Posted March 15, 2006
John Allen of the National Catholic Reporter
with his take of Pope Benedict’s
understanding of women
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Whenever I lecture on the Vatican or the papacy, there's a standard set of
questions that almost always come up, one of which focuses on women in the
church under Benedict XVI. Sometimes this is a disguised way of asking about
women's ordination, but more often it's a genuine bit of curiosity about
whether we can expect Benedict XVI to do anything to promote the empowerment
of women in the life of the church.
Until last week, I was left to speculate. Now, however, we have the pope's
own words in response to the same question.
On the morning of March 2, Benedict XVI met with a group of clergy from the
Diocese of Rome, listening to 15 of them formulate questions, and then
offering impromptu answers. Fr. Marco Valentini touched precisely on this
point, asking why the church doesn't recognize that the insights and
experiences of women can balance those of men in decision-making positions.
The following is my translation of the full text of Benedict's answer, given
in Italian.
"I'll now respond to the assistant pastor of St. Jerome's - I can see he's
also very young - who spoke to us about how much women do in the church,
also on behalf of the priests. I can only underline how the special prayer
for priests in the first Canon, the Roman Canon, always makes a great
impression on me: Nobis quoque peccatoribus. In this realistic humility of
us priests, precisely as sinners, we pray that the Lord will help us to be
his servants. In this prayer for priests, and only in it, seven women appear
who surround the priest. They demonstrate how women believers help us in our
path. Everyone has certainly had this experience. In this way, the church
owes an enormous debt of gratitude to women.
You quite rightly underlined that, at the charismatic level, women do a
great deal, and I would dare to say, a great deal for the governance of the
church, beginning with the sisters of the great fathers of the church, such
as St. Ambrose, to the great women of the Middle Ages - St. Hildegard, St.
Catherine of Siena, then St. Teresa d'Avila - up to Mother Teresa. I would
say that this charismatic sector certainly is distinct from the ministerial
sector in the strict sense of the term, but it's a true and profound
participation in the governance of the church. How could we imagine the
governance of the church without this contribution, which sometimes becomes
very visible, as when St. Hildegard criticized the bishops, or when St.
Brigit and St. Catherine admonished the popes and obtained their return to
Rome? It's always a determining factor, and the church can't live without
it.
You rightly say: 'We want to see women more visibly, in a ministerial way,
in the governance of the church.' I would say this is exactly the question.
The priestly ministry from the Lord is, as we know, reserved to men. This
priestly ministry is governance in the deep sense that, definitively, it is
the Sacrament that governs the church. This is the decisive point. It is not
the individual man who does something, but the priest faithful to his
mission who governs, in the sense that it is the Sacrament - that is,
through the Sacrament - that Christ himself governs, both through the
Eucharist and the other sacraments, but it is always Christ who presides.
However, it's proper to ask if in this ministerial service - the fact
notwithstanding that here sacrament and charisma form the one track upon
which the church is realized - it's not possible to offer more space, more
positions of responsibility to women.
Bottom line: no change on women's ordination, but openness on other ways to
move women into positions of authority that don't require sacramental
ordination.
The e-mail address for John L. Allen Jr. is jallen@natcath.org
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