The Pope on Women’s Ordination

“Francis is Stuck. Let me count the ways.” That was my first title for this blog. I saw no change in what he said to a gathering of people who work at America magazine. Deliberately diverse, the group posed questions one after another. Executive editor Kerry Weber was third and set up her first question: “the majority of Catholics seem to have lost faith in the bishops’ conference’s ability to offer moral guidance.” The Pope’s reply was his normally quotable self: “Jesus did not create bishops’ conferences. Jesus created bishops.” He went on to praise Mark Seitz, Bishop of El Paso, as a pastor, not an ideologue.

Then podcast host Gloria Purvis asked about abortion, which “still seems to plague the church in the sense that it separates us. Should the bishops prioritize abortion in relation to other social justice issues?” Francis wandered around in embryology; the essence of his response was “When I see a problem like this one, which is a crime, become strongly, intensely political, there is a failure of pastoral care in approaching this problem. Whether in this question of abortion, or in other problems, one cannot lose sight of the pastoral dimension: A bishop is a pastor, a diocese is the holy people of God with their pastor. We cannot deal with [abortion] as if it is only a civil matter.” I emphasize this to note the continuity of his remarks.

Rome reporter Gerard O’Connell brought Francis back to the original question, and he responded “What interests me is the relationship of the bishop with the people, which is sacramental. The other [issue] is organizational, and bishops’ conferences at times get it wrong (equivocan). It is enough to look at the Second World War and at certain choices that some bishops’ conferences made, which were wrong from a political or social viewpoint. Sometimes a majority wins, but maybe the majority is not right.” He went back to that “sacramental” relationship in concluding.

Other questioners asked about sex abuse and Ukraine, and then Purvis asked: “What would you say now to Black Catholics in the United States who experienced racism and at the same time experience a deafness within the church for calls for racial justice?” She stressed that Blacks are leaving, clearly an issue for a Pope who prioritizes evangelization. Here I note a subtle change in Francis’s reply: “I believe what is important here is pastoral development, be it of the bishops or of the laity, a mature pastoral development…The bishops and the pastoral workers have to help to resolve it.” Suddenly more than those “sacramental” bishops are involved. Is this ministry? Francis concluded: “I would say to African American Catholics that the pope is aware of their suffering, that he loves them very much, and that they should resist and not walk away. Racism is an intolerable sin against God. The church, the pastors and lay people must continue fighting to eradicate it and for a more just world.” He drew in the Indigenous and Latinos under the same loving umbrella.

Then Kerry Weber asked the question very important to us: “many women feel pain because they cannot be ordained priests. What would you say to a woman who is already serving in the life of the church, but who still feels called to be a priest?” Suddenly the pastor is gone. “It is a theological problem.” Again, Francis wandered, this time between the Petrine principle of ministry and the Marian principle of women. Women who are the church? The spouse? The whole people of God? The mother? “Therefore, that the woman does not enter into the ministerial life is not a deprivation. No. Your place is that which is much more important and which we have yet to develop, the catechesis about women in the way of the Marian principle.” Note “you.” Weber is mother and spouse as well as a church worker in the communications vineyard. I have no idea whether she is seeking ordination. But she has been clearly “mansplained,” as Amanda James writes in VNY La Voce di New York. Use the link here to Tuesday’s blog by Katie Lacz for a careful exploration of the spousal analogy and the perceptive comments added by you readers. The idea inspires me to revolution; if we’re the church and so important, why don’t we just take over? Oh, maybe we have, in our women-led small faith communities. We minister, sacramentally. My classical music station just plays Chopin’s “Revolutionary Etude.” I read Kate McElwee’s letter to WOC members again and think about the Synod. But I digress.

In the midst of all this wandering, Francis inserts a new principle, at least to me. “The administrative way, which is not a theological thing,” so not exactly on a par with the others (no holy name), but where “we have to give more space to women.” Certainly, we have celebrated the many Vatican appointments and the easing up of limits to women’s participation in church governance and liturgy that Francis has initiated. But this one thing…this one group of people for whom there is no sympathy, no reaching out, no welcoming, despite proven and acknowledged competence where they have been allowed.

I don’t think it’s theological. It’s scary. What would happen if even some of the women who entered sisterhoods became priests? Would the social ministry of the church collapse? Check out the reflections of Consecrated Virgin Nameeta Renu in NCR’s Global Sisters Report on the difference between the Jerusalem and Galilee churches. I believe the Pope who is very sincere in Fratelli Tutti suspects that women who want a role in ministry will abandon the Social Gospel. Maybe that’s how he thinks about priests. Maybe he thinks of women wanting to be ordained as ambitious clericalists, not liturgists or preachers or sacramental ministers.

The last title for this blog that occurred to me was “The Jesuit Connection.” I’ve always been a tad suspicious of America. Retiring editor in chief Matt Malone started the papal visit by noting that “the magazine was founded by Jesuits in 1909.” Is that why the interview happened? The “shock troops of the Pope” and all that. (Google it.) I have been glad to see more women writing and more difficult issues raised if not resolved to my liking, but I perceive a veil of clericalism over the total enterprise. It’s like the veil of feminism I wear, which I’m not willing to relinquish, either. Memories come back: watching the smart boys in high school going to Regis or Xavier (but thinking the latter’s swashbuckling coats and military garb ridiculous); writing about the suppression of the Jesuits for a college paper, knowing that Fordham where I used the library would not admit me; admiring the Tetlow brothers who brought creative liturgy into my world when in graduate school at Brown, now seeing their niece and daughter Tanya president of that very university. But, hey, women have done all right. Maybe we were better off at Catholic women’s colleges. And now there’s real change. That’s why it’s shocking to see this Pope, whom I so admire for so many other things, clinging to the sexist branch of the clerical tree he is trying so hard to cut down.