A Scandalous Misuse of Power
NICHOLAS LASH is the Norris-Hulse professor of divinity at Cambridge University. We quote from his article, "On Not Inventing Doctrine" in The Tablet (12/2).
ACCORDING TO THE POPE -- FOR, SINCE he approved the recent Response of the CDF and ordered its publication, we may suppose that he agrees with it -- "this teaching requires definitive assent, since, founded on the written Word of God, and from the beginning constantly preserved and applied in the tradition of the Church, it has been set forth infallibly by the ordinary and universal magisterium (cf. Second Vatican Council, dogmatic constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium 25, 2)". The most important word in that sentence is "since". Clearly this teaching could not have been thus set forth unless those teaching it knew it to be "founded on the written Word of God" and "constantly preserved and applied in the tradition of the Church" (though it may be worth warning the reader that paragraph 25 of Lumen Gentium makes no mention of the phrase "ordinary and universal magisterium").
There is, of course, no way that the Pope and other bishops could ascertain whether or not these two conditions had been fulfilled except by consulting, in the first case, biblical scholars and, in the second, church historians and theologians. It is well known that, when Pope Paul VI sought the opinion of the Pontifical Biblical Commission on the matter, he was advised that the question could not be decided on the basis of New Testament exegesis alone. In other words, the biblical "foundations" of the present Pope's teaching in his apostolic letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, in so far as they exist at all, are far too fragile to bear the weight he seeks to put upon them.
Where historians and theologians are concerned, I do not have the impression that strenuous efforts have been made to ascertain their opinions in the matter. Were such efforts to be made, the Pope would, I think, discover two things that might surprise him. In the first place, far from there being a teaching that has been "from the beginning constantly preserved and applied", the question as to whether the "representation" of Christ requires that those who preside over the celebration of the Eucharist be males, was never even asked until about half way through the present century. In the second place, on the rare occasions in the history of the Church on which the question as to the suitability of women to hold hierarchical office has been raised, it has, indeed, always been answered in the negative. There is, in other words, a teaching that has been "from the beginning constantly preserved and applied": namely, that women cannot be ordained to apostolic office because they are inferior to men.
It follows that, if we set aside (as the present Pope has indicated he would wish to do) arguments based on the inferiority of women, there simply is no traditional teaching on the matter. The question, as now raised, is a new question. Like all new questions, it needs time, patience, attentiveness, sensitivity and careful scholarship.
Neither the Pope nor Cardinal Ratzinger can make a teaching to be "founded on the written Word of God" simply by asserting that it is so founded. Nor can they, by assertion, make it a matter that has been "constantly preserved and applied in the tradition of the Church". The attempt to use the doctrine of infallibility, a doctrine intended to indicate the grounds and character of Catholic confidence in official teaching, as a blunt instrument to prevent the ripening of a question in the Catholic mind, is a quite scandalous abuse of power, the most likely consequence of which will be further to undermine the very authority which the Pope seeks to sustain.
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