Priesthood and Sacrament: 'My Doctrine is not Mine'

Saint Augustine is known to have said, 'My doctrine is not mine'. I think this phrase can and should be remembered when the Church's teaching on sacramental ordination of men only to the priesthood is challenged by a hermeneutic that is of the Protestant Reformational mindset and more recently secular liberalism that demands that dogma submit to the assumed conceptual grid of our modern secularist worldview. Vatican II was very clear in its document on the priesthood to remain united to the Council of Trent's understanding that the primary sacramental function of the priest is his offering up of the one sacrifice of Christ at Calvary in the sacramental sacrifice of the Mass. So, when Rome is challenged by theologians as graceful and gifted as Rowan Williams on an issue that the Catholic Church holds as a primary doctrine received from Christ himself, it is impossible to move to a place where Christ himself has not put it.

Language is an important symbol that communicates reality much like the symbols of the sacraments. What has happened with priesthood in our modern egalitarian culture is to remove the sacral language of priesthood and replace it with the profane vocabulary of modern society as if we are speaking on the same plane when discussing priestly ordination. To remove the sacral language from priesthood is to miss the mark completely on what Jesus gave to his Apostles. Priesthood is not a matter of practical utility and this is the danger that people, even Catholics, can fall foul to if they lose the symbolic language of the sacral in priesthood. To do the latter is to deny the very foundational mark in the building of the Church which is the Apostles' participation in the mission of Jesus. There is a serious flawed move in trying to form an alliance with Marxist ideals and shaping our Christology on a Jesus who is a 'revolutionary of love' who is against institutions and all the enemies in Marxist philosophy that get into the way of its pursuit of deconstruction and a false utilitarianism. This approach has found its way into modern theology and is attacking the Christological foundations that priesthood symbolise. This is, therefore, a serious departure of primary theological positions, not secondary. OrdinatioSacerdotalis explains my point.

In the Apostolic Letter Mulieris Dignitatem, I myself wrote in this regard: "In calling only men as his Apostles, Christ acted in a completely free and sovereign manner. In doing so, he exercised the same freedom with which, in all his behavior, he emphasized the dignity and the vocation of women, without conforming to the prevailing customs and to the traditions sanctioned by the legislation of the time."

In fact the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles attest that this call was made in accordance with God's eternal plan; Christ chose those whom he willed (cf. Mk 3:13-14; Jn 6:70), and he did so in union with the Father, "through the Holy Spirit" (Acts 1:2), after having spent the night in prayer (cf. Lk 6:12). Therefore, in granting admission to the ministerial priesthood, the Church has always acknowledged as a perennial norm her Lord's way of acting in choosing the twelve men whom he made the foundation of his Church (cf. Rv 21:14). These men did not in fact receive only a function which could thereafter be exercised by any member of the Church; rather they were specifically and intimately associated in the mission of the Incarnate Word himself (cf. Mt 10:1, 7-8; 28:16-20; Mk 3:13-16; 16:14-15). The Apostles did the same when they chose fellow workers who would succeed them in their ministry. Also included in this choice were those who, throughout the time of the Church, would carry on the Apostles' mission of representing Christ the Lord and Redeemer.

Jesus reminded us all that 'on our own he nor we can do anything.' This statement draws bishops, priests and deacons into the mission with Jesus. Everything given to the people of God from priests is given to them as gift and nothing comes from them but directly from God and this is understood in the language of the Church as sacrament. This is where males priests who symbolically and really function in persona Christi give what they themselves cannot give. This makes the office of priesthood a divine sacrament and hence of primary position when understanding the doctrine of ecclesiology. Without this sacramental expression of ministry the newness of Christ in the present age will not be communicated to a world that needs to come face-to-face with the living God in the person of Jesus Christ. Therefore in the words of the late Pope John Paul II, given with his apostolic blessing, sharing in the mission of Jesus, and the first Apostles writes,

Although the teaching that priestly ordination is to be reserved to men alone has been preserved by the constant and universal Tradition of the Church and firmly taught by the Magisterium in its more recent documents, at the present time in some places it is nonetheless considered still open to debate, or the Church's judgment that women are not to be admitted to ordination is considered to have a merely disciplinary force.

Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church's divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful.