Rebel Without A Cause

A local woman in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee could face excommunication after having participated in an “ordination” ceremony on July 31 along with 11 other women in Pittsburgh. Kathy Sullivan Vandenberg had previously met with Archbishop Timothy Dolan, who warned her that she could face excommunication if she chose to take part in what he described as an act both “simulated and invalid.” Vandenberg had proffered an unconvincing attempt at showing respect and deference toward Church leaders, all the while plowing forward with her intentions, which culminated in the controversial pageant “ordination.” In the face of excommunication, Vandenberg almost casually dismissed the very real possibility and declared, “Excommunication is simply a punishment. That doesn’t mean I’m excluded from the church. Only I can exclude myself.” To a degree, she is correct in that she understands that her freely willed actions will bear consequences. But it is precisely her blatant act of willful disobedience that would cause her to “exclude herself” from the Church. That she doesn’t see this glaring inconsistency in her own statement is alarming. She is mistaken in another regard however. In fact, while still a Christian by virtue of her Baptism, excommunication would place her in state of exile in relation to the Church as a body. Vandenberg is the latest example in a truly sad display of an all too commonly shared ignorance on the part of some Catholics regarding the Church’s position on the exclusive ordination of men to the priesthood. Her theological follies reveal an astonishingly constricted ecclesiology and Christology. The Church, as the mystical body of Christ, for whom He offered Himself on the cross is the central tenet upon which our faith and Sacramental life rest. This teaching has firm roots in Scripture and in particular within the Pauline tradition.

Pope Benedict XVI elaborates on three sources of this ancient tradition. The first is what he calls the “Semitic conception of the ‘corporate personality.’” In other words, the belief in a common humanity passed down from Adam. As the Pope describes it, this concept of “corporate personality” was deconstructed somewhat by the philosophy of Descartes, which professed a radical alienation of the individual within the prison of his own thought process as opposed to a united humanity, sharing a common physical and metaphysical nature. A positive development in philosophy has been a renewed emphasis on the subject as “I” and his necessary relationship to the other, “you,” thus reestablishing the Semitic link between persons, what Pope Benedict refers to as “mutual interpenetration.” He goes on to say, “Thus, the Semitic view of the corporate personality-without which it is difficult to enter into the notion of the Body of Christ-could once again become more easily accessible.”

The Pope then turns to the concepts of “body” and “Eucharist” as the second sources of this tradition for the mystical Body of Christ. The Lord literally feeds His people with His bread, His true Body. Eating is that action which allows for an intimate intermingling of two subjects. “The formula ‘the Church is the Body of Christ’ thus states that the Eucharist…forever remains the place where the Church is generated.” The act of communion unites the believer with the Head, who is Christ, together with the other members as well. Thus one sees a complete fusion of Christ with the entire Church, that is to say, with the body and her members.

This leads us to the final source of the tradition, what the Pope identifies as “the idea of nuptiality.” Here one sees the fulfillment of the other two sources in the intimate bond of love between the Groom, Christ, and His bride, the Church. “Christ and the Church are one body in the sense in which man and woman are one flesh.” And it is here that the heart of the Church’s teaching on the Body of Christ reaches its apex. For the union between Christ and the Church is so intimate that we speak of it in terms of the physical and spiritual unity shared between man and woman in the nuptial bond, as the book of Genesis asserts, “For this reason the man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to the woman, and they shall become one flesh.”

So in light of these truths, the Church’s position regarding the ordination of men to the priesthood makes complete sense. The priest, standing in the person of Christ, offers Himself, His very Body, to the Church as His bride in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. It becomes patently ludicrous to ponder the unseemly spectacle of a woman standing in the person of Christ, offering the Sacrifice of the Mass to the Church as bride. By the very nature of things, the priest must be male, as he places himself in the position to allow Christ to work through him directly in this act of love toward His one bride, the Church.


2,000 years of unbroken Tradition, instituted by Christ


I mean, really...is that Linda Tripp back there?