Dear friends .... forwarding some really good stuff from John Wijngaards 
....  good material for study and meditation.

Luis

----- Original Message -----
From: John Wijngaards
Sent: Sunday, January 14, 2007 10:19 PM
Subject: Geneva Post article on Women Leaders in the Catholic Church

I am sending you an article written by me that appeared in the Geneva
Post Quarterly. Since I have retained the copyright for it, I am sharing
it with you and your list. You may  distribute it as you wish as long as
you publish the appropriate credits.

Please, forgive me if you receive this email twice.

With best wishes for all the good work you are doing,

John Wijngaards

------------------------------------------------------------

Church without women leaders
Will women ever govern the Roman Catholic Church?

by  John Wijngaards
The Geneva Post Quarterly
November 2006, pp. 23-45.

The Catholic Church has moved on since the day, on 29 July 1904, when
Pope Pius X instructed the bishops of Italy not to trust the
intelligence or reliability of women.

“In public meetings, never allow women to take the word, however
respectable or pious they may seem. If on a specific occasion bishops
consider it opportune to permit a meeting for women by themselves, these
may speak but only under the presidency and supervision of high
ecclesiastical personalities.”

Church authorities have now come to terms with the fact that women are
capable of heading academic faculties, running major corporations,
ruling their countries as prime ministers or presidents. But such
secular competence does not empower women to assume spiritual leadership
in the Church.

Pressed on this issue during a meeting with the clergy of Rome, Pope
Benedict XVI recently asserted that women contribute to the government
of the Church through their manifold services. He mentioned a number of
women saints of the past who have made their mark. But these services,
though crucial to the Church, are purely of an auxiliary, charismatic
nature, he said. The true government of the Church is reserved to men.

“The priestly ministry of the Lord, as we know, is reserved to men,
since the priestly ministry is government in the deep sense, which, in
short, means it is the Sacrament [of Orders] that governs the Church.
This is the crucial point. It is not a particular man who does
something, but the priest in him governs, faithful to his mission, in
the sense that it is the Sacrament, that is, through the Sacrament it is
Christ himself who governs, both through the Eucharist and in the other
Sacraments, and thus Christ always presides.”

The implication of this piece of typical ecclesiastical jargon is that
women have no authority whatsoever in the government of the Church.
Catholic belief holds that Christ entrusted authority over his Church to
the apostles and their successors. This authority is threefold: the
authority of teaching (imposing doctrine), the authority of consecrating
(presiding at the eucharist, performing ordinations, etc.) and the
authority of ruling (imposing moral obligations, forgiving sins, taking
all major decisions regarding Church discipline). Pope Benedict
reiterates that all these forms of authority are imparted only by the
sacrament of holy orders, which is reserved to men.

Church Law puts it succinctly: “Only a baptized male validly receives
sacred ordination” (Can. 1024).  And: “Only those who have received
sacred orders are capable of the power of governance, which exists in
the Church by divine institution (Can. 129, § 1).  In short: no Church
leadership for women!  You may rule a country, you’ll never rule a diocese!

Where does this discrimination come from?

Although present-day Church authorities attribute the ban of women from
church leadership to Jesus Christ himself as I will report in a later
section, historical research makes clear that its origin lies in Roman Law.

The influence of the Roman Empire on the organization of the Catholic
Church is undeniable. In fact, the influence has been beneficial in many
respects. For the Romans were great administrators. They understood the
need of good infra-structures, such as roads, office buildings and a
universally accepted currency. Their military and governmental officials
were given clearly circumscribed duties and responsibilities. The Romans
hated confusion and enforced discipline.

It was a great Roman, Pope Gregory the Great (540-604), who put his
stamp on church administration. Gregory belonged to a patrician family
and had served as prefect of the city of Rome for a couple of years
before entering church service. When he was elected Pope, he immediately
began to centralise the entire papal administration. He laid down rules
on the liturgy and pastoral ministry. He co-ordinated new missionary
efforts, such as the conversion of England. He asserted papal authority
in face of Byzantine claims. He left a lasting stamp on the way the
official church was run by applying Roman principles and Roman systems
of management. He is considered by many historians as the architect of
the later medieval papacy.

The Romans were also good lawgivers. The great contribution of Roman
legislation was its laying down of simple and clear principles. Roman
law was detailed, specific, practical. It lent itself to resolving
disputes. It was a form of law developed by people who were able
administrators and efficient organizers. In fact, no system of law has
been so influential in the world as that which arose in the city of
ancient Rome.  Its thinking dominated the Roman empire for more than a
thousand years, and in the Byzantine empire it remained in use till
1453. It formed the basis for the law codes of most western countries.
More important for us: it shaped much of church law in the Catholic church.

But laws often hide structural prejudice, and this is what happened in
the case of women. For Roman law was hostile to women. Roman family law
was based on the principle that the father of the family (pater
familias) had complete authority both over the children and his wife.
This was defined as paternal power (patria potestas). The wife depended
totally on her husband, being in fact his property. He could do with her
as he liked. He could punish her in any way, even kill her, or sell her
as a slave -- though this last punishment was forbidden after 100 BC.
And as far as family property was concerned, the wife herself did not
own anything. Everything she or her children inherited belonged to her
husband, including also the dowry which she brought with her to her
marriage.

The rights of women in general civil Roman law were not much better.
Although the woman was considered a Roman citizen, she obtained her
position only through her husband. Women could not carry their own name,
as little as slaves could. Only men enjoyed this distinct sign of their
being a Roman citizen. Moreover, a woman was excluded from all public
functions and rights:

“Women are excluded from all civil and public responsibility and
therefore can neither be judges nor carry any civil authority, they
cannot bring a court case, nor intercede for someone else nor act as
mediators”.

Women could not function as witnesses, whether at the drawing up of a
last will, or in any other form of law. Like  minors, slaves, the dumb
and criminals, women could not be trusted. Women were also reckoned to
be incapable of representing themselves in law “because of the infirmity
of their sex and because of their ignorance about matters pertaining to
public life”.

Assimilation into Church discipline

If we understand that this was the condition of women by civil law, a
law which everyone greatly respected, we can appreciate how this
devaluation of women slipped into church thinking. The inferior status
of women was so much taken for granted that it determined the way Latin
speaking theologians and church leaders would look on matters relating
to women. Just listen to this reasoning by Ambrosiaster (4th cent) which
is typical of the time:

“ Women must cover their heads because they are not the image of God  .
   .  .  How can anyone maintain that woman is the likeness of God when
she is demonstrably subject to the dominion of man and has no kind of
authority? For she can neither teach nor be a witness in a court nor
exercise citizenship nor be a judge  --  then certainly not exercise
leadership!”

Ambrosiaster states that woman “has no kind of authority”. Why not?
Because by civil law a woman could not hold any public function or
exercise any authority. He goes on to say that she cannot be “a witness
in court, or exercise citizenship [ = take part in public meetings] or
be a judge”. Why not? Because civil law forbade it. Now notice the
argument. Woman does not bear the image of God because she is manifestly
subject to man as we can see from civil law! The real argument rests on
Roman law which is taken as right and just. And here the true culprit is
revealed. The cuckoo raises its ugly head. The position of woman is not
really decided by any Christian tradition or inspired text, but by the
pagan Roman law which was believed to be normative.

Unfortunately, the thinking of the Latin Fathers of the Church became
part of Church Law, the Corpus Iuris Canonici, because the first
compiler of that law, the monk Gratian, adopted all their prejudices
against women (Bologna ca. 1140):

·        “Because of her state of servitude a woman is subject to her
husband in everything.”

·        “Even if a woman is educated and saintly, she still should not
presume to instruct men in a [church] assembly.”

·        “Women may not teach or baptise or distribute communion  .  .
.  Women may not touch sacred objects  .  .  .  Women may not wear or
touch sacred vestments  .  .  . Women may not be part of a church choir.”

·        “Women cannot be promoted to the priesthood or even the diaconate.”

·        “Woman is not called ‘woman’ (Latin mulier) because of the sex
of her body but because of the weakness (Latin mollicies) of her mind.”

The Corpus Iuris Canonici remained the Catholic Church’s official
lawbook till 1910. But long before then the inferior position of women
had also enjoyed the attention of theological speculators.

The era of rationalization

The early Middle Ages saw the start of systematic theology. Thinkers
began to demand reasons for everything, including for the exclusion of
women from the ministries. Women were obviously substandard, they knew,
but were there no exceptions? What about Mary, the mother of Jesus? Or
Mary of Magdala, who had preached to the apostles? There is evidence
that in the 13th century there was still room for explaining the
omission of women from sacred orders as purely a church practice, a
custom that could be changed. Bonaventure (1217-1274), for instance,
states: “all agree that women ought not to be promoted to Orders; but as
to whether they are capable [of Orders], there is doubt.”

Theological ranks, however, soon closed solidly behind the Church’s
stand against women. A multiplicity of reasons were generated, including
ridiculous ones such as that women talk too much, or that it is not
becoming for them to wear the clerical tonsure. The justifications that
gained most ground were these:

·        Women are not created in the image of God; their purpose is to
serve their husbands.

·        Women still carry the curse of Eve’s sin.

·        Jesus Christ did not include a woman among the apostolic twelve.

·        Paul forbade women to teach in church.

·        Women are not perfect human beings and thus cannot represent
Christ.

In recent Church documents only the last three justifications have been
retained in a slightly modified form.  It was Jesus Christ himself, we
are told, who excluded women from the ministries for all time to come.
That is why the Church has, in fact, never ordained women. Neither does
the Church possess the power to change this practice. For Christ was a
man, and God wants him to be represented only by men in the leadership
of the Church.

This reasoning is so faulty and unsubstantiated that it would be
dismissed out of hand by most present-day scholars if it were not
presented in serious documents by the highest teaching authority in the
Church. The Vatican’s arguments, it seems to me, are as pathetic to any
professional theologian as a creationist’s boast that the finding of
dinosaur fossils confirms the world was created 6000 years ago.

At the risk of boring my readers to tears, let me sketch the theological
jousting with some cartoon-like strokes. The debate can be read in full
on the internet.

Nowhere does Jesus Christ explicitly exclude women from leadership in
his community. The fact that the first twelve apostles were only men
proves nothing. The first twelve were all Jews. Does that mean only Jews
can be priests? Yes but, the Vatican retorts, Jesus ordained the
apostles at the last supper when he said: “Do this in commemoration of
me”, and only men were present. Were they? We know now that women too
must have been there for the last supper was a paschal meal. Exodus 12
prescribes that women and children too had to share in a paschal meal.
Moreover, whereas previously only men joined the covenant directly
through circumcision, entrance into Jesus’ community  comes about by
baptism which is the same for men and women. Paul states the consequence
clearly: “through your common baptism in Christ there is no longer any
distinction between Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female”
(Galatians 3,28).

And what about the claim that the Church never admitted women to holy
orders? It simply is not true. For at least nine centuries the Catholic
Church, especially in its eastern provinces, routinely ordained women as
deacons. This diaconate was imparted through an ordination rite that, in
today’s terminology, has to be judged to be fully ‘sacramental’. The
bishop imposed hands on each candidate, invoking the Holy Spirit for the
specific purpose of assigning the woman to the ministry of the
diaconate. The ordination rites for male and female deacons were
identical in all essential elements. Both men and women deacons received
the diaconate stole. Church legislation regulated the rights and duties
of women deacons as much as that of the men. Women therefore did take
part in holy orders and, according to the old principle ex facto
sequitur posse (‘from it having been done it follows it can be done’),
the Church can ordain women because she has done so in the past.

Is there any validity in the rationale of Jesus Christ as a man
requiring a male representative? Thomas Aquinas (1224 - 1274), who is
quoted by the Vatican as a source for this opinion, believed women were
less perfect biologically because only the male seed carried future
offspring. Every woman is born incomplete, a ‘monster’, an ‘accident of
nature’. Small wonder Thomas taught that only a perfect human being,
that is: a male, can represent Christ.

The Vatican, while not sanctioning Aquinas’s biological ignorance, yet
holds on to the biological pre-eminence of men by seeing a significant
divine symbolism in Christ’s incarnation as a man.

“The fact that Christ is a man and not a woman is neither incidental nor
unimportant in relation to the economy of salvation  .  .  . God’s
covenant with men (!) is presented in the Old Testament as a nuptial
mystery, the definitive reality of which is Christ’s sacrifice on the
cross  .  .  .  Christ is the bridegroom of the Church, whom he won for
himself with his blood, and the salvation brought by him is the new
covenant. By using this language, revelation shows why the incarnation
took place according to the male gender, and makes it impossible to
ignore this historical reality. For this reason, only a man can take the
part of Christ, be a sign of his presence, in a word ‘represent’ him
(that is, be an effective sign of his presence) in the essential acts of
the covenant.” (Inter Insigniores, com. § 100-102)

The reasoning is seriously flawed. Its derivation from prophetic imagery
and Ephesians 5,21-33 is arbitrary. It contradicts the traditional
doctrine that Christ was incarnated as a human being (not just as a
man). In the words of Elizabeth A. Johnson: “The old principle states:
What is not assumed [into Christ’s humanity] is not saved. If maleness
is constitutive for the incarnation and redemption, female humanity is
not assumed and therefore not saved.”

Also, the symbolism limps. If the Church is the bride and Christ her
groom, how can the Vatican exclude women from representing the groom
while including both women and men in the bride? And if Christ’s
maleness and the maleness of his priests is so crucial in God’s plan of
salvation, has the phallus not become the defining symbol of Christ in
the eucharist? Hans Urs von Balthasar, who inspired much of the
Vatican’s thought in this matter, states so explicitly.

“The priestly ministry and the sacrament are means of passing on seed.
They are a male preserve. They aim at inducing in the Bride her function
as a woman.” (Wer ist Kirche?, p. 24)

“What else is Christ’s eucharist but, at a higher level, an endless act
of fruitful outpouring of his whole flesh, such as a man can only
achieve for a moment with a limited organ of his body?” (Elucidations,
p. 150)

The truth of the matter is that few Catholic theologians subscribe to
these official rationalizations.

Stand off between the Vatican and Catholic scholarship

By all evidence available to me, I estimate that at least three-quarters
of Catholic theologians disagree with the official position held out by
the Vatican. They do not accept as proven that Jesus Christ himself
excluded women from future ministries. They ascribe the woman-hostile
church practice of previous centuries to cultural bias. They see no
valid reason why the Church could not admit women to all ministries and
leadership positions.

I say: ‘by all evidence available to me’, for a blanket of silence has
descended on the theological community after Ordinatio Sacerdotalis
(1994) which effectively forbade discussion on the question. Theologians
serving seminaries and universities under Church control are, after all,
required to swear an oath of loyalty that implies agreement with the
Vatican. As one theologian put to me: “I have three good reasons to keep
my mouth shut. They are called Sharon, Alice and Bob - my children whom
I need to feed.”

With Polish rigour and German thoroughness, the whole Church apparatus
has been rigged to conform. The Vatican Curia has consistently tried to
fill all leadership positions with candidates favourable to its own
views. Bishops are only chosen if they have first indicated that they
agree with the Vatican. “Bishops are like the flagstones in St.
Peter’s”, one Vatican source observed. “If you lay them down properly
from the start, you can walk over them for the rest of their lives.” It
is not unlike the old Soviet Russia where all top officials had to be
screened and appointed by the central Polit Buro.

The CDF (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) follows up on this
structural control by censuring anyone who steps out of line. The
Vatican criticises bishops in person if they have organizations in their
jurisdiction that favour women priests. The Vatican sends letters to
bishops ordering them to reprimand and punish church personnel who
support women’s ordination, often mentioning dissident persons by name.
The party line was clearly spelled out in an instruction of 13 September
1983.

“The bishop should prove his pastoral ability and leadership qualities
by resolutely refusing any support to those people - whether individuals
or groups - who defend the priestly ordination of women, whether they do
so in the name of progress, of human rights, compassion or for whatever
reason it may be.”

All such repression of open discussion happens in flagrant contradiction
to the solemn stipulation of the Second Vatican Council that “all the
faithful, both clerical and lay, should be accorded a lawful freedom of
inquiry, freedom of thought and freedom of expression” (Gaudium et Spes,
§ 62).

As a result of Vatican pressure, most Roman Catholic theologians do not
publicly discuss the issue. But I know what they think from private
correspondence and from personal contacts. I am a member of the Catholic
Theological Association of Great Britain, the Catholic Theological
Association of Europe and the Catholic Theological Society of America.
The credibility of the magisterium’s banning women from ordination
borders on zero. Scholars agree with Elisabeth Johnson, not with Joseph
Ratzinger.

It could have been so different  .  .  .

Forty years ago the Catholic Church seemed to steer free from its inborn
reactionary and dictatorial tendencies. Between 1959 and 1965 I
witnessed a new spring. The Second Vatican Council opened windows in all
directions and provided the first chance of real Church reform. I was
lucky enough to be in the eternal city during those exciting days.
Everything suddenly seemed possible. Even for women! The current joke
was: “at the next Council, bishops will be invited to bring their wives,
at the one after that to bring their husbands.”

Do not forget that for the first time in the Church’s history women were
actually allowed to be present in St. Peter’s Basilica, the Council
hall, even though the lucky ones were only a handful with no more than
observer status. But Gertrude Heinzelmann and other intrepid women
managed to hand in a formal request that women’s ministries should be
considered. The issue was on the table, though it did not make it onto
the agenda.

Cardinal Ottaviani embodied resistance to change. He was Prefect of the
Holy Office and so Cardinal Ratzinger’s worthy forerunner. His official
motto read: Semper Idem - ‘Always the Same’. He suffered significant
defeats. One liberating document after the other was accepted by the
Council fathers. I remember the day when Ottaviani overran the
ten-minute time limit put on speakers and Cardinal Alfrink of Utrecht,
Council moderator for the day, forced him to stop. The Council fathers
applauded. Ottaviani stepped down with a red face. It was the end of
Ottaviani’s dominance. Or so it seemed to optimists like me.

In India I witnessed the Church’s genuine efforts at reform. It affected
worship, religious life, seminary training, dialogue with other
religions and many other key apostolates. The energy created was
astounding. Apart from some grumpy old stick-in-the-muds who dug in
their heels, bishops, priests, religious sisters and lay leaders eagerly
joined in. We felt happy, enthusiastic, exhilarated by the new
prospects. It made us overlook the storm clouds that were building up in
the Vatican centres of power. In 1975 I suggested to an all-India
seminar that the bishops should look into the possibility of admitting
women to holy orders.

What had meanwhile taken place in Rome is only now becoming clear. We
should have known. We should have noticed the first symptoms.

Cardinal Ottaviani had been restored to considerable influence under
Pope Paul VI. When the international committee of experts recommended
that contraceptives could legitimately be used by married couples in
certain circumstances, Ottaviani and three allies blocked the report.
They persuaded a worried Paul VI to reject the committee’s findings and
sign the now infamous encyclical Humanae Vitae that bans contraceptives
always and everywhere. It goes against nature, we are told. The Church’s
stand has had serious consequences for a country like India where poor
women often have no way of protecting themselves from violent husbands
who stumble into the hut after a binge on local gin, and demand sex. It
is deadly in countries where AIDS prevails.

Adaptation to Indian forms of worship was proceeding well. Ten special
indults were granted by the liturgical office in the Vatican during the
first years of sincere reform. Then the frost set in. The
archconservative Cardinal Knox took over liturgy. He had been appointed
away from Sydney because people there could not understand his kind of
humour, it was said. Ottaviani did. He and Knox refused approval to a
new eucharistic prayer for India that had been prepared by Indian
liturgists during years of consultation. Reason: it included Indian
theological terms!

I have painted the scene because this was the context in which the
question of women’s ministries was raised, and aborted in the womb!

What? Surely no women at the altar!

1971 was a year of promise. Representatives from all over the world
gathered at the Bishops’ Synod in Rome. The Canadian Bishops’ Conference
- God bless them! - through their spokesman Cardinal Flahiff, formally
requested the Church to open the discussion on admitting women to all
the ministries. Others concurred. How would the Vatican respond?

The Canadian request was timely from point of view of the Church’s
rank-and-file members. That is: the ordinary faithful, carriers of
inerrancy according to Vatican II. However, from a Church political
point of view, the timing could not have been worse. Conservative forces
were reorganising themselves under the leadership - you have guessed it!
- of Cardinal Ottaviani. These could not possibly conceive of a change
so fundamental as women entering holy orders. Absurd!

But the Vatican authorities went through the motions. A special
commission was set up to study the Function of Women in Society and the
Church (1973). The Biblical Commission was asked to look at the question
from a scriptural angle. It would all work out, they were sure.

Imagine their surprise and panic when support for women as priests
welled up spontaneously in many official bodies. The Vatican acted
immediately to stamp out such signs of rebellion.

The commission on the Function of Women was directed not to discuss
women’s ministries, even though this had been the reason why it was set
up. Dissenting voices (1974 - 1975) were suppressed as we know from the
records of Rie Vendrik, a Dutch representative. The final report of the
commission was never published.

The Pontifical Biblical Commission (1975) came out in favour of the
ordination of women. In response, its report was withheld from
publication. And, to muzzle the commission for good, it was henceforth
made totally subject to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith,
as the Holy Office was now called. The truth only emerged when the
commission’s chairman, Fr. Stanley, resigned, and when the report was
leaked to the press.

Meanwhile the worldwide Anglican Church had been involved in discussions
on ordaining women. In November 1975, a theological working group of the
Anglican/Roman Catholic International Consultation met in Assisi to
consider women priests. Rome appointed two Catholic specialists: Frs.
Eric Doyle OFM and Hervé Legrand OP, to represent the Catholic Church,
expecting them to defend the traditional position. They did not. Both
expressed support for the ordination of women from a
scriptural/theological point of view. Rome promptly refused to
acknowledge the Assisi report. Fortunately the Anglicans published it.
Rome then put pressure on the Catholic theologians to revise their
opinion - which they refused to do.

By this time Ottaviani’s group had thoroughly woken up. They felt they
had to nip this in the bud: this dangerous rebellion from grassroots
theologians.

In 1975 and 1976 Pope Paul VI repeatedly wrote to Archbishop Donald
Coggan, the primate of the Church of England. These letters tried to
demolish any illusion that the Catholic Church might one day be willing
to ordain women. Also, in 1976, Paul VI firmly ruled out women's
ordination in Inter Insigniores, the first document by a modern pope to
raise the question.

The echo we hear right through is Ottaviani’s Semper Idem. Unwittingly
he may have played his trump card by appointing Joseph Ratzinger as a
permanent member to the CDF.  Then John Paul II became Pope, a man of
philosophy and ferocious faith who was disgusted at ‘the degenerate
West’ with its ‘culture of death’.  The restoration of ancient values,
including woman’s place as mother of the family, was now going to be
promoted with ruthless zeal. Hands off the chalice, back to pushing the
pram!

Leaders in a dysfunctional Church?

It is blind religious zeal that undoubtedly drives the small group that
has seized almost unlimited control of the structures of the Church.
Pope Benedict XVI has clearly indicated that fighting ‘relativism’ is
his main objective. “Relativism is the central problem for faith today”.
Eradicating relativism validates the abuse of papal authority, the
silencing of prophecy in the Church, the reduction of bishops to
rubber-stamp officials, the repression of academic research and
dismantling of free discussion. All to defeat the relativism of a
multi-faith society, accountable sexual ethics, critical journalism,
open TV and radio, scientific bible studies, rights campaigns by
celibates, gays and women!

The return to 19th-century piety undoubtedly comforts a small
traditional minority and, perhaps, uneducated Catholics in Asia, Africa
and Latin America. For the others, the official Church is a source of
conflict and unrest. Condemnation of contraceptives that everyone uses.
Insistence on unmarried priests in the face of clerical child abuse and
dwindling vocations.  No human rights in the Church. Censure of freedom
of expression and other modern values to which we owe so much. Brutal
treatment of individuals while preaching love, blaming Jesus for
discrimination against women. Small wonder that the clerical Church we
have become has been compared to a dysfunctional family.

“In these families an addictive father sets up a pattern of control and
abuse. In order to survive, everyone colludes and tries to placate and
appease him by turning inward to protect the family’s reputation. The
dominant abuser determines everything that the family will do and think:
loyalty to him becomes the test of membership. In this process everyone
becomes co-dependent in the addiction, and thus the system continues.”
(Paul Collins, Papal Power, p. 103)

The papacy has consolidated its power under Pope John Paul II, but its
inner credibility has been hollowed out. When Rome’s stranglehold
eventually collapses, as I am sure it will one day, reform will focus on
restoring proper authority to bishops, theologians and lay people, and
reducing the power that the papacy has unlawfully appropriated to itself.

On that day the Catholic Church can also shed its fear of our
‘relativistic’ and secular world. The lasting solution to the present
religious crisis lies neither in the outright rejection of the newly
discovered values, nor in a compromise that would water down our
Christian faith. The answer lies in true integration: in allowing the
salvific words and deeds of Jesus Christ to take root once more in the
new secular realities and so transform them from within.

It should be recognised that the scientifically-minded, autonomy and
fulfilment-seeking culture of our western countries is a distinct new
culture, like cultures the Church meets in any other missionary
situation. Here, like elsewhere in the world, the Word of God needs to
be incarnated, with the preservation of all that is good in our culture.
The Second Vatican Council spelled it out.

“The seed which is the Word of God grows out of good soil, watered by
the divine dew. From this soil the seed draws nourishing elements which
it transforms and assimilates into itself. Finally it bears much fruit .
. .  From the customs and traditions of their people, from their wisdom
and their learning, from their arts and sciences, local churches borrow
all those things which can add to the glory of their Creator, manifest
the grace of the Saviour or contribute to the right ordering of
Christian life.” (Ad Gentes § 22)

The Catholic Church needs to shed unnecessary past accretions, such as
the bias against women, and adapt itself to the new world in which we
find ourselves, as the Church has done during other crucial periods in
its history. Evangelisation means continuous incarnation, in which the
Word can only become new flesh by taking that flesh seriously.

Will women be ordained leaders in the Catholic Church?

I look at history. The ruthless migrating nations that ravished the
Roman Empire destroyed Christian communities. They also laid the
foundation of flourishing Christian medieval societies. I see that
atrocious horror, the second world war, paradoxically giving birth to
computers, travel by jet, nuclear energy and satelite communication. It
also liberated women in many countries and brought the United Nations
closer together. I see communism, contrary to everyone’s calculations,
crumbling in Eastern Europe even though it seemed secure under a canopy
of terror.

Yes, women will become leaders in the Catholic Church: deacons, priests,
bishops and popes. Perhaps sooner than we dare expect. Christ’s Spirit
has not died. She is very active in the body of the Church. Though she
works through human instruments, she will not fail.

John Wijngaards


-- 
Luis T. Gutierrez, Ph.D.
Editor, "Solidarity, Sustainability, and Non-Violence"
http://pelican-consulting.com/solisust.html
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