[In the following essay, Viladesau examines John Paul's historical and anthropological arguments against the ordination of women as delineated in Mulieris Dignitatem. According to Viladesau, Mulieris Dignitatem, “suffers from weaknesses of questionable theological presumptions and faulty logic.”]

A priest of my acquaintance tells a story of his visit to the home of parishioners in rural Ireland. During the conversation the man of the house broached the subject of women in the church and asked why they could not be ordained. The priest reached into the depths of his theology and replied, “We can't ordain them, Pat, because the Lord Jesus didn't.” At this point a strident female voice replied from the kitchen: “Sure, he would have if they hadn't killed the poor man so young!”

The issue of ordination of women remains significant in the church, despite or even because of reiterated rejections of its possibility by Rome. It raises not only the theological, exegetical, and historical questions implied by the woman in the anecdote—must the traditional prohibition of women's ordination in some way be linked to Jesus, and if so, on what basis?—but also philosophical and anthropological issues that go beyond the strictly theological realm and engage the interest and the competence of other thinkers.

Perhaps the most comprehensive official statement of the argument against ordination of women is found in the apostolic letter Mulieris Dignitatem of Pope John Paul II. This issue is not the principal focus of the document; it occupies a relatively minor place, and it would be a grave mistake to allow a concentration on this issue to overshadow the contribution the Pope's meditation makes to the cause of women in the church and in society. It is indeed a theologically ground-breaking statement on the dignity and complete equality of women, based on a reading of scriptural tradition in light of a philosophy of personalism. In this regard it has a significance beyond “women's” issues that bears on our vision of the human person.

Precisely because it is placed in such a positive context, however, the Pope's reasoning concerning the ordination of only males clarifies the principle he is defending and the theological method that underlies it. Pope John Paul makes abundantly clear that women are equal to men and share equally in the common baptismal priesthood of the faithful. Their exclusion from ministerial orders, therefore, is seen as based not on any intrinsic inferiority of women, but on the explicit will of Christ, which includes a differentiation of sexual roles in the economy of salvation. The essence of the argument is brief enough to be quoted at length.

Against the broad background of the “great mystery” expressed in the spousal relationship between Christ and the church, it is possible to understand adequately the calling of the “Twelve.” In calling only men as his apostles, Christ acted in a completely free and sovereign manner. In doing so, he exercised the same freedom with which, in all his behavior, he emphasized the dignity and the vocation of women without conforming to the prevailing customs and to the traditions sanctioned by the legislation of the time. Consequently, the assumption that he called men to be apostles in order to conform with the widespread mentality of his times does not at all correspond to Christ's way of acting. “Teacher, we know that you are true, and teach the way of God truthfully, and care for no man; for you do not regard the position of men” (Matt. 22.16). These words fully characterize Jesus of Nazareth's behavior. Here one also finds an explanation for the calling of the “Twelve.” They are with Christ at the Last Supper. They alone receive the sacramental charge, “Do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22.19; 1 Cor. 11.24), which is joined to the institution of the eucharist. …

Since Christ in instituting the eucharist linked it in such an explicit way to the priestly service of the apostles, it is legitimate to conclude that he thereby wished to express the relationship between man and woman, between what is “feminine” and what is “masculine.” It is a relationship willed by God both in the mystery of creation and in the mystery of redemption. It is the eucharist above all that expresses the redemptive act of Christ, the bridegroom, toward the church, the bride. This is clear and unambiguous when the sacramental ministry of the eucharist, in which the priest acts in persona Christi, is performed by a man.

The argument presented here has two dimensions, which may be characterized as “historical” and “anthropological.” The historical argument is that the designation of males alone for ordained ministry was an explicit choice of Jesus. Jesus was free from the sexual role-conditioning of his time; thus he could have ordained women had he so wished; that he did not is proof of his positive will to exclude women from such office. However, the Pope does not see Jesus's choice as arbitrary, but as one that reveals something intrinsic about the theological meaning of being male and female, in the orders of creation and of grace. The Pope's “anthropological” argument thus posits a sense in which Jesus could not have ordained women: he could not have willed to do so, not because of any limitation or conditioning of his freedom, but precisely because he was conscious of and wished to reveal an intrinsic unsuitability of women for this role.

In the following sections I shall examine each of these arguments in detail, attending to the issues they raise for theologians and others. I shall attempt to show that the historical argument, as presented in Mulieris Dignitatem, suffers from weaknesses of questionable theological presuppositions and faulty logic. The document's anthropological argument, I shall suggest, is more fundamental and more powerful, being based on the claim of an intrinsic analogy between masculinity and God's relationship to the world as revealed in Christ and represented in ministry. Yet this argument, as stated in the Pope's document and in the theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar, poses a dilemma: for I shall attempt to show that it can only be logically compelling insofar as it implicitly claims an exclusivity for the male analogy of God, and that this in turn implies a general superiority of males over women—positions that the Pope himself explicitly rejects. If this is so, then the force of this argument for exclusively male ministry is undermined. Finally, I shall suggest that a consideration of the theological problem of the ordination of women on either historical or anthropological grounds necessitates the posing of questions that are not addressed by Mulieris Dignitatem.

THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT

The historical/Christological argument, as Pope John Paul notes, essentially repeats the reasoning of the 1977 declaration “Inter Insigniores” of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The main points of the argument can be summarized in the following propositions that are either explicitly stated or presupposed:

1. Jesus transcended the mentality of his times with regard to the treatment of women.

2. Jesus chose only men to form the group of the Twelve.

3. The exclusion of women from this group was purposeful and expressed Jesus's sovereign freedom.

4. This choice of males only was not an accommodation to the mentality of the times.

5. The Twelve alone received the “sacramental charge” to celebrate the eucharist.

6. The Twelve were thus explicitly constituted as priests by Jesus.

7. By choosing only the male Twelve for this priestly and apostolic service, Jesus intended to reveal a truth about permanent male and female roles.

8. The priesthood of the church is the continuation of the priestly function of the Twelve.

9. Therefore only men may be admitted to this ministry, in accord with the explicit intention of Jesus.

This argument is clearly Christological, in that it is centered on the explicit will and actions of Jesus. It seems also to hold together only on the basis of a Christology in which Jesus completely transcends normal human limitations, in which he has a full and supra-human knowledge and is aware of all issues and is completely “free and sovereign” in his actions, and in which he foresees, explicitly wills, and concretely establishes the structures of the future church.

However, this Christological picture and the reasoning it supports appear at odds with much contemporary Christian theology on historical and logical grounds. First, the foundation of a number of these historical/Christological assertions seems open to question. In some instances they go beyond the scriptural and historical evidence; in others they apply anachronistic concepts to the data. Second, even if the assertions are accepted as true, the conclusions do not appear logically warranted by the premises.

The first contention, that Jesus's treatment of women “constitutes an ‘innovation’ with respect to the prevailing custom at that time,” is clearly supported by a number of instances reported in the gospels, cited both here and in “Inter Insigniores” (John 4.27; Matt. 9.20ff.; Luke 7.37; John 8.11; Mark 10.2-11; Matt. 19.3-9), even if we must be cautious about attributing detailed historical accuracy to texts that clearly bear the stamp of the evangelists' theological purposes and contexts. Nevertheless, as “Inter Insigniores” admits, these texts give only isolated instances, and cannot be said clearly to demonstrate the contention. Taken together, they provide a kind of “convergence” that allows us to conclude that Jesus's attitude toward women was both liberated and liberating as compared with that of his contemporaries.

It would not be logically warranted, however, to generalize from this that Jesus must have been totally free of all societally conditioned attitudes regarding women, so that his every action regarding the female sex bespeaks a perfect freedom from the customs and ideas of his times. This position cannot be validly induced from the limited instances given in the New Testament, and drawing such a universal conclusion from such particular evidence could be warranted only on grounds of an a priori conviction that Jesus must have had a perfect attitude. This in turn seems grounded in the Christological position that holds Jesus's human mind to have possessed a superhuman and a historical mode of knowing that excluded all ignorance, limitation, and conditioning, at least in matters pertaining to salvation. This seems part of the Christological presupposition of the Pope's meditation: “‘the mysteries of the kingdom’ were known to him in every detail. He also ‘knew what was in man’ [John 2.25], in his inmost being, in his ‘heart.’ He was a witness of God's eternal plan for the human being. … He was also perfectly aware of the consequences of sin. …”

It is beyond the scope of this essay to enter into the classical theological problem of the consciousness of Christ, and in particular of the interaction between his fully human mind and the divine intellect. It must suffice to note that, in contrast to what is apparently implied in the Pope's statements, most contemporary theologians and scripture scholars hold that the human mind of Jesus was truly historically conditioned. That is, even though Jesus's humanity was inspired and transformed by his unity with God, the transcendent experience of that mystery (“hypostatic union”) always necessarily expressed itself in a mind that remained truly human and therefore necessarily expressed even its deepest intuitions in time-conditioned language and categories. This does not mean, of course, that Jesus was simply subservient to the received categories of his time and place. Even ordinary intelligent people can expand and reformulate their ways of thinking and have new insights that go beyond their social conditioning; a fortiori it is clear that Jesus was constantly breaking through the thought and behavior patterns of his day in the light of his inner experience of God and God's Kingdom. But such breakthroughs would of their nature be concrete and progressive, not total or systematic; they would still be subject to the intrinsic limitations of even the best available mode of expression, and would necessarily occur within a linguistic and social context that could not be completely transcended.

Furthermore, there would always necessarily remain areas that were unknown because unexperienced: aspects of experience not yet integrated into a new vision, ideas taken for granted as part of the historical setting, and the normal possibility of mistaken memory or understanding. Thus, as Raymond Brown shows in his Jesus God and Man, despite the gospels' emphasis on his “superhuman” knowledge, certain passages nevertheless portray Jesus as sharing normal human ignorance about concrete matters and as both able and needing to learn in the normal human way (Mark 5.30-33; Luke 2.46, 52); he is credited with mistaken citations of scripture (Mark 2.26; Matt. 23.35); he takes for granted certain mistaken ideas of his times, like the Davidic authorship of the Psalms (Mark 12.36) and the historicity of the Book of Jonah (Matt. 12.39- 41); he interprets the scriptures in the common rabbinic way, in violation of the sense of the texts (John 10.33-36; Mark 12.36); in many areas he apparently accepts without criticism the mythological world view of his times, with its demonology, its material conception of the afterlife, and its apocalyptic expectations (Mark 9.17-18; Matt. 12.43-45; Mark 9.43ff.; Matt. 9.48; Mark 13.24-25; Mark 13.7-8).

However, it remains true that Jesus appears to have made extraordinary breakthroughs on crucial religious issues, even if modern scholarship on the Judaism of Jesus's times forces us to be more cautious about attributing absolute novelty to all his teachings. Some of these breakthroughs regarded attitudes toward the Law, toward non-Jews, and toward women. Nevertheless, Jesus did not institute a program of complete liberation from observance of the Law, or of mission to the gentiles; these had to await the coming of the Spirit after his death and resurrection. His revolutionary attitudes were combined during his life with a certain acceptance of many prevailing attitudes of his context. In a Christology that acknowledges the true humanity of Jesus as one who was “like us in all things but sin,” this fact need not be explained away as a conscious and purposeful accommodation to others' mentality; it is to be expected that Jesus's own mentality would in many ways remain within the conceptual and moral framework of his times, even while he transcended it both in its essential dynamism and in particular dramatic instances that came within the purview of his mission. There would be many things, however, that did not arise as issues for Jesus, and on which he would presumably accept the prevailing customs and understandings.

The assertion of “Inter Insigniores” and Mulieris Dignitatem that Jesus's choice of males alone as members of “the Twelve” implies a deliberate and purposeful exclusion of women reveals a Christological perspective in which such normal conditionings and limitations of Jesus's mind and actions do not enter into consideration. Indeed, both documents seem to presume that the only possible alternative to a purposeful exclusion of women on Jesus's part would be an equally purposeful and knowing concession to the mentality of his times. They seem to assume, furthermore, that the latter represents the position of those who think that Jesus's action in this regard need not be normative today. Thus both documents take pains to refute the argument that Jesus avoided choosing women for the Twelve as an opportune concession to the customs of the day or “following the accepted mentality of his times,” but neither seems to envisage the possibility that this mentality might have been shared or at least never completely critically examined by Jesus himself, or even that other accidental or time-conditioned factors might have been operative in Jesus's concrete choice.

Similar Christological presumptions seem to underlie other critical assertions in the Pope's argument. It appears taken for granted that Jesus explicitly foresaw and instituted the actual priestly ministry of the church by conferring it on the Twelve apostles alone at the Last Supper. However, although the essentially historical account of Jesus's command to commemorate him certainly implies a community gathered in his name and memory (and this in turn implies some kind of ministry), few scholars today would attribute to the historical Jesus an explicit foreknowledge and intention of the church in its concrete later institutions. Indeed, Jesus (like the earliest Christians) appears to have expected an imminent arrival of the eschatological Kingdom of God, whose coming his own death would somehow bring about; it is difficult to reconcile this with a clear vision of a permanent institutional church.

Furthermore, our limited information about the earliest church does not support the presumption that only the Twelve or those appointed by them presided at the Eucharist. As Raymond Brown writes, “there is simply no compelling evidence for the classic thesis that the members of the Twelve always presided when they were present, and that there was a chain of ordination passing the power of presiding at the Eucharist from the Twelve to missionary apostles to presbyter-bishops.” It seems more likely that the very diverse early Christian communities took Jesus's charge to “do this” as addressed to the church in general, which the Twelve represent (an idea echoed in the present third Eucharistic prayer, in which we speak of Jesus commanding us to celebrate these mysteries), and that these communities designated ministers in different ways, according to their diverse structures. There is, Brown notes, at least some evidence that others than apostles and presbyters may at times have presided. Moreover, Brown shows convincingly that the episcopacy and priesthood of the church as they actually developed do not totally coincide with the notion or functions of the “apostles”; nor can an historical continuity of “ordination” from the latter be demonstrated.

Acceptance of such scholarship does not, of course, deny the emergence of the priesthood as the work of the Spirit in a church implicitly willed by Christ and in continuity with his mission, but it does seriously challenge the Christological foundation of the Pope's argument as summarized above, and in particular his conclusion that the norms for the present institution of the priesthood can be traced directly to an intent of Jesus to define masculine and feminine roles.

In summation, the Pope's historical-Christological argument against the ordination of women in Mulieris Dignitatem appears based on a “classicist” Christology that overlooks the findings of modern biblical scholarship and the theology that flows from them.

Even if one were to accept the Pope's Christological presuppositions, however, there is another difficulty with his argumentation, on the basis of logic. Another anecdote will perhaps serve to make the problem clear. In an episode of the British comedy series “Bless Me, Father,” set in a Catholic parish in the 1950s, a woman taking convert instructions asks a young curate why women cannot be ordained. His reply indicates that the priesthood derives from the Twelve apostles, and that Jesus chose that all his apostles should be men. The prospective convert thinks for a moment, and then says: “But all of the apostles were also Jewish. Are you Jewish, Father?”

We might clarify the logical issue further by expanding the analogy that the anecdote suggests and by accepting the presuppositions of the Pope's argument. Jesus was clearly beyond the mentality of his times in dealing with gentiles. He broke customs and traditions sanctioned by his religious background. Hence, in calling only Jews to be apostles he could not have been simply conforming to the mentality of his society, but must have been acting in a completely sovereign and free manner. Since in instituting the Eucharist Christ linked it to the priestly service of the Twelve, it is legitimate to conclude that he wished to express thereby the permanent relationship between gentile and Jew in the church's ministry. Therefore only Jewish Christians may be admitted to the priesthood.

The fallacy in this argument is immediately apparent. Although it is true that all Jesus's disciples were Jews, it does not follow that he called them simply because they were Jews, or that this is a permanent and essential condition for priesthood (even if one accepts a derivation of priesthood from the Twelve); there were other factors overlooked in the argument. Does not the same reasoning apply to the sex of the apostles? Even if one holds that Jesus completely transcended all historical conditioning, we cannot read his mind to know what was “intended” by his actions. How can we know that male sex was an intrinsic and not an accidental factor in Jesus's de facto choice?

With this question we come to the second, anthropological element in the Pope's Christological meditation; for he argues that there is in fact something intrinsic about the difference between the sexes that is operative in and shown by Jesus's choice of male apostles.

THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

In Pope John Paul's mind, Christ's choice of only males for the ministry of the Twelve was not an arbitrary act of will, but reveals a basic anthropological principle inherent in the nature of humanity from the creation, as well as a basic Christological principle inherent in the economy of salvation. This point is of great significance, for it means that this element is in principle separable from the historical arguments discussed above. Although the Pope sees his anthropological position as connected with Jesus's historical attitude, its validity does not depend on the presumed de facto connection, but can be asserted on the basis of independent theological reasoning.

This anthropological-Christological element is where Pope John Paul most significantly expands the treatment of “Inter Insigniores”. The latter had enunciated the basic principle that the celebrant of the Eucharist must be male in order to provide a more adequate “natural” image of Christ, for whom he acts (“in persona Christi”) in relation to the church. The document however had not clearly answered the objection referred to above: why is sharing Jesus's sex crucial to representing him, rather than sharing his Jewish race (or for that matter any of a number of other features of his historical person: color, physiognomy, culture, psychology)?

Pope John Paul implicitly replies to this difficulty by placing the entire question of priestly ministry within the wider context of a “spousal” theology based on the analogy of bridegroom and bride enunciated in the Letter to the Ephesians (5.25-32). This idea is already present in “Inter Insigniores,” but Pope John Paul enlarges it and makes it central to his exposition. (It is to be noted that the treatment of “The Eucharist,” where the ordination of women is dealt with in Mulieris Dignitatem, is a subdivision of the major section entitled “The Church—The Bride of Christ.”) The male sex of the representative of Christ is significant because Christ's relation to the church is precisely that of bridegroom to bride, and this symbol, echoing the images of spousal love in the prophets, is in turn founded on the relationship of male to female established by God in creation. It is this that appears to lie behind the assertion that in establishing a male priesthood Jesus “wished to express the relationship between man and woman, between what is ‘feminine’ and what is ‘masculine,’ … a relationship willed by God both in the mystery of creation and in the mystery of redemption.”

Not surprisingly, John Paul's treatment of this topic contains a number of striking similarities to the writings on the subject by the Pope's favorite theologian, Hans Urs von Balthasar, who was elevated to the cardinalate shortly before his death. Specifically, we can find in Mulieris Dignitatem echoes of von Balthasar's Marian and “spousal” theology of the church, as well as his exegesis of Ephesians 5.21-33, a text that plays a major part in the Pope's considerations. Since the Pope actually quotes from von Balthasar's essay on the ordination of women (“Frauenpriestertum?”), these similarities are clearly not fortuitous. But there are also aspects of Mulieris Dignitatem that seem to take it beyond von Balthasar's thought. A brief reference to this aspect of von Balthasar's theology can therefore perhaps help to illuminate both the background of Pope John Paul's views and their originality.

Von Balthasar is strongly committed to the idea of difference and complementarity between the sexes, and believes that the modern feminist movement is mistaken in trying to overcome such differences. The forgetfulness of the femininity of women is for him one of the defects of an era characterized by technology and positivism; the Catholic church because of its structure is a countervailing force to this failing of our age, and is perhaps the last bulwark in humanity of a true appreciation of the differences between the sexes. The female is related to values of being and meaning rather than those of accomplishment; woman's essential role is to provide reserves of safety and home for the ever-wandering and task-orienting male.

The genetic sexual differences between male and female are for von Balthasar the basis of a natural theological symbolism necessarily reflected in the different roles of males and females in the church. In the sexual act, von Balthasar says, the man is the initiator and leader, and the woman, even though not passive, is truly receptive (“Ein Wort”). Analogously, the entire creation is female (radically receptive) to God, who, as the Origin and Source, is the male principle. This fundamental relationship is reflected and repeated in the relationship of Christ as the male principle to the church as his bride. Precisely as male, Christ represents the Origin, the Father, and the church is the woman made fruitful by him. In his meditation “The Conquest of the Bride,” von Balthasar portrays Christ speaking these words: “Being God, I am the Source and am before every being, and for this reason the man is the glory of God and the source of the woman, and God-become-human is the man, while the Church is a woman, since the woman is the glory of the man.” For this reason woman has the easier task, for “woman is being-created as such with regard to God and being-church with regard to Christ. She has nothing to represent which she is not herself, while the male must represent the Origin of all life, which he can never be.”

Von Balthasar sees the primary model for the church as bride in Mary, whose “yes” to God is the paradigm of receptive readiness. In the perspective of the fundamental Marian nature of the church, the equality of women is not something that needs to be painfully striven for, since it is already present. This does not mean identity of roles, however. Mary is Queen of Apostles, but does not have apostolic office; she has something different and better. Likewise, women in general have a more fundamental role in the church than that of holding priestly office. Woman in fact incorporates the essence of the church, so that every member of the church, even priests, must assume a female/receptive attitude with regard to the Lord of the church. On the other hand, by their office the members of the male hierarchy are representatives of the bridegroom Christ within this encompassing femininity of the church. Because it is the bridegroom who is represented in the male role of leadership, and especially in the Eucharist, in which Christ continually “begets” the church, the office of the Twelve and their successors is essentially and not accidentally masculine, although exercised within the wider context of the essentially feminine and Marian church. Thus a woman who sought this office would be seeking a specifically masculine role, and in doing so would be forgetting the essential primacy of the feminine aspect of the church over the masculine.

Whether or not von Balthasar's theology is a specific source of Pope John Paul's Christology and anthropology, it clearly manifests parallel ideas and concerns and represents a powerful statement of the argument that an exclusively male priesthood is based not on an arbitrary command but on an intrinsic connection between Christ's masculinity and his salvific function. The “separate but equal” roles of men and women in the church, on this thesis, are based on two diverse ways of being human, each of which reflects in a distinct way the relationship of humanity to God.

Can one then argue, as von Balthasar and Pope John Paul do, from the idea of God or Christ as “bridegroom” of the church to the necessity of a male clergy to “represent” him? There seem to be major difficulties with this reasoning. First, the notion of “representation” needs close examination and clarification. In exactly what sense does a priest in fact “represent” God or Christ, and precisely as “bridegroom”? Is this a necessary and adequate way of describing the function of the Eucharistic celebrant, for example? Furthermore, even granting a clear meaning to the idea of “representation,” could not the reasoning in fact be reversed: the priest “represents” the church and acts “in persona ecclesiae”; the church is female, and the bride of Christ; therefore, the priest ought to be female?

At the root of this difficulty is the fact that the argument attempts to draw specific conclusions from a metaphor. As Sallie McFague has shown, metaphors and models are crucial to theological thought, but by their very nature they demand plurality: there must be a number of complementary metaphors in order to express the richness and complexity of the relationships between God and God's creatures. When any single metaphor becomes so dominant as to be exclusive, or is implicitly thought to encompass every aspect of the human-divine relationship, then one ends by absolutizing certain aspects of that relationship, while losing others. In that case the transcendence of God is compromised by anthropomorphism, and the created term of the analogy is idolized. It is for this reason that Catholic theology rightfully insists on the negative moment in every analogy: God is like x, but is always more profoundly unlike x, and possesses the qualities in question in an eminent and unimaginable way. It is also for this reason that no single analogy can ever suffice.

In the case at hand, it is clear that the metaphor of God (or Christ) as bridegroom, world (or church) as bride, is a legitimate one, and leads to fruitful reflection on the nature of creation and salvation. Can it be claimed, however, that every aspect of these realities is determined by a metaphor in which God is male with respect to a female world, or in which Christ is the spousal “other” to the female church? If so (as seems implied by certain of von Balthasar's statements), then this amounts to a claim for universal male superiority, no matter what protestations to the contrary may be made; for if God is in every respect more like a man than like a woman, then it follows that the male sex is more like God, more in God's image. If, on the other hand, one does not claim absoluteness for this metaphor, then other analogies are possible, and the question of which aspects of our humanity and of our relation to God are represented by each metaphor remains open. (If, for example, one admits that God is to be represented as “active” with regard to a “receptive” creation, then it may be allowed to follow that God is more like the male than the female in the act of procreation. But is this sexual act to be taken as the sole determinant of what is “intrinsically” masculine and feminine? If one takes the act of bearing a child as the metaphor, then God is more like the actively giving mother than like the receptive child or the helpless father. In this instance, the female principle is active, not receptive: the mother not only gives physical existence, but shares her very life, nourishes, houses, and finally brings forth her child, while the father awaits passively. Could the metaphor of God's motherhood then apply to ministry? It is interesting that it was extensively so used in the Middle Ages.)

In Mulieris Dignitatem Pope John Paul II clearly avoids absolutizing the metaphors of God as male (Father or bridegroom) by adverting to the phenomenon of anthropomorphism and insisting on the negative moment in every analogy. Moreover, he explicitly refers to the possibility of female metaphors for God, in particular God as Mother. For the Pope, then, there is nothing intrinsically and exclusively masculine about the relationship of God to creation. In this John Paul goes beyond the texts cited above from von Balthasar. In doing so, however, he also weakens the theological case for the exclusivity of the bridegroom-bride metaphor with regard to Christ and the church; for this metaphor can no longer be regarded as grounded in a more basic analogy according to which humanity is always to be thought of as “female” with regard to God's (male) activity.

In fact, of course, there are other and more central metaphors for the relationship of Christ to the church that do not imply sexual differentiation: for example, the image of the church as the body or members of Christ, or the image of Christ as our “brother.” As noted above, there are even instances in medieval spiritual writers (including such not inconsiderable figures as Anselm of Canterbury and Bernard of Clairvaux) of a female image being applied to Christ: like God in the Old Testament, Christ is portrayed as Mother in giving birth to the church and nurturing it; and, significantly, this function is attributed also to those with office in the church, particularly abbots.

As was observed above, the signal innovation of Mulieris Dignitatem over “Inter Insigniores” with regard to exclusion of women from ordination is the placing of the question within the framework of the “spousal” theology of the bridegroom; this ostensibly answers the question why the maleness of Jesus, rather than other accidental aspects of his historical person, is crucial to “representing” him to the community. But once it is admitted in principle that the spousal analogy is simply a metaphor, and not the only possible one, the rationale loses its force, and the question recurs: why should this metaphor, in which there is a sexual element, be determinative for office in the church?

The whole context of Mulieris Dignitatem seems to suggest that the centrality of this metaphor in the case of priesthood is based on a prior conviction concerning “natural” sexual role divisions, based on God's disposition of humanity in creation. This would return us to von Balthasar's assertion that church office is intrinsically masculine; but not simply on the basis of “representing” the male Christ, or because every activity of God with regard to the world is analogously “masculine,” and must be so represented, but on the ground that some activities of the church on God's behalf—those specifically connected with sacramental leadership and order—de facto involve primarily masculine traits. Is there any anthropological basis for such an assertion?

It seems undeniable, in the light of contemporary studies, that there are significant genetically imprinted physical and psychological differences between men and women, and that some kinds of role differentiation stem from these. The degree of sexual divergence and the actual parameters of the sexual division of life and labor, however, seem to derive from cultural factors, and are to a large measure within the control of human decision. “Male” and “female” roles and characteristics are therefore not absolutely universal and static realities, but have a certain latitude of definition, even though grounded on a basic biological framework. Several questions then arise.

If there are roles at least indirectly sexually determined by innate genetic dispositions or tendencies, is the Christian sacramental priesthood among them, or is its association with the male sex determined purely by cultural and historical circumstances? Does the ordained ministry, in its essence, call for specifically masculine traits or simply for human traits? Are there aspects of such ministry that could call for specifically female traits? Has the ministerial priesthood been too narrowly realized because of its restriction to males? Until recently, none of the great world religions has admitted women to the clerical state. Is this because of something intrinsically masculine about the office, or because of the historical association of the so-called “higher” religions with Indo-European patriarchal societies worshipping a Father-god?

Positions of official leadership and power in the church and in society have historically been held by men, albeit with some notable exceptions in the secular world. Is there something intrinsically masculine about socio-political power? If so, should this be the model for office in the church, in which service and not lordship is supposed to be the norm for those who lead? Are the kinds of leadership and power exercised by men essentially or only accidentally unfeminine? Are they the only possible kinds? Women perform ministries in the church, and have a long history of leadership in certain aspects of Christian life (one may think of the orders of religious women in missionary and teaching roles, for example). How are these related to what is sacramentalized in ordination?

These and similar considerations seem to need examination if one is to attempt to examine the question of ordination of women on anthropological grounds.

CONCLUSION

I have examined only the two arguments against ordination of women that seem central to Pope John Paul II's thought. The historical-Christological argument seems not only to presuppose, but to depend on, certain positions that are (at least) questionable in light of contemporary scriptural and historical studies and of an adequate theological valuation of the true humanity of Jesus. Although some may deny the primacy of the historico-critical method in evaluating church doctrines and practices, such a method is certainly relevant to evaluation of an argument that purports to be based precisely on history. The anthropological-Christological argument as presented by von Balthasar and resumed by the Pope, starting from the “spousal” character of God's relationship to the world and Christ's relationship to the church, as well as the “Marian”-receptive character of the latter, seems based on the absolutizing of a particular metaphor. This appears inconsistent with the views on equality presented in earlier sections of the document, unless it can be grounded in another kind of anthropological argument, related to the Pope's analysis of a sexual differentiation willed by God from the creation. Such an argument, which goes beyond the scope of Mulieris Dignitatem, might attempt to draw support from the data of genetic and socio-biological studies. However, even if such support were found, this approach would still raise a number of questions about the very nature of ordained ministry that would have to be answered before any conclusions could be drawn on its basis. It is at least problematic that ordained ministry should a priori be restricted to aspects of service associated with “male” characteristics.

Of course, a critique of arguments for exclusively male ministry does not in itself constitute a positive argument in favor of the ordination of women. Moreover, it has been the purpose of this analysis to confine itself only to Christological/anthropological reflections raised by Mulieris Dignitatem. As was noted above, the case against ordination of women is not the central concern of this document; it is not to be expected, therefore, that every aspect of the question should be considered there. Aside from Christological and anthropological considerations there is also, for example, the important question of the church's long and constant historical tradition. This tradition might be argued by some to be normative, even if it is based on historically conditioned decisions that might per se have been determined otherwise. Such arguments, and the question of the criteria on which they might be judged, raise important methodological and ecclesiological (and hence also ecumenical) issues which go beyond the scope of present considerations. It is my hope, however, that these limited reflections may serve to advance the discussion by clarifying some critical issues, pointing out the more fundamental methodological problems which lie behind the explicit points at issue, and inviting further exchange of ideas in these areas.