Last week Pope Francis disappointed advocates for the ordination of women. His previous statements on the death penalty and Communion for the remarried had encouraged their hopes. If the Pope could apparently disregard previous teaching on these matters, they thought, why could he not announce that the Church will sacramentally ordain deaconesses?
First at an in-flight press conference, then at a meeting of nuns, Pope Francis punctured these hopes. “In regard to the diaconate we must see what was there at the beginning of revelation, if there was something, let it grow and it arrives, but if there was not, if the Lord didn’t want a sacramental ministry for women, it can’t go forward. For this reason we go to history and to dogma.” He pointedly added: “If anyone wants to found another church, they are free.”
Even as Francis denied that the Church can sacramentally ordain women, he seemed to hint that it can informally reverse itself on other matters. “I have clearly stated that the death penalty is unacceptable, it is immoral. 50 years ago, no … but there has been a better understanding of morality,” he said. “The way we understand our faith today is better than in the pre-Vatican II period.”
When the stewards of an ancient tradition suggest that previously all men were mad, confusion is the inevitable result. Some commentators asked why such a “better understanding” could not emerge on the matter of women’s ordination. Such questions are natural given the confused and confusing way “development of doctrine” has been invoked for the past 50 years. Blessed John Henry Newman’s understanding of the term was essentially conservative; those who invoke it today usually do so to justify a more or less direct reversal.
In 1964, Evelyn Waugh lamented the drastic reforms taking place in Catholic life: “It never occurred to me … that the Church was susceptible of change. I was wrong and I have seen a superficial revolution in what then seemed permanent.”
What Waugh regretted, others have celebrated. If the Church can discard its ancient liturgy, why can it not do the same with doctrine? The supposedly dead weight of the past – what they see as puritanical strictures against birth control, homophobic passages of St Paul, Christ’s “cruel” words about divorce – might be thrown off at last.
In 2001, Cardinal Walter Kasper cited recent changes in Catholic practice to justify a change of teaching on Communion for the remarried: “Our people are well aware of the flexibility of laws and regulations; they have experienced a great deal of it over the past decades. They lived through changes that no one anticipated or even thought possible.”
In narrow terms, Kasper was wrong. Liturgical changes, however dramatic, do not justify rewriting sacramental theology (perhaps especially when those liturgical changes coincide with a historic collapse in Catholic practice). But in broad terms his observation is hard to deny. Changes to the liturgy and to the way the Church speaks about religious liberty unsettled old habits of piety. In the atmosphere that then arose, revolutionary transformation was eagerly expected. The uninformed layman might be forgiven for thinking that the Church could simply contradict itself.
Closer observers pointed out that the Second Vatican Council had solemnly declared that the new teaching on religious freedom “leaves untouched traditional Catholic doctrine on the moral duty of men and societies toward the true religion and toward the one Church of Christ.” They noted that liturgical changes are not the same as doctrinal changes.
But this kind of response has always been insufficient. People are not cold reasoning machines, distinguishing easily between the superficial and the fundamental. Our logical deductions cannot be separated neatly from our habits of prayer. Any faith that aspires to be universal must be open equally to the clever and the simple. If its consistency is only apparent to those who have read deeply in obscure authorities, it risks becoming a paper theory instead of a real and vital body of belief.
Though women’s ordination is of course an impossibility, in one sense its advocates have a point. They are pushing, from the wrong side, against the untenable modus vivendi that has prevailed since the Second Vatican Council. Even some conservative Catholics speak as though the Church could in fact reverse itself on matters like religious freedom and the death penalty. It is now harder than ever to explain why women cannot someday be ordained. Pope Francis’s actions regarding the death penalty and Communion for the remarried have heightened the contradictions, exposing the hermeneutic of continuity to the attacks of Lefebvrists and liberals alike.
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