Apr 13 Mon
Is the priesthood a right for all Christian Catholics?
Some, comparing the Catholic Church with the Anglican Communion, argue that the Church would not have fully "rehabilitated" women. This implies that the Church would have deviated from Christ's intention. It is a Protestant supposition that directly confronts the divine constitution of the Church.
From the Catholic perspective, that hypothesis does not hold up. The Church needs purification in her members, but she has not betrayed her essential constitution. To try to correct the Church according to external categories is to introduce a "hermeneutical rupture" that Benedict XVI has already denounced as "discontinuity and rupture."
The hierarchical structure of the Church is not a later construction or a form of domination. Christ himself instituted a concrete organization by choosing the Twelve and conferring a unique mission on Peter.
"Priesthood is not about sociological domination," the Dominican Divry explains, but about "a service-oriented ministry of sacramental order." To confuse this fact with that of the fundamental equality of all the baptized leads to errors of interpretation. As St Paul reminds us, "there is no longer male or female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Gal 3:28), which does not eliminate the diversity of functions within the Church.
One of the points where these distortions are most evident is in the interpretation of the female figures. To present the Virgin Mary as a symbol of forced submission is, according to Divry, a clear theological error.
Mary's "fiat" is not passivity, but a decisive act of freedom. The yes of the Virgin commits all humanity to the history of salvation. God does not want slaves. Rather, the relationship between Christ and the Church is based on freedom.
Introducing categories such as "patriarchy" or "equality of functions" transfers to the interior of the Church some socio-political schemes that do not respond to her nature. Thus, the priesthood is presented as a right or a promotion, when in reality "it is not part of the rights of the person," but belongs "to the mystery of Christ and of the Church." The priesthood is not a right, not even for men.
There is a personal diversity of functions within the Church. Yet difference is not inequality. The priest is not “more” Christian (or automatically holier) than the layman.
The diversity of vocations in the Church does not imply inferiority. The Church fully recognizes the dignity of women and their irreplaceable role in Christian life, but without confusing roles.
We must recall that the mission of figures such as Mary Magdalene – "apostle to the apostles" – is not equivalent to the priestly ministry. These are different areas within the same communion.
The truth is clear: fidelity to the Gospel does not consist in adapting it to the fleeting categories of the time, but in accepting the mystery of the Church in all her depth, where the equality of the baptized coexists with the diversity of vocations.
Excerpts from Fr. Édouard Divry, OP