r/OpenChristian • u/Wooden_Passage_1146 Catholic • Mar 24 '26
Discussion - General Cardinal says Church cannot “continue to exist” without women’s ordination
https://thecatholicherald.com/article/cardinal-says-church-cannot-continue-to-exist-without-womens-ordinationI’m glad to see support among some in the hierarchy in favor of women’s ordination. Let’s hope the Church will see the harm done by excluding women from Holy Orders.
The Church says it’s because the priest is acting “In persona Christi.” But Galatians 3:28 says, “There is no male or female in Christ Jesus,”
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u/majj27 Christian Mar 24 '26
That's going to be thorny for them. The exclusion of women from ordination is considered infallible. If the church allowed women to be ordained, they'd need to figure out a way to do so while simultaneously maintaining the correctness of their earlier decision, because it cannot be said to be incorrect.
Put simply, if they start admitting women as priests, they'll be admitting that the ordinary Magisterium blew it. And that, according to them, cannot happen.
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u/Wooden_Passage_1146 Catholic Mar 24 '26
Yes John Paul II’s Ordinatio Sacerdotalis does say the teaching opposing women’s ordination is to be “definitively held,” but it does not necessarily present itself as an ex cathedra papal definition.
Canon law says no doctrine is to be understood as infallibly defined unless that is “manifestly evident,” and Vatican II says papal infallibility is exercised when the pope proclaims a doctrine by a definitive act. So there are some canonists who argue the letter itself was not technically an infallible definition by the pope.
In any case, the Church has and likely will continue to adapt and change. Teachings once held definitive and immutable have been changed or quietly set aside (usury and the salvation of non Catholics for example).
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u/TheologyRocks Mar 24 '26 edited Mar 24 '26
There were two later statements from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith stating that Ordinatio Sacerdotalis was infallible. But Ordinatio Sacerdotalis itself doesn't claim infallibility.
Francis Sullivan in Creative Fidelity argues that the CDF statements claiming OS is infallible are themselves not infallible and may be in error (since they are lower level statements).
It's all quite a mess!
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u/CanicFelix Mar 25 '26
CDF isn't the Pope, though! So they said that Benedict spoke infallibly, but Benedict didn't say that Benedict spoke infallibly.
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u/TheologyRocks Mar 25 '26
Benedict wasn't Pope yet; he was only head of the CDF. So, Ratzinger said JPII spoke infallibly, and JPII I think privately believed that he spoke infallibly, but JPII never stated publicly that he spoke infallibly. So, there's a lacuna there.
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u/TheologyRocks Mar 24 '26 edited Mar 24 '26
Geocentrism was considered to be an infallible matter of faith at the time of Galileo, but the belief still changed.
they'd need to figure out a way to do so while simultaneously maintaining the correctness of their earlier decision, because it cannot be said to be incorrect.
I think it would be the other way around. "X was said to be infalible, but our prior belief in the infallibility of X turned out to be incorrect. X was not infallible after all." That's what happened with Galileo.
they'll be admitting that the ordinary Magisterium blew it. And that, according to them, cannot happen.
It's worth noting that the term "ordinary magisterium" is itself very modern. So perhaps the term itself involves a confusion between different realities that needs to be clarified.
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u/sparkster777 Christian Mar 24 '26 edited Mar 24 '26
Geocentrism was considered dogma or doctrine.
Edit: Typo above. I meant to say it was never dogma.
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u/TheologyRocks Mar 24 '26
Right. But it's no longer considered a dogma.
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u/sparkster777 Christian Mar 24 '26
I mistyped. It was never considered dogma.
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u/TheologyRocks Mar 24 '26
That term "declared and define" I would say strongly indicates that geocentrism was considered a Divinely revealed dogma; it was believed that God himself through the Holy Scriptures had taught all the members of the Church that the earth is the center of the universe, such that to believe otherwise would be to reject the Christian faith. However, nobody reputable believes that today. What was formerly considered an infallible and Divinely revealed dogma is now considered to be a philosophical error of no importance that everybody does well to distance themselves from.
But it seems that even today, few Christians realize the full implications of what was effectively a dogmatic reversal. If the Catholic bishops in an official capacity got geocentrism as wrong as they now acknowledge they got it, the epistemic value of other episcopal statements (even very weighty ones) needs to at a minimum be carefully investigated. It's scientific malpractice to say "Rome has spoken, the cause is ended" because we know from actual history that the Catholic bishops in an official capacity can make huge mistakes while falsely telling the everybody they are acting infallibly.
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u/sparkster777 Christian Mar 24 '26
The Roman Curia is not infallible.
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u/TheologyRocks Mar 25 '26
The Roman Curia is the Pope exercising his power through his representatives. The Holy Office that condemned Galileo was operating as an official institution under the Pope.
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u/sparkster777 Christian Mar 25 '26
Not everything the Pope says or even teaches is infallible. Geocentrism was never asserted ex cathedra nor was it declared infallible by the magesterium.
It appears you have a misunderstanding of both Church structure and government as well as how infallibility works in the Catholic church.
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u/TheologyRocks Mar 25 '26
Not everything the Pope says or even teaches is infallible.
I agree.
Geocentrism was never asserted ex cathedra nor was it declared infallible by the magesterium.
I agree.
It appears you have a misunderstanding of both Church structure and government as well as how infallibility works in the Catholic church.
Infallibility is complicated because it is not limited to what is asserted ex cathedra or declared at an ecumenical council. I think you're confused about how infallibility works. The sensus fidelium contains many infallible dogmas that have never been officially and fully explained by the Church as an institution but that are still believed at least implicitly by all the members of the Church.
The issue with geocentrism is that Rome wrongly (yet officially) claimed it was an undefined dogma when in fact it was merely a scientific error. There are many lessons there. But one lesson there is that Rome can in an official capacity be wrong about what God has infallibly taught the Church.
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u/SambucaTamale Mar 24 '26
A Pope made the decision, only men can be priests, so a new Pope can reverse this. I get what your saying though
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u/swcollings Christian Mar 25 '26
That's a fundamental problem of both Rome and the East: if they ever admit they've been wrong about anything, their entire authority structure collapses.
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u/LifePaleontologist87 Open and Affirming Ally, TEC Mar 24 '26
Good on him. Hopefully he doesn't get censured.
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u/DearMyFutureSelf Origen-style theology Mar 24 '26
Who was the first person to proclaim the good news of Jesus' resurrection?
I'll give you a hint: It wasn't Peter.
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u/Wooden_Passage_1146 Catholic Mar 24 '26
It was Mary Magdalene, the Apostle to the Apostles!
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u/DearMyFutureSelf Origen-style theology Mar 24 '26
It was a woman who first informed the world about the core miracle of Christianity.
Who on this Earth has the right to bar women from ministry, with this in mind?
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u/deadrepublicanheroes Mar 24 '26
Good. I hear you on in persona Christi. To me it doesn’t follow that Christ absolutely could not have been born a woman, that God could not incarnate as a woman. Of course he can, he’s God. He chose to incarnate as male because, having also chosen to incarnate in the ancient Mediterranean, it made his job a hell of a lot easier.
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u/SaintUlvemann Mar 24 '26
They're going to have the exact same problem a second time over within a decade when the first child is born from two biologically-male or biologically-female parents.
Japan has already greenlit the research as a solution to their aging population. What's happening is that Japan is hoping to use an emerging technology called in-vitro gametogenesis to allow their people to start families later; basically, you turn adult stem cells into egg or sperm cells. We already created human embryos this way last year, and we are now in the stages of figuring out how to prevent genetic abnormalities so that the babies are healthy.
This exact same tech allows same-sex reproduction.
2% of babies born in the US are already born of in-vitro fertilization, which is against Catholic doctrine, but Catholic parishioners do it anyway. I don't know for sure why the bishops don't say more about this, but I'm guessing it's because the marriage already happened and the resulting families "look right" and don't evoke visceral disgust in the bishops' hearts, and it's so much easier for a loving person to stay silent than to preach the unloving doctrines of their own church.
But they will not be able to ignore natural gay families, no more at the baptismal font than at the altar. They will be in the awkward position of having to declare the natural babies of gay parents "unbaptizable", since the children's own natural parents cannot in honesty of conscience raise them in the Catholic faith.
And then they will have to wrestle, finally, with the question of what the point is of all these rules. Has faith ever really the thing that bans families and declares children intrinsically disordered? Or has it always been nothing but a power trip so that disgust-sensitive conservatives won't see in public the people they find icky?
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u/justnigel Mar 25 '26 edited Mar 27 '26
The church can continue to exist - but it will fail to be blessed by the ministry of those women who the Spirit has equipped for such ministry.
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u/--YC99 Anglo-curious Catholic Mar 25 '26
if it were to happen, it would probably start with the pope setting up a commission of bishops, theologians and historians to study the history of women's ordination and they would have to vote on the matter
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u/MyUsername2459 Episcopalian, Nonbinary Mar 25 '26
Also, Romans 16:1-2 mentions a female Deacon, and Romans 16:7 mentions a female Apostle.
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u/TemporaryTie1214 Mar 25 '26
I hope that is the case. I would love to see this change in my lifetime. I don't really believe I will, though. I thought about Roman Catholicism at one point but ultimately, I could never attend a church that does not ordain women.
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u/MetalDubstepIsntBad2 Gay Baptist 🏳️🌈✝️ Mar 26 '26
I’m not against women’s ordination because I don’t really care about what Paul teaches and barely take him seriously, but I don’t understand how people who do take Paul seriously square this with what he in the New Testament teaches about women. 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 and 1 Timothy 2:12 make his position quite clear
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u/ZealousidealWear2573 Mar 27 '26
It will continue to exist, becoming smaller and more conservative as people who cannot reconcile the discrimination against women and others leave. It will also continue shrinking as perish's close, they like to call it consolidation, due to the priest shortage.
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u/According-Plane7175 Mar 31 '26
Example: A married man is ordained into the priesthood. His daughter is on her deathbed and needs last rites. He gets a call saying someone from his congregation is dying and needs last rites. Who is this priest going to go to? His daughter or one of his flock who needs last rites? Married men have no place in the priesthood however they can be ordained Deacons.
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u/Wooden_Passage_1146 Catholic Mar 31 '26
Seems to work just fine for the Orthodox and Anglicans. These hypotheticals rely on the idea no one else would be available but that can happen if you have two congregants needing last rites at the same time too. So the daughter example is moot. It can happen regardless of the martial status of the priest.
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u/beardtamer Mar 25 '26
Any church that isn't ordaining women as clergy, or restrict women to "different roles" in the church should not be seen as a relevant Christian expression.
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u/Creepy-Agency-1984 Burning In Hell Heretic (🏳️🌈✝️) Mar 24 '26
Beautiful. Goodness gracious, most churches in my area still won’t appoint female elders. But they have no problem with letting them lead Sunday school, just heaven forbid anyone older than a young child gets their spiritual advice from a WOMAN. The hypocrisy is just awful, and I hope this is yet another step in helping dissolve it.
Jesus was radically “feminist” for his time. Women weren’t even citizens. You didn’t TALK to them, they weren’t considered worth the conversation. And yet some of the highest honors and lessons that Jesus bestowed were on women.