Women’s Ordination
Even when I was a boy, growing up in the Episcopal Church, my favorite part of our Sunday service was the Lord’s Supper. Our parish thought it was definitely on the “high” end of the liturgical spectrum, complete with acolytes and altar rails. Our vicar was a very kind, intelligent young lady named Ruth. She had two children, and her husband was the bishop’s chauffeur. Every Sunday, she would celebrate what Catholics call a Sung Mass, complete with acolytes and altar rails.
Ours was the last rural parish in the Diocese of Massachusetts, so our service was a little “hillbilly deluxe.” It paled in comparison to the Church of the Advent: the grand Anglo-Catholic church on Beacon Hill in Boston. Still, our liturgy was miles higher than the local Catholic church.
Anyway, near the end of the service, we would all genuflect and then quietly process to the front. Then we’d kneel at the rail. Finally, Ruth would come by with the bread and say, “The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ keep you in everlasting life.” We’d say Amen, eat the bread, and then shuffle back to our pew.
Yes, I loved it—though didn’t know what exactly it was that I loved. Like most Protestants, I believed in the Real Presence; and, like most Protestants, I couldn’t begin to tell you what that meant. It seemed to me that Queen Elizabeth I got it right:
’Twas God the word that spake it,
He took the bread and brake it,
And what the word did make it,
That I believe and take it.
Which is to say, “Beats me.”
Nevertheless, the Communion service always made me feel close to the Lord. I imagined myself like the Apostles at the Last Supper, eating and drinking with Jesus: their master, their teacher, their God, their friend. I felt privileged to be joining with my fellow disciples in worship. I felt real sorrow for my sins—the sins that fixed Him to the Cross.
More than that, however, I felt a tremendous sense of relief. Christ had won the battle. He triumphed over death. I’d fought with the Enemy, and yet not only did He pardon me, but He offered to share His victory. What more could I ask for?
Then, when I was about fifteen, something very strange happened. It was an ordinary service on an ordinary Sunday. Towards the end, we all genuflected and then quietly processed to the front. We knelt at the rail. Finally, Ruth came by with the bread and said, “The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ keep you in everlasting life.” I said Amen, ate the bread, then shuffled back to my pew.
As I knelt down to pray, I was startled by this horrible feeling growing in my stomach. It was equal parts hunger and despair, as though all the food in the world had been eaten up and none would ever grow again. I don’t know how else to describe it, except that my soul felt like a desert. I’ve never felt so empty or so lonely as I did that day.
My father noticed at once that something was wrong. On the drive home, my father kept glancing over at me. Finally, he asked, “Are you okay?”
Suddenly, I burst into tears. I cried so hard that he pulled off the road. To be honest, I had no idea what was wrong myself. Then a thought appeared in my mind, as though someone had flipped a switch and turned on all the lights. Through my tears I said, “I want to be Catholic.”
Well, I didn’t. It’s hard to believe looking back, but I didn’t.
I’d been attending Catholic schools since fifth grade, and until that moment I hadn’t the faintest desire to join the Church.
Well, that’s not quite true. I asked my parents to convert once, when I was about eleven, because I hated being the only kid who didn’t go up for Communion during school Masses. Then I learned that I could follow my classmates up to the sanctuary, cross my arms and receive a blessing. I was totally inconspicuous. My interest in becoming a Catholic disappeared at once.
Like I said, the liturgy at my little parish church was much better than that of the local Catholic church. And, once I could drive, I’d go into Boston to worship at the Advent. To those who have never witnessed really good Anglo-Catholic liturgy, I can’t begin to describe its beauty. For those who have, I needn’t try.
To quote G.K. Chesterton, my fellow former Anglican: “I can speak, I think, for many other converts when I say that the only thing that can produce any sort of nostalgia or romantic regret, any shadow of homesickness in one who has in truth come home, is the rhythm of Cranmer’s prose.” He certainly speaks for me.
My high school was also a bastion of Modernism. That’s a word I never use lightly, but here it’s quite accurate. Most of our religion teachers told us that the Church would “evolve” in its views on homosexuality. I distinctly remember one of them saying, in an offhand sort of way, that the Church would also “grow out” of the papacy. (What she would grow into, she didn’t say.)
And, of course, not a single member of the faculty would defend the all-male celibate priesthood. It was taken for granted that women would be ordained within ten or twenty years. Hopefully the Church wouldn’t “grow out” of the papacy before then, so one of these new priestesses can ascend St. Peter’s throne before we stow it away with Torquemada’s thumbscrews and Tetzel’s ledger.
In other words, I was led to believe that the Catholic Church would become exactly like the Episcopal Church, except with bad hymns. Of course, I was quite wrong. An ugly Mass can still be valid; an Anglican Mass, no matter how beautiful, cannot. But that didn’t occur to my teenage self, and so my desire to become Catholic simply withered on the vine.
Now, fast-forward about eight years. It’s 2015 or thereabouts. I recently finished college and have embarked on a career in journalism, with a strong focus on religion. I have a special hatred for Anglicanorum coetibus, Pope Benedict XVI’s apostolic constitution establishing the Anglican Ordinariates.
The Ordinariates are a confederation of Catholic parishes that celebrate the Mass in a rite heavily influenced by the Book of Common Prayer. They allow Anglicans to keep the best of our liturgical tradition—the “Anglican patrimony,” they call it—within the Catholic Church. Naturally, most orthodox Anglicans are taking Benedict up on his offer.
I think it’s a travesty. It doesn’t matter how liberal the Anglican Communion becomes, I say. The Church of England is still our mother-church. How can we abandon her now when she needs us most? Where was our sense of duty, of loyalty? What of our faith that Christ would not allow the Gates of Hell to prevail against His Church?
(Of course, I was wrong to put my faith in the Anglican Communion. But I hope the faithful of the Society of St. Pius X will appreciate the position I found myself in. I was the last traditionalist Anglican!)
Anyway, by now, I’ve a bit of a name for myself. Earlier this year—that is, 2015—I was asked to write a tract called Mere Anglicanism on the same theme. Then my friend Ryan says to me, “If you’re going to write a whole book attacking the Ordinariate, you should at least go see it first.” Why not?
There’s an Ordinariate parish in Boston, comprised mostly of former members of the Church of the Advent. They meet in the basement chapel of a diocesan parish: a plain, windowless room with a plain table-altar. Ryan hasn’t come along, so I didn’t know anyone. I sit in the back pew, alone.
The Mass is uneventful. It reminds me of the Advent, though not nearly so grand. The priest is a kind-looking older man in a moustache who preaches like a Southern Baptist. He has what we Anglicans call “enthusiasm,” and we don’t approve of enthusiasm.
Then it comes time for Communion. Just like in my school days, I stay inconspicuous by following all the Catholics up to the altar with my arms crossed. To my surprise, these Catholics kneel! I thought this was part of the “Anglican patrimony.” Growing up around Novus Ordo parishes, I’d only seen altar rails in Episcopal churches. (A few weeks later, when I attended a Latin Mass, I realized that, yes, Catholics have been known to kneel before the altar from time to time.)
So, here I am, kneeling in the basement of this ugly church, surrounded by traitors and cowards. I kick myself for wasting this Sunday with papists when the Advent is just a few minutes down the road. I make a mental note to call Ryan and chew him out when I get back to my car.
I’m the last one in line, right on the left-hand side of the altar. Now, the priest—beginning from the right—begins to make his way down the rail. I hear him say to each communicant, “The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life.” Amen.
Suddenly, something stirs in me. I’ve never known how to describe it, except that it was like waiting at the airport for a loved one—how you know they’re coming through the gate, even when you can’t see them. You just know, deep down in your bones, that they’re near at hand.
As the priest goes down the line, the feeling gets stronger and stronger. The Loved One gets closer and closer. I can hear my heart pounding in my ears. Then it dawns on me: there, in that little bowl the man in the moustache is holding, that is Jesus Christ. It is actually Jesus Christ. Jesus isn’t “here,” as some sort of pious ambience. He’s there, in the priest’s hands. He’s there, in the mouths of the communicants.
Then the priest paused over me and said, “I bless you in the name of the Father…”
As I made my way back to the pew, I felt the same hunger I’d felt eight years before, only there was no despair. On the contrary. I felt like a castaway who’d stumbled into a great feast.
No, that doesn’t do it justice. It was like I’d spent my whole life eating a thin, slimy gruel, and someone had just put a ribeye steak under my nose.
No, that’s still not right. It was as if I’d been hungry my whole life, but hadn’t known there was such a thing as food. I didn’t know the desire could be satisfied. Now I knew better.
After Mass, this kindly priest comes up to me and shakes my hand. “I don’t think I’ve seen you here before,” he says, smiling gently. “Welcome. What’s your name?” Once again, tears run down my cheeks. “I want to be Catholic.”
Dear reader, please forgive all of the autobiography in this article. If I’m ever fortunate enough to meet you, I’ll gladly prattle on about myself for hours quite happily; but I promise that, in writing, I’ve more or less disciplined myself to abstain from first-person pronouns.
This is actually the one part of my life I don’t like to talk about. I find it embarrassing. It’s the best joke I’ll ever tell, and I’m just the punchline. I feel like Sarah, the wife of Abraham: “God hath made me to laugh, so that all that hear will laugh with me.”
But more than that, I want to make a point about the theme of this issue, “The Church and Women.” And that point is this: our priestess Ruth was a kind, intelligent woman with a true devotion to Jesus. I might even go so far as to call her pastoral. But she wasn’t really a priest. She couldn’t act in persona Christi. She couldn’t celebrate the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. She couldn’t feed her flock with the Body and Blood of Our Blessed Lord.
I think it’s easy for our progressive friends to lose sight of this very important (yet very simple) point: when it comes to the question of (say) whether women should be ordained or not, it doesn’t actually matter what we think. It matters what God thinks. And, according to God, if you try to ordain a woman, nothing will happen. It won’t “take.”
Of course, those progressives have heard that argument before. The problem isn’t in their heads. It’s in their hearts. Virtually every error in Church history has arisen, not from a lack of intelligence, but from a lack of gratitude. We insist that everything make sense to us, that everything fit neatly into our own paltry little worldview. It’s an aversion to mystery. It’s a refusal to be awed and delighted, humbled and afraid, chastened and comforted. That’s why Christ told us to become like children.
So, you’ll notice that all of those who feel that women are entitled to receive the Sacrament of Holy Orders also feel that pro-choice Catholic politicians are entitled to receive the Sacrament of the Eucharist. Some of them might be won over (eventually) by theological arguments. But for most of them the problem runs much deeper. They want Christ, but they want Him on their terms. They feel entitled to their own Christ, who agrees with their own progressive sensibilities.
That isn’t how the Church sees it. The Church reminds us, in her loving, gentle way, that we’re like the Canaanite woman. We’re dogs who are fortunate to eat even the crumbs that fall from their master’s table. And yet the Master feeds us His own body and blood! If your response is, “And that’s very nice of Him, but why would He only hire men to serve at the table?”—well, you may want to reassess your priorities.
In a 2014 interview, Seán Cardinal O’Malley touched on the subject of women’s ordination and made a very important point. “If I were founding a church,” he once told an interviewer, “I’d love to have women priests. But Christ founded it, and what He has given us is something different.”
I expect that quote will raise a few eyebrows. But notice something: you will never in a thousand years hear progressives make that argument for their own camp. You will never hear a Modernist say, “If I were founding a church, I’d love to have an all-male priesthood. But Christ founded it, and what He has given us is something different.”
Advocates for women’s ordination never even pretend as though they’re simply humbling themselves to Christ’s will. And that’s also true of advocates for admitting pro-choice politicians to Holy Communion. And of advocates for same-sex “marriage.” And of advocates for contraception. And on and on, down the list of new-fangled errors.
This is why, fundamentally, the battle between orthodoxy and heresy isn’t waged for our minds, but for our hearts. Error stems not from stupidity, but from pride.
It’s also why heretics always tend overwhelmingly to be trained in theology. As a matter of fact, in his book on the Arian crisis of the 4th century, St. John Henry Newman said:
Perhaps it was permitted, in order to impress upon the Church at that very time passing out of her state of persecution to her long temporal ascendancy, the great evangelical lesson, that, not the wise and powerful, but the obscure, the unlearned, and the weak constitute her real strength.
The obscure and the unlearned don’t put their own theories and ideologies before Christ and His Church—if only because they don’t have theories or ideologies. Those are vices for the intelligentsia. So it is that the smartest men in the world come up with the worst possible ideas.
Of course, there’s no greater exemplar of Christian humility than Our Blessed Mother: the only mortal since Eve whose reason wasn’t stained by original sin. And yet Mary wasn’t made an Apostle. She didn’t leave us with a single epistle. She didn’t preach. All we have from her is a prayer—a prayer of gratitude, no less. “The Almighty has done great things for me,” she sang, “and holy is His Name.”
That was enough for Our Lady. May it be enough for all of us.
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