Ministry and Representation

From Can Women be Priests? by Paul Lakeland, pp.59-75.

Theology Today Series, General Editor: Edward Yarnold, published by The Mercier Press, Dublin & Cork.
Republished on our website with the necessary permissions.

From missing link to stranglehold

The early life of the Church has similarities to the life of early man. In both cases their origins are shrouded in patchwork cloaks of light and dark; the glimpses that history allows us of what happened are the more tantalising for the fact that so much is still hidden from us and, in the life of the Church at least, likely to remain so. One such area of frustration was touched upon when we discussed the problems of tradition and mentioned apostolic and ecclesial tradition, and the difficulty of drawing a line between the two. Another missing link complicates the question of the relationship between apostles and bishops (the episcopoi, those who have the duty of ‘oversight’ in the churches). The bishops are certainly the successors of the apostles in the sense that they carry forward the message of the gospel to which the apostles were the first witnesses. What actually happened in the transitional period we will never know in detail; at one point there were apostles, and then some time later there were bishops. Fortunately, a little more than that can be said about the development of presbyters or elders, out of which today’s priests emerged.

It is perhaps fair here to say a word or two about why we wish to turn to this problem now. So far, when we have referred to priests, men or women, we have understood roughly the modern concept of priest in the Roman Catholic Church. As we said in the introduction, there may be many better words to describe just what our priests do, but we have for clarity’s sake to use the one with which we are saddled. There comes a point, however, at which it is necessary to try to see what in our modern concept of priest is of central importance, and what is ultimately inessential. Celibacy, for example, would come into the second category, since there were times when the Church did not require it, and there are traditions close to our own (Greek Orthodox or Uniates, for example) where it is not required today. One way to seek out some indications of the essence of the priesthood is to look at the world in which it came into being.

Saint Paul was not an apostle in that primary sense of witness to the death and resurrection of Christ, but by adoption, so to speak. However, he engaged in one of the primary apostolic activities, that of the foundation of new churches. His letters for the most part bear witness to his efforts to keep the churches he had founded, but to which he could not always be travelling, in the true light of the gospel. These churches as saving communities of believers with some liturgical celebration of the Lord’s supper at the centre of their life inevitably had to have some kind of government, not necessarily provided by the apostles themselves. In the church of Jerusalem described in the Acts of the Apostles this leadership seems to have been in the form of a council of elders (or presbyters, from the Greek presbuteroi) led by the apostle James. This was a not surprising development in a JudaeoChristian community whose members were familiar with the concept of elder from its place in Judaism. It is difficult to be exact about the function of the elders at that time. They were almost certainly some kind of governing body, possibly also exercised a diaconal ministry, and may have had some hand in the presidency of the worship, although that is not certain and would have been contrary to the Jewish prototype on which we presume them to have been modelled. Perhaps they were more like the kind of parish council which does not exist simply to rubberstamp the decrees of the parish priest.

The Pauline churches, on the other hand, provide evidence of a much wider variety of ministries at this early stage, although it is interesting to note that Luke seems to refer to there being elders even in the Pauline church (Acts 14.23; 20.17). This may, of course, be no more than the kind of inexactitude we indulge in when we talk loosely of the elders or presbyters as priests, or when we refer to the early ceremonies of the breaking of bread as ‘the Mass’. In the early life of the Church, then, we know that there were presbyters in the Jerusalem church, who in origin at least were administrative rather than liturgical in function, and that in the Pauline churches almost every aspect of the life of the Church had its particular ministry expressing its particular gift of the spirit. It is possible to conjecture, although it is only conjecture, that the development of a need for organisation at least at a rudimentary level would be likely to make the churches grow more rather than less alike.

In the twentieth chapter of Acts the same people are referred to as being elders in the church of Ephesus (verse 17) and as having ‘guardianship’ (episcope, oversight) over the church. This could mean that what Paul calls episcopoi Luke would call presbyters, and may point forward to the situation in the church of the pastoral epistles, where some kind of fusion of the two traditions may have been reached. It is there that what is sometimes called the historic threefold ministry of the Church (bishops, priests and deacons) receives its first mention. However, although in the pastorals the deacons have a clearly separate function, it is not easy to say whether or not the presbyters and bishops are the same or different people.

Ministry in the early Church is best understood in terms of a ministry of service in building up the body of Christ. Everything is God’s work which helps to strengthen that community brought into existence at his command. Presbyters, bishops, apostles, prophets and all the administrative and more ‘charismatic’ elements have to be seen in relation to this aim. Paul’s harshness towards the practice of speaking in tongues without interpretation springs from his knowledge that this introduces dissension into the Christian assembly. Two verses from Ephesians sum up the Pauline view:

And his gifts were that some should be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, for the equipment of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for building up the body of Christ (5.11-13).

Ministry here is the call of the Spirit to the service of the community which is the body of Christ; this call is recognised (or authenticated) by the Church in some visible way, often even at first by the laying-on of hands (for example, see Acts 6.6).

It would be wrong to try to escape asking the same question of ourselves as the early Church was commonly asking: what form of ministry today best serves the needs of building up the body of Christ which is the Church? This question is the other side of the tradition coin. We cannot just launch out into the deeps of the fertility of our imaginations and concoct something, but we can apply the experience of the early Church. So we can say, for example, that any new form of ministry must be exercised as the result of a call of the Holy Spirit, acceptable to the people of God, and authenticated by the institutional Church. In terms of our particular interest here, it means that the removal of the theoretical difficulties, in this case theological ones, is only the first step in implementing the ordination of women. The next step is the sign of the Holy Spirit, perhaps in numbers of women offering themselves for the ministry, an event already occurring in the United States and to some extent in Europe. The education of the whole Church to understand the step is also an obvious precondition for its successful acceptance, and finally the Church’s authentication (ordination) should follow, a move which it would be unwise to make without all the previous ones having been effected.

The Church at the present time has existed for too long with a clerical stranglehold on the gifts of the Spirit. The ranks of the clergy are not going to open up to women, however theologically acceptable the idea becomes, until they have learned to relax their grip on the life of the Church. Whatever kind of ministry it was that existed in the early Church, reference to Paul shows us a picture of variety and differentiation of function. When we talk about ordination in the Roman Catholic Church today we think immediately of the ordination of priests, or just possibly of deacons. We reserve the term, in other words, for the only ministry we know of, that of an all-embracing office which has arrogated to itself over the centuries the functions of elder of the community, president of the liturgical assembly, teacher, prophet, chairman of the parish council, and expert fund-raiser. Some of the suspicion of the recent recurrence of pentecostalism within the Church is possibly well-founded, but too much of it grows from the feeling that the Spirit might be dangerous if it is not filtered through the usual clerical channels. Priesthood as we know it in the Church has to let go, not only so that the Spirit may be seen once again to work at all levels within the community, but also so that the priesthood itself may rediscover its true identity, at present submerged under a host of inessentials.

Nor is there anything particularly dramatic in that identity when rediscovered, since looking back at the New Testament and the Church of the early centuries indicates two elements which were obviously the constituent elements of the ministerial priesthood - elder and president of the eucharistic assembly. The drama and the rediscovered novelty lies in situating this within a framework of cooperation and not a ‘head and members’ model. This brings us to the question of how symbolism affects the relationship between the ministerial priesthood and the Christian community.

Representing Christ

In some of the preceding pages we have been looking at areas within which some would claim that there is evidence to show that women cannot be priests. In others we went on to look at the ways in which men and women could be said to be equal, to be different, and to be able to give a theological complexion to their complementarity. The question which will occupy us in the closing pages of this book is whether or not there is something inherently masculine in the very nature of the priesthood to prevent women assuming that role in the Christian assembly. In the last section I avoided defining any of the functions of the priest in terms of his being a representative of Christ. This is not because the term is false, but it is misleading if taken out of the context of the entire priestly office. In some sense, it can equally well be said that the priest is not the representative of Christ at all, but of the people of God before Christ, hence of an entity (the Church) traditionally represented in feminine language and symbolism.

At its crudest, the representation argument simply says that as Christ came on earth as a man and as the priest is the representative of Christ, so the priest must be a man. This begs the question of the precise mode of the priest’s representativeness. It is not specifically as priest that he first and foremost represents Christ, since all God’s people constitute a priestly people, and Christ is ‘the one high priest’. Since the term ‘priest’ applied to our ministerial priesthood is misleading, but a term we have inherited either through the accident or the malignity of history, it would seem imprudent to pin too much upon it. The ministerial priesthood is the concentration of certain activities in an office; so, as president at Mass the priest represents Christ, as much in the Johannine significance of service of the brethren (washing the feet of the disciples) as in the synoptic tradition of the consecration of bread and wine. But the subject is much more complex than this, and some of its entanglements will be discussed below. What we have to discover is whether the priest’s representativeness requires him to be masculine, or if perhaps we are dealing with what are basically metaphors.

1. The bridegroom

In this common theological image, Christ is the bridegroom and the Church is his bride. In the relation between the priest and the laity the priest exercises this function of bridegroom in his representing Christ, and only a man can be a bridegroom. So only a man can be a priest. There are two immediate drawbacks to this theory; we want to know in what sense, metaphorical or literal, Christ is the bridegroom of the Church, and then in what sense if any this relationship is carried over to that of the ministerial priesthood. There is a danger of imprecise argumentation here, since if I have started, as many do, with an uncritical acceptance of the statement, ‘The priest is the representative of Christ’, then saying that Christ is the bridegroom of the Church necessarily involves the priest as representative bridegroom in some bizarre kind of everlasting proxy marriage.

An everlasting proxy marriage is perhaps not the ideal relationship between Christ and the Christian. Christ is primarily present in the Church, and the Church is us - we are ‘other Christs’, we are Christ in the world. This is part of the priestly nature of the whole people of the Church, that we mediate Christ to the world. While we are Christs, this ministerial priesthood which is composed of ‘representatives of Christ’ is also composed of individuals who like ourselves are members of the Church. That is, they are members of the bride, the Church, which is feminine, at the same time as they are Christ, masculine, the bridegroom. But they cannot be said to be both bride and groom, both masculine and feminine, out of their very nature. We can only overcome this if we say that there are two ways of looking at an individual member of the ministerial priesthood, as a priest in which he has certain functions which are related to the person of Christ, and as a member of the Church in which he is a Christian like ourselves. That is, at one time he is symbolically masculine, at the same time symbolically feminine, and neither symbolic position is affected or falsified by his biological role. In other words, if a man can be a member of the Church, symbolically feminine, then a woman can be a member of the ministerial priesthood, symbolically masculine.

So there are two problems in this bride and bridegroom image; one is the difficulty of assigning either priest or lay person exclusively to either side of the divide, and the other is the changed nature of the marital relationship since the image first gained popularity. We might also add that Christ in the gospels did not use the term himself, but preferred to speak of bridegroom and wedding guests! The bride and groom relationship between Church and Christ is only a partially satisfactory image. Certainly it expresses the unifying love between Christ and Church, but how does it get over the problem involved in the fact that Christ instituted the Church? Marriage is for us a contract between two equal partners, yet the love of God expressed in Christ and with us in the Holy Spirit keeps the Church in being. Can it be part of the bridegroom’s function to have brought the bride into being and to keep her in being?

The marital relationship is one in which the partners share and learn from one another; can Christ be said to learn from the Church as she learns from him? Obviously we are pushing these arguments to absurd extremes, but only because we are taking the image literally, as expressing a state of affairs which is so, instead of seeing it as a symbolic expression of a loving relationship. There is no strict one-to-one correspondence on detail. But if this is so in the case of Christ and the Church, then it is so for his representative the priest in his relationship to the laity. The priest is only the bridegroom of the laity insofar as it is true to say that Christ is the bridegroom of the Church. That is, in a true but strictly limited sense of the symbolisation of a loving care in service and in the Eucharist.

But if this is all that it means, it can reasonably be asked once more how this pertains necessarily to man. Is woman to be thought less capable of loving care? Is she unable to serve the people of God? Is she incapable of celebrating the Eucharist? The answer to the first two of these questions is clearly negative, and to the third similarly so to the extent that she is thought to be incapable because she cannot represent Christ the bridegroom of the Church. It involves a far larger question: namely, is a person to be a priest because of the qualities symbolised by their sex, or because of the qualities possessed by the individual?

2. Christ’s saving humanity

In our view of the characteristics of men and women discussed earlier we saw that individuals rather than types share many of the aspects of both sexes in their emotional and psychological make-up. Roughly speaking, man is animus with some admixture of anima, woman the opposite. It is, then, no disrespect to say that Christ himself as a human being would share in this condition and would demonstrate some feminine character traits to a greater degree or lesser. Christ was fully man, but being a male is not to have no feminine characteristics. Christ died for mankind and rose to save mankind; in the saving act of his death and resurrection he brought all human perfection, male and female, into the new life in him. In him, for that very reason, there is ‘neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus’. Male and female in Christ indicate neither rank before God nor rank in Christian society. Redeemed humanity is all one, in the sense of being equal before the Lord. Christ’s maleness is in no way important to the saving nature of his life and death; he saves humanity in his humanness, not in his maleness, and he is a man because he had to be something. In his divinity the saving act transcends sexuality as the divine transcends the human.

For the priest who is the representative of Christ this picture has certain implications. In the first place the priest is not a representative of Jesus of Nazareth in any crudely understood sense. If he were, then he would be chosen for his likeness to Christ, and circumcised men aged about thirty with Jewish features and swarthy skins would be the only people admitted to the clerical ranks (and that probably only for a three-year ministry). No, it is in his saving theological significance that Christ is represented by the priest, and it is in his saving act that Christ’s sex is unimportant. So why should that of the priest be of such significance?

3. The femininity of Christ

Christ’s saving act for mankind is accomplished by the grace of God, and through this grace new life is brought to the followers of Christ, the Church. The Church is then sustained by the grace of God flowing through the head of the Church, which is Christ. Christ is at once the source and the mediator of the life of the Church; in cooperation with the Father the Church is born. There is matter here for a crudely biological parallel which would make the Son the mother and the Father the father of the Church, but such is not our intention. Rather, it is to highlight the fact that Christ comes to bring new life to the Church, but the new life he brings (the life of the Spirit) is not something which comes from him alone. It comes from him and the Father. He is then the agent of handing on life which, in his humanity, he has received from another (God), and in his divinity he has received from all eternity in the Father. He is the cooperator who is involved in the creation of new life for the Church, he is the source and the carrier of the life of grace. He is, in other words, acting under a feminine symbol.

Once again, if the priest is the representative of Christ, then he is so in the theological significance rather than the bodily presence of Christ. The priest in his function at the Eucharist, at baptism, in penance, is in the place of Christ as the bringer of new life through himself. He stands in the place of Christ in a physical sense, but in a theological sense Christ acts through him in the gift of grace in the sacraments. Similarly, the whole Church can be seen as the mediator of grace to the world, a mediation in which the free gift of God and the concern of the Church to live up to her vocation as ‘leaven’ are intermingled. As she gives herself, so she gives God in Christ. This is a further aspect of being Christ in the world; it may also confuse the reader. But the confusion itself is instructive, since it is precisely what happens when we move into the realm of metaphor and symbol. The truth which they contain is universal truth, and so many aspects of existence can be considered under the light of the truth which they express. The Church, the priest, Christ, are inextricably masculine and feminine to the depths of their religious significance. If the arguments are only saying that there is a way of looking at the priest’s activity in which it has parallels with some specifically masculine acts, then that is quite true. What has to be recognised is that if a man can be a priest and yet exercise those functions which can be seen in the light of feminine symbolism, then it is no argument against women priests to say that they would have to perform certain symbolically masculine acts. In fact, their suitability for priesthood as mediation and cooperation in the life of grace is far clearer than it is for men.

IN CONCLUSION

If some of the ‘problems’ surrounding our ‘issue’ have now been cleared away, there remains the question: ‘Is it a good idea?’. Put differently, it could be said that once an issue has been clarified, and doctrinal considerations removed from dispute, subsequent consideration of the issue takes the form of deciding whether or not the external conditions have changed to the point at which a change in discipline is advisable. An obvious case in point here would be that of the celibacy of the clergy. Of course, it is entirely possible and indeed valuable to construct a theology of celibacy or of the male priesthood, since we presume that any practice of the Church hallowed by the usage of centuries is intended to clarify some truth. Thus, the theology of celibacy will try to establish a connection between priesthood and virginity, and there may be much of value to be found in such a picture Scholastic theology, above all others, is that which tried to move beyond the realm of symbolic truth to an explanation of things as they are in their essence. It was in scholastic theology that the mythic truths of Genesis were exalted into statement of unvarnished fact. Hence Aquinas was forced to conclude that a nun could exercise jurisdiction (since some of then undoubtedly did with the express approval of the Holy See even over men) by virtue of the fact that her religious consecration gave her ‘a certain share in manly dignity’. She became, in other words, an honorary man.

Giving a few people the benefit of the doubt, we can say that no one today would exactly share Aquinas’s view. Yet there does seem to be a danger in the current movements for the ordination of women to the priesthood that the end-result if they were successful on their own terms, would be ‘a approximation to manly dignity’; that, in other words, some of the women who want to be priests really want to be men. Haye van der Meer concluded his book with the thought that the ministerial priesthood as it now stands doesn’t look satisfactory for women precisely because it was formed by men over many centuries, What exists today is simply the male side of a one-sided ministerial priesthood. To counter this there is a need, above all else, for women to take on Church activities and ministries at as many levels as possible. Re-educating the whole Church has to begin with the familiarisation of both clergy and laity with the idea that women do rather more than arrange the flowers.

Has the time arrived for some constructive step to be taken about the ordination of women priests? I hope that the foregoing pages have made clear that there is no theoretical objection which can sustain close examination, and that there are certain indications in the symbolism of the priesthood which are decidedly feminine. These are not plainer than they are simply because the male-dominated development of the Church has inevitably meant that they would go largely unexamined. But there does remain the question of the practical advisability of the step.

In our chapter on Saint Paul we had occasion to mention frequently the principle of ‘building up the body of Christ’, and if there is a serious possibility that the introduction of some new practice, even if in itself entirely justifiable, would substantially disrupt the life of the Church, then its inception has to be carefully considered. Problems with latinists and traditionalists generally in the liturgy, and disillusionment with the comparatively aesthetically barren vernacular mass, for example, can be almost entirely explained as the result of bad or nonexistent preparation. The people did not know why or what was happening, and the clergy were little better prepared themselves. The same sort of problems would obviously arise if married clergy or women priests were to be introduced into the Church tomorrow. The more one believes that they must be introduced, and must take root successfully, the more circumspect one will be in thrusting them unfeelingly upon the Church.

This touches on what has been called the ecumenical aspect of the issue - namely, if a particular Church takes this step, will it not jeopardise their relations with others? The answer to this is ‘yes’ only if it remains for either Church a question of dogma. As a disciplinary issue for individual Churches the presence or absence of women priests becomes one factor in an acceptable and indeed vital pluriformity. Similarly, when the concept of national Churches takes renewed hold within the Roman communion, as it must do within the next half-century, matters of celibacy, women priests and a host of other issues will be decided on a national basis according to local needs.

All this aside, re-education remains a pressing need, not only for preparation for the day when women priests could be introduced, but perhaps even more urgently to demasculinise the Church. In any case, at the present moment if women priests were introduced it would be an example of the gracious granting of a privilege by a male-run Church to a few worthy women. As such it would seem to me to be a reinforcement on one level of what it is thought by its advocates to destroy at another; that is, male domination.

The first and most important step is to open up the Church at all its administrative levels to the representation of women, not as trusted slaves or just to show that we are broadminded, but on a basis of equality. This in itself presupposes the even more important declericalisation of the institutional Church. Bishops and priests are pastors and teachers; the Church’s civil service need not and probably should not be staffed by such people. Men must relinquish their hold on the Church’s life and allow women their say, and the clerical bureaucracy must be the first to do that. The Church should be allowed to breathe. Perhaps then the Church, which is after all metaphorically a ‘she’, would move closer to a balance and away from its present oppressive masculinity.

There are two mistaken assumptions that could be made about this picture; that women would flood the seminaries and the chancelleries, and that they would be priests on lines very similar to the current model. We have said ad nauseam above that statistics cannot be allowed to tyrannise over individuals, but at the same time we ought to remember that their proper purpose is to inform us about generalisations. If our understanding of the nature of women is correct, we might expect that only a few (relatively) would have either the inclination or the gifts for the priesthood. In exactly the same way, of course, that only a few men have the gifts for the priesthood. But just so long as ‘oversight’ for the local church involves administration we can expect the priesthood to be attractive to very few women. Secondly, it would be wrong to imagine that women in the priesthood would leave unchanged our conception of a priest. They would come as Women priests, with so much to add beyond their symbolic suitability. All the specifically feminine gifts of caring, compassion and so on would enrich the ministerial priesthood beyond recognition. Our current vocations crisis shows among other things that even the men are dissatisfied with the current model of the priesthood. But the movement for the ordination of women, as it gains the momentum it must, could be the work of the Holy Spirit, prompting the Church to ask once more the question, ‘What is a priest?’, and not to be afraid to answer it honestly.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

The books listed here are arranged in descending order of usefulness and relevance to the debate. The sections listing booklets and pamphlets, and articles, are simply in alphabetical order.

Books

van der Meer, H., Women Priests in the Catholic Church?, Philadelphia, Temple University Press (1973). The original German edition, Priestertum der Frau?, Herder (1969) contained a very full bibliography which does not appear in the American edition.

Tavard, G. H., Woman in Christian Tradition, London, University of Notre Dame Press (1973).

Bruce, M., and Duffield, G. E., Why not? Priesthood and the Ministry of Women, Abingdon, Marcham Press (1972). This book is a collection of essays by a group of non-Catholic Christians presenting the conservative viewpoint.

Hutt, C., Males & Females, London, Penguin Education (1972).

Kennedy, E. (ed), Women in Ministry: a sisters’ view, Chicago, National Association of Women Religious Publications (1972).

Hewitt, E. C., and Hiatt, S. R., Women Priests: Yes or No?, New York, The Seabury Press (1973).

Morris, J., Against Nature and God, the history of women with the jurisdiction of bishops, London, Mowbrays (1973).

van Vuuren, N., The Subversion of Women, as practiced by churches, witch-hunters, and other sexists, Philadelphia, Westminster Press (1973).

Booklets and pamphlets

Anonymous, Women in the Priesthood?, London, Church Literature Association (1973). Subtitled ‘reflections by a group of theologians’, this is a conservative Anglican view.

Barn, B. (ed), What Is Ordination Coming To?, Geneva, World Council of Churches (1971).

Blackfriars, The Place of Women in the Church, Oxford (1973). This is the privately printed conference proceedings of a group of Catholic women who met at Blackfriars, Oxford, in September 1973.

Cranston, C. (ed), Evangelicals and the Ordination of Women, Bramcote, Grove Books (1973).

General Synod, The Ordination of Women to the Priesthood: a consultative document, London, Church Information Office (1972). This booklet, edited for the General Synod of the Church of England by Miss Christian Howard, is an indispensable summary of the history of the issue, particularly in the Anglican communion.

Pro Mundi Vita, Men and Women in Partnership in the Church and in Society, Brussels, Pro Mundi Vita (Special Note 21).

Mascall, E. L., Women Priests?, London, The Church Literature Association (1972).

World Council of Churches, Concerning the Ordination of Women, Geneva, WCC Department on Faith and Order (1964).

Articles

Anonymous, ‘Women in the Church’, in Herder Correspondence, October 1969.

Bevenot, M., ‘Traditiones in the Council of Trent’, in Heythrop Journal, 4 (1963) pp. 333-347.

Brothers, J., ‘Women in Ecclesial Office’, in Concilium, 10 (1972) pp. 109-122.

Doyle, E., ‘God and the Feminine’, in Clergy Review, 56 (1971) pp. 866-877.,

Henning, C. M., ‘Women in the Priesthood’, in Commonweal, 11 Jan 1974, pp. 360-363.

O’Collins, G., ‘Ordination of women’, in The Tablet, 23 Feb and 2 March 1974, pp. 175-176 and 213-215.

Radford Ruether, R., ‘Male Clericalism and the Dread of Women’, in The Ecumenist, 11 (1973) pp. 65-69.

Simcox, C. E., ‘Should Women Be Priests?’ in The Lamp, 71 (1973) pp. 2-9.

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