Monday, May 05, 2008

A Rough Jotting on Ecumenical Theology

One of the difficulties in talking across ecclesial and denominational lines is that the same words often don't mean quite the same things. For instance, when a Baptist talks about 'women's ordination', he means the notion that women may be called or consecrated to pastoral ministry and preaching, and that this call or consecration may be recognized as part of the worship of the congregation. This is not at all what a Catholic would mean when talking about women's ordination. Indeed, for a Catholic 'women's ordination' in a Baptist sense has long been a settled issue: in the Catholic tradition women can be called to pastoral ministry and preaching, and their ministry and preaching can be recognized as part of the worship of the congregation. There is a long history of this, in fact; the most obvious examples are abbesses. One finds that even among Catholics who are very conservative on the question the issue is clear enough; for instance, very traditionalist Catholics will deny that an abbess can preach but when pressed will affirm that an abbess can exhort. There are not-wholly-unreasonable reasons for this -- the point is to make very clear that the abbess has no sacramental function, and so where a word, like 'preaching', is often associated with the sacramental function of bishops, traditionalists tend not to use it outside of that sacramental function. But sacramental function aside, there is no functional difference between the pastoral role at least some abbesses can legitimately yield and that of any other pastor of the Church; and insofar as preaching involves, e.g., giving pastoral exhortation in public, abbesses can be said to have some authority to preach (e.g., in chapter). So any controversy over women's ordination among Baptists has no real parallel among Catholics; at most there there is room to dispute how far an abbess's authority as spiritual mother can extend, in matters like preaching and correction, before it invades the sacramental precincts reserved to prelates. When Catholics talk about 'women's ordination', they are not talking about whether women can be called to pastoral ministry, understood as the sort of functions exercised by a Baptist minister (which, consistent with the actual practice of the Catholic Church through the ages can only be given an affirmative answer; and, indeed, there is no doubt that an abbess in Catholic tradition is understood to have much greater spiritual authority over her 'congregation' than a Baptist pastor over his), but whether they can be called to the sacramental ministry associated with the sacrament of holy orders (which is answered firmly in the negative). And it is noteworthy that no less an authority than Thomas Aquinas holds that this latter is the one and only form of authority a Catholic woman cannot exercise: every other form of temporal and spiritual authority (even, he says, spiritual authority greater than that of a bishop, where God has intervened with a special gift) is open to her if God calls her to it; and even this one is only denied her to signify a divine point until glory, which transcends every such gift of grace we may receive in this lifetime. Thus a Baptist and a Catholic talking this matter over have to be careful to understand what the other person really means.

Similar impediments to straightforward discussion are everywhere. A Catholic, for instance, must think that the Zwinglian is wrong about the Catholic Eucharist; but since the Catholic doesn't think the Zwinglian Lord's Supper is sacramental, the Catholic can't immediately rule out the possibility that the Zwinglian is right with regard to that. Indeed, the question with which the Catholic is faced is whether the Zwinglian is right or is (so to speak) selling himself short. Thus in every case of discussion across ecclesial or denominational lines, care should be taken to know how the person across that line is using the term, and good judgment should be used in comparing it to usage on this side of the line.