the valid reception of Holy Order requires that the recipient should be of the male sex. The Fathers of the Church speak of it as something universally known and acknowledged.1

In the golden age of Scholastic theology Aquinas, Bonaventure, and Duns Scotus, thinkers not at all shy of disagreeing with one another, concur in this witness. Later theologians do little more than restate the common doctrine.2

Today the matter is disputed inside the Catholic Church as well as out of it. For the Catholic, one may ask how the doctrine can possibly be challenged. For this is an issue of positive doctrine, the basic reasons for which have been stated and acted upon from apostolic times. We are not in this context dealing with a presumption of theologians, with something thought out and proffered in order to get over a difficulty in theology. The doctrine concerning Holy Order which is in possession now, has been taught and accepted universally by the entire Catholic episcopate of East and West. It follows that the requirement that only a person of the male sex can be promoted to Holy Order, must be a tenet of the Catholic Faith. There does not seem any way round this rejoinder to those who demand the ordination of women to the priesthood. However, in an age when woman has, through the cultural and intellectual development of society been able to vindicate in practice that status of equality of person with the male, which was always hers by right of nature and grace, we have to do more than simply state positive doctrine: We have beyond the mere statement to look for the intrinsic reasons behind the works and words of God in Christ. Everything in the Christian Revelation is structured through Divine wisdom and Divine truth.

It is not possible to cover every aspect of the contemporary debate, but two salient features stand out. In the first place, most of the non-episcopal Christian communities have already admitted women to the "priesthood". The inverted comma is used advisedly, because in fact they have not admitted women to the priesthood but to the ministry, which is a different matter. In the United States of America, the Episcopalian Church looks set to ordain women to the priesthood in the near future.3 At home, the Church of England is deeply divided about both the expediency and the doctrine of this issue. The division in the Church of England extends not merely to her theologians, but much more importantly to the opinions expressed in synod by her bishops. The official position of the Roman Catholic Church is not in doubt, and was reaffirmed by the Pope recently at the beginning of Women's Year. Nevertheless, as in the controversy concerning the lawful use of marriage both before and after the Encyclical Humanae Vitae, the certain doctrine of the Catholic Church does not prevent theologians of some public note from openly teaching the opposite through the public media.

Perspectives on the Priesthood

The ordination of a woman is easily conceded in Churches where the priest is simply a minister, and where the sacerdotal element is denied or diminished. Some of us would fault the emphasis of the Canterbury Agreed Statement on the Ordained Ministry, in this respect. The sacerdotal function of the priest would appear to have been played down, while the sacerdotal character as such, is not even discussed. The profound disagreement of the bishops of the Church of England concerning the validity of the ordination of women to the priesthood, reflects the fact that the `inner reality' so to speak of the nature and character of Holy Order as a sacrament, has been in dispute and theological tension in the Church of England from the time of the Elizabethan Settlement. This basic uncertainty over what constitutes the priest, is still not resolved within her.

If a priest is in essentials only a minister, then there does not appear any intrinsic objection to the ordination of the female sex. St. Paul of course is the bête noire of the proponents of the admission of women to Holy Order. He not only forbids that a woman teach in the Church with authority or `hold dominion over the male' but he relates his prohibition further, to a doctrinal reason, - to the `mystery' or meaning of the creation of the sexes. For Paul, man is made to the image of God, and woman to the image of the man (I Cor. 11 : 7-16). However crudely St. Paul's teaching seems to impinge on the modern mind, the traditional teaching of the Church concerning the ordination of the male sex alone, does derive from the basic doctrine expressed by St. Paul, and never contradicted by any of the Apostolic churches, concerning the relationship of `Adam' to God, and of Eve to `Adam'. That is why it was asserted that Catholic teaching on the limitation of Holy Order to the male sex, was based on Apostolic doctrine, and not on theological speculation alone. St. Thomas Aquinas, when giving the reason for the non-promotion of woman to Holy Order, simply states that the woman is "in a relationship of being subject" in the Pauline sense.4

There may be much more behind St. Paul's `crude' fundamentalism than appears at first sight. Can we be sure that he speaks as the dominant and prejudiced male of his time, when by a curious paradox, the best argument used for the ordination of the woman also derives from a bold teaching of St. Paul? In this other context he might well be the hero of women's liberation. "In Christ Jesus," he says, speaking of the equality of personality, dignity, and status we have through baptism, in Christ, "there is no distinction of Jew or Greek, slave or free citizen, male or female" . . . . (Gal. 3 : 28.) If the office of a priest were nothing more than the commissioned ministry of the word of God, no character other than that of baptism would need to be invoked. The commissioning would come from a community of equals, and by common consent the sacrament of baptism does confer some sort of participation in the priesthood of Christ.

If the priest of the altar possesses in truth a sacerdotal character, if he offers sacrifice through this character for the living and the dead: if he possesses some intrinsic participation in the offering of Him who ever lives to intercede for us, - then perhaps something more than the common character of baptism may be required. If in addition the priesthood is endowed with a magisterial power, by some intrinsic participation in Christ's power to rule and to define, - then perhaps the nature and character of Holy Order may involve some sort of integration into the very personality of Christ, as God made man, for the salvation of mankind. It will depend on how intimately the very flesh of man and woman, as male and female, derives from the office of Christ in creation as Son of God, and Son of Man. There may be a relationship of very being, in the masculinity of Christ, to the division of function into male and female, in the nature of mankind itself. It could be that the priesthood of Christ as given to men to share, is more than a ministry of the word alone. It could involve a participation in the sacral ministry of Christ the Priest for the needs of the People of God. It could be that the priesthood of the Christian altar carries on in the flesh and extends down the ages, in the economy of the Incarnation, the sacerdotal character of Christ Himself.

We are going to say that the above thesis is in fact the case; that Christ is male in the human order by a necessity of being, and that the participation by human beings in the character of His Priesthood in His Church down the ages, must be in the perfect likeness of His own human reality. We will say men and women exist as sexually such only for Him, and because God needed the womb of woman, the vehicle of human nature, as something separate in creation, so that He could determine the womb of Mary to take flesh, and become man, without being determined to a creaturely existence. For Christ was God Pre-existent in the person of the Logos, or "Word" before time was, or the world was.

For a complete understanding of this theme the argument should be thought of as applying to the priest in his fullness, i.e. to the bishop, membered to Peter, and through Peter membered directly into Christ. The argument though is valid from the basic priestly power "over the Body and Blood of the Lord" in the confection of the Eucharist, as Sacrifice: and Sacrament in Christ.

The Argument from Woman's Equality of Status

The other salient feature in the present controversy argues from the personal equality of woman with man. A woman, runs the argument, because of her natural vocation towards motherhood, is physically more vulnerable, and more dependent on the male, and has been exploited in a man's world. She could never have even aspired to the priesthood until a time came when the intellect displaced the primacy of sheer brawn in human society; until the age of science, that is to say.

This argument is only partially true. In any form of society, whether ancient absolute monarchy, or modern socialist cultures there is in reality always a ruling level, (and one which in fact clings to power) a level to which the word "aristocracy" can well be, applied, whether it be of inherited privilege, merit, or intellectual prowess. At this level, all through the ages there have been "queens" as powerful as the "kings", women who have sealed the fate of the State, and sometimes of the Church. The first Elizabeth of England would be one outstanding example of such a ruling woman. Human society has also known its sybils and priestesses of outstanding influence and prestige.

Yet, among the generality of labouring mankind, the personal subjugation of the woman to the man has been true as a broad fact. This is the primary penalty of Original Sin upon womanhood. It is the impact of the crudity of nature which derives through the Fall. The book of Genesis expresses this "curse" with a majesty of insight which proves the direct inspiration by God of the vision of the biblical Seer. He writes: "your love shall turn in yearning to your husband, and he shall lord it over you"(Gen. 3 : 16.) The man also, in the thorns and thistles of subsistence farming amid wretched social exploitation, has his own heavy curse to bear. Yet the burden of the woman is wonderfully portrayed.

The Vision of Paul to the Ephesians

The cultural subjection of the woman, even as a result of the Fall, is not a sufficient explanation of the consistent teaching of Christian tradition. The Holy Spirit was well able to raise up a prophet, to record in the Gospels a bold vision of woman's potential in Holy Order, if divine order had willed it. To whom would such a vision more properly have belonged or have applied, than to Mary the Mother of Our Lord Jesus Christ, herself? It does not occur in the Magnificat, nor in any of the development of the doctrine of the Church concerning the place and status of Mary in the economy of our Salvation, and that development has been extensive and profound.

St Paul, when in the Letter to the Galatians he asserts the equality and dignity of the baptised woman with the man, was being revolutionary enough in his assessment of woman, and he contradicts the assessment of Aristotle among the great thinkers of antiquity. The essential reason given by Paul for the restriction of Holy Order to the male sex, is neither a penal reason, nor a cultural reason. The reason he gives is function in God, the relationship of the sexes to God, because of the Incarnation of Christ. There is a prophetic meaning in St. Paul's doctrine to the Corinthians, and to Timothy, and we find it summed up in the 5th chapter of the Letter to the Ephesians. It is very different from a merely cursory reading of those other contexts.

In Ephesians, "the woman" in the sacrament of Christian marriage, derives her status from a primary relationship of her sexuality to the Church. The "man" derives his status as "head of her flesh" from a primary relationship of his sexuality to the flesh of Christ, as Head into which the Body which is the Church is organically membered. Observe that in the notion of the Church both males and females, as creatures, are contained, and that these are equal in dignity and status through the character of baptism. St. Paul does not make the Church a symbol of marriage: no, he makes marriage a symbol of the Church. The "great Mystery", the primary reality that is to say, is the union of Christ with the Church. Marriage is a great sacrament and a holy mystery because its office in man and in woman derives from this prior, and higher "sacrament" between Christ and mankind, in the Church. In the language of Scholastic philosophy, and this will have significance for the priest or church student, the union of Christ and the Church is the princeps analogatum in the order of an intrinsic analogy of very being, as applied to Christian marriage.

Christ: Reason for the Sexual Differentiation of Human Nature

The deduction from the preceding section is vital. It implies that the division of human nature sexually into the male and female principles, is to make possible the Incarnation of Christ, as God made man, into the human order. We argue that the creation of "Adam" as male and female is something more than a matter of biological convenience. The Greek

Fathers in particular seem to have much the same vision of Christ, when they call Him "The Universal Man" and speak of all creation being "recapitulated" in Christ; perhaps today we might express their meaning better by saying "focussed through" Christ. Such a perspective on the Incarnation strengthens the teaching of St John, in the Prologue to the fourth Gospel, it is the theme of St. Paul to the Colossians, the Corinthians, the Hebrews, and indeed in many places. It is the theme of St. Peter's epistles as well. This is the vision of Christ as the "Sacrament hidden in God before all ages", the vision of the coming of Christ as the Head and Heir of Creation, for whose Incarnation as man, the whole material universe and its laws are poised. In Christ we are chosen before the founding of the world. Among the early Fathers of the Christian Church, nobody expresses this theme more fully or more trenchantly than St. Irenaeus.5

Significance of "The Rib"

The teaching of St. Paul to the Ephesians sheds a brighter light on the meaning of that phrase, - "Adam is made to the image of God, and Eve to the image of Adam". For the statement, in that Christocentric (Christ centred) sense which is always the ultimate meaning of the scriptures, means that Adam, in type and in prophecy bears the figure of the Christ who is to come. The "woman", Eve, is made to the image and likeness of Adam, because she, in type and in prophecy, is the Church. This interpretation helps us to understand a little better that noble, rather mysterious title of "Son of Man", which Christ uses in preference to others, to express His relationship to mankind. It would mean that as the Word made flesh, not simply as the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, the Logos in His sheer Divinity, Christ is the source and the origin of our physical being. By this, one is suggesting that we are predestined "from before the foundation of the world" in the human nature of Jesus Christ, and that the laws of physical nature are made, and aligned, in view of what is necessary for His Coming. Unless that is so, it is indeed hard to see why God, who is pure Spirit, should create matter at all. Unless its order, its perfection, and its beauty leads up to Christ, and is crowned in His Kingship, matter seems to be rather a drag on the spirit. God did not need to become an angel, because the angel is a pure spirit. For the angel, the Being of God can play upon its created substance to teach, and to transform directly, without hindrance. In the case of mankind it is different: we need the word spoken, and the love made manifest. For our sakes the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. We are saying that the whole of Nature and its laws of life were aligned towards that supreme fulfilment, and that the division of human nature into male and female was for that purpose.

The Letter to the Hebrews is ascribed by universal Catholic tradition to St. Paul as its author, at least in the sense that it embodies his doctrine and the apostolic formation he gave his own band of disciples.

The Letter to the Hebrews does seem to embody well the perspective on the Incarnation we have just suggested:

"Because his children were partakers in flesh and blood, He himself has become partaker in the same

Nowhere does He lay hold upon the angels,

It is of the seed of Abraham He has taken hold."

(Hebrews 2 : 14 -16).

A few verses earlier we have, and very much in the concise, highly logical style of St. Paul's theological reasoning: "For it became Him for whom are all things and through whom are all things, who had brought many children into glory, to perfect the Principal (archegon) of their salvation by his suffering. For He who makes holy, and those who are made holy are of the one stock" (Hebrews 2 : 10 -11).

The Epistle to the Hebrews does seem to say we are created a mixed nature of spirit and of matter, because we were predestined in Christ Incarnate, before the foundation of the universe.

In this subject-matter of the relationship of our flesh and its sexual ordering to the Incarnation of Christ, the insight given to this writer by the late Fr. Robert Dyson SJ, has an interesting relevance. He suggested that the sign we render as "rib" (Genesis 2 : 21 - 23) was derived from an older, but related Sumerian script symbol, -"the sign of the arum lily" - which stood for the male genital member, with the meaning of "principle of life and generation".

The prophetic sense of the text would then be that Adam as the Universal Man contained in himself the full potential of human life, and that out of this ONE (in prophecy it is Christ) there is taken a principle of life and generation, i.e. the female principle. When Eve is presented again to Adam, he acknowledges her as "bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh" and Adam is then "re-oned" again, but in a higher, happier, and more perfect manner. If it is conceded that the text is prophetic of the decree of the Incarnation, and that Adam here stands for Christ, and Eve for the Church, then clearly we are being taught that the Incarnation is decreed before the foundation of the world, and independently of the Fall of mankind: for in this case it is Christ who hails the Church as "bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh", and whose perfect unity with the human race, through that Church, is shown in ancient prophecy.

It begins to look as though we are being told that in the human nature of Christ, united to the Eternal Divinity of His Person, the creation of mankind is decreed. But we also see that, in order for God the Son to come into Creation as the source and origin of human life, as King of Kings, as Heir to the Ages, and High Priest of our Salvation and Redemption, the nature of life must be divided in its office, and in its function, for Him. God cannot be born as a created person by the operation of the human will, the creaturely will, and the mingling of human seed. When a human person is born, besides the operation of God, and the direct creation into living matter of the soul, there is a true causality, dependent though it be, by which a human person comes into very being by the full spiritual and physical action of man and woman. If human life were unisexual, it would still have been the same. The process of generation would be the determination to bring into being a created personality, through the will of the creature, and its full reproductive processes. Christ does not need that, and cannot be born as a man in that way. Christ always pre-existed as true God from true God, in "the bosom of the Father", which means in the very being of the Father. Christ was already a Person, and was the Uncreated, before He became man in the womb of the Virgin Mary. What Christ needs, in order to be enfleshed as man, is that there should exist in the human order, the natural vehicle of the formation of a human nature so that the seed of Mary can be determined in that natural vehicle by which the body (through indeed a human soul) is given to make a man. This `natural vehicle' is the womb of woman.

In this way Christ, the pre-existent Eternal Person, can take unto His Divine Personality the nature of man, and become "The Word made Flesh" without coming under that general Law of creation, in which through the total work of the creature's will, and natural sexual intercourse, a created human person is brought into being. Christ needs to become man, without being made as a person also. Christ is not a Created Person. He is an Uncreated Person.

To achieve this end, the power of life in the human species must be divided. There must be the principle which takes hold, and determines creatively, and the principle which receives, and in receiving responds of its own creative power with the fruitfulness of human life. There must be the male and the female principles. Both are necessary for a created human person to be made, but God can, and must, dispense with the male principle for the Incarnation of His Son, the Uncreated Person of the Son directly determines the womb of woman, in Mary, that He, the same Christ, shall "take flesh and dwell among us". Of course this division of the office and function of sexual creation adds a greater beauty, love, and dignity to human life, in us created persons, through the institution of the family. The supernatural order, the order of God's own life and purposes, always perfects the natural order without distortion of that natural order.

Along the ascent of life to man, we do find that the living being begins to develop heterosexually into the male and the female principles. Apart from God's need for the womb of Mary in Creation, there is no obvious reason why even advanced life should develop to become hetero-sexual in type. Modern discoveries concerning the possibility of purely female reproduction in quite high types of life, cast doubt upon the biological necessity for the distinctly male at all! It appears quite otherwise, if the womb, the female principle, is taken out from the unity of life, so that the material creation may afford the Priest-King of creation, the natural vehicle, with Mary's consent, of His enfleshing.

The Vision of the Apocalypse

In God, pure Spiritual Being, there is of course no sexuality, but there is the fullness of life, and of power over life. We say that the Eternal Word, God the Son is "begotten of the Father from all eternity". We are talking of a begetting which is only an analogy with human generation it is true, but we are talking of a relationship in Being between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit which does proceed from the fullness of life, in God's own Being. From God's fullness every creative power proceeds in its own lesser order. Human nature cannot express this fullness in one sexual form, because human nature is made at all only because God is going to dignify and raise it, in His own Person, by becoming man. We begin to see the meaning of that title, - Son of Man. It means that Christ, in His human nature, not just in His divine nature, is as the One Person, the reason for our being made as we are at all. He is indeed the one stock of whose fullness we all participate. For His Incarnation human sexuality has to exist as the principle which prompts life creatively, and the principle which responds creatively to that prompting by giving of its own with life, and life more abundantly. This is true of the spiritual relationship of Christ to all human persons, and that is why the union of Christ and Mankind is so perfectly figured in the union of man and woman in marriage. Because Christ has to come into the material creation as the determiner of the vehicle of life, therefore also human nature must be divided into the function and office of determination to life, and the function and office of response with offspring, to that determination. One could say human sexuality must, for Christ's sake, be divided into that which prompts life, and that which responds to the giving with the fruit of life: that is to say, into the male and the female principles.

The Character of Holy Order

When Christ comes into the world as a human being, His flesh must obviously clothe His Divine Person with that which expresses His creative giving for mankind, and which presupposes the other complementary principle which is to respond to His giving with life, and life more abundant. By very definition of His Divinity, become now `Son of Man' as well as `Son of God', Christ is at one and the same time King of Creation, and High Priest of the human race. He must come into the world clothed in the flesh which expresses Him as the Lord and the Giver, not as the vehicle which receives, and is receptive and creative only because He is to come and determine it. Christ's personality then must come as the masculine, that which determined the womb, that which prompts life, and to which the womb, the principle of "womanhood" responds. By virtue of being, when He comes as man, Christ must come as male. The priest of the altar, if he is more than a mere minister of the word of preaching and exhortation, if he in any real sense shares in the personal priesthood of Christ, can only be of the same male sex. The matter is settled in the ontological relationship - the relationship of being that means, which Christ has to the human race, to human nature, and to the womb of woman, made and prepared to receive Him from before the ages. In this, the female, womanhood, is trustee for all mankind, and indeed for the whole material universe. We see how wonderfully the woman must represent the Church, and represent all mankind as called into the Church, to be membered to Christ. We see how the sexual nature of woman stands for the human race itself; for mankind yearns and desires the Coming of its King and its Redeemer. It cannot provide of its own, it must wait upon Christ's determining, but the creature can, and must of its own things provide the vehicle of His enfleshing, when He decrees to come. In this sense woman, and especially Mary, Mother of Christ, stands for the creature, for all creation, and especially creation as crowned with man, with the rational creature, as that creature looks up to and desires union and communion with its God.

There seems to be an indication of this in the wonderful vision granted by the Blessed Trinity which is God to St. John the Apostle, in the book of Revelations:

"And a great sign appeared in heaven

A woman clothed with the sun, and with the moon under her feet and on her head, a crown of twelve stars.

And being with child, she cried travailing in birth and was in pain to be delivered.

And she brought forth a man-child

Who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron,

And her son was taken up to God, and to His throne" (Rev. 12: 1-5).

First and materially, the planet Earth is the woman seen in the vision of prophecy as teeming with life and fruitfulness through the womb: fertile ultimately with mankind. Our earth is indeed clothed with the sun, its principle of life and increase over aeons of evolution. It has under its feet the lesser satellite which is "for times and for seasons, for days and for years". This planet Earth, cradle of intelligent man, is crowned with the stars, the plenitude of the whole economy of the universe, which here at least has reached its summit of achievement, - the human creature. In Hebrew, that number "12" signifies a perfect complement.

In the mind of God there is no sharp separation of secular and of sacred, for the natural order is made to be perfected in the supernatural order, the order that means, in which God's own Being exists. Therefore the prophetic, the Christocentric meaning, follows on not as a mere mystical or allegorical sense, but as the fuller meaning in the very order of being, of this one same vision. This planet Earth is with child in the womb of the Virgin Mary: and in her, through the sorrows and travails of men, looking up for their redemption, the "Woman", the Church, is impatient and in pain to be delivered of Him. The womb of "The Woman" of the vision, is the womb of Mary, the unique vessel of God's election, through which the very possibility of the Church is established. Mary is mankind, as we wait for Christ, and as we offer ourselves to receive Him into our order of nature. But only through the female can He come, so Mary, par excellence "The Woman" of the vision, stands also for the entirety of the Church and of Mankind. The Woman who through the womb represents the creature receiving the Creator into its order of being, as the Church, is rightly crowned "with twelve stars", with the episcopate and human priesthood upon earth of Jesus Christ. How wonderfully then, is St. Paul true in prophecy, when he writes:

"I would have you know that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman, is the man; and the head of Christ is GOD." (I Cor. 11: 3)

This is the sexual order through which human nature, and human society in Church and in State is structured, but we are concerned here with the Church. The nature of mankind, the same and equal in male and female, is functionally divided for the coming of Christ. The male exists because Christ is to come, and shows in his sexuality the promise and expectation, the headship and the hope of the face of Jesus the Christ. The woman exists because God needs her and must have her. She exists that human nature may be formed at all, and stands for all of us, for without the decree of Christ, human nature, mankind as we know ourselves, would not have been made by the Living Word who is God the Son. How truly then, is Mary Mother of the Church, and how rightly did the Holy Spirit inspire Pope Paul VI to name her so, during the Second Vatican Council. A man is not a priest of the sacrament of Holy Order just because he is a male. Because he is `male' he possesses a natural possibility of being aggregated to Christ's personal priesthood towards mankind, and thus of extending the work and priestly personality of the Lord for His people across the ages.

Christ, as Divine Person, pre-existent before the Incarnation, must come into the material creation as one who is different from the creature as well as one who is the same as we are, in all things but sin. He has to come as the determiner, and not as the recipient. For this, as we have argued, God must divide the sexual functions of human life into two distinct but complementary functions. The one function cannot be the other function, they are distinct orders of office, and they give meaning to each other only because they are different, but are also interrelated. In the very fact of that distinction of function in the natural and the supernatural order, the woman cannot be a priest of the sacrament of Holy Order, in Christ, any more than she can be a male, in her sexual order, and its office. The woman, in her sexual nature is all mankind as we have been created for the Advent of Christ the King, Head of our human race, and High Priest of our union, and our reconciliation, with the Father. The woman is, through her womb, creation's gift to God, for the purposes of Christ the Priest-Saviour. That is what is meant by her having a status of being subject: she is subject to Christ, or better, subject to the Father for the purposes of Christ. In this "subjection" the whole order of human life gives of its own to God; for the flesh of God made man. Such a "subjection" is the very condition of the Incarnation, and of the Priesthood of Jesus Christ on earth. Because woman, in Mary, is subject to Christ the Priest that He may determine her very being and come as her Lord, she cannot possibly also be the priest which she brings forth as Mother, and hand-maid. It is not only for herself, but for all mankind, and even for all life in creation that Mary speaks, when she gives her `fiat' to the Father, for the birth of the Divine Son: "See in me the handmaid of the Lord, be it done unto me according to Your word". To be so subject is glory, for all the powers of nature and of life are gathered up in the womb of Mary, "The Woman", that God may be made man through the seed of her womb. Because of this relationship of woman to God, we naturally and rightly talk not of our holy father the Church, but of Our Holy Mother the Church. In this aspect the female sex stands for the whole human race, for the whole Church, and for both sexes, in as much as we are both mere creatures. The sexuality of the male does not make him one whit more divine than the woman, it merely manifests that the office of physical life is divided into the determiner and the determined; for He who determines and fulfils both male and female, Jew and Greek, slave and free man is to come as Son but needs the womb of a mother. Every priest of the altar is a "son" through Christ in this sense. It stands to reason that a mother, actually so or potentially so in her sexual order, cannot also be the "son" for whom, and through whom her nature is determined in its own difference of office and of function. Men and woman, we do not really have any need to be jealous of each other's spiritual gifts, for the very being of us both is made for just one reason, - that God may be enfleshed among us, and fulfil us both. Without both of us, the male and the female, there would not be, there could not be, - Our Lord Jesus Christ, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God.

To this writer it has always seemed that the title "co-redeemer" used of Our Lady was disquieting, obviously ambiguous, and even dangerous. But, to call Our Lady "Mediatrix of all Graces" is surely quite another thing? It is through the offering of her womb to the Father, for the Son, by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit, that she gives us the Divine Grace in Person. Therefore the title "Mediatrix" would seem to be implicit in her other, and defined title of the God-bearing, or "Theotokos".

All Human Relationships Exist for Christ

All our sexual relationships, whether in the natural society of marriage, or in the spiritual society of the Church derive, we have argued, from their prior and intrinsic relationship to the human nature of Jesus Christ, and to His unique function in the universe as Priest, Prophet, and King. Whether that office of the Incarnation is exercised also on other planets far out in space, we do not know. We would all of us surely exult to include such a possibility. The relationships we have to Christ, in the Mystical Body we form through Him as our Head, especially those which confer a character are real, intrinsic relationships. They are not something incidental to our being, and the order of our life in time, and in eternity. We know it is wrong to speak as if, through baptism we became one in actual physical identity with the natural being of Jesus Christ as God. This would be pantheism, and it is error, even when it is well-intentioned error. Equally though, we know that the relationship we have to the Father, and the Holy Spirit, through this character of "adoption" in Christ, which baptism confers on us, and the sacrament of confirmation perfects, is something more than a mere `social union' with Christ. It is something real, something of the order of life and being, even if we do have it in the order of God's loving gift, and not as something which is within our own natural definition, something we could in any case claim. We cannot fully declare and name what we have through the sacraments which confer a character upon us; though time, and the leading on of the Holy Spirit may clarify much within the Church, in the ages yet to come. There is an element of that which surpasses our power to grasp, and we call it mystery. This mystery is only the clear truth in the mind of God, as that truth, and at mind of God surpasses the minds of our childhood, here on earth, fully to take in. We do know that the union we have with Christ, through the character of baptism, which is perfected in confirmation, makes us "partakers of the divine nature", and that the gift given is real, something of the order of very being itself.

In the case of the character, the configuration unto God, of the priesthood of Holy Order, it is the solemn teaching of the Church, especially in recent encyclicals on Christ our Mediator, and on the mystical Body of Jesus Christ, that the priesthood of the altar does confer a real participation, ministerially and through the priest's human nature, in the sacerdotal acts of Christ the Priest.6 Certainly this character of Holy Order is not a physical nor a formal identification of being with Christ the Priest: and yet in the order of Christ's gift and call, it is a power in the real .and the physical order. Basically, it must be a ministerial office, in much the same way as Mary ministered of her womb, and the fruit of her womb, for the Incarnation of Christ. The priest of Holy Order likewise, allows the being and the power of Christ, not his own created power or virtue, to work through him. In an utterly, true sense, though in one in which we yearn for a fuller understanding in theology, the priest of the altar is also a vehicle of the personality of Jesus Christ.

It is that same personality of Christ, as Christ lives and works in the Family of God which is the Church, that acts with power at the solemn moment of the Eucharist: that Eucharist which is the brain and the heart function of the life of the Church. It is the same power of Christ working not in some sterile symbolism, but in magisterial infallibility, which speaks through the solemn definition of Peter, whether that definition be given, in Council or out of Council. The priestly office of Jesus Christ, and the magisterial office of Jesus Christ, must continue to be exercised in that perfection of intrinsic order, spiritual and natural, in which the Manhood of Jesus is given to mankind, and in which mankind responds to its Lord and King. Holy Order must mirror the extension of Christ's own personal ministry and power across the ages, in the sexuality proper to the Person of Christ as man.

Even in an age in which the mind, refining the spiritual soul which is common in nature to both man and woman, obliterates those sexual advantages which proceed from brawn, physical power, or physical freedom, it remains true that only a father can be a father, and only a mother can be a mother. The perfecting of human nature through culture, or through grace in the spiritual soul, will enhance and refine the sexual nature of man and of woman. It will never destroy the difference, never destroy the office of nature and of grace, never make us all "unisexual". There will be more joy, peace, and fulfilment in any family because there is a `dad' and a `mum', who are different in their impact and their reactions, just because they are different in their sexuality. They are mutually self-fulfilling just because the difference is one of natural complementariness, not of an antagonism of nature.

It is going to be the same for us in the Family of God. Christ is always going to be for us all the one and unique `Father' figure, because He is the `Son' of the Eternal Father, and even in His humanity the most perfect possible expression of the Father. The priest, from the Pope to the humblest parish priest and his assistant, is going to mirror in his personality - which includes his male sexuality - the same relationship to the People of God. He is going to do so especially at the sacred moment when he puts on the Person of Christ, and exercises power over bread and wine, that they be consecrated into the Body and Blood of Christ. When a priest does that, he `recapitulates' the whole order of the Incarnation and Redemption in Christ, and expresses it in Christ Himself, through his own created personality, which bears the character of Christ the Priest. He could not do that if he were a woman, for he would falsify in his created person, the perfect recapitulation of all things, of the whole order of creation, and of the role of male and female, and of all the People of God, - to the Person, the human nature, and the office of Jesus the Christ.

In conclusion, there is a sexual order in the nature of the human being, and of the society human and divine which follows upon the creation of the human nature, and its elevation to being made "cosharer in the Divine Nature". This sexual order exists for the Incarnation of Christ as Priest, Prophet, and King; Head and Determiner of the human race.

The same sexual order is recapitulated in the character of Holy Order, because through Holy Order Christ lives and works intrinsically and personally with Divine powers, in His Church. Things cannot be any other way. The `fiat' of God is spoken but once, and it is perfect in all aspects of its order.

A FOOTNOTE

May one agree with Fr. Emile Mersch S.J., when he writes: we should say that the character of Holy Order, as far as it tends to sanctify the person who bears it, rather than to sanctify other persons, may be regarded as an accidental (i.e. incidental) perfecting of the characters of baptism and of confirmation."7 The character of Holy Order is not a direct and formal participation of the Priesthood of Christ in its essence. If it were so we would all be co-Redeemers, and all intrinsically Holy, who are priests of the altar. We would formally be mediators between Christ and His people, and we are not so. We participate at the ministerial, and so to speak material level of our bodies and souls through Christ's use of our human being, very much in a way, as the Word Eternal determined Mary's human nature to become man. What the priest receives is still an enormous privilege, and a love given by Christ, in this invitation to share His own work and mission, much beyond any familiarity of human friendship. Yet no woman, least of all a woman Religious, should feel that through the character of Order the male is `divinised' in a degree of superiority of being that a woman cannot reach. We have no place to envy each other's gifts. It remains true that Our Lady is the greatest creature ever made by God. The `divinisation' of human nature is contained in the character of baptism, not of Order. The character of Order is given that we may all attain a stature worthy of that birthright. The nature of God is without sex, and in the Kingdom, the Blessed will neither marry nor use marriage. Yet no priest who has known and loved his priesthood in the savoured sweetness of the Master, can fail to acknowledge the greatness of Christ's gift, or his own patent unworthiness. In this very recognition, we acknowledge the Lord as sole Mediator between God and Mankind.

1Tertullian: de Praescript. 41; De Velandis Virginibus, c.9; Epiphanius Haer. 49.n.2.

2St. Thomas: Suppl.q.39. art.1. Bonaventure : Disputat. 25, art. 1. Scotus q.11

3DPS    Report of House of Bishops Meeting. Mexico 1974. Later the House of Bishops of the USA Episcopal Church voted in favour of women priests by 97 votes to 41. In England, time of writing, Diocesan Synods of Rochester, Manchester, Sheffield, Bath and Wells, had also voted in favour.

4See:    I Cor. 11 : 7 - 16; I Cor. 14 : 34 - 40; 1 Tim. 2 : 11 – 12; Eph. 5 : 21 - 33; 1 Peter 3 : 1.

5St. Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, book 5, passim. Also: I Cor. 2 :7; Eph. 1 : 4; I Peter 1 : 20.

6Cf. Encyclical letters of Pius XII, Mystici Corperis Christi (1943), Mediator Dei (1947).

7Theology of the Mystical Body, book 5. c. 18., The Sacraments.

www.faith.org.uk

Table of Contents

1

2

3

.4

5

6

7