A Gesture With Multiple Levels of Meaning

Crozier of Pope Saint
Gregory the Great  

Interesting news today from Rome—nothing overly dramatic but an important symbolic moment.  The Holy See has loaned to the Church of England for a convocation of Anglican prelates, the ornamental head of the crozier of Pope Saint Gregory I.  The connection is that it was Pope Saint Gregory who sent Augustine of Canterbury to England as a Missionary to the peoples of Southern England. 

Christianity existed in England before Augustine’s mission in the year 597.  The Christian faith had come to England with the Romans, certainly as early as the second century and probably even the end of the first century.  While the Anglo-Saxon invasions of the fifth and sixth centuries had driven much of the surviving native Christian population out to the wilds of western Britain and the moors of the north, the faith had survived.  Contact with Rome had long been lost, however, and the British Church was independent with many unique customs, including a different calendar for Easter.  (Much of this is handled in more detail in my series on the history of the Anglican Church.)  It was only with the Synod of Whitby in 664 that the native British Church of the North and West, the Ecclesia Anglicana,  was reconciled with the Rome-leaning Church of the South-east, headquartered at Canterbury.  The English Church always stood in a somewhat unique relationship with the papacy—loyal but quasi-independent—until the break under Henry VIII in the 1530’s. 

Today the Anglican Communion has become quite a fragile union as the Anglican Churches of the Northern hemisphere and the Anglican Churches of the Global South are in great tension about many issues including the ordination of women bishops (and in some cases, priests) and the place of gays in the Church.  There are a variety of non-theological points of tension as well as some of the Southern Primates seem to want to replace Canterbury as the nexus of the Communion.  The next Lambeth Conference—a meeting of Anglican bishops from around the world—which would normally be held in 2018 has not yet been announced and it is rumored (actually more than rumored) that Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby has no intention of calling such a potentially divisive meeting until the various primates (heads of the various national or regional Anglican Churches) can agree on a structure that won’t break apart under the strain.  The primates are expected to meet this month and it is to this meeting that Pope Saint Gregory’s crozier is being sent.  It is a lovely gesture of course, but also a subtle reminder to the Church of England of its long-time-ago ties to Rome and the papacy.  

Women Deacons?

Well, the Synod is underway and Archbishop Paul Andre Durocher of Gatineau Quebec, President of the Canadian Bishops’ Conference, raised the issue of ordaining women to the Diaconate.  Of course it has the krazies in a flap.  There are those who still want to hold that women are to be veiled virgins or fecund mothers—leave everything else to the men.  But several of you have contacted me as to what I think about it.  I don’t know why that matters.  I don’t get a lot of say in things, just the chance to sit on the sidelines and take the occasional pot-shot when some itinerant emperor parades by naked.  Of course, given the dysfunction in our Church structures, that happens pretty often these days, faster than I can blog. 

But as to what I think of women deacons?  I think it is a great idea.  Long overdue.  I mean long—like maybe a millennium and a half—overdue.  Why did we ever stop ordaining women deacons?  They could have been a great help in spreading the faith up into Northern Europe in the sixth and seventh and eighth centuries.  They could have been of great pastoral help in the European urban expansion of the 12^th and 13^th centuries.  They could have anchored the faith in the rough seas of the 16^th century Reformations.  They could have been great and effective evangelists in the missionary expansions of the 17^th-20^th centuries.  And most important of all, if we had kept women deacons from the days of the primitive Church, our skirted clerics wouldn’t be so friggin’ frightened of human beings with lady parts now.   Honest to God, the way they go on you’d think we are going to have menstrual blood all over the altar steps.  Or that it couldn’t be cleaned up if it did happen.  Move on boys, nothing to see here. 

The first thing we need to remember is that while deacons receive the Sacrament of Holy Orders at their diaconal ordination, their participation in the priesthood is that priesthood common to all the baptized.  They do not share in the “ordained priesthood” in which priests share and bishops possess in its fullness.  Therefore, any theological blocks that may exist to women in the presbyterate or episcopate are not relevant to the admission of women to the diaconate.  Of course, since the diaconate is the fire-door to the priesthood we are letting the girls get awfully close; one senile bishop’s bejeweled hands away and no alarm bells to stop in time! Worked for the Episcopalians, but then a lot of things work for them that don’t for us and I am not going down that rabbit hole.  

It may surprise some readers too that while women deacons are a well established historical fact up until the fourth century, the Roman Catholic Church has continued the practice, albeit in a severely abrogated form.  Nuns of the Carthusian Order, perhaps the strictest of Religious Orders whose members live as hermits, on the occasion of the Solemn Profession of Vows are vested in the diaconal stole and given the right to read the Gospel at certain services.  (The right of liturgically proclaiming the Gospel is the most important of the rights and privileges of Deacons in the Catholic Church.  The Deacon takes precedence in the reading of the Gospel over any priest or bishop present.  Even the Pope!  Even Cardinal Burke!!!)  While no one considers the nuns to be “deacons,” nor to have received the Diaconate in the same sense in which men are ordained deacons, the unique role of these women is a vestige of the once common practice of nuns being ordained to the diaconate.  I have also read that the practice of Deacon-nuns has not completely disappeared in some of the non-Chalcedonian Churches of the East and there are Orthodox Churches considering reintroducing Deaconesses, especially in monastic communities.  So, in other words, some of the men aren’t afraid of the competition as long as the women are locked away where they can’t mess things up for the boys.  Got it?  Isn’t it always the way?

And I think this is the real problem in reintroducing the Diaconate to women.  For many conservative Catholic laity it is simply another indication of the radical social revolution of the last 75 years in western society where women have broken through glass ceiling after glass ceiling, displacing male leadership and chipping away at patriarchy.  For a significant portion of clergy—including male deacons—it opens a male preserve to radical change that would mark “the rise and the fall of many in Israel.”  I think there is serious need for us as a Church—note, for us as a Church, not simply the “them” in the red beanies—to discuss the broader and deeper issues of gender, power, and human sexuality.  We need to come to some level of honesty as to what the real issues are that we are permitting to shape us as a Church and how those issues are advancing or retarding our mission of proclaiming the Kingdom of God.  The questions are a lot deeper than ordaining women to the diaconate and the questions are long overdue.  

A Sad And Dangerous Precedent

Archbishop Sentamu presiding

at the Episcopal Consecration
 of Bishop Philip North

Yesterday the Reverend Philip North was consecrated as the Bishop of Burnley in York Cathedral, but it was a rather bizarre service.  While the Archbishop of York, Dr. John Sentamu, “presided” over the service as Metropolitan of the Northern Province, the province to which the Diocese of Blackburn of which the Bishop of Burnley is suffragan, belongs (In the Anglican Church those whom we Catholics would call “auxiliary bishops” are called “suffragan bishops”) the actual ordination was done by the Rt. Rev. Martin Warner, the Bishop of Chichester.  Bishop Warner also was the celebrant of  the Eucharist which followed the ordination rite. 

The reason that Archbishop Sentamu performed neither sacrament (Episcopal Consecration or the Holy Eucharist) is that Archbishop Sentamu had the week before consecrated the Rt. Rev. Libby Lane as the Bishop of Stockport (suffragan of Chester).  Bishop Lane is the first woman to be ordained bishop in the Church of England, though certainly not the first in the Anglican Communion,  Bishop North, an arch-traditionalist who rejects the ordination of women to the priesthood and episcopate, insisted that he be ordained by a bishop who shared his theological views regarding an all-male priesthood.  Bishop Warner and the two co-consecrating bishops who joined him the laying on of hands (it is traditional, though not essential, to have at least three bishops for the consecration of a bishop) all are opposed to the ordination of women and have never ordained a woman to the priesthood.  Bishop Lane and several other Anglican bishops were present at the ceremony but did not join in the laying on of hands consecrating the new bishop.     

Moreover, by asking that Bishop Warner and not Archbishop Sentamu preside at the Eucharist, Bishop North is also calling into mind the integrity of Archbishop Sentamu’s episcopal ministry.  This is a non-verbal way of saying that the tissue holding together the Church of England is tenuous at best and that schism is all but certain.  When bishops refuse communicatio in sacris to one another the unity of the Church is shattered.

All due respect to Bishop North—and for that matter for Archbishop Sentamu for enabling this scandal—but as important as fidelity to our theological convictions are, I believe that the unity of the Church is an even more fundamental commitment.  I guess I believe that the unity of charity, the cor unum—even where there is profound disagreement—is a non-negotiable.  I believe that when the Church, not an individual prelate or pastor but the Church, takes a step individuals are bound to yield individual reservations to the common faith.  I am not saying that one must agree, but only that however strong the disagreement the bonds of communion—both Eucharistic and fellowship—must be maintained.  I believe this is as true for us Catholics as it should be for the Church of England or any other Church.  This is what saddens me in our Catholic Church whether it is when those on one end of the krazy spectrum proceed with the ordination of women priests or bishops or those on the other end ordain bishops or priests for the pre-conciliar rites without an apostolic mandate.  At the end of the day we don’t have to agree but we do need to gather at the one table for the One Bread of Christ’s Body and the One Cup of Christ’s Blood. 

  

Happy 40th Anniversary to the Philadelphia 11

July 29, 1974: The Ordination of
the Philadelphia 11

I was listening to the radio the other day as I was driving and came across Maureen Fiedler’s Interfaith Voices, a program that I always enjoy.  Dr. Fiedler (aka Sister Maureen Fiedler IBVM) had a special program commemorating “The Philadelphia 11.”  Forty years ago today, July 29^th 1974, eleven women deacons in the Protestant Episcopal Church in the USA presented themselves to Bishops Daniel N. Corrigan, Robert L. DeWitt, and Edward R. Welles and were ordained as priests in the Episcopal Church.  The eleven women—the first women priests in the Episcopal Church (though not in the Anglican Communion) were the Reverends Merrill Bittner, Alla Bozarth-Campell (don’t Episcopalians have wonderful names?), Alison Cheek, Emily Hewitt, Carter Heyward, Suzanne Hiatt, Marie Moorefield.  Jeannette Piccard, Betty Schiess, Katrina Swanson, and Nancy Wittig.  Katrina Swanson is the daughter of the late Bishop Welles, one of the ordaining bishops. 

There was nothing in the canon law of the Episcopal Church to prevent the ordination of women as priests, but the General Convention of the Church in 1970 and again in 1973 failed to approve motions authorizing such ordinations. Surprisingly it was not the House of Bishops that had objected, but the House of Delegates comprised of lay and lower clergy representatives.   In search of good pastures, shepherds are often ready to move faster and further than their flocks whose vision is limited by their narrow experience—a reason why we often call those who cannot (or will not) think critically “sheep.”  There was a day in the history of the Catholic Church in the United States when we had Shepherds like Richard Cushing, John McNicholas OP, Frank Haas, James Gibbons, John Dearden, Albert Meyer, Paul Hallinan, Bernard Topel, Bernard Sheil, to name a few.  (To be honest, I can’t think of many more.)  Heck, our first Bishop, Archbishop John Carroll, was even pushing for Mass and the Sacraments in English almost two hundred years before the Church finally came ‘round.  But back to the Episcopalians. 

Confronted with the fact that there were now eleven women on whom hands hand been laid and the Holy Spirit invoked, the Bishops of the Episcopal Church had to devise a protocol to confront the new situation.  At first they were inclined to declare the ordinations invalid in as that the (Protestant Episcopal) Church had not called these deacons to ordination.  The sacrament of Orders is not some arbitrary thing that a bishop can do at will.  At least in the Reformed Theology—and in fact, (though more in theory than in practice) in Roman Catholic theology—it is the Church that calls the candidate to the ministry and the Bishop is acting not on his own behalf, but as the head of a Church that has called the candidate.  In the ordination service—the Roman Catholic Ordination Rite as well as most other ceremonials—the assent of the gathered faithful is asked for by the ordaining bishop.  Given that there had been no such call, save from the assembled congregation that morning in Philadelphia, and given that the (Protestant Episcopal) Church had in fact refused to call women to the priesthood, and complicated by the fact that each of the three ordaining bishops were not the head of any (local) Church in whose name they could be acting, but all retired, foes of the ordination of women claimed that the ordinations were invalid.  But then Bishop Arthur Vogel, considered to be the best theologian among the Episcopal Bishops (a group not known in general for intellectual prowess), got up and presented a counter-argument: the women had been ordained by duly consecrated bishops and according to the official rites of the Church.  The ordinations were therefor valid.  The whole matter was replete with irony.  Bishop Vogel was a somewhat extreme High Churchman, not one who would be expected to argue for the ordination of women.  His argument, befitting a prelate educated at Nashotah House (a seminary that would cause the SSPX astonished confusion for its Tridentine Anglicanism) was pure Catholic Theology.  You have a valid minister; you have a valid rite; you must presume valid intention unless there is clear intention otherwise.  (As there was nothing in the canon law of the Protestant Episcopal Church) preventing the ordination of women, you also had a valid candidate.)  In the end the ordinations were ruled valid but the women were asked not to exercise priestly ministry until such time as the General Convention recognized women’s ordination which they did in 1976—a significant year for several reasons. 

The Catholic situation is somewhat different.  First, we have no women deacons.  There is a strong movement to ordain women as deacons—there were deaconesses for the first six centuries or so of the Church—and their duties corresponded to the duties of the male deacons though their ministry was directed towards women and the needs of women.  There are two reasons why we do not ordain women to the diaconate.  It would shake the growing rapport with the Orthodox Churches of the East (Greek, Russian, Syrian) as well as the other ancient Churches (Copts, Assyrians, Armenians), none of whom yet ordain women.  (Though the subject of admitting women to the diaconate is coming up for discussion in some of the Orthodox Churches.) The second reason—perhaps a bit more “on the ground” as it were, is that the diaconate is the firewall to insuring we don’t ordain women to the priesthood.  As the Episcopalians discovered that July day forty years ago: if they are already deacons, get a bishop to go along and they can move quickly and surreptitiously into the priesthood before you can stop it. 

The Catholic situation is somewhat different also in as that Catholic Church Law specifically declares that a valid candidate for ordination must be male.  There is therefore, under the current law, no way that the “Church” can call a woman to ordination. It simply would not be valid even with a validly ordained bishop following the prescribed rites.  So when we hear that several women were “ordained” on a boat on the Rhine River or in someone’s back yard in Maine, the only “Church” that called them is the community gathered at that time and in that place.  Unlike the typical ordination service in which the assembled congregation is representative of the larger Church, such assemblies are not representative of the Catholic Church.  The women ordained may be priests, but they are not Catholic priests.  The Catholic Church has not called them to priesthood. 

A tricky situation would be if a Bishop who was Ordinary of Local Church (in other words, a Bishop who heads a diocese) ordained a woman; that Bishop has a right to act on behalf of and in the name of the Church which he heads.  But for him to ordain a woman would take him—and his Church—out of the Roman Communion.  So again, perhaps the newly ordained would be a priest—but not a Catholic Priest. 

There is the case of Ludmila Javorová, a Czech woman who claims to have been secretly ordained to the priesthood in December of 1970 by Bishop Felix Maria Davídek.  Davídek himself had been secretly consecrated Bishop in 1967 during the period of Communist persecution of the Church in Czechoslovakia.  Allegedly Bishop Davídek secretly ordained a number of women as they would not be suspected of being priests and would thus have more mobility during what was one of the most virulent persecutions of the Church in the 20^th century.  Javorová’s disclosure that she had been ordained triggered Pope Saint John Paul II to write his 1994 Apostolic Letter, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis in which he teaches that it is by Divine Law, not human law, that the priesthood is given only to men and that therefore this law is immutable and that consequently the ordination of a woman is ipso facto invalid because the candidate is inherently ineligible.  Sounds pretty final doesn’t it?

There is still some argument about the theological soundness of the Pope’s Letter and there is still some (though not as much perhaps as twenty years ago) clamor among Catholics in the developed World for the ordination of women.  Now let me make it very clear.  I am not disagreeing with the teachings of Pope John Paul or of the Church itself.  I am not writing theologically.  I am not equipped to do so.   I am writing as a historian and only in that capacity.  And as a historian I know that I will not see the ordination of women even if I live another generation. (Of course, there was a day when I was told that I would never see Mass in English, but that is beside the point.)  No one reading this post is ever going to see the ordination of women in the Catholic Church.  Neither—probably—will your children.  But the trajectory of history makes the ordination of women in the Catholic Church inevitable.  I know, Pope Saint John Paul said that it can’t—by Divine Law—happen.  I know, I know.  Pope Boniface VIII said that no one who was not subject to the Roman Pontiff could be saved.  Pope Pius XI condemned the Ecumenical Movement.  Pope Pius IX said that it was theologically erroneous (and most seriously so) to believe or teach that : The Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization.  “Things change, Kundun!”  I am not advocating change but two centuries down the line Catholics will look at the arguments about the ordination of women and wonder “what were they thinking with all the problems of the 20^th century and they were arguing over that?”  A millennium down the line and the arguments will be as obtuse as the arguments over Homooúsios or Homoiousia though of infinite less consequence then or now.  So happy anniversary to the Philadelphia 11.  We’d jump in the pool with you to celebrate but seem to have forgotten our bathing suit.  And since there are now ladies in the pool, skinny dipping is not an option.  Well, it may be for you Episcopalians, but we Roman Catholics are still a bit priggish, aren’t we?