Review of “Women’s Ordination in the Catholic Church” by John O’Brien

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.