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Review of “Women’s Ordination in the Catholic Church” by John O’Brien
Colm Holmes • 13 November 2020
Review by Gina Menzies
Review of “Women’s Ordination in the Catholic Church” by John O’Brien, published by Cascade Books, 2020
Gina Menzies
If ever there was a study of the counter arguments to the ordination of women in the Catholic Church, this is it. With forensic and detailed analysis John O’Brien peels away, in irrefutable detail, the arguments made against the ordination of women in Vatican documents such as Inter Insigniores (1976) from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), approved by Pope Paul VI and Ordinatio Sacerdotalis (1994) an Apostolic Letter of Pope John Paul II. The most recent document from the CDF, The Definitive Character of the Doctrine of Ordinatio Sacerdotalis (2018), reaffirms the earlier documents and tries to add Pope Francis to an unbroken chain of magisterial teaching.
John O’Brien, Associate Professor of Theology in Durham University, systematically dismantles poor scholarship in relation to scriptural interpretation of women’s role in the early church and the Catholic Church’s fixation with unchanging tradition.
O’ Brien’s focus on context and historical consciousness aligned with a keen hermeneutic of suspicion provide useful tools to demolish arguments derived from scripture and history. He comes to the insightful conclusion that the reasons for the prohibition are rooted in cultural assumptions and a canon law which lacks a credible theological basis.
Tradition is frequently cited to justify the non-ordination of women. However, tradition, properly understood, is a dynamic process, influenced and challenged by time and place in history. This is illustrated by many examples from the early centuries of the Church, in which women had pastoral and leadership roles. The work, ministry and responsibility were effectively the same for both women and men as the offices of deacon and presbyter developed.
O’Brien takes us through the centuries to reveal the role of women in spreading the gospel, ministering to the Christian communities through the first millennium and the subsequent skewed anthropology which denies women a role in decision-making or in presiding over the Eucharist. This way of thinking has never entirely exited from official church thinking. Maleness as the ultimate criterion for Eucharistic presidency and consequent engagement in decision-making in the Catholic church is a denial of the foundational precepts of Christianity which rests on the equality and dignity of all human beings.
It is clear from this detailed study that “a homogenous structure of church ministry cannot be deduced from scripture alone” (page 63) and more significantly: “The early church’s developing theology of ministry focused not on powers conferred, but on the ecclesial relationship into which the ordained was conferred and Eucharistic presidency followed from pastoral leadership over a community.” (page 65) In other words, pastoral care was primary, automatically creating leadership roles which included presiding over Eucharistic celebrations. Are we in a similar place today?
The theologian, Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza‘s rigorous scriptural excavations has long since established the existence of women churches. The narratives of the Last Supper in various parts of the New Testament, each written for the local church to which the scripture was addressed, exhibits “the ecclesial concerns and cultural assumptions of their times”. It is more, not less likely, that women who worked pastorally, presided over House Churches would also have celebrated Eucharist.
While socio-cultural conditioning influences initial understanding and interpretation, it also influences change in that understanding and interpretation. Women’s sociological emancipation, most recently the election of a woman as vice president of the United States, should be a driving force for change in the consciousness of society and Church as a whole.
O’Brien cites significant epigraphic evidence of ordained women in the first millennium, especially in the first five centuries. Inscriptions in Palestine bear witness to the second Phoebe. The deaconess Maria is remembered in the Jerusalem area. Archaeology has excavated many of these inscriptions to add to the weight of argument of women’s leadership of the churches in these centuries.
From the beginnings of the Jesus movement, the author traces the involvement of women in the first millennium of the Christian church. There is clear evidence of the ministry of women in the New Testament. Gifted women exercised important leadership ministries in the emerging churches. Many of these would have been considered diaconal, presbyterial and episcopal: this work of spreading the Gospel was effectively the same for men and women. The early church was a movement inspired by the Jesus story. The fact that it was pastorally orientated was its guiding theology. This was not dissimilar to the approach of Pope Frances. Serving the needs of the community then and now is primary.
A change began in the late fifth century with a statement of Pope Gelasius in 494. Without any reference to theologian foundations, it rejects the admission of women to the priesthood (page 78):
“… that divine affairs have come to such a low state that women are encouraged to officiate at the sacred altars and to take part in all matters imputed to the offices of the male sex, to which they do not belong”.
As if to provide a final pastoral example of serving the needs of the community through the ministry of women, O’Brien narrates the history of the ordination of Ludmila Javorova and other women in the former Czechoslovakia. Bishop Felix Davidek spent fifteen years in prison during which time he asked Ludmila to seek out candidates for ordination to a clandestine priesthood. Felix realized that nuns and hundreds of Catholic women in prison were denied pastoral care. Ludmilla set forth the circumstances of her ordination to Pope John Paul II, to which she never received a reply.
This study challenges the monolithic teaching of the Catholic church on the ban on the ordination of women. It deserves a response from the Magisterium and from those who continue to claim that Jesus definitively prohibited women from ordination.
Interview with Soline Humbert Irish Daily Mail 15 March 2025
A reflection by Soline Humbert for the Women’s Ordination Conference Retreat “Hidden Springs, Holy Radiance” 9 February 2025 [ see recording on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szP5h1kzEsU ] We have been gathering over the past three days in the presence of Brigid of Kildare, and I am sure she has brought gifts to each one, for my experience is that she is attentive to our needs and very generous with her help. At this stage I just want to share some of my own life journey with Brigid. I first encountered her in 1969 when I came from France to Ireland as a child on holidays to learn English. I went to a small Irish town called Tullow. As it happens it was in Tullow that on the first of February 1807 the order of nuns of St Brigid which had been dissolved at the Reformation, had been refounded by a far-sighted bishop. Symbolically an oak sapling had been brought from Kildare Town, from the church of the oak, to Tullow and planted in the grounds of the Brigidine convent where I took English classes. It was by then a majestic oak tree. It still stands to this day. Coincidentally and somewhat ironically, 1969 was also the year that Pope Paul the 6th removed St Brigid, along with 193 other saints, from the Universal Roman Calendar of saints. The reason being that there wasn’t enough evidence for her existence! That despite the fact she was the most mentioned Irish person in the writings of several centuries after her death... What was true was that her flame had been somehow extinguished, and her importance diminished in a deeply clericalised and patriarchal church as Ireland was at the time. She was in the shadow of St Patrick and very much the secondary patron Saint, reflecting the secondary position of women in general. But change was slowly happening. Having discovered in myself a vocation to the priesthood I eventually co- founded a group for women’s ordination and launched a petition to open all ministries to women in February 1993. At the very same time, which I consider providential, the flame of St Brigid was rekindled by the Brigidine sisters in Kildare Town. Women were stirring after a very long wintertime in the church and in society and becoming more fiery. Brigid with her torch was blazing a way for equality. It is then, and only then, that I came across the story of her ordination as a bishop and I remember my astonishment for I had never read anything like that before, or since, for that matter. Of course, while this fact was mentioned in many of the lives of Brigid going back to the first millennium it had been quietly left out of the pious descriptions of her life which were fed to the people. The way the story is recounted makes it clear that her ordination was considered to be very much the doing of the Holy Spirit. Objections about her gender were voiced but powerless to negate what God had done. It reminds me very much of the passage in the Acts of the Apostles when St Peter is amazed to discover that the Holy Spirit has descended on Cornelius, a gentile, and which leads him to conclude that “God has no favourites”. Brigid’s episcopal ordination at the hands of a bishop overcome by the Spirit is also a powerful affirmation that when it comes to ordination God has no favourite gender. Her ordination’s divine origin shows that Brigid was a bishop because God ordained it, and her. A very subversive truth our Church has yet to learn... As we campaigned for women’s ordination we made sure that this episode from Brigid’s life was brought into the open, again and again, despite clerical efforts to dismiss this dangerous historical memory as pure legend and keep it buried. Interestingly when the Anglican Church of Ireland, (Episcopalian) ordained their first woman bishop in 2013 it was to the diocese of Meath and Kildare! A very symbolic act. I have often gone to St Brigid’s Well in Kildare, a little oasis of peace, to spend some time with Brigid and re-source myself by the gently flowing water. After the First Women’s Ordination Worldwide Dublin international Conference in 2001 I went there again on the anniversary of my baptism and I hung my purple stole on a tree overlooking the well. I had worn that stole for many years as a sign of waiting. From now on I would wear stoles of other colours. And a few years ago, I found myself back in Tullow, as a guest speaker at the invitation of the Brigidine sisters for an international celebration. It was very moving to be able to speak of my calling to priesthood in the place where the order of St Brigid had been revived and where I had first come as a child half a century beforehand! That day I sensed very much the presence of Brigid the bishop and I was filled with joy and gratitude. In some ways we can say St Brigid has risen up and is leading the way for women to rise up. Although a woman in what was very much a man’s world and a man’s church, Brigid exudes a remarkable confidence in her being, in her words and in her actions. No doubt that confidence was rooted in a deeply contemplative life nurtured by prayer. “From the moment I first knew God, I have never let him out of my mind, and I never shall”. She embodies the authority which stems from being filled by the Spirit and a leadership at the service of peace, justice, hospitality to the strangers, charity to the poor and marginalised, reconciliation, healing and harmony with creation and care of the earth. The two Scripture readings we have just heard are very fitting for she was renowned for her practical care and generosity to those in need or suffering. Like Christ, she went around doing good. I must not be the only one who saw and heard in Episcopalian bishop Mariann Budde’s recent words the spirit of St Brigid as she used her God- given authority to plead for mercy for the people in vulnerable situations in the face of unbounded cruelty. Brigid is a bold, dynamic presence. She is said to be a woman of the threshold, of liminal places, and she is a sure guide for our times when we also are in transition on the threshold of a new church and a new world too. She calls to us to step boldly forward with our torches burning brightly, bringing the light and warmth of God’s Love to a world gone cold in the grip of darkness and despair. Her life reminds us that with “God nothing is impossible” and to expect miracles. I shall end on a light- hearted note: I went on pilgrimage to St Brigid’s Well and Solas Bhride in Kildare last Tuesday to prepare for this retreat. On the way back from the well and driving through the wide expanse of the Curragh where thousands of sheep graze freely I started seeing a multitude of rainbows. It reminded me of one of the many whimsical stories about Brigid: Caught in a rainstorm, she hangs her mantle on a sunbeam to dry. Dripping from its edges, colourful rainbows form in the water droplets, and her mantle is ‘bright’ with colour. Lady, from winter’s dark, Star of Imbolc, rise! Dance across our threshold: Scattering warm laughter Seeds of hospitality, Tolerance, forgiveness! Return again to the folk: You the Spring we yearn for! (Tom Hamill)
Women are a problem for the Catholic Church, an institution with ingrained misogyny - Soline Humbert
Papal plámás is no substitute for an end to discrimination against women
Vatican says NO to EQUALITY?
Dr Luca Badini Confalonieri with Fr Helmut Schüller
WAC International response to Instrumentum Laboris
It is a dull document but perhaps all the cans that have been kicked down the Synodal road will yet create a din that cannot be ignored.
Christchurch Cathedral June 30th 2024
The Tablet used WAC Ireland's "Last Supper" painted by Irish artist Nora Kelly on its cover
One of the leading thinkers in the Irish Church welcomes the Pope’s ‘change of culture’ but warns that it will peter out unless there are reforms to structures and institutions
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Interview with Soline Humbert Irish Daily Mail 15 March 2025
A reflection by Soline Humbert for the Women’s Ordination Conference Retreat “Hidden Springs, Holy Radiance” 9 February 2025 [ see recording on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szP5h1kzEsU ] We have been gathering over the past three days in the presence of Brigid of Kildare, and I am sure she has brought gifts to each one, for my experience is that she is attentive to our needs and very generous with her help. At this stage I just want to share some of my own life journey with Brigid. I first encountered her in 1969 when I came from France to Ireland as a child on holidays to learn English. I went to a small Irish town called Tullow. As it happens it was in Tullow that on the first of February 1807 the order of nuns of St Brigid which had been dissolved at the Reformation, had been refounded by a far-sighted bishop. Symbolically an oak sapling had been brought from Kildare Town, from the church of the oak, to Tullow and planted in the grounds of the Brigidine convent where I took English classes. It was by then a majestic oak tree. It still stands to this day. Coincidentally and somewhat ironically, 1969 was also the year that Pope Paul the 6th removed St Brigid, along with 193 other saints, from the Universal Roman Calendar of saints. The reason being that there wasn’t enough evidence for her existence! That despite the fact she was the most mentioned Irish person in the writings of several centuries after her death... What was true was that her flame had been somehow extinguished, and her importance diminished in a deeply clericalised and patriarchal church as Ireland was at the time. She was in the shadow of St Patrick and very much the secondary patron Saint, reflecting the secondary position of women in general. But change was slowly happening. Having discovered in myself a vocation to the priesthood I eventually co- founded a group for women’s ordination and launched a petition to open all ministries to women in February 1993. At the very same time, which I consider providential, the flame of St Brigid was rekindled by the Brigidine sisters in Kildare Town. Women were stirring after a very long wintertime in the church and in society and becoming more fiery. Brigid with her torch was blazing a way for equality. It is then, and only then, that I came across the story of her ordination as a bishop and I remember my astonishment for I had never read anything like that before, or since, for that matter. Of course, while this fact was mentioned in many of the lives of Brigid going back to the first millennium it had been quietly left out of the pious descriptions of her life which were fed to the people. The way the story is recounted makes it clear that her ordination was considered to be very much the doing of the Holy Spirit. Objections about her gender were voiced but powerless to negate what God had done. It reminds me very much of the passage in the Acts of the Apostles when St Peter is amazed to discover that the Holy Spirit has descended on Cornelius, a gentile, and which leads him to conclude that “God has no favourites”. Brigid’s episcopal ordination at the hands of a bishop overcome by the Spirit is also a powerful affirmation that when it comes to ordination God has no favourite gender. Her ordination’s divine origin shows that Brigid was a bishop because God ordained it, and her. A very subversive truth our Church has yet to learn... As we campaigned for women’s ordination we made sure that this episode from Brigid’s life was brought into the open, again and again, despite clerical efforts to dismiss this dangerous historical memory as pure legend and keep it buried. Interestingly when the Anglican Church of Ireland, (Episcopalian) ordained their first woman bishop in 2013 it was to the diocese of Meath and Kildare! A very symbolic act. I have often gone to St Brigid’s Well in Kildare, a little oasis of peace, to spend some time with Brigid and re-source myself by the gently flowing water. After the First Women’s Ordination Worldwide Dublin international Conference in 2001 I went there again on the anniversary of my baptism and I hung my purple stole on a tree overlooking the well. I had worn that stole for many years as a sign of waiting. From now on I would wear stoles of other colours. And a few years ago, I found myself back in Tullow, as a guest speaker at the invitation of the Brigidine sisters for an international celebration. It was very moving to be able to speak of my calling to priesthood in the place where the order of St Brigid had been revived and where I had first come as a child half a century beforehand! That day I sensed very much the presence of Brigid the bishop and I was filled with joy and gratitude. In some ways we can say St Brigid has risen up and is leading the way for women to rise up. Although a woman in what was very much a man’s world and a man’s church, Brigid exudes a remarkable confidence in her being, in her words and in her actions. No doubt that confidence was rooted in a deeply contemplative life nurtured by prayer. “From the moment I first knew God, I have never let him out of my mind, and I never shall”. She embodies the authority which stems from being filled by the Spirit and a leadership at the service of peace, justice, hospitality to the strangers, charity to the poor and marginalised, reconciliation, healing and harmony with creation and care of the earth. The two Scripture readings we have just heard are very fitting for she was renowned for her practical care and generosity to those in need or suffering. Like Christ, she went around doing good. I must not be the only one who saw and heard in Episcopalian bishop Mariann Budde’s recent words the spirit of St Brigid as she used her God- given authority to plead for mercy for the people in vulnerable situations in the face of unbounded cruelty. Brigid is a bold, dynamic presence. She is said to be a woman of the threshold, of liminal places, and she is a sure guide for our times when we also are in transition on the threshold of a new church and a new world too. She calls to us to step boldly forward with our torches burning brightly, bringing the light and warmth of God’s Love to a world gone cold in the grip of darkness and despair. Her life reminds us that with “God nothing is impossible” and to expect miracles. I shall end on a light- hearted note: I went on pilgrimage to St Brigid’s Well and Solas Bhride in Kildare last Tuesday to prepare for this retreat. On the way back from the well and driving through the wide expanse of the Curragh where thousands of sheep graze freely I started seeing a multitude of rainbows. It reminded me of one of the many whimsical stories about Brigid: Caught in a rainstorm, she hangs her mantle on a sunbeam to dry. Dripping from its edges, colourful rainbows form in the water droplets, and her mantle is ‘bright’ with colour. Lady, from winter’s dark, Star of Imbolc, rise! Dance across our threshold: Scattering warm laughter Seeds of hospitality, Tolerance, forgiveness! Return again to the folk: You the Spring we yearn for! (Tom Hamill)
Women are a problem for the Catholic Church, an institution with ingrained misogyny - Soline Humbert
Papal plámás is no substitute for an end to discrimination against women
Vatican says NO to EQUALITY?
Dr Luca Badini Confalonieri with Fr Helmut Schüller
WAC International response to Instrumentum Laboris
It is a dull document but perhaps all the cans that have been kicked down the Synodal road will yet create a din that cannot be ignored.
Christchurch Cathedral June 30th 2024
The Tablet used WAC Ireland's "Last Supper" painted by Irish artist Nora Kelly on its cover
One of the leading thinkers in the Irish Church welcomes the Pope’s ‘change of culture’ but warns that it will peter out unless there are reforms to structures and institutions
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C/O 49 Rockfield Avenue,
Perrystown,
Dublin 12.
D12H6F6
Ireland