Difficulties: Secunda Pars
Taking again the example of the doctrine of the reservation of Holy Orders to men alone, I’d like to examine some of the “lines of defense,” if you will, in our understanding. These lines of defense have contradictory counterparts in the world.
1) A Unitive Notion of Human Nature.
In the proper understanding of human nature, we know that a human being is a material body informed by a spiritual soul. The soul is thus the form of the body, and the person is not seen as separated from his body in any way. When we understand this and reflect on the natural–even obvious and physical–differences between the sexes, we recognize clearly the beauty of their relationship (even on a merely natural level) as ordained by God’s wisdom.
This notion is under attack on several fronts. An atheistic evolutionary view of the human person has led us to believe that our sexual differences are purely accidental in two senses. First, they are a product of chance factors. Second, they are only on the surface and do not pertain to who we are as persons. This can dispose us to resent our bodies and to resent sexual differentiation. It also leads us easily to believe that “men can do anything women can do and vice-versa.”
2) A Realist Notion of the Sacraments.
This follows closely on the heels of the unitive notion of human nature. If we don’t split in our minds the material and the spiritual, then we have no problems with the sacraments. If the sacraments are merely signs, if they do not really bring about anything, then they are only functional. If this is the case, then there is no need for the priesthood. In fact, the priesthood itself is only a functional position. Why, then, should sexual differences pertain to qualification? On the contrary, though, the priesthood is a matter of essence, of being, and not only of doing. Therefore, if there are real differences between the sexes (not, of course, a complete difference of nature or anything of the sort) then it is easy to understand how one sex is capable of being (and as a consequence of doing) something that the other is not, even in the supernatural order.
The sacraments do not undercut human nature! Rather, they sanctify it. Thus, the signs of the sacraments–which are actually conveyers of the divine life–are not arbitrary. Christ chose water for baptism because of the natural significance of water. Similarly with all the sacraments. Because he created human nature in the way that he did: male and female, Christ could not have instituted, e.g., marriage to be between anything but a man and a woman. He could not institute a sacrament which would contradict human nature like that! Similarly, because of the nature of the sacramental priesthood, Christ could not bestow the sacramental priesthood on women. He cannot contradict the order he established in human nature.
There are attacks on at least two fronts. The first disregards matter as having any role to play in spiritual things. The seconds disregards the spiritual altogether and leads us to behave merely bestially. Actually, both tendencies lead us to behave like beasts: A human being who splits for himself spirit and matter does not become like an angel.
3) Faith.
Faith is the final line of defense, it seems. Even if we do not understand the reservation of Orders, at a minimum we accept it because of faith. Now, I realize that the doctrine of the reservation of Orders is at the present time understood to be de fide tenenda, that is, it is understood to be a logical necessity of something revealed by God but not as something itself revealed by God.1 However, because of our faith in the institution of the sacraments by Christ and our faith in the guidance of the Church by the Holy Spirit, we have to hold firmly as irreformable the doctrine of the reservation of Orders. Even if we do not understand something, surely we would believe it because we have God’s word for it?
This line of defense is greatly under attack by a Kantian split wherein God is seen as purely transcendent and incapable of acting in a concrete way in history. This has very subtly crept into our way of thinking. After all, God really is transcendent. That part is true. However, we can never deny the Incarnation and Providence. When we begin to believe that we cannot really know anything about God–which would mean we are incapable of knowing anything that is really worth knowing–we treat Faith as mere belief.2 We pretend that we are all just trying to grasp the divine through different paths, on a search for the truth. We ignore the fact that Christ came to testify to the truth (John 18:37) and that the Holy Spirit guides the Church into all truth (John 16:13). God told us truth which we must believe; he has not left us to grope in the dark but has sent light into the world (John 1:9).
We can see how a bad concept of human nature leads to a bad concept of grace and the sacraments. Even then, Christ reveals human nature clearly to us, but we do not believe him because of the hardness of our hearts.
1 “A similar process can be observed in the more recent teaching regarding the doctrine that priestly ordination is reserved only to men. The Supreme Pontiff, while not wishing to proceed to a dogmatic definition, intended to reaffirm that this doctrine is to be held definitively, since, founded on the written Word of God, constantly preserved and applied in the Tradition of the Church, it has been set forth infallibly by the ordinary and universal Magisterium. As the prior example illustrates, this does not foreclose the possibility that, in the future, the consciousness of the Church might progress to the point where this teaching could be defined as a doctrine to be believed as divinely revealed. (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.” Doctrinal Commentary on Concluding Formula of the Professio Fidei. 11)
2 “Thus, theological faith (the acceptance of the truth revealed by the One and Triune God) is often identified with belief in other religions, which is religious experience still in search of the absolute truth and still lacking assent to God who reveals himself. This is one of the reasons why the differences between Christianity and the other religions tend to be reduced at times to the point of disappearance.” (Dominus Iesus. 7)
