031474 On Women as Priests
by JOSEPH BREIG
I do not have the text of the talk about women and the priesthood, given by Benedictine Father Regis Barwig of Oshkosh, Wis., at a Rome meeting of the organization of Sisters known as Consortium Perfectae Caritatis. But if the National Catholic News Service's account of the speech was at all adequate, Father Barwig contributed more heat than light.
Let me first state my own position. I am immensely devoted to the Virgin Mary, and deeply reverent of womanhood : and I will be delighted (here or in the next world) if the Church eventually decides that women should be ordained. In this matter, as in others of great spiritual import, the Holy Spirit will speak, in his own good time, to the teachers in the
Church.
- To my mind. Father Barwig attacked the subject like an angry man wielding a sledgehammer. At one point, he struck
an inexcusably low blow by saying that
some persons who favor ordination of women, also advocate abortion on demand.
That is a fact, but it has nothing whatever to do with the question. A person can be wrong about one thing without being wrong about everything else. 'And it is gravely unfair to link, in any way, the question of ordaining women with the abortion slaying of infants in the womb, That is a smear, not an argument.
Father Barwig alleged that "the life of Religious consecration (of women in the Sisterhoods) is menaced by the movement for ordination of women." If he means that some Sisters are leaving the Sisterhoods, and some women are staying out. merely because they think they should be priests, I doubt it. A vocation as superficial as that would not be much of a vocation.
Father Barwig asserted that proposals for ordination of women ''are a belittling of the life of virginity, perfect chastity and Religious consecration." If he means that Sisters should close their minds to the thought of serving God as priests, I think he is wrong. Certainly they should not let any such thoughts disturb their lives as Sisters, but surely they should pray for divine guidance for the Church on the question.
Father Barwig argued that "The established relationship of priest to Christ is clearly founded" on the fact that "redemption came by Jesus Christ, true God and true man." True. God became incarnate as a man, not a woman. But no man ever has, or ever will, come within a trillion miles of Our Lady's sharing in Christ's redemptive work.
At another point, Father Barwig denounced, "feminist-liberationist claims." But that too is a smear. An idea need not be wrong solely because some people who support it are not to our taste.
I am still waiting for some convincing considerations in this matter.