Priesthood Status Questionis?

Priesthood is the topic of a three-day Symposium organized by Cardinal Marc Ouellet in what may be his last gasp as head of the Congregation of Bishops. In April 2021, I wrote about its lineup of women theologians based at Vatican institutions. They are scheduled for two sessions, one about complementarity and the other on “Women and Ministry, status questionis.” That’s on Friday, the day after I write. Maybe they have already made news, though I doubt it after looking at their impeccable credentials.

Cardinal Ouellet uses the sex abuse crisis to launch the Symposium, though it’s really about developing the “classical” (Thomistic) theology of priesthood, according to Loup Besmond de Senneville in La Croix International. At least Ouellet has the grace to apologize profusely for the “unworthy ministers” and those who covered up their “criminal behavior.” One of the members of the “scientific” committee organizing the Symposium, Father Vincent Siret, rector of the French seminary in Rome, says “Our purpose is not to respond immediately to the most heavily publicized issues, such as the ordination of married men.” Despite that, celibacy gets the most coverage of the issues that might come up, and “a person who has closely followed the development of the program” says “It was first designed to reframe things following the Synod for the Amazon, to defend celibacy.”

Ordination beyond celibate males rarely comes up, and the only one to cover women’s issues is the AP’s Nicole Winfield in America. She writes about a Canadian conference and an Australian report, both about abuse of women and other vulnerable adults being a possible consequence of celibacy. She quotes one of the Symposium speakers, “theologian Michelina Tenace, [who] told a Vatican press conference that the abuse scandals were evidence the whole process of discerning priestly vocations and training seminarians must be rethought. ‘One way to verify the call to the priesthood must be to never aspire to any power,’ she said.” THAT would certainly be a change in the way things are now! I do endorse better evaluation of discernment and training, though processes like these do not seem theological to me.

Christopher White has a long interview with Ouellet in NCR, providing more context and also discussing celibacy at length. Ouellet admits that he was “more attentive to the doctrinal dimension” when he was appointed by Pope Benedict XVI. “With Pope Francis, we’ve learned the accompaniment dimension,” Ouellet told NCR. “We have learned that it’s not enough to tell people what they have to do.” Really?

Pope Francis’s talk illustrates the difference. His theme is “closeness: closeness to God, to the bishop, to fellow priests, and to the People of God…four pillars of our priestly life.” The most complete exploration of the Pope’s deeply spiritual sharing is by Gerard O’Connell in America.

I, of course, pull out the political. The Pope’s in favor of celibacy and fraternity and against clericalism. So is Ouellet; White says that “part of his motivation…was to help ‘unveil’ the roots of clericalism. ‘This term is a generic and concrete word at the same time, describing a set of phenomena: abuses of power, spiritual abuses, abuses of conscience, of which sexual abuses are but the tip of the iceberg, visible and perverse, emerging from deeper deviations to be identified and unmasked.’” Less emphasis on institutional power than I (and probably the Pope) would choose. I hope that whatever theological reflections emerge from this meeting are more profound than blaming flawed humans or endorsing the structures and strictures that already exist. We have a lot more questionis.