**Rowland Croucher**
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 Posted: Tue Jul 29, 2008 5:05 am Post subject: Rome *Does* Change |
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Sightings 7/28/08
On Women's Ordination
-- Martin E. Marty
Robert J. Egan, S. J., of Gonzaga University, started it all (this round)
with an article in the April 11 *Commonweal*, in which he asked whether
official Roman Catholics ought to consider reconsidering the Vatican
declarations against the ordination of women to the priesthood. In best
"fair and balanced" style the editors later gave space (July 1 to Sr. Sara
Butler, MSBT, of St. Joseph's Seminary in Yonkers. She draws on her
book *The
Catholic Priesthood and Women *(2007), which had helped prompt Egan's
response. And, also in the July 18 issue, Father Egan was given another
chance. So today's *Sightings* is a response to a response to a response to
a response – almost ad infinitum?
Whether Catholics should change and begin ordination of women is their
business, not mine, at least not here and today, though outcomes of Catholic
debates do have huge "public religion" consequences. I can only testify to
the manifest blessings so many churches, like my own (ELCA), have received
during the past half-century from the ministry of women-ordained. My
business instead picks up on Egan's closing paragraph, where he argues
against Sr. Butler's reversion to and repetition of the claim that Rome does
not change. He orthodoxly celebrates the constancy of teachings from Rome.
But: "New questions arise, and new horizons open, cultures themselves are
transformed, and the fund of human knowledge changes." His article has no
room to provide chapter and verse when he lists understandings and teachings
in which Rome "has changed dramatically, in ways that could not have been
foreseen."
He offers a short list. You could look 'em up: "on slavery, women's
inferiority, the divine right of kings, the uses of torture, the status and
dignity of the Jewish people, the execution of heretics, the idea of
religious liberty, the moral legitimacy of democratic governments, the
indispensability of Thomism, the structure of the universe itself." In all
these cases, after Catholic change has been virtually total and quickly
taken for granted, one is hard put to think back to when it supported
slavery, women's inferiority, torture, et cetera, or opposed the items just
listed which it now affirms.
Several years ago Maureen Fiedler and Linda Rabbin, editors, corralled
eighteen scholars who tracked papal statements which suggest significant
revisions and reversals in "understanding and teaching," in *Rome Has Spoken
*. Their authors, for example, tell of "Usury: Once a Sin, Now Good
Stewardship." Evolution. Positive views of sexual expression within
marriage, changes in scriptural interpretation, ecumenism, and more.
Admittedly, the nature and extent of changes on some of these subjects are
open to debate and should be debated. But change there certainly has been.
"Religious Freedom" is the change most recognized and experienced by modern
publics. *Rome Has Spoken* quotes a dozen papal prohibitions against
religious freedom from 1184 to 1906. Change came suddenly, beginning with
Pius XII in 1946, more explicitly with John XXIII in 1963 and then,
conciliarly, at the Second Vatican Council in 1965. Just 102 years ago,
Pius X was still teaching the following in a papal encyclical: "that the
state must be separated from the church is a thesis absolutely false, a most
pernicious error…an obvious negation of the supernatural order." "Rome"
changed, and admitted it did so – and survived. Globally, it flourishes now
most where it had persecuted least.
References:
Maureen Fielder and Linda Rabbin, eds. *Rome Has Spoken…: A Guide to
Forgotten Papal Statements, and How They Have Changed Through the Centuries.
* NY: Crossroad Publishing, 1998.
Sr. Butler's Cardinal Cooke Lecture on the subject of women's priesthood is
available at
http://www.archny.org/seminary/st-josephs-seminary-dunwoodie/administration/sister-sara-butler/
Martin E. Marty's biography, current projects, upcoming events,
publications, and contact information can be found at www.illuminos.com.
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*Sightings* comes from the Martin Marty
Center<http://marty-center.uchicago.edu/>at the University of Chicago
Divinity School.
Attribution
Columns may be quoted or republished in full, with attribution to the author
of the column, *Sightings*, and the Martin Marty Center at the University of
Chicago Divinity School.
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--
Shalom/Salaam/Pax! Rowland Croucher
http://jmm.aaa.net.au/ (20,000 articles 4000 humor)
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