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translated by John Wijngaards
To the Congregation for
the Doctrine of the
Faith
00120 Citta del Vaticano
Palazzo del S. Ufficio.
To Cardinals Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (Prefect), Alfonso López Trujillo, Ignace Moussa I. Daoud, Giovanni Battista Re, Francis Arinze, Jozef Tomko, Achille Silvestrini, Jorge Medina Estévez, James Francis Stafford, Zenon Grocholewski, Walter Kasper, Crescenzio Sepe, Mario Francesco Pompedda
To Bishops Tarcisio Bertone SDB
Rino Fisichella.
28 February 2003
Your Eminencies Cardinals and Bishops,
In December 2002, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith confirmed, with the explicit approval of the Pope, the excommunication of the seven women who received the ordination to the priesthood on 29th June 2002. The Congregation’s decree was passed on to the Austrian speaker of the group (Christine Mayr-Lumetzberger) in January 2003.
In our response to this decree we will refer especially to point 2b of your writing, therefore to the aspect of Doctrine, because it is fundamental to your judgment and your way of acting.
You accuse us of “formally and tenaciously denying the doctrine, which has always been taught by the Church and practised by the Church and which has been presented in a definitive fashion by John Paul II”, namely “that the Church has no authority whatsoever to impart priestly ordination to women”. (You base yourself in this on the Apostolic Letter Ordinatio sacerdotalis, no 4). The “denial of this doctrine” is in your view “ the rejection of a truth which belongs to the Catholic faith”, and which therefore deserves “a just punishment” (cfr. canon 750 par 2; 1371 no 1 Codex Iuris Canonici; John Paul II, Apostolic Letter Ad tuendam fidem, no 4a). In this way the women concerned are supposed to have contradicted the Catholic doctrine regarding the “teaching authority of Peter’s successor” and to have refused “factually not to acknowledge the unchangeableness of the utterances of the Pope about doctrines which have to be held by all believers in a definitive fashion”.
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith therefore desires, in agreement with the Holy Father, that we women should firmly acknowledge and hold on to the doctrine (Ad tuendam fidem no 4) which can be proved to contradict the full dignity of women as well as their full equality with men (cfr. Gal 3,26-28). This contradiction has now been abundantly documented in careful studies of the sources. Every exclusion of women by reason of their sex, in this case their exclusion from central ministries and functions in the Church (cfr canon 1024 CIC), represents a violent attack on the freedom and dignity of a human being that cannot be justified. Canon 1024 in Church law must therefore be considered an immoral Church law that does not have a right to exist. It causes those concerned, especially women, great suffering. It is a serious crime to maintain this legal exclusion of women from the ordained ministries (Canon 1024), especially from the priesthood, through the heaviest ecclesiastical punishments. It was not without reason that the Second Vatican Council in its Pastoral Constitution (Gaudium et Spes § 29) stated: “Since all people have a spiritual soul and have been created in God’s image, since they have the same nature and the same origin, since, redeemed as they are by Christ, they enjoy the same divine calling and destiny, therefore the fundamental equality of people has to be brought evermore to recognition . . . All forms of discrimination regarding social, cultural and basic rights of the human person, whether because of their sex or of race . . have to be overcome and eliminated, since they contradict God’s plan . . ” (see also Lumen Gentium § 32).
To judge whether in the exclusion of women from all ordained ministries in law (see Canon 1024 CIC) or in the doctrine underlying law, it is a question of discrimination in gender should be judged not by you, but above all by the women who are the victims of this law. To demand under the threat of excommunication that we also say ‘yes’ to this injustice and should even acknowledge this exclusion as “a truth which belongs to Catholic faith”, is inhuman, even perverse . . and deserves the strongest opposition . . . on account of the dignity of women as persons.
Unfortunately, we cannot find any evidence to establish that you, as members of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, have honestly studied the long history in the Church of discrimination against women, a discrimination which has meanwhile been proved in numerous scientific works. Otherwise you would have come to a different conclusion with regard to the position of women in the Church. It can be proved namely that in the early Church women did enjoy ecclesiastical ministries (women deacons, women priests, missionary apostles). Due to a hardening (of the Church’s stand) and the patriarchal institutionalisation of the hierarchy of the ministries, the functions of women in the Church were gradually suppressed. Your holding on to the “doctrine” that the ministrial priesthood is reserved for men and that the Church “has no authority at all” to give women the priestly ordination and that this doctrine “has always taught and practised in the Church”, comes close to a falsification of the history of the Church.
In your decree you argue according to the principles of your own “closed system”, far from the reality of society. In society the true value of woman as a human being and her human rights are now being acknowledged as juridical rights that should be protected. Society formulates its laws and ordinances accordingly (cfr. GG in German text § 3 section 2).
You are inflicting heavy damage on the Church, by tenaciously defending this law which is discriminatory against women as well as the doctrine that lies at its basis, and by imposing the heaviest ecclesiastical punishments for any opposition, This proves that the “spirit” of the Inquisition, one of the greatest errors and tirannies in the Church’s history, has not been overcome till our own day -- as we are experiencing to our cost.
For more that forty years, already before the beginning of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) we have expressed ourselves against the ban of women from the priestly ministry, in valid spoken and written argumentation. We did not, however, encounter any willingness among the leading Church authorities to reconsider their position. Therefore, appealing to our personal dignity and our dignity as Christians, we feel impelled to break this law that discriminates against women (Canon 1024), since it does not come from God but from men in the Church. We feel supported in this by the word of Scripture: “One has to be more obedient to God than to human beings” (Rev 5,29).
When we defend our human dignity in action, it is not we who have harmed the Church and the faithful through our way of acting or who have given them cause for scandal, as you contend, but you -- because, through your doctrine and law, you still do not respect women as full human beings and members of the Church.
Give God the honour, whose divine spiritual power calls to the priestly ministry whom She wants (cfr. 1 Cor 12,11) Learn to question, at last, the antiquated, inhuman laws and structures of the Church and help us overcome them!
Many people in the Church are waiting for you to come to your senses and to show your willingness to convert,
respectfully,
in the name of the seven ordained women,
| Ordinations 29 June | RC women called to the priesthood | Theologians on the teaching of the CDF | The duty of speaking out | Mistaken teachings by Popes in the past | Womenpriests home page |
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