Sacrifice, Social Maintenance and the Non‐ordination of Women

Abstract

Pope John Paul II’s apostolic letter published on May 22 1994, by coincidence the anniversary of the burning of Joan of Arc at the stake, stated in peremptory fashion that the admission of women to priestly ordination is not subject to debate among Roman Catholics, and the nonnegotiability of this statement has been insisted on more recently by Cardinal Ratzinger. In deference to this admonition I propose neither to debate the issue itself nor evaluate the theological and exegetical arguments on both sides, though it will not be possible to leave them completely out of account. What I would like to do instead is reflect on what is at stake for the church leadership, theologically and practically, in excluding women from the ministerial priesthood and doing so in such uncompromising terms as to even forbid the faithful to debate the subject. To pose the question in this way is not meant to insinuate that there can be no reasonable and arguable grounds for an exclusively male priesthood nor does it imply a dismissive attitude to arguments put forward in official documents in favour of the exclusion of women, much less assume that these arguments are advanced disingenuously. At the same time, I think it can be said that our reasons for holding certain positions are often unacknowledged and unarticulated even to ourselves, and are in any case more primordial than the arguments we elaborate in defence of these positions. In other words, our agenda is not always fully displayed in our arguments, which I imagine also holds for arguments put forward in official church documents.