Revised: Non-ordination of women: Not a dogma?

By Dr. Jeff Mirus ( bio - articles - email ) | Oct 04, 2019

[October 4, 2019: In response to many questions from those who had trouble with the argument, I have revised this essay from earlier in the week. If you found it confusing, I hope you will read it again.]

One of the key drafters of the working document for the Amazon Synod, Bishop Erwin Kräutler, has solemnly declared that John Paul II’s statement that the Church cannot ordain women is not a dogma (see this story). What burns me about this is that it is a deliberate attempt to confuse people. It is the standard line of Modernists when they want to cast one of the Church’s teachings into doubt.

But can you spell Red Herring?

In logical argument, a “red herring” is the introduction of a point which appears to undermine an argument, but in reality is completely off the topic or irrelevant to the argument. In this case, the argument would be that the Church has determined definitively that she cannot ordain women. This is what Pope St. John Paul II concluded, and very precisely stated, in his 1994 Apostolic Letter, On Reserving Priestly Ordination to Men Alone. Here, in fact, is that precise conclusion:

4. 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.

So the question is settled definitively by the Magisterium of the Church. But along comes Bishop Erwin to proclaim that this decision is not a dogma, and we see at once that, in the lead-up to the Amazon Synod—which includes in its working document a question about the possibility of ordaining women for the priest-starved region—this statement is designed to cast into doubt the absolute certainty that women cannot be ordained to the priesthood.

It is all a trick, you see. Yes, it really is true that John Paul II’s teaching is not a dogma. But welcome to Red Herrings 101: The Church teaches with absolute certainty many things that are not dogmas.

A “dogma” is something very specific: It is a truth of the Faith (a) central to God and His work of redemption, (b) that we know from Divine Revelation; or (c) a related truth so closely linked to such a truth as to be essential to its preservation; and (d) a truth that has been proposed as such by the Magisterium of the Church. Therefore, we must eliminate from our minds the false idea that a dogma is any truth whatsoever that we know from the Magisterium of the Church to be absolutely true.

The largest area in which we can find absolute certainty without any dogmatic definitions is the whole field of morality. Remember that the content of the faith is revealed through Jesus Christ in Scripture and Tradition but that, for the most part at least, moral truths are revealed through the “book of nature”, which we call the Natural Law. The Church has equal authority to teach infallibly on faith and morals, whether known from the “Book of Revelation” or from the “Book of Nature” (as St. Augustine put it). But what the Church teaches in morals does not meet the definition of dogma, because it is not identified as part of Divine Revelation which can be known only through Faith; therefore, a moral teaching is not generally even regarded as a “truth of the Faith”.

Instead, a teaching drawn from the Natural Law is, rather, a moral principle, which all can know through reason. But it is still encompassed by the Church’s teaching authority, and her power to bind and loose. For that authority applies to all matters of faith and morals that God has revealed, both in Revelation and in Nature.

Now, it so happens that Pope St. John Paul II’s determination of the impossibility of the ordination of women is an instance of a third type of truth. It pertains not to a truth drawn from Divine Revelation but to the absence of a truth that is necessary to the case. In fact, John Paul II’s whole point is that the ordination of women is not included in Revelation. The sacraments of the Church are all instituted by Christ, and are carried out in the manner he revealed. The Church can no more make up a new sacrament, or a new way of conferring a sacrament, or a new subject of a sacrament than she can decide to make up her own ways of transmitting grace apart from the ways that Christ Himself established. The economy of grace depends absolutely on the institutions of Jesus Christ. Period.

So note again John Paul II’s conclusion: “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.”

This is not a statement about a truth of the Faith that has been revealed—that is, it is in no sense a definition of some positive reality known only through Revelation; this is why the Pope refers to it as a judgment. It is a statement that the Church cannot sacramentalize some practice precisely because her authority to do that has not been revealed.

Let me clarify the case further by indulging in a little speculation. If God had revealed that men alone are capable of ordination because they correspond to Christ in a particular way not shared by women—or any other highly significant Revelation of this type—I suppose that, if precisely formulated and deemed by the Church to be a central feature of the work of Redemption, this point of Divine Revelation might rise to the level of a dogma. But we do not have anything of this kind.

We do not know why the Church was not given the authority to ordain women. Many ideas have been suggested as to why the decision to ordain only males is particularly fitting, but fittingness is always speculative and, indeed, the weakest form of theological argument. No, the whole point is that we are left in the dark. We can only guess. Putting the matter as simply as possible, there is no dogmatic material here.

Therefore, as a matter of the definition of words, the Church’s inability to ordain women is not a dogma. It is just a fact. The Church cannot do it because she does not have the authority from Christ to do it.

That is something well within the competence of the Magisterium to determine and declare. Finally, in making this definitive judgment, Pope John Paul II simply confirmed the constant understanding, belief and practice of the Church since its founding.