The bourgeois solution and the Protestant perspective

By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | Aug 10, 2011

Yesterday my colleague Jeff Mirus offered a quick and compelling explanation of why Father Roy Bourgeois is wrong to say that the Church’s refusal to ordain women is “not the way of God, but of men who want to hold on to their power.” In the course of his explanation—which you really should read in its entirety, if you haven’t done so already—Jeff makes a simple and unanswerable point:

Either the Church has the authority to state definitively what God has and has not revealed, or she has not.

With Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, the Church has spoken decisively, saying that it is impossible to ordain women. For those of us who believe that “the Church has the authority to state definitively what God has revealed,” that closes the debate.

There are, however, many people who do not believe that the Catholic Church can teach with that sort of authority. Evidently Roy Bourgeois is one of them; otherwise his stand would be utterly nonsensical.

But here’s the problem: If you don’t believe that the Catholic Church teaches with authority, why would you want to be a Catholic? The Church certainly claims the authority to teach what God has revealed. If that claim is fraudulent, then the entire institution is based on a hoax.

There are many Christians who reject the Church’s claim to teach authoritatively. They have broken with the Church and formed their own denominations, interpreting God’s revelation according to their own lights. They’re called Protestants. Father Bourgeois evidently does not recognize himself in that category, yet his public statements—and his actions, which have put him outside the Catholic Church—speak for themselves.