More interesting posts on why not women's ordination

Fr. Dwight Longenecker comments:

It is not a baptism unless water is used. It is not a Eucharist unless wine and bread are used. Likewise it is not an ordination unless a man is used. One could argue that in a culture where bread and wine are unknown and the staples are, say, manioc root and coconut beer that it would make better sense to use manioc root and coconut beer for the Eucharist. This might be pastorally sound, but it would not be a Eucharist. Likewise, there may be very good societal reasons for ordaining women, but the Catholic Church can't do it even if it feels good.

The underlying reason is something that I believe many Anglicans and Catholics have overlooked, that Catholics regard ordination as a sacrament and Anglicans do not. At best they may hold such an idea as a pious opinion if one is catholic minded.

The bishops from the Traditional Anglican Communion who signed the Catechism of the Catholic Church in 2007 and made a formal request to the Holy See to come into communion believe that ordination is a sacrament.

Longenecker, a married Catholic priest, was commenting on this most interesting post by Jeffrey Steel. More from Longenecker here.

If the priesthood is simply a job, then of course (it is argued) that women can do the job just as well as men, but if there is a symbolic and sacramental dimension which is fundamental--if the identity of the priest (and therefore his gender) is somehow all tied up with the greater mysteries of creation, fall, incarnation and redemption, then there is more to it than just 'can the person do the job.'

I HATE the word gender. The sex of the priest matters. The sex should be male. But this does not mean women cannot and do not play a key role in ministry as disciples of Christ, even in a Catholic Church.


Steel writes in Why Rowan Williams is wrong: Why priesthood is a first order issue:

What Rowan seems to be willing to do is to undermine the 'value' of sacraments and symbol. Not only does he undermine the value of sacraments with this question he also removes the purpose of symbol in sacrament that accomplishes the primordial function of language to the interior witness of priesthood. It is in symbol that the real speaks and if he can change the symbol in one sacrament, then why not all the others? What of their 'realness' will be gone and hence the 'realness' of Christ if the symbols change? Symbol is the very thing that communicates and unfolds the primary dimension of language and sacramentally the fundamental metaphor of sacramental reality. Sacrament is how Christ becomes human to us and reveals his truth.

What happens when you change or alter the sacramental symbols is that you remove the symbolic efficacy of the rites. As Chauvet reminds us, 'a communication is supremely effective because it is through language that the subject comes forth in its relations to other subjects within a common "world" of meaning.' What Rowan wrongly does in his question and in his views reduces ordination to some sort of a 'socio-linguistic process' transforming sacramental grace in priesthood into nothing more than a secular-humanistic form of anthropology and in actuality diminishes the complete 'otherness' of God. Sacramental grace can only be maintained IF we obtain its reality extra nos and in Christ. That is, this grace is established by Christ and not from our 'meeting of minds' in diversity and hence this is why Rowan slips into a form without reality in his position.

The more I look at what the Archbishop of Canterbury said in Rome before his most recent meeting with the Holy Father, the more I see how terribly off track he is. I thank God for our little band of Anglican pilgrims who refused to bend to modernism and this 'meeting of the minds' in diversity. I thank God that Pope Benedict XVI has opened a way for us to preserve the English Church through personal ordinariates.

And I think that while the ordinariates will start small, they will be mightily attractive and form a bridge for Protestants of all kinds.

We had a confirmation at our church yesterday of a man who had served as a Baptist minister.
At lunch afterwards we got talking about where there might be a Church that was evangelical, Catholic and charismatic. That's what I hope our little ordinariates will be, places where nothing that is good from the evangelical or charismatic world is lost, but it is planted securely in the doctrinal and ecclesial safety of the Catholic Church under the ministry of Peter.

It's going to happen. The dream is already attracting people and catching hold. We will soon hardly be able to squeeze people in at our Sunday services.