Women's Ordination and the Sacrament of Matrimony

One of the major issues underlying the differences between Protestants and Catholics on the nature of vocation is Protestantism's position of functionality of the clergy. For those who hold such an sub-Catholic position of priesthood, women's ordination is not a problem. But this position forsakes the historical view of the sacramental nature of the Church. The Church cannot modify the sacramentality of the Church or the Holy Orders of this Body. What is often overlooked is the nature of the sacraments as the holy ordinances of God that mark God's people out and their relationship with Christ who places on them his permanent character in the sacraments. In his book on Priesthood and Diaconate, Gerhard Muller illustrates this important theological concept by noting how this is realised in the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony. He writes,

The Latin-rite wedding liturgy formulates it correctly: 'I take you as my wife' or 'as my husband', and not some abstract, asexual expression such as 'my partner in life'. Therefore the sexual difference between man and woman, which makes them complementary in a specific way, is a constitutive element in the Sacrament of Matrimony. Between husband and wife there is, not a symmetry of equality, but rather a symmetry of difference. This symmetry does not consist in an equality of the phenomenological or ontological, essential sort, but rather in the personal mutuality of man and woman, which has as its foundation the distinctive value and distinctive reality of masculinity and femininity. The lover can communicate himself to the other only through his being different. Being sexually different is the one thing that makes fruitfulness of love possible (in mutual assistance and in the child of both spouses.)

Therefore, Matrimony is only received by the two distinctive sexes of man and woman. Unisex relationships lack the natural relation of the sacramental signs which come together in Matrimony. This is a fundamental given of creation and the application of Matrimony and the symbolism of Christ the groom and the Church as the bride becomes obvious. The ordained man represents Christ in His fundamental relationship to the Church as husband to wife. Is it any wonder that what has followed from the ordination of women to the priesthood in the Anglican Church is the move to bless unisex relationships? The two novelties are intertwined more than one may realise at first glance.

It is all the more clear when one adds to this novelty the ordination of women to the episcopate. The Bishop is the res et sacramenti of Christ to the Church and to maintain his priestly role as a representative in persona Christi he must be a male. This is why so many in the Anglican church redefine husband and wife as 'partners' and now even speak of other relationships of the unisex nature with identical terms. This redefining of the sacramentality of the Church is attacking the Bride and her Husband at the very foundations and that is why the holder of the Sacrament of Holy Orders is and can only be a male.

UPDATE: Dr. Liccione at Sacramentum Vitae has an excellent post on the long discussion over at Titusonenine on this issue. The comments coming from Dr. William Witt only go to show how far the Catholic and Protestant hermeneutics are from one another.