Excluding women from the priesthood recalls Dr. King's reply about obeying all laws
This op-ed by CTA member Richard K. Taylor was published in The Philadelphia Inquirer.
My friend, Eileen McCafferty DiFranco, was one of the eight Roman Catholic women who were ordained priests July 31 on a Pittsburgh river cruiser. The ordination is not recognized by church officials, who hold fast to the long-established Catholic teaching that only men can be priests.
I admire and respect Eileen, who celebrated her first Mass Sunday at the First United Methodist Church in Germantown. She is a person of deep Catholic faith, who has not only a keen intellect, but also a passion for justice that compels her to speak out against unfairness and wrong. Recently, she and Larry celebrated the 32d year of their Catholic marriage. They raised four children in our local parish in Germantown, where Eileen served over the years as a Eucharistic minister, a member of the Liturgy Council and Parish Council, and as a teacher in adult and children's education. She also has used her skills as a registered nurse to volunteer in our free clinic that serves a low-income community with many health needs.
"I've always felt that God has directed my footsteps," she told me last week. "Even as a child, I felt a nudging from God to preach. That 'nudging' finally led me, as an adult, onto a path where I sensed God calling me to the priesthood. I didn't discern this alone. At every step, respected members of my church community said, 'Yes, we see these priestly gifts in you, and we validate your call.' Given the opposition to women as priests, this journey is hard, but this is the path where God has dragged me, sometimes kicking and screaming."
Eileen is dismayed that the official teachers of the church she has served so faithfully use gender as a criterion for priestly ordination. She is frustrated that she has not been able to test her call by going through the normal steps toward ordination that the church prescribes. How can it be, she often asks, that the church excludes one half of the world's population from the priesthood?
Paragraph No. 1024 in the church's Code of Canon Law states unambiguously: "Only a baptized man can validly receive sacramental ordination." In light of this clear statement, one might ask: Shouldn't Catholic women like Eileen, if they truly are faithful, swallow their objections and simply obey the law?
This line of reasoning made me think of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s statement about following the law. "There are two types of laws," he said, "just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal, but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral obligation to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that an unjust law is no law at all."
Given the current Catholic controversy, it is significant, I think, that Dr. King quoted a Catholic saint. The Catholic Church has a rich tradition of social teaching in which justice plays a key role. It holds that justice is one of the four cardinal virtues. This teaching goes back to the Scriptures and the words of prophets like Isaiah, who said, "Make justice your aim, redress the wronged" (Isaiah 1:17). It also harks back to the words of Jesus, who said that God had anointed him "to let the oppressed go free" (Luke 4:18). The Catholic tradition since New Testament times has continued to highlight this scriptural teaching right down to the present. "Christian love," said the bishops in one of their modern synods, "implies an absolute demand for justice, namely, a recognition of the dignity and rights of one's neighbor."
The question that reverberates from Pittsburgh is: Did these Catholic women break a just or an unjust law? If Catholics judge that shutting women out of consideration for the priesthood is a manifestation of justice, then the faithful should oppose what Eileen and the other women did. But if it is (as I believe) an unjust law, then what is our responsibility before Jesus, who criticized religious leaders of his day for "neglecting the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith" (Matthew 23:23)?
Richard Taylor (rktpbt@worldnet.att.net), proud grandfather of nine, was on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s field staff in the 1960s. Raised a Quaker, he became a Catholic in 1982, has worked for peace/justice through St. Vincent de Paul parish, Philadelphia, witnessed often with S.E. Pa. Women's Ordination Conference, and last November with his Jewish wife organized Christians and Jews to oppose the ban on gays in the local seminary. He recently wrote "Love in Action: A Direct Action Handbook for Catholics Using Gospel Nonviolence to Reform and Renew the Church."