Some excellent questions by Greg Krehbiel on the prospect of women deacons

Now that Pope Francis seems intent on opening the next Pandora's Box, this one about women deacons, here are some very good questions that really ought to be carefully considered, offered here by Greg Krehbiel, a very sharp-minded fellow who even brews his own beer! Love this guy!


[Hat tip to JM]

"Get with the program": women bishops

Our undercover correspondent we keep on retainer in an Atlantic seaboard city that knows how to keep its secrets, Guy Noir - Private Eye, wired us a telegram two weeks ago when the news came out about the Church of England voting to ordain women bishops.

"You know," said the lengthy telegram, "Catholics will scoff at the Archbishop being advised by David Cameron, but I wonder how very different that is i-n s-p-i-r-i-t from the Pope giving repeated interviews to atheists?"

Indeed, I had just read that of the 12 media interviews granted by Pope Francis, eleven were with secular atheists. Maybe he's trying to reach out ...

Noir continued: "It is all of the same cloth of openness to the world and feeling the need for the church to be tutored.

"And while I am at it," the text went on, "if this is not an instance of a very real and obvious teaching moment, what is? 'I don't understand? Don't Catholics value women too? Why can't women be priests? See, the C.O.E. [Church of England] is going through all this too! Aren't they also Christians and partners in the Gospel?'

"Silence simply adds strength to the secular argument. The modernist movement can't be contained or countered by being nice.

"I wish I had access to the profile of the female bishop of D.C. (Episcopal) in the new issue of the W-a-s-h-i-n-g-t-o-n-i-a-n Magazine. It shows you what we will be up against for the next decade."

Albert Mohler, in his essay on the matter, begins with the following observation:

Writing about the age of John Milton, the British author A. N. Wilson once tried to explain to modern secular readers that there had once been a time when bishops of the Church of England were titanic figures of conviction who were ready to stand against the culture. “It needs an act of supreme historical imagination to be able to recapture an atmosphere in which Anglican bishops might be taken seriously,” he wrote, “still more, one in which they might be thought threatening.”

Hmmmm ... Food for thought.

Then he concludes with this:

The Rt. Rev. William Ralph Inge, Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London in the early 20th century, once famously remarked: “Whoever marries the spirit of this age will find himself a widower in the next.” Now, that is a word from an Anglican we all need to hear.

Hmmmm. More food for thought.

Thomas Howard interviewed by Patrick Henry Reardon and David Mills

The Catholic Angler
An Interview with Thomas Howard

A longtime friend of Touchstone and himself a model of the “ecumenical orthodoxy” and “mere Christianity” we strive to represent, Professor Thomas Howard has brought many—Catholics as well as Evangelicals—to a deeper understanding of the treasures of the historic church through his writings and personal influence.

A graduate of Wheaton College and New York University, Professor Howard taught for many years at an Evangelical college until he became a Roman Catholic in 1985. From then on until his retirement he taught English at St. John’s Seminary College, the seminary of the archdiocese of Boston. 

He has written several books, on both religious and literary subjects, beginning with Christ the Tiger, a sort of spiritual autobiography, in 1967. Since then he has written seven more books, including Evangelical Is Not Enough; Lead, Kindly Light, the story of his conversion to Catholicism; and most recently On Being Catholic. He has also written studies of the novels of Charles Williams and C. S. Lewis, notably The Achievement of C. S. Lewis and C. S. Lewis, Man of Letters. Ignatius Press, the publisher of On Being Catholic, also distributes a videotape series of 13 lectures by Professor Howard on “The Treasures of Catholicism.”

Professor Howard was interviewed by senior editors Patrick Henry Reardon and David Mills while at Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry to teach a weeklong course on the novels of C. S. Lewis. The interview has been edited for clarity and completeness, but the oral style has been retained.
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Touchstone: One of the things C. S. Lewis is now notable for is his intellectual dissent from, in a way his assault on, feminism. I mean not the ordination of women as in his essay “Priestesses in the Church?” but the feminist ideology in general.

Thomas Howard: That’s one of those questions that has to be chased all the way through the corpus of Lewis’s works, because, obviously, feminism as such was not then a major or articulate force. He wrote the essay “Priestesses in the Church?” because the question had surfaced in a mild Anglican sort of way, but there was nothing very imminent about it.

Lewis presents a view of reality at a polar extreme from the frame of mind that ends up demanding ordination of women as presbyters. Obviously, he believes in hierarchy, but it’s not a hierarchy of power, which seems to be the feminist understanding. The whole discussion of priestesses in the last thirty years has run along sociological and political lines, with theology dragged in, when necessary, from the sidelines and various attempts made to rewrite the Bible to show that St. Paul said you should ordain women as presbyters.

In Lewis, you get a vision of things—of everything—in which the whole question of masculine and feminine is a subdivision of tremendous, prior considerations that he understands to characterize the universe. Lewis felt that those categories are of the very stuff of the universe, prior to male and female. Male is the way masculinity exhibits itself under biological species or terms, and female is the way femininity manifests itself under biological species.

For him, hierarchy is obviously the way the dance is choreographed, or the way the map of the universe is drawn. He points out in one place that in a hierarchy one has the duty of obedience to those above one in the hierarchy and the duty of magnanimity and stewardship and noblesse oblige to those below one. I seriously doubt that Lewis would use the words “above” and “below” with respect to masculine and feminine, because they don’t apply. They’re the terms of people who can only think of a dance in terms of power—which makes for a pretty poor dance.
The locus classicus for his view of gender is, I think, the scene toward the end of Perelandra when Ransom sees the two eldila: Perelandra, who is feminine, and Malacandra, who is masculine. The feminine eldil, Perelandra, participates in equal majesty, dignity, authority, and so on, with the masculine figure, Malacandra, but she has a receptiveness, a nurturing side. All these words have become buzzwords now, but they weren’t when Lewis wrote them in the 1940s.

I think he would feel that it’s turning things upside down to try to come at the mystery of femininity and masculinity with a power glint in one’s eye, or with an egalitarian, calculating set of categories to try to even up the slices of the pie.

You see this mind in That Hideous Strength.

TH: There’s a sense in which the entire book That Hideous Strength is a document in the case. Jane Studdock is clearly deeply confused at the beginning of the book in her effort to avoid being thought of as “little wifey”—and who wants to be thought of as little wifey? Fairy Hardcastle calls her that.

But she doesn’t want to be identified with what she would think of as stereotypes, but which are actually archetypes, having to do with womanhood and being wife or mother, etc. She is an intellectual, she is writing her dissertation on John Donne’s “triumphant vindication of the body,” and yet poor Jane is a Gnostic without knowing it. She hasn’t got a clue about the vindication of the body. She doesn’t know that her body will turn out to be virtually Mark’s salvation, not just because he remembers her with lust or concupiscence in the toils of Belbury, but because it is her womanhood that stands with clarity and truth and good sense and resilience and toughness over against the bottomless deception and disintegration that is Belbury.

It is Jane embodied, not just the idea of Jane, not just Jane’s intellect—far from it—but Jane as his spouse that saves Mark. And, of course, the very last paragraph of the book is, in one sense, the beginning. We have now come up to the real beginning of the marriage. Mark is about to be saved. He has escaped hell, and Jane is to be his salvation.

"Vatican spokesman says no plans for women cardinals -- but not impossible, either"

"I am of divided mind ..."

Via Rorate (November 4, 2013), this, from The Irish Times:

The Holy See yesterday dismissed as “nonsense” weekend Irish media reports that Pope Francis might nominate two Irish women as cardinals.

Responding to reports in Irish and Irish-American media that Pope Francis might name both TCD ecumenics Prof Linda Hogan and former president Mary McAleese as cardinals at a future conclave, senior Vatican spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi said:

“This is just nonsense . . . It is simply not a realistic possibility that Pope Francis will name women cardinals for the February consistory.

“Theologically and theoretically, it is possible,” he added. “Being a cardinal is one of those roles in the church for which, theoretically, you do not have to be ordained but to move from there to suggesting the pope will name women cardinals for the next consistory is not remotely realistic." (emphasis added)

Rorate adds: " We are not saying that Fr. Lombardi was laying brick for the pathway towards women cardinals in the future. That said, the 'progressive' Catholic media has already pounced on this as the watershed moment where 'the Vatican' has said women can be cardinals in the future. Words have consequences."

Guy Noir, our intrepid correspondent adds his two cents:

"Got to love these guys!

"Gay marriage, awful! But who are we to judge?

"Women cardinals, nonsense! But hey, anything is possible...!"

[Hat tip to JM]

Creative sacrilege: "fun campaign" for women's ordination

From The National Schismatic Reporter, via Fr. Z: "I am not making this up: There’s a fun new campaign for women’s ordination!" (WDTPRS, August 24, 2013).

The best account of women and the priesthood I have ever seen

Brilliant!

Here is the audio form of an article by Peter Kreeft I remember reading in Crisis Magazine probably more than two decades ago. I thought it the best concise and lucid accessible account of why the Church ordains only men when I first read it, and I was glad to come across this audio form of the piece today.

I see that the print form of the piece is still available, now in booklet form with a companion piece by Alice von Hildebrand, entitled Women and the priesthood(Franciscan University Press, 1994), though no longer online, so far as I can tell.

The rebellion of Korah

"Injustice! Why can’t men become women priests too?" (WDTPRS, December 17, 2012).


Korah's rebellion (Numbers 16).

TLM and Womenpriests

We were in Windsor for Mass last Sunday at the historic Our Lady of the Assumption Church, where the Tridentine Mass was transportingly sublime, as always -- when a question occurred to me. As I watched the drama of Redemption unfold in this weekly extraordinary form of the traditional Roman Rite, I found myself trying to distance myself from my own active participation momentarily to grasp something.

What I was looking at was the priest and servers at that early point in the Mass called the Confiteor. Facing ad orientem, and with deep bows, they made their acts of confession, striking their breast: "Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa ..." Their attention was clearly not on who was in the pews at that moment. That thought probably did not even cross their minds. Their attention, their outward demeanor, the direction they were facing (toward God) -- everything, in other words -- was focused on a sort of "dialogue" being carried on between themselves and God.

And the thought came to me: I wonder whether any activist members of Catholic Womenpriests or the Women's Ordination Conference seeking ordination for themselves have ever desired to become priests serving in this classical form of the liturgy. It's hard to imagine.

The following video clip, features the Confiteor from a Tridentine Missa Contata at Assumption Church in Windsor celebrated on Feb 9, 2008 for the cause of Vn. John Henry Cardinal Newman. The priest, the team of servers, and the choir were virtually identical to those I witnessed last Sunday. I know these guys. The chief male voice you hear singing the propers is the great cantor, Wassim Sarweh. But my point is this: would those dissident women seeking ordination want to be priests if this is what was expected of them? Take a look:



You don't see the priest's face hardly at all; and when you do, he doesn't make eye contact with the congregation, at least if he knows his rubrics. He's not there to have a conversation with you. He's not there to share his personality with you. He's not there, like Leisure Suit Larry, to do a one man comic act: "Hey there, where y'all from? What's your name?" He's there to do his job, to perform the Sacrifice. Evelyn Waugh's observation, shortly after his conversion around 1930, comes to mind:

Of the extraneous attractions of the Church which most drew me was the spectacle of the priest and his server at a low Mass, stumping up to the altar without a glance to discover how many or how few he had in his congregation; a craftsman and his apprentice; a man with a job which he alone was qualified to do.

Indeed, Waugh loathed all that came to replace such standards of liturgical craftsmanship -- the dumbing down of the liturgy and a false bonhomie that characterized even the revisions of the 1960s that preceded the new Mass (Waugh, who died in 1966, did not live to see the Novus Ordo, which was promulgated in 1969). Concerning the pre-Vatican II revisions and innovations, Waugh was already saying things like: "The Mass is no longer the Holy Sacrifice but the Meal at which the priest is the waiter. The bishop, I suppose, is the head waiter."

Not one word here is said out of irreverence or disrespect for the Mass as it is meant to be celebrated. Indeed, it is precisely a devotion and deep respect and adoration for the surpassing holiness of those Sacred Mysteries that animated Waugh's concern as well as our own here.

What can go wrong is perhaps easiest to see, as Plato would say, where things are "writ large" -- where things have gone awry in extreme and aberrant ways. An example of such, in a French Mass gone terribly wrong, was called to our attention by a reader in a recent comment box discussion. The concelebrating priests at a Mass following the pilgrimage of young Catholics (ages 14-17) from Strasbourg to the church of Notre Dame du Chêne, in Plobsheim (France) doubtless thought they were assisting their youthful 'audience' in their 'active participation' in their liturgy. The effect, however, is obviously the opposite. ["The horror ... the horror ..."]



The immediate effect of this embarrassing spectacle is to throw up an obstacle precisely against the authentic active participation of the faithful in the Mass, which -- as Popes from Pius X to Benedict XVI have maintained -- is not a matter of outward enthusiasm or clericalizing the role of the laity by bringing them up into the sanctuary, but an inward spiritual disposition of the worshiping heart. The result of this spectacle, by contrast, is the creation of a diversion from the proper focus of any liturgy: the self-oblation of our Savior as Sacrificial Victim on our behalf. Instead we are served up the ghastly sight of clerically-vested middle-aged men making a miserable run at trying to look hip. Is our mind drawn to God amidst this disaster? If so, it can only be in a bowel-wrenching prayer for deliverance.

This does not mean that our worship cannot be suffused with profound joy, but it must be a joy that takes seriously what the Mass is. Our Savior is not the Buddy Christ, but the Pierced One, the Crucified One.

So, I wonder, do any Womenpriest activists exist who want to be ordained so that they can serve in the traditional Tridentine form of the Roman Rite? It would be interesting to know.

[Hat tip to S.V.]

The Hammer Drops

by Dale Vree

Leon J. Podles, in his new book Sacrilege: Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church (2008, Crossland Press, www.CrosslandFoundation.org), hammers the point home that most Catholic bishops "hate confrontation." This goes a long way toward explaining their reluctance to discipline predatory priests. It also goes a long way toward explaining the sorry state of the Church today. Fortitude, one of the four cardinal virtues, is sorely lacking among the current leaders of the U.S. Church.

This cowardly attitude also explains why several U.S. bishops shrugged off the recent and numerous invalid attempts at priestly "ordination" of women by the rogue Roman Catholic Womenpriests movement. As we wrote in our New Oxford Note "A New Catholic Community" (Oct. 2006), Bishop Patrick McGrath of San Jose, California, "has no plans to reprimand or excommunicate or in any other way acknowledge" the woman in his diocese who claims to have been "ordained" a Catholic priest and who has been offering an invalid "mass" at San Jose State University. In our New Oxford Note "The Beat Goes On" (Oct. 2006), we noted that then-Bishop Donald Wuerl of Pittsburgh took no action against the "ordination" ceremony on the Pittsburgh rivers or its participants, and that Archbishop Sean O'Malley of Boston "has not sanctioned" and has "imposed no penalty" on his former archdiocesan director of Healthcare Ministry who was "ordained" a Catholic womanpriest in Canada. These bishops, it seems, were willing to wink at the unlawful simulations of the conferring of the Sacrament of Holy Orders, and the public rejection of the de fide doctrine that female ordination is invalid, rather than risk confrontation and -- God forbid! -- bad press.

So when Roman Catholic Womenpriests made another attempt at "ordaining" female Catholic priests in St. Louis, Missouri, we perked up, with an inkling that Archbishop Raymond Burke wouldn't allow this travesty to take place in his archdiocese without repercussions.

As we reported in our New Oxford Note "Archbishop Burke Has Courage" (Jan. 2008), Archbishop Burke "reacted strongly" to the November 11, 2007, attempt by "bishop" Patricia Fresen of Germany to "ordain" Elsie Hainz McGrath and Rose Marie Dunn Hudson at a Jewish synagogue in St. Louis. He "sent letters by courier to Elsie and Rose warning them to 'renounce your intention to attempt to receive priestly ordination…. Should you refuse to comply…you will automatically in­cur…the censure of excommunication.' He warned them that they have placed 'in danger the eternal salvation of your soul and the souls of others,' and that their ceremony is a 'grave spiritual deception.'" He warned them that they risked the penalty of interdict (the withholding of the Sacraments) unless they publicly acknowledge their errors.

Archbishop Burke then ordered Elsie and Rose to defend themselves before a Church tribunal. But Elsie called the tribunal a "canonical kangaroo court," and Rose said of Archbishop Burke, "He loves to do this. But nobody's paying attention." Both women indicated that they would not appear at the tribunal.

According to Msgr. John Shamleffer, the chief canon lawyer of the St. Louis Archdiocese, Burke sent three letters to Elsie and Rose between November and March, asking them to meet with him "to give them the opportunity to recant, hoping that through pastoral means this could be resolved" (St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 14) -- to no avail.

Then, on March 12, Archbishop Burke dropped the hammer on Elsie and Rose, and on Patricia Fresen: He issued a "Declaration of Excommunication of Patricia Fresen, Rose Hudson and Elsie McGrath," which he ordered published in the St. Louis archdiocesan newspaper, St. Louis Review (it appeared on March 14). Archbishop Burke explicitly states in the Declaration that the three women have incurred a latae sententiae (i.e., automatic) censure of excommunication "by reason of the crime of schism." Schism is defined in the Catechism as "the refusal of submission to the Roman Pontiff or of communion with members of the Church subject to him" (#2089). Archbishop Burke also imposed a ferendae sententiae censure of interdict on them "for having pertinaciously rejected a definitive truth of the Faith [i.e., that female ordinations are invalid] after having been admonished by the Ordinary." (A latae sententiae censure is automatically incurred with the committing of a canonical crime; a ferendae sententiae censure is "imposed" by the lawful Church authority, in this case the Ordinary, and adds greater solemnity to the sentence.)

Archbishop Burke also writes that "the faculty to exercise the right of defense" was "delivered to each of the three women…requiring them to appear before" him at the tribunal. "All three accused," however, "failed to appear."

Archbishop Burke writes that "after having weighed all of the proofs and arguments," and "with God alone before my eyes, I, by this my definitive sentence, consigned to writing, declare and pronounce" that Elsie and Rose are "guilty of the canonical crimes" mentioned above, and that Patricia is further guilty of the crime of "simulation of the administration of a Sacrament." Archbishop Burke therefore also imposed on Patricia a feren­dae sententiae censure of excommunication for her additional canonical crime.

Archbishop Burke explains in his Declaration that Patricia, being the "leader of a schism" -- i.e., as a founder of the Roman Catholic Womenpriests movement -- who "has publicly stated that her sect is outside the hierarchy of the One True Church willed by the Savior Himself, our Lord Jesus Christ," and Elsie and Rose, by attempting to receive "priestly ordination" from Patricia, have all "thereby demonstrated their consummate disobedience, and their withdrawal from full communion with the Roman Pontiff, the local Archbishop, and the faithful loyally subject to them."

The full force of the Declaration is that "all three of the guilty parties have lost membership in, good standing in, and full communion with the Roman Catholic Church, which bond each and every baptized Catholic is obliged to maintain." Elsie, Rose, and Patricia are henceforth forbidden from entering the grounds of "any property of any parish or other institution of the Archdiocese of St. Louis, until they have formally and publicly withdrawn from their contumacy." Further, "all three of the guilty are forbidden to…receive any Sacraments," and "no ordinary or extraordinary minister may lawfully administer Holy Communion to any of the guilty parties." The three "may not receive absolution from their sins as long as they have not repented, publicly retracted their rejection of a truth of the Faith, made amends for their commission of the delict of schism, and had the censure of excommunication lifted from them." They are also "barred from burial in blessed ground, and are deprived of a funeral in the Church."

Heavy stuff.

Archbishop Burke does express his "most sincere hope" that the "application of the due canonical penalties" of excommunication and interdict "will lead the parties to seek the cure of their most grievous sins and canonical crimes." This is why excommunication is often referred to as a "medicinal" penalty. It calls the excommunicated party to a full realization of his errors and to seek the "cure" of repentance and conversion, for the health of his eternal soul.

In a brief statement accompanying the publication of the Declaration in the St. Louis Review, Archbishop Burke says that it is "my responsibility to safeguard the unity of the Catholic Church and protect the souls of the faithful." He also notes that the "situation is sad for the whole Church," and is "a cause of great concern for me as an archbishop." He asks that we join him in praying that the three "will be reconciled with the Church and that the great harm which has been caused to the Church, with the help of God's grace, will be healed."

But in a statement released on March 13, Elsie and Rose say that they "and all Roman Catholic Wom­en­priests, reject the penalties of excommunication, interdict, and any other punitive actions from church officials. We are loyal daughters of the church, and we stand in prophetic tradition of holy (canonical) disobedience to an unjust man-made law that discriminates against women." We can only pray that Elsie, Rose, and Patricia avail themselves of the medicine of repentance and conversion.

The excommunication of the "St. Louis 3" is the first official censure against Roman Catholic Women­priests since the 2002 excommunication of the "Danube 7" by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. Bridget Mary Meehan, spokesman for Roman Catholic Womenpriests, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that there are 53 "ordained" women in North America alone. Why have Archbishop Burke and Cardinal Ratzinger been the only ones to act? It's that old "fear of confrontation."

Archbishop Burke has done what his brother bishops have hesitated to do. He has dropped the hammer on the heads of heretics. Archbishop Burke does indeed have courage, and he has set a sterling example of leadership in defense of the Faith.

[Dale Vree is Editor of the New Oxford Review. The present article, "The Hammer Drops" was originally published as a "New Oxford Note" editorial in the New Oxford Review (June 2008), pp. 25-27, and is reproduced here by kind permission of New Oxford Review, 1069 Kains Ave., Berkeley, CA 94706.]