SEVEN STRATEGIES TO PROMOTE WOMEN’S ORDINATION
1. Recognise that the SOURCE for women’s openness to ordination lies not in emancipation but in baptism.
Those who oppose the ordination of women usually claim that the desire for ordination arises from the contemporary drive for equal rights. They portray the demand for women priests as a modern and novel idea, a secular invention, the intrusion of profane social equality into the sacred precincts of the liturgy, a giving in to strident feminist bullying. While it is true that the climate of social emancipation has helped to raise the question of women’s absence from the ministries, the real origin of the demand lies in our common baptism.
2. Understand Rome’s arguments for its ban on women priests and know how to refute them.
With regard to women as priests, prejudice has ready-made arguments that go back to the Middle Ages. “Jesus did not choose women priests. The Church has never admitted women to holy orders, and-so-on” Arguments used to shore up a prejudice have to be taken seriously because the first step in dismantling a prejudice is for those who hold it to recognise that its basis is false. It requires challenging the truth of one’s reasons and one’s rationalisations.
3. Be familiar with the theological reasons for ordaining women.
Study the reasons for ordaining women springing from our Christian faith. This is necessary if you want to make other people understand why it is right that women too share in the ordained ministry of the priesthood. The reasons lie embedded in Sacred Scripture, in our Christian Tradition, in ancient Church practice and in reflections on the implications of our core beliefs.
4. Create opportunities to educate people for change.
OK, we want to see women function in the Catholic Church as deacons, priests and bishops. Rightly so! But we should realise that, in order to achieve that goal, we need to change mental perceptions. Our greatest obstacle is the mixture of misconceptions and misunderstandings that underpin the conviction that those ministries have been entrusted only to men. The problem lies in the brain, in wrong ideas. It can only be remedied by a process of re-education. And in this process men too should be involved, as much as women have to be — both as teachers and learners.
5. Make women visible in church.
A lesson we can learn from psychology is that contrary experiences help to overcome prejudice. Familiarity is the key word here. Catholics are used to see only men officiating at the altar, only men taking all decisions in the diocese and the parish. Unconsciously they associate liturgical functions with men. The more they see women in roles that border on the priestly ministry, the more they will overcome inner psychological resistance. So, though they are not the final solution, intermediate steps too count. Psychological barriers can be broken down by women assuming a more visible presence in the Catholic community.
6. Support integrity in the Church and voices of protest.
In recent decades, especially under Popes John Paul II and Benedict XIV, Rome has unleashed an unprecedented ‘reign of terror’ in the Church with the express purpose of suppressing all further discussion on women priests. This springs, no doubt, from the conviction that the ordination of women contradicts Scripture and Tradition, and that the faithful should be spared the ordeal of going through uncertainty and confusion. Powerful measures of organisational control have been put in place and are being constantly monitored.
7. Jesus Christ wants women in the priesthood. Proclaim it!
Jesus Christ revealed to us that God is Love. He came to restore full human dignity by offering all of us, both men and women, to become children of God. He established a new realm on earth: the Kingdom of God in which the overriding values of mercy and justice would rule supreme. He called on all of us to proclaim the Good News that this new era had begun. Last not least, he wanted and wants all citizens of that new ‘realm of love’ to be able to share fully in his own prophetic, royal and priestly roles. All this implies that, in our time when patriarchal prejudices are being unmasked, Christ wants women as much as men to be able to minister as priests.
John Wijngaards