There seems to be a new article on the ordination of women, sex abuse, or some combination of the two every day now, many displaying theological tonedeafness and worse, scorn for the motives of Catholics who dare to take seriously the Church’s longstanding theological traditions. But there are delicta, and then there are graviora delicta. In fact, some published opinions are so bad as to make Maureen Dowd’s verses sound like a hymn.
On Saturday, The Guardian’s Lucy Mangan approached Christopher Hitchen’s level of spume when she said, of the profoundly unstable Mel Gibson’s recent hate-tirades,
Received wisdom is that Gibson cannot recover from this. But one course is still open to him. If ever priesthood beckoned a man, it is surely now. At least he apparently saves his violence for adult females. Truly, God works in mysterious ways.
It’s one thing to harbor spite for the Church, priests, or Catholics in general, but at least spitefulness is a relatively uncomplicated emotion. Willful ignorance strikes me as even more invidious. Such was on display in Tim Padgett’s positively agonizing opinion piece found yesterday in Time. Padgett’s argument, if you can call it that, holds that the Church’s repeated disapproval of mock-ordination ceremonies owes to “Dostoyevskian paranoia” about potential threats to clerical power.
Still worse than Padgett’s conspiracy theory is the fact that he, like so many Catholics, only allows himself to view the Church through the sullied lens of politics. He speaks of public opinion as if it were a factor in determining the Church’s perennial teachings, and opines that Church leaders have poor public relations skills. At least he doesn’t refer to parishioners as constituents.
He goes on, alleging the Church now teaches that “ordaining women into the priesthood [is] a sin on par with pedophilia.” It most certainly doesn’t, just as it doesn’t teach that stealing is a worse sin than rape. Both are graviora delicta, but one is quite a bit higher on the graviora scale than the other.
The misunderstanding goes still deeper. Padgett seems to think that women’s ordination is a real option the Church simply refuses to take up. He might be surprised to hear that the Church has never taught that ordaining women is a crime. Instead, it has taught that there simply is no such thing as a Christian priestess; therefore, mock-ordination ceremonies that confuse Catholics about the Church’s teachings constitute serious offenses to the belief of Catholics. It happens, alas, that mock-ordination ceremonies are one of the more popular modes of Gnostic protest these days.
Rehearsing reasons for the Church’s constant understanding of the male priesthood needn’t be done here, but two points nonetheless come to mind. Along with a muddling of the theology behind the question, Padgett and others of similar mind seem not to realize that when they ask, “Why not ordain women?” their question sounds, to many Catholics, indistinguishable from the question, “Why wasn’t Jesus a woman?” It’s a question of reworking the narrative of Christianity into a form that better suits the whims of modernity.
July 20th, 2010 | 6:22 pm
Nice way to put it: ” there simply is no such thing as a Christian priestess”. There is no such thing as the “right to abortion”. There is no such thing as “homosexual marriage”. I guess that’s what you call “ontology”: the study of the kinds of things that have existence, and the kinds of things that don’t. We need a very strong revival of this science.
July 20th, 2010 | 7:11 pm
Here’s why women cannot be priests: because the Mass is the sacrifice of the Bridegroom, Jesus, for the Bride, the Church.
It’s because of what the Mass actually is. Deny the reality of the Mass (we used to call it sacramental realism) and you can do anything you want. Deny the reality of marriage, and you can do anything you want. Deny the reality of male and female. . . …
July 20th, 2010 | 7:14 pm
I’d be willing to bet that most of those people also think that it is a belief of the Catholic church that priests are more likely to get into heaven. The understanding of even basic theology is non-existent.
July 20th, 2010 | 9:18 pm
You do your position no favor by assuming the worst motives on the part of those who disagree with you. I might even go so far as suggesting it is uncharitable. That said, Ms. Mangan got it right on the whole Polanski fiasco in the same essay, for what it’s worth. The Guardian newspaper is secular and treats all denominations (except Islam) with disdain. Stop playing the victim. Moreover by any standard the Vatican is tone deaf on the PR front.
July 20th, 2010 | 9:23 pm
Is Miasarx serious: the Mass is the sacrifice of he bridegroom for the bride? Is this 2010 or the Council of Trent?
July 20th, 2010 | 10:46 pm
Oh, I get it. Christ died only for Catholics. Thanks Miasarx!
July 21st, 2010 | 8:38 am
bob and Amos: read Cardinal Ratzinger’s “Dominus Iesus” (c. 2000). It’s “Church”, as in the Mystical Body of Christ. Also, He “gave Himself for us” (Titus 2:14). As is often pointed out, Catholicism is “both/and” not “either/or”. Hence, Trent AND Vatican II. “2010″, of course, is a meaningless number in terms of eternity.
July 21st, 2010 | 8:49 am
miasarx:
Here’s why women cannot be priests: because the Mass is the sacrifice of the Bridegroom, Jesus, for the Bride, the Church.
If that’s the reason why women can’t be priests, then the same logic would seem to prevent men from being “the Bride, the Church.”
July 21st, 2010 | 9:27 am
I’m heard many arguments on the tone-deafness of the Vatican regards PR. The strongest, in my mind, comes from The Anchoress on this web site. Yet, I have difficulty with that idea. PR is a dangerous, if useful, tool for the Church to pursue. It seems to me that the origins of the sexual crisis were mainly exercises in PR. Had the Church stuck to its mission at the diocesan level, the erring priests might have been dealt with at the time rather than decades later. And the solution might have been of substance, removing them from ministry, rather than the current “Why weren’t they laicized?” as if that approach was some kind of magic. But that was a path not taken and its consequences can only be guessed at now. So I remain doubtful but not certain.
July 21st, 2010 | 9:46 am
Dear Feeney: There is a legal right to abortion in this country. Several states do legally allow homosexuals to marry. These things do exist, even if some do not agree. Religious beliefs are not the same thing as legal rights.
July 21st, 2010 | 1:53 pm
christine,
Not to be dismissive nor insulting, but Feeney’s reference to “ontology” rather rules out the question of legal rights. He is talking about moral rights, and, I suspect, he is doing so from a natural law perspective. Thus, under the natural law there is no such thing as a “right to abortion” or a same-gendered marriage. With the increasing influence of positive law during the past half century and more, it is more and more the case that the fact that a legislature establishes some practice as “legal” has less and less relation to whether the practice is moral.
Pax et bonum.
July 21st, 2010 | 5:48 pm
TomG – sorry to see the genra of satire lost to some….
Keith Toepfer – your comment comes as a welcome sense of relief to Biden, Pelosi, et al…
July 22nd, 2010 | 9:20 am
christine: * Thanks for your response. KeithToepfer has explained it better than I can. I wasn’t relying on religious belief. I was referring to the “natural moral law”, which precedes any laws that a legislative body might pass. The Supreme Court’s granting of a “right” to abortion offends against this higher law, because there can never be a right to destroy a child growing inside a woman’s womb. This so-called “right” is simply an illusion.
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