By Barbara Hughes, O.C.D.S.

The recent  appointment by Pope Francis of Sister Nathalie Becquart as one of two undersecretaries for the Vatican’s Synod of Bishops has once again aroused speculation regarding the role of women in the Church. Cardinal Mario Grech, General Secretary of the Synod of Bishops noted that with Sister Becquart’s appointment, “a door has been opened. We will then see what other steps could be taken in the future”1. The appointment is an inflection point for the Church and has proponents of women’s ordination once again pointing to the glass ceiling in the Catholic Church.

Despite numerous declarations that the male-only-priesthood is part of the deposit of faith, as many as fifty-five percent of Catholics remain unconvinced, insisting that if Christ were alive today, he would call women to ordination. Responding to this claim, theologian Sara Butler, M.S.B.T points out, “He [Christ] is alive now. Don’t we believe that the Lord is living and acting in the Church, that these teachers are not just acting on their own judgement but are trying to be absolutely faithful to the teaching they have been entrusted with”.2.

Since Vatican II much has been written both in defense of and in opposition to the male priesthood. Therefore, it’s not my intention to reiterate past arguments. Instead, my approach is to explore the universal call to the common priesthood that is bestowed on Christians through the sacrament of Baptism. When we view life as a continual pilgrimage in search of a perspective that opens us to new and renewing ways of thinking, a deeper appreciation for the role of the common priesthood evolves. Unfortunately, for too long the notion that we are members of a royal and prophetic priestly community, male and female, lay and ordained has been lost on mainstream Catholics. This may account in part for the need by some to regard the male priesthood as a bastion of male domination by the Church that needs to be penetrated. However, if we hold fast to thinking that the ordained priesthood is superior to the common priesthood imbued in every member of the Body of Christ, the distinct nature of what Carmelites refer to as the transformation of a person in God through love, remains underdeveloped.

When defending the male-only-priesthood focuses primarily on Christian tradition, the authority of the Church, or on an institutional role rather than on relationship with God and apostolic service, the sacrificial dimension of transformative love through union with God is at risk of being overlooked. When it comes to the priesthood, ordained and common, it’s not as much about discovering new landscapes as it is about seeing our life in Christ with new eyes. Clearly there is nothing ordinary about the common priesthood.

As the faithful travel the road to Christian maturity, the process of ongoing conversion invites deepening surrender to the will of God until it reaches what Bernard Lonergan posits “is total and permanent self-surrender without conditions, qualifications, or reservations”.3  When the surrender is complete, persons experience what mystics refer to as the spiritual marriage, where there is neither male nor female, but only a oneness with Christ, the Eternal Bridegroom and High Priest. In other words: they become another Christ, a persona Christi in the world. “The redemptive sacrifice of Christ unique, accomplished once and for all; yet it is made present in the Eucharistic sacrifice…Only Christ is the true priest, the others being only his ministers”.4

Therefore, I submit that the Christification of the baptized person is of a higher order than the ministerial priesthood because its transformative nature is total and permanent, projecting a visible sign of Christ in the world that is both incarnational and reflective of the Paschal Mystery. The efficacy of the ministerial priesthood on behalf of the community cannot be obfuscated by the personal sins of the priest who stands at the altar in the person of Christ. However, the individual sanctification of the minister remains on par with every other Christian who responds to the call to be one with Christ on the cross. Clearly, the clerical abuse, financial scandals, and careerism within the ranks of the ordained demonstrate that the faculties bestowed on priests are for the good of the community and not a guarantee of personal sanctity.

As individuals navigate the developmental stages of purification and illumination towards union with God, the process of letting go frees persons from a self-image that’s formed largely by critiques, both positive and negative based on expectations and performance, creating what Thomas Merton referred to as the false self. The shift from the false self to the true self is gradual and not without pain as the old self gives way to its new identity. No longer seeking self-identification governed by rules and roles, the individual recognizes the fact that its true worth lies in its friendship with God. Like Mary, who saw herself only in relationship to God, the true self is able to say, “I am the handmaid of the Lord. Let it be done to me according to thy word”.5 Since “the fundamental motivation of our apostolic service, more than simply playing out a role is love and friendship with Christ,”6 let’s not minimize the universal call to the common priesthood of Christ, from which no one is excluded, by viewing it through the lenses of gender discrimination.

G.K. Chesterton cautioned against a Church that will move with the world, when what is needed is a Church that will move the world. Moving the world has been the role of saints, martyrs and mystics since the beginning of Christianity. Their example, blood and teachings have transformed the world, not because of what they did, but because of the person they became in Christ. As icons of Christ writ large in time and eternity, their timeless presence flows through the Body of Christ, not for their own glorification, but for the good of the Church. The Church, as the bride of Christ must remain free from social and cultural conditioning. With Christ as its head, no human person can limit access to Christ because of gender.

In the parable of the wedding feast, guests excused themselves for a variety of reasons, Jesus concluded with the words, “Many are called, but few are chosen”.7 The Bridegroom invites all to the heavenly feast, male and female, lay and ordained. It’s we who put up barriers, operate on erroneous assumptions, or make excuses that prevent our entering. Refusing to look beyond the surface or the human tendency to alter or fix what is unappealing keeps us from recognizing the will of God within the vocation to which we have been called, complete with trials and tribulations that John of the Cross termed the dark night. According to the Carmelite saint, “persons who refuse to go out at night in search for the Beloved and to divest and mortify their will, but rather seek the Beloved in their own bed and comfort will not find him”.8 Not unlike those who are imagining the grass is greener on the other side, proponents of women’s ordination may fail to recognize the graces within their present state.

Few women demonstrated the ability to work through cultural mores, while remaining faithful to the teachings of the Church more clearly than St. Teresa of Avila. Moved by her desire to save souls, Teresa was liberated from cultural constraints that maintained women couldn’t possibly have a public role in the Church. But it was through Teresa’s union with Christ, not through any imagined role that she was able to move beyond theological and anthropological thinking of the time. The more deeply she was united with Christ, the better she understood that men and women, created in the image and likeness of God have the same dignity and are called to be Christ to the world. Teresa cautioned her nuns against building castles in the air, insisting that it was not what they did that mattered, but the intentionality and humility that motivated them.9

Some proponents of female priests cite St. Therese of Lisieux as an ally, but her words are taken out of context. Therese wanted to be everything for Christ and listed her desire to be a priest among many other vocations. It was the desire for total surrender to be all et al for Christ that caused her emotional outpouring. More notable is her account of realizing that her real vocation was love. She explained that after reading St. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians about the Body of Christ, she suffered a “veritable martyrdom” until she read that love was the most excellent vocation. She went on to explain:

I understood that if the Church had a body composed of different members, the most necessary and most noble of all could not be lacking to it and so I understood that the Church had a Heart and that that heart was burning with Love…I understood that Love comprised all vocations, that love was everything, that it embraced all times and places. My vocation is Love! 10

 

Love is the vocation to which all are called, to unite our self with the crucified Christ so that we may also rise with him. This is the vocation that comprises every state of life, not only for priests and religious, but for all the faithful. Every husband who loves his wife the way Christ loves his Church, and every wife who returns his love and all that it entails becomes persona Christi. It’s the sacrificial dimension of love that likens them to Christ who was faithful even to his death on the cross. Through the sacrament of Baptism, the whole Church is a priestly people that shares in the priesthood of Christ.11 Ordained and lay, single and married are called to this priesthood in Christ.

No human being exemplified this more perfectly than Mary, Jesus’ own Mother. Her fiat was complete and ongoing. She gave herself to God totally and without reservation. In offering Jesus. the person she loved most to the Father during the presentation in the temple, she was told, “and you your heart shall be pierced with a sword”.12  It was a foretaste of what she would experience as she stood by her son at the foot of the cross, sharing in his priesthood not as an ordained minister but as one who’s heart was one with the heart of God. And so it can be for every Baptized Christian who is willing to offer the sufferings that are part of every life as a gift to the Father through Jesus for the good of the world.

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  1. Kim Daniels, https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2021/02/12/sister-nathalie-becquart-pope-francis-catholic-

catholic-women-leadership-240012

  1. Sara, Butler, M.S.B.T. Why Women Can’t Be Priests, interview by Mary De Turris, Our Sunday Visitor,

December 17, 1995.

  1. Bernard Lonergan, Method in Theology, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press) 240.
  2. St. Thomas Aquinas quoted in CCC 1545 (Pauline Press, 1994).
  3. Maria Rosa Gonzales Casa, S.T.J. Teresa of Jesus, Woman, Prophet, Mystic translated by Judy Roxborough,

S.T.J. (Washington D.C.: ICS Publications 2020) 189.

  1. Lk. 1:38.
  2. Matt. 22:14.
  3. John of the Cross. Collected Works of John of the Cross, “Dark Night” Bk 2.24.4 translated by Kieran

Kavanaugh, O.C.D (Washington D.C.: ICS Publications) 446.

  1. Teresa Avila. Collected Works of Saint Teresa of Avila Vol. II, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh, O.C.D. “Interior Castle”

7.4.15. (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications) 450.

10.Therese of Lisieux. Story of A Soul, trans. John Clark, O.C.D. (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications)193-94.

  1. CCC 1591.
  2. Lk. 22:35a.

 

Barbara Hughes, O.C.D.S. has a master’s degree in Formative Spirituality. A wife, mother and grandmother, she is author of Ministry and the Mystical Path, a regular columnist in “The Catholic Virginian” and has been published widely in numerous Catholic periodicals. Her book, Mary the Perfect Contemplative: Carmelite Insights on the Interior Life of Our Lady is scheduled to be released by ICS Publications in April of 2022.