Or, the blog post where we explore the question I started asking 24 years ago. And likely alienate all our readers in the process . . .
If you wish to “get to the point,” please skip to “The Bottom of the Rabbit Hole.” This blog post is long and spends 50+ pages setting up context, which I feel is important but not every reader will need to the same degree. So feel free to start there and read backwards as you deem useful, desired, or necessary.
Table of Contents
1. Obligatory Disclaimers and Expectation Management
2. Acknowledgements and Special Thanks
3. Preliminary Considerations
– Definition(s) of Ordination
– The Evolving Understanding of Holy Orders
– Alternate Spiritual Currents, Gendered Lineages, and Esoteric Transmission
– Outlier Situations: Women Ordained by Mainstream Bishops
– Differing Levels of Intellectual Honesty
4. Origins and Function of the Diaconissate
– The Diaconate in General: Origins and Intended Function
– Did the Apostles Ordain a Sacramental Diaconate?
– The Female Diaconate
– Was the Diaconissate Sacramental?
5. Church Councils and the Diaconissate
– Ecumenical: First Council of Nicaea (325)
– Regional: Synod of Laodicea (372)
– Regional: First Synod of Nimes (396)
– Regional: First Synod of Orange (441)
– Ecumenical: Council of Chalcedon (451)
– Regional: Synod of Epaone (517)
– Regional: Second Synod of Orleans (533)
– Regional (Eastern): Quinsext Synod in Trullo (692)
– Regional: Sixth Synod of Paris (829)
– After the Councils
6. Certain Arguments I Find Unconvincing
– Pro: “There Was a Break in the Understanding of Holy Orders”
– Con: “Jesus Clearly Intended for the Clergy to Be Male”
– Pro: “We Can Prove the Early Church Had Women Priests and Bishops!”
– Con: “Women Have Never Been Ordained in the Church’s History”
– Pro: “The Words Benedicere, Consecrare, and Ordinare Used to Mean the Same Thing”
– Con: “We Have to Judge Historical Questions According to the Current Teaching of the Magisterium”
– Pro: “You’re a Misogynist if You Disagree with Even a Little of What I Tell You!”
– Con: “Shut Your Brain and Kowtow to What the Magisterium Tells You!”
– Both: “Who Are You to Disagree with Me? I Have a Ph.D. in So-and-So!”
– What Else?
7. Finally, we Have Our Context!
8. The Bottom of the Rabbit Hole
– Unanswerable
– Irrelevant
– This Is Why There’s Always “Something Else”
– What Would a Female-Lineage Christian Priesthood Look Like?
– Pastoral Considerations
Appendix A: Order for Making a [Female] Deacon
– Commentary
– Translation of the Ritual Text
Appendix B: Ordination of an Abbess, Text #1
– Commentary
– Translation of the Ritual Text
Appendix C: Ordination of an Abbess, Text #2
– Commentary
– Translation of the Ritual Text
Appendix D: Benediction of an Abbess from the Roman Pontifical
– Commentary
– Translation of the Text
Prologue
New information demands new conclusions.
For over 24 years, I have asked myself the question “what is the real reason a woman can’t be ordained?”
When that question first occurred to me, I was still attending Holy Family (the indult community in Dayton), and one of my friends on the choir, Steve, was an ex-seminarian. So I asked him the question. His answer was unsatisfactory, along the lines of: “St. Paul says women shouldn’t speak in the churches or have authority over a man.”
That answer wasn’t satisfactory, and I countered by saying, “That was just Paul giving his personal opinion. What else do you have?”
“Well, Jason, you just have to obey the Magisterium.”
To which I say, “I hope you THAVMA readers know me better than that!”
Ever since that day, I had been unable to find a satisfactory answer. This includes engaging with both sides and either being told by one side that I’m either “misogynist” or “regressive” for not marching in lockstep, or being told by the other side that “all theology is based on authority” and that I’d better toe the line.
So, as I wrote 13 years ago, I’m still on the fence from the perspective of theology alone, because the only question I need to have answered remains, well, unanswered. It doesn’t help that big-T Tradition offers nothing but silence, and nobody on either side is able to admit the question even exists. I guess they see no sense in letting the Deposit of Faith get in the way of their agendas!
To summarize, these have been my positions for the past 24 years:
One: Women have not (traditionally) been sacramentally-ordained in the history of the mainstream Orthodox and Catholic ordinal lineages, though “outliers” are known.
Two: This does not mean a woman cannot be ordained in these lineages.
Three: The only way to determine whether a woman can, is to find out whether the sacramental character of Order can be imprinted onto a woman’s soul.
Four: For whatever reason, Sacred Tradition has never bothered to deal seriously with the latter question, and formal theology similarly lacks both the deep-level conceptualization and the vocabulary for addressing the mechanics of the spiritual principles behind how the sacraments operate.
Five: This silence from Sacred Tradition leaves us an open question that cannot be sufficiently answered from Public Revelation alone.
Six: Any conclusion reached thus necessarily errs on the side of caution or on the side of presumption, and
Seven: I choose to respect others’ conclusions, so long as they’re willing to respect mine.
I repeat: new evidence demands new conclusions. And I have discovered much that was unknown to me when I wrote 13 years ago. My Latin is much better now. I’ve since learned to read paleography. More source-texts are available to the average person than at any time in history. I have encountered female clergy who, if they were male, would’ve been considered excellent candidates for ordination in the “regular church.” And perhaps most importantly, being 15 years removed from the Traditional movement has given me room to overcome many of my previous intellectual biases.
The new evidence I found – at least it was new to me – came in the form of several diaconissal and abbatissal ordination rites dating from between 650 and 1200, along with the decrees of local councils dating between 396 and 829. This threw me down a very deep rabbit hole finding text after text, some of which turned my worldview upside-down.
Obligatory Disclaimers and Expectation Management
As we begin, I feel it necessary to make a few things clear. Perhaps more clear than anything else I’ve written,
I write this neither as enemy nor ally. I am a centrist who intends neither to champion women’s ordination, nor to attack those churches who practice it. I see most people on both sides as having a legitimate disagreement and doing the best they can with the information they have, and believe there is room for difference of opinion. For reasons I intend to explain, I just don’t trust either side’s thought-leaders and find both sets of arguments unconvincing.
Likewise, I am only talking about this question in context of the Roman Catholic Church and those churches who retain the Roman Catholic doctrine of an indelible sacramental character. Everybody else can pretty much solve the question by reading Galatians 3 or appealing to their denomination’s historical practice. I may draw from other churches in order to present examples, but nothing I say here is intended to apply to Eastern Orthodox, Protestants, Ecclesiastical Gnostics, or anyone else unless I explicitly name them.
This blog gets its fair share of hate-readers who like to quote-mine. So let me be very clear about this too: I am neither condemning or endorsing any person or group under discussion. If I give a sympathetic treatment to a person, group, or subject you don’t like, that’s because I’m endeavoring to treat everyone sympathetically. That includes those with whom I disagree virulently. If you can’t handle that, you don’t have to keep reading.
First Principles. My theological orientation is generally traditional, albeit my method is more influenced by the Wesleyan Quadrilateral than I’m supposed to admit out loud. My intellectual orientation tends toward skepticism and empiricism. I believe objective truth exists, and I believe the human mind is capable of knowing objective reality. I value results over theory. I am profoundly disinterested in philosophy, particularly Continental philosophy which I liken to mental masturbation. These are my First Principles. If your First Principles are different from mine, then it’s only logical that your conclusions will be different from mine. The universe is big enough for both of us, so you do you.
I am Libertarian. I believe other people are not my property, and certainly not the property of any “collective.” I have no use for the Leftist or Rightist ideologies driving either side of the debate, and reject all forms of Collectivism, Identitarianism, Legal Positivism, and Authoritarianism as a matter of principle.
I will not be addressing the real or imagined issues Traditional Catholics raise against the 1552 and 1968 Ordinals. My position is that any potential defect in the 1552 Ordinal was most likely corrected in the years between 1930 and 1970. The debate over the 1968 Ordinal is an internal matter within the Traditional Roman Catholic movement, and I find the arguments against its validity based on an overly rigid view of what constitutes an essential sacramental form (and in the case of some individual critics, an outright wrong view).
This discussion is strictly hypothetical. Talking is not the same thing as doing, a distinction that seems lost on a lot of people. The way I see it is that one can talk in hypotheticals about anything they want, but they’re not really taking a side until they actually do something that requires them to commit. In my situation that translates as follows: I can talk about either side of women’s ordination all I want, but I would only be picking a side if the day comes that I lay hands on a woman’s head with the intention of cheirotonia.
Last but not least: this is only a blog post, not doctorate-level research. My use of “semi-colloquial” language is intentional. I make no pretense at being an expert on the topic, and I certainly don’t expect to end a 370-year long debate by scribbling on the internet! I’m just someone with unanswered doubts who distrusts both sides of the debate, and am only sharing what I found on the course of this intellectual journey.
I do, however, hope this will the last thing I have to say on the subject for at least the next 10 years …
Acknowledgements and Special Thanks
Several people have given feedback on snippets I’ve posted for review on social media, and they’ve helped this blog post become better because of it. Others have had blogs (active or defunct) that I’ve referenced or quoted, and still others have had conversations with me that forced me to do some thinking. They all have my utmost gratitude:
I’d like to take a moment to thank Jenny Tyson, Kristopher Manghera, Fork Nan Pwen bon houngan, John Plummer, David Oliver Kling, Bartimaeus Black, Kathy Cason, and all others who’ve contributed to this whether through DMs, comments, E-mails, and every other form of feedback.
In different times and in different ways, every last one of you has caused me to think in different directions even if you didn’t realize it at the time. There’s a strong chance I didn’t realize it either!
One final acknowledgement: All Biblical quotations are from the Douay-Challoner Bible. All other translation work is my own unless otherwise specified. I have striven for formal fidelity but have not shied away from dynamic translation in those places where it would make for a more natural English reading.
Preliminary Considerations
This article will be something of a follow-up and expansion on my article about the women’s ordination debate written in 2010 and slightly updated in 2016, largely because new information leads to new conclusions. Since the topic itself is complicated owing to a number of historical and theological factors, I’d like to start by giving some context for the various source texts as well as any conclusions I draw from them.
This of course raises an important point: reading a source is one thing, but understanding a source is quite another. It is important to read each source in context, otherwise we end up like so many people who misquote the Bible. I will endeavor to keep all sources in context while making no claim my conclusions represent objective truth. My only claim is that I shall do my best to get as close to truth as my information and understanding will allow, and that I will strive for my conclusions to follow logically from my premises.
Definition(s) of Ordination
Perhaps a good place to begin is by discussing the definition(s) of the word “ordination.” To most Catholics this word simply means “the rite that makes a man a bishop, a priest, or a deacon.” Yet the word had a much broader use in ancient times.
Since the word “ordination” derives from the word “order,” we can work our way backward from there. Among the ancient Romans, an “order” referred to “an established civil body,” and commonly refered to one’s rank in society. A more modern term for this usage of the word “order” would be “class” in general and either “social class” or “professional class” in particular. This was contrasted with the “plebs,” which referred to the common people in general.
So in this first sense, “ordination” or “ordering” means to set someone apart from the “regular people,” and assigning them a rank within the social or professional order.
This forms the foundation for the term when it was imported into Christian parlance, where it came to mean “setting a person apart into a rank within ecclesiastical society,” while believers outside these orders came to be referred to in Latin as laici, derived from Greek ὁ λαός (“o laós”), referring to “the people;” this is the root of our English word “laity.” Hence the institution of orders and laity can be considered a copy of the social order in which the early Christians lived, and was marked by the laying-on of hands accompanied with prayer (see Acts 6:6 and 1 Timothy 4:14).
In this second sense, ordination means to set a Christian believer apart from the “regular people,” assigning them a rank within the ecclesiastical order by a rite involving the laying-on of hands and prayer.
The word came to be more restricted still. As early as the Apostolic Tradition attributed to Hippolytus (c. 225 AD), we see the word “ordination” restricted to those with liturgical duties, shifting away from the Roman concept of Order:
The widow shall be appointed by the word alone, and [so] she shall be associated with the other widows; hands shall not be laid upon her because she does not offer the oblation nor has she a sacred ministry [alternate reading: “nor does she conduct liturgia”]. Ordination is for the clergy on account of their ministry, but the widow is appointed for prayer, and prayer is the duty of all.
[Source]
In this third sense, ordination means to set a Christian believer apart from the “regular people,” and assigning them a rank associated with liturgical functions, by a rite involving the laying-on of hands and prayer.
Our progression now meets with the “Augustinian Doctrine” upheld by the Western Church. Ordination came to be seen as imparting an indelible mark upon the soul of the person being ordained. This indelible mark, technically called a sacramental character, is considered the source of the cleric’s spiritual powers (e.g. the power to offer the Eucharist), and cannot be taken away or surrendered, even if the individual cleric were to fall into heresy, schism, or outright apostasy. This is first spelled out in St. Augustine’s Against the Epistle of Parmenianus where he makes clear the sacrament of Ordination cannot be lost, and that “the Sacraments are everywhere.” He uses the conversion of heretical clergy as an example:
For that which certain people have begun to say with a conviction of truth, “One who leaves the Church does not lose his Baptism, but loses the right to administer it;” appears, by many ways, to be said inanely and in vain. Firstly, because no cause is shown: why he who cannot lose his own Baptism would be able to lose the right to administer it. For either is a Sacrament, and either is given to a man by way of a certain consecration; this when he is baptized, that when he is ordained. And therefore it is not allowed to be repeated within Catholicism. Now also, when the clergy convert [lit. “leaders come over from that party”], for the benefit of peace they are received and converted from the error of schism, and if a need is seen that they bear the same office they bore [with the other sect], they are not re-ordained. Rather, as their Baptism remains intact, so too does their Ordination; because as the vice was corrected by way of their conversion [lit. “cutting off” (from the other sect)] for the peace of unity, but not in the Sacraments, which are everywhere.
(Translated from Book II, section 28; emphasis mine)
Augustine’s main point is explaining that heretics also possess valid Sacraments, and how such a thing can be so. In the next section Augustine gives his thesis a finer point, using the example of a layperson who administers baptism and ending with the metaphor of the mark of the Legions imprinted on the body of someone who has never fought before. I quote the relevant sections. (Book II, Section 29, ellipses used for the sake of brevity):
However, if some layman was compelled by necessity to give [Baptism] to a person on their deathbed (because he learned how to give it when he himself received it), I don’t know who rightly says it needs to be repeated. Even if he does so without being driven by necessity, it is a usurpation of another person’s job … If it is usurped and there is no necessity, and [Baptism] is given by anyone to anyone, what has been given cannot be said not to have been given, even though it can be rightly called illicit … nevertheless it shall not be considered as not being given.
Nor by any means does a devoted soldier disrespect the Imperial insignia when it has been usurped by private individuals. For if someone secretly goes outside the law, and in the public mints, beats and puts a seal on gold, silver, or brass; … if the Imperial seal has been recognized, are the coins not piled into the Imperial treasury?
Or if anyone, whether a deserter or someone who has never served, were to brand the mark of a soldier onto some private individual; were it not so that (when apprehended) he is punished as a deserter? … Or if this non-soldier trembles with fear from the soldier’s mark upon his body and flies to the Emperor’s mercy, and begins to serve after having gained that forgiveness by pleading and effusive prayer; surely the mark is not re-given to the man after he has been freed and corrected, but the old mark is recognized and approved!
Do the Christian Sacraments adhere less strongly than this bodily mark? When we see that the apostates do not lack Baptism, and in any case it is not repeated over them when they come back [to the Church] through penance, and therefore is it not the judgment that they could not have lost it?
I quoted so much of this section because it is important for understanding Augustine’e point. St. Thomas Aquinas elaborates on the permanency of the character in the Summa Theologiæ (III, 63, 5):
As stated above, in a sacramental character Christ’s faithful have a share in His Priesthood; … Now Christ’s Priesthood is eternal, according to Psalm 109:4: “Thou art a priest for ever, according to the order of Melchisedech.” Consequently, every sanctification wrought by His Priesthood is perpetual, enduring as long as the thing sanctified endures. … Since, therefore, the subject of a character is the soul as to its intellective part, where faith resides, as stated above (Article 4, Reply to Objection 3); it is clear that, the intellect being perpetual and incorruptible, a character cannot be blotted out from the soul.
Finally – and the reason I spent so long developing this section – this is the official Roman Catholic teaching. Its official expression was given at the Council of Trent. Canon 13 of the 7th Session tells us that “If any one saith, that the received and approved rites of the Catholic Church, wont to be used in the solemn administration of the sacraments, may be contemned, or without sin be omitted at pleasure by the ministers, or be changed, by every pastor of the churches, into other new ones; let him be anathema,” while Canon 3 of the 23rd Session anathematizes anyone who claims “that he who has once been a priest, can again become a layman.”
It should be stressed that Augustine was not inventing a novel doctrine, so much as describing the concept of the “seal” present in the New Testament discussion of Baptism, Confirmation, and Ordination. When St. Paul discusses this seal, he uses variations of the word σφραγίς (“sfra-yís”), which could refer to a seal, a signet ring, or the impression stamped by that ring. This word survives in modern Greek as σφραγίδα (“sfra-yí-dha”), where it refers to “an indentation or imprint made by stamping.” We see this clearly in 2 Corinthians 1:22, where Paul refers to us as “Christ also hath sealed (Gr. Σφραγισάμενος) us, and given the pledge of the Spirit in our hearts.”
We see variations of this word in Ephesians 1:13, where Paul refers to the community as “signed (Gr. ἐσφραγίσθητε) with the holy Spirit of promise,” and the same word again in Ephesians 4:30: “And grieve not the holy Spirit of God: whereby you are sealed (Gr. ἐσφραγίσθητε) unto the day of redemption.” (One possible reading of this last verse is to imply a lifelong duration of the seal.)
In Apocalypse 9:4 we read of those “who have not the sign (Gr. σφραγίδα) of God on their foreheads.” (Notice this is the same form of the word that survived into Modern Greek.)
The seal is discussed in patristic literature, and directly referenced in the Eastern Orthodox and Novus Ordo rites for Confirmation, both of which invoke “the seal of the Holy Ghost” upon the confirmand. Augustine, therefore, is simply one voice in a long tradition attempting to explain the Church’s understanding of St. Paul’s word σφραγίς, both in and of itself and in conection with the Church’s practice of not re-baptizing or re-ordaining people who were either baptized or ordained outside the Catholic Church, and defining the Catholic position vis-à-vis the Donatists regarding those who chose to burn that grain of incense during the persecutions because staying alive was better than the alternative.
In this fourth sense, ordination means to set a Christian believer apart from the “regular people,” and assigning them a rank associated with liturgical functions, by a rite involving the laying-on of hands and prayer, through which an indelible mark is imprinted onto that person’s soul.
Even more narrowly, the notion of the sacramental character is seen as so essential that a person is considered as “not ordained” if they don’t possess that character, which means they never received ordination or the ordination rite was done incorrectly (if the rite was performed by someone incapable of ordaining, or if the ordaining bishop forgot to lay hands on the candidate’s head, for example). The logic here is that a person who does not have the sacramental character lacks the power to offer the sacraments, and therefore cannot be said to possess a “valid ordination.”
We see the logical conclusion of this thinking spelled out in the Catechism of the Council of Trent, Part 2, Chapter 7, Question 30: “The Sacrament of Orders is not to be conferred on very young, or on insane persons, because they do not enjoy the use of reason: if administered, however, it no doubt impresses a character.”
Ludwig Ott states this more clearly in his Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, telling us on page 460: “The Consecration of a baptised infant as a deacon, priest, or bishop is valid, but not licit.”
In this fifth sense, ordination means to have undergone the ritual of ordination and to have received the sacramental character associated with the rank bestowed by the ritual.
Lastly, there is a competing conception of ordination called the “Cyprianic Doctrine,” which conflates validity with liceity (concepts carefully separated in the above-mentioned “Augustinian Doctrine”). This doctrine teaches that in order for an ordination to be valid, it also has to be “licit,” that means it has to be in conformity with man-made church law and in union with the church institution. Consequently, a person who leaves the Church is considered to lose their confirmation, and a Priest is considered to lose his ordination completely. I mention this in order to make sure the reader is aware it exists, but will not spend too much time on it because 1) literally everybody is illicit in somebody else’s eyes, including the mainstream churches; and 2) this doctrine teaches that “a priest can become a layman,” which Roman Catholic theology has already condemned as heretical in the above-quoted decree from the Council of Trent.
In this sixth and final sense, ordination means not only to have undergone the ritual of ordination, but to remain in good standing and follow the rules of the institution that ordained you!
Yet to throw some more confusion into this discussion, not all ordinations were intended to impose a sacramental character. For example, the Minor Orders and Subdiaconate which existed until Vatican II – and afterward partially reconstituted as “ministries” – were at some points in history considered to bestow a character (The Summa Theologiae claims this for each order), while in later times these were considered not to impart a character at all. For example, in the Appendices we shall see two rites titled “Ordination of an Abbess” (Latin: Ordinatio Abbatissæ), where there is a clear intent to avoid one or more things that could imprint a sacramental character even though one rite explicitly mentions Holy Orders. Likewise, we will also see an example where the exact same wording would (by modern standards) indisputably ordain a man to the diaconate!
Thus for purposes of this article, I’m going to refer to the fifth of these definitions as “sacramental ordination” because of its focus on the character, and also to “non-sacramental ordination” in reference to rites with no intention of imprinting a character. This is roughly parallel to the Eastern Orthodox distinction between “cheirotonia” and “cheirothesia” (to be explained below). This seems like a fair middle ground, while keeping in mind the word’s different uses in ecclesiastical parlance as well as throughout history.
EXPLANATION: CHEIROTONIA AND CHEIROTHESIA
In modern Eastern Orthodox parlance, there are two words for the laying-on of hands: χειροτονία (cheirotonia) and χειροθεσία (cheirothesia). Each signifies differing levels of intention behind placing hands on someone.
Cheirotonia refers exclusively to a laying-on of hands with explicit sacramental intention, i.e., in the ordination of Deacons, Priests, and Bishops.
Cheirothesia refers to laying-on of hands with no sacramental intention, as found in the minor orders such as reader, taper-bearer, and in former times, a (female) Deacon.
Yet even this distinction is not clear, as we have another twist in the narrative. According to OrthodoxWiki, the words “Cheirotonia and cheirothesia formerly were used almost interchangeably, but came to acquire distinct meanings.” And I have not been able to ascertain the exact time when this distinction became clear, whether after the eighth century – as I’ve read from some advocates for women’s ordination – or sometime sooner. Tracking down the date of this distinction is thus on my bucket list and I may update this section in the future.
Now if you think that was confusing, just wait till you see the next section . . .
The Evolving Understanding of Holy Orders
You may have noticed something from the above section, namely that each definition of the word “ordination” came about at a different phase in the Church’s history, and different points in history have seen different interpretations of what makes an ordination valid. This is why any study of women’s ordination rites so complicated, because the insistence on different criteria at different stages of history.
Fortunately, the Holy Ghost once again protects the Church from the speculations of her human members, because the rites for the Major Orders have always contained the laying-on of hands and a prayer with the necessary elements. The problem is that at different times, the Church decided to consider different parts of the rite as necessary for validity. That is to say, the Church’s rites may be stable, but her understanding of “what is required for a valid ordination” has not been static and has actually evolved over the centuries. In fact our current understanding of “essential form” dates to 1947, with a possible slow evolution starting in 1896. Citations will be given below.
Fortunately, this evolution has not been an exercise in drastic changes for the sake of drastic changes, but has effectively been a case of the Church deepening and/or clarifying her understanding of the sacramental principles at work.
According to Leo XIII and Pius XII, the requirements for a valid ordination are 1. the laying-on of hands, and 2. the ordination prayer must invoke the Holy Ghost and also state the reason why the Holy Ghost is being invoked (priesthood, diaconate, etc.).
From about 1200 until 1946, theologians considered the essential act of ordination to be the Tradition of Instruments, by which the ordinand was handed the symbols of the Order being received. We see this stated clearly in Book II, Article 7 of St. Thomas Aquinas’ On the Articles of the Faith and the Sacraments of the Church:
The matter of this sacrament is that matter which is handed over to the candidate at the conferring of the order. Thus, priesthood is conferred by the handing over of the chalice, and so each order is conferred by the handing over of that matter which in a special way pertains to the ministry of that particular order.
Some 150 years after St. Thomas, we find the Council of Florence decreeing the Tradition of Instruments as the essential matter for the sacrament, specifically in the Bull of Union with the Armenians, which tells us the following:
The sixth is the sacrament of orders. Its matter is the object by whose handing over the order is conferred. So the priesthood is bestowed by the handing over of a chalice with wine and a paten with bread; the diaconate by the giving of the book of the gospels; the subdiaconate by the handing over of an empty chalice with an empty paten on it; and similarly for the other orders by allotting things connected with their ministry. The form for a priest is: Receive the power of offering sacrifice in the church for the living and the dead, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the holy Spirit. The forms for the other orders are contained in full in the Roman pontifical. The ordinary minister of this sacrament is a bishop. The effect is an increase of grace to make the person a suitable minister of Christ.
(Source, emphasis mine)
Yet before this, the same Council in its “Drecree for the Greeks,” indirectly recognized the ordinations of Greek Orthodox, who do not use the Tradition of Instruments. The Council did this by explicitly recognizing their Eucharist: “Also, the body of Christ is truly confected in both unleavened and leavened wheat bread, and priests should confect the body of Christ in either, that is, each priest according to the custom of his western or eastern church.”
This leads us to a riddle about the (perceived) necessity of the Tradition of Instruments, and we may safely say it was only considered a requirement for ordinations within the Roman Church and according to the Roman Rite. In any case this constitutes the only major aberration in either the history or the theology of the Church’s understanding of ordination, as the handing over of a chalice and paten, etc., were absent from the earlier rites and only introduced sometime between the sixth and tenth centuries, depending on which commentator is describing it. However, this was simply added into the rite while the other parts were still retained. The only thing in error was the human understanding of the rite, not the rite itself.
If we return to earlier times, as we’ve seen in the above-cited quote from the Apostolic Tradition, it is clear the Early Church understood ordination to require both the laying-on of hands and prayer: “hands shall not be laid on her … [because] ordination is for the clergy …” This understanding of laying-on of hands can be deduced from Scripture itself, as Acts 6:6 states the Seven Deacons were ordained with prayer and the imposition of hands, and 1 Timothy 4:14 also mentions the grace that is within [Timothy] by prophecy and the laying-on of hands (by the presbyterate!). This verse from 1 Timothy forms yet another scriptural basis for the doctrine of the sacramental character.
We start to see a turning away from the Tradition of Instruments in 1896, when Leo XIII adjudicated the status of Anglican ordinations in Apostolicæ Curæ. In the 24th section of the document, Pope Leo discusses matter and form for the Sacrament of Order, and concludes: “this appears still more clearly in the Sacrament of Order, the ‘matter’ of which, in so far as we have to consider it in this case, is the imposition of hands, which, indeed, by itself signifies nothing definite, and is equally used for several Orders and for Confirmation.”
This clearly led Rome to rethink a few things, because in 1947 Pope Pius XII published Sacramentum Ordinis, which completely reversed the teaching of both St. Thomas and the Council of Florence. He begins by affiriming the principle that “The Church has no power over the substance of the sacraments,” and then addresses the exception that we mentioned in the Council of Florence:
Besides, every one knows that the Roman Church has always held as valid Ordinations conferred according to the Greek rite without the traditio instrumentorum; so that in the very Council of Florence, in which was effected the union of the Greeks with the Roman Church, the Greeks were not required to change their rite of Ordination or to add to it the traditio instrumentorum: and it was the will of the Church that in Rome itself the Greeks should be ordained according to their own rite. It follows that, even according to the mind of the Council of Florence itself, the traditio instrumentorum is not required for the substance and validity of this Sacrament by the will of Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself.
(Section 3)
In a grandiose-sounding sentence in the very next section, Pope Pius declares a return to an earlier understanding of what’s required for an ordination to be valid, and defines the matter for Ordination as the laying on of hands:
Wherefore, after invoking the divine light, We of Our Apostolic Authority and from certain knowledge declare, and as far as may be necessary decree and provide: that the matter, and the only matter, of the Sacred Orders of the Diaconate, the Priesthood, and the Episcopacy is the imposition of hands; and that the form, and the only form, is the words which determine the application of this matter, which univocally signify the sacramental effects – namely the power of Order and the grace of the Holy Spirit – and which are accepted and used by the Church in that sense. It follows as a consequence that We should declare, and in order to remove all controversy and to preclude doubts of conscience, We do by Our Apostolic Authority declare, and if there was ever a lawful disposition to the contrary We now decree that at least in the future the traditio instrumentorum is not necessary for the validity of the Sacred Orders of the Diaconate, the Priesthood, and the Episcopacy.
(Emphasis mine.)
Pius XII would seem to have resolved the issue once and for all, and I agree with his solution. However his wording of “in the future” left an open question as to whether ordinations before 1947 required the Tradition of Instruments. Fortunately for us, that question is outside the scope of this writing (as the Tradition of Implements did not appear until long after the Diaconissate had dissapeared in the West), but it helps to be aware of the various opinions. My own opinion is that the laying-on of hands was always the matter, and that the insistence on the Tradition of Instruments was a gross error.
In the late 1950s, Fr. Emmanuel Doronzo investigated the laying-on of hands versus the Tradition of Instruments in Volume 2 of his Tractatus Dogmaticus de Ordine, devoting 81 pages to analyzing the subject before giving his conclusions. The discussion begins on page 610 and bears the title: “Whether the Matter for Holy Orders is and always was solely the Imposition of Hands and the Form determining it, and whether it is more probable this was instituted by Christ himself.”
Doronzo then walks the reader through his sources, telling us the Tradition of the Instruments in the rite for a Deacon first appears in the Mozarabic Liber Ordinum in the 7th century, then in English Pontificals during the 10th (p. 679); likewise 10th-century England in the rite for a Priest, the Tradition of Paten and Chalice (p. 683).
He announces his conclusion on page 691, stating in no uncertain terms:
Recapitulating what we have said about the historical evolution of the rite of ordination, it is constant that this rite has, from the time of the apostles, essentially consisted of the laying-on of hands and some concomitant prayer, whatever else maybe about the divine origin of this rite, its connection with Moses’ imposition of hands, and its relationship with the rabbinic Semikâh. And the entire ancient tradition of the Fathers has both retained that element, and at no time omitted it, whatever may be said of the silence (easily otherwise explained) of the documents of the 2nd century, and certainly the later practice of the Church expressed expecially in the liturgical books. In this and only this rite, the constant practice of the western and eastern church are in strict agreement.
(Italics and spelling as in original.)
In in other words, the “essential matter” for Holy Orders is and always has been the laying-on of hands, even when the Roman Church said otherwise in regard to the Roman Rite. Case closed, and my poor over-keyboarded fingers are ecstatic that we needn’t belabor this point any further.
Now it’s time for another curve ball.
What is this curve ball, you may ask? It’s the fact that even the modern three-fold system of “Deacon, Priest, and Bishop,” seen as separate Orders, is relatively recent and also dates to Pius XII’s encyclical in 1947. In doing so, he resolved a tension between the offices of priest and bishop that dates back to ancient times. As St. Jerome tells us in his Epistle to Evangelus: “the apostle clearly teaches that presbyters are the same as bishops.”
Later in the same Epistle, he goes on to say:
When subsequently one presbyter was chosen to preside over the rest, this was done to remedy schism and to prevent each individual from rending the church of Christ by drawing it to himself. For even at Alexandria from the time of Mark the Evangelist until the episcopates of Heraclas and Dionysius the presbyters always named as bishop one of their own number chosen by themselves and set in a more exalted position, just as an army elects a general, or as deacons appoint one of themselves whom they know to be diligent and call him archdeacon. For what function, excepting ordination, belongs to a bishop that does not also belong to a presbyter?
About 170 years earlier than Jerome, the Arabic version of the Canons of Hippolytus tells us a priest is ordained the same as a bishop, and the two are the same in all things except for the the ability to ordain and sitting on the throne. The following is from Canon IV:
Now if a Presbyter is ordained, all things are done with him as with a Bishop, except he does not sit on the throne. The same prayer is also said over him as over a Bishop, with the only exception being the title (lit. “name”) of the Episcopate. The Bishop is equal to the presbyter in all things except the throne and ordination, because the power of ordaining is not given him.
(This link contains both the Arabic and a Latin translation. I have translated the above from the Latin.)
This is the seed of how the theology of Holy Orders evolved by the Middle Ages. Namely, medieval theology attempted to reconcile this similarity-yet-difference between Priest and Bishop by considering the Sacrament of Order as “full and perfect in the Priest.” The Episcopate was not considered an order in its own right, but more as a “higher degree” of the priesthood (see Catechism of the Council of Trent, 2:7:25). In practice the Episcopate was a sort of “spiritual expansion pack” that added the power of Ordination, since in the ancient Church the Priest was the ordinary minister of all other Sacraments including Confirmation (in the Eastern Churches, he still is).
This led to other theological questions such as potestas ligata, or whether a priest had the bishop’s sacramental powers “bound up” within him and just needed a special rite to bring them forth; this last is the basis for John Wesley’s ordinations of Methodist clergy in 1784, and for Fr. Pulvermacher’s consecration of Gordon Cardinal Bateman in 1999. Similarly the identification of episcopacy as a degree rather than an order also gave rise to the question of whether per saltum ordination to the Episcopate was actually valid. (Ignoring the fact that St. Matthias’ episcopal ordination in Acts 1:26 could only have happened per saltum!)
In addition to all that, the Minor Orders, Subdiaconate, and Diaconate came to be conceived as lower degrees of the priesthood, which therefore reconciled all the Orders as part and parcel of one sacrament. Yet later – at some time between 1300 and 1947 – the Minor Orders and Sundiaconate came to be seen no longer as part of the Sacrament but as sacramentals that a priest could bestow with the bishop’s permission. As Ludwig Ott explains on page 452 of Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma:
The four Minor Orders and the Subdiaconate are not Sacraments but merely Sacramentals (Sent. Communior.)
The Decretum pro Armenis (D 701) which follows the teaching of St. Thomas and of most of the Schoolmen, cannot be adduced as a decisive counter-proof, as the Decretum is not an infallible doctrinal decision, but merely a practical institution. The Council of Trent took no attitude on the question. The Apostolic Constitution “Sacramentum Ordinis” of Pius XII (1947) obviously favours the view that only the Orders of diaconate, priesthood and episcopate are the stages of sacramental consecration, as only these three are mentioned.
The Minor Orders and the subdiaconate are not of Divine institution, but were only gradually introduced by the Church to meet spiritual requirements. The lectorate is first attested to by Tertullian (De Praescriptione, 41), the subdiaconate by St. Hippolytus of Rome (Apostolic Tradition), all the Minor Orders (which up to the 12th century included the subdiaconate), by Pope St. Cornelius (D 45).
Yet Jerome’s and the Canons’ statements cannot be taken in isolation. Almost 300 years before Jerome and 110 or so years before the Canons, St. Ignatius of Antioch speaks quite differently about Bishops, Priests, and Deacons. In chapter 6 of his Epistle to the Magnesians he says:
… your bishop presides in the place of God, and your presbyters in the place of the assembly of the apostles, along with your deacons, who are most dear to me, and are entrusted with the ministry of Jesus Christ.
Clearly the Bishop is the “top dog” in St. Ignatius’ paradigm and the priests are analogous to the “assembly of the apostles.” He uses a similar analogy in chapter 3 of his Epistle to the Trallians:
In like manner, let all reverence the deacons as an appointment of Jesus Christ, and the bishop as Jesus Christ, who is the Son of the Father, and the presbyters as the sanhedrim of God, and assembly of the apostles. Apart from these, there is no Church.
Ignatius’ high view of the episcopate is probably the clearest in chapters 8 and 9 from his Epistle to the Smyrnæans:
[Chapter 8] See that you all follow the bishop, even as Jesus Christ does the Father, and the presbytery as you would the apostles; and reverence the deacons, as being the institution of God. Let no man do anything connected with the Church without the bishop. Let that be deemed a proper Eucharist, which is [administered] either by the bishop, or by one to whom he has entrusted it. Wherever the bishop shall appear, there let the multitude [of the people] also be; even as, wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church. It is not lawful without the bishop either to baptize or to celebrate a love-feast; but whatsoever he shall approve of, that is also pleasing to God, so that everything that is done may be secure and valid.
[Chapter 9] It is well to reverence both God and the bishop. He who honours the bishop has been honoured by God; he who does anything without the knowledge of the bishop, does [in reality] serve the devil.
In Ignatius one can clearly see the three-fold pattern of Deacon, Priest, and Bishop as clearly separate, as well as the conflating of validity and liceity that we find in Eastern Orthodoxy (as an Orthodox friend summarized it to me in a Facebook conversation recently: “Orthodoxy sees validity as connected to the bishop’s permission”). With Jerome and Augustine, one can more readily trace the trajectory of the Western Church with its conception of Holy Orders and the separation between Power of Orders and Power of Jurisdiction.
In context, Ignatius’ and Jerome’s opinions are products of the Church’s situation in their respective times. Ignatius wrote immediately after the close of the first century, when the Church was small, the Church was illegal, and during a time when Christian communities were small enough that there was no need for anyone other than the Bishop to celebrate the Sacraments. Jerome, on the other hand, was writing toward the dawn of the fifth century; the persecutions were over, Christianity was now the official religion of the Empire, and had grown so large that the Bishop was no longer able to keep up with the people’s sacramental needs all by himself. Even in the Canons of Hippolytus we can see this transition as complete or nigh-complete, indicating the Church’s situation had already changed during the century between St. Ignatius’ martyrdom in 108 and the Canons’ earliest possible date around 225.
So in summary, the Church’s understanding of Holy Orders has developed, progressed, and the Roman Church made one wrong guess over the centuries, which guess was later corrected. We can also see the theology of Holy Orders following two separate yet equally-organic trajectories, one which we can call the “Ignatian-Cyprianic” taking root in the East, and the other “Hieronyman-Augustinian” taking root in the West. This cannot be called a “break” in theology, however, but more like a tree with two stumps growing from the same set of roots. Both trajectories proceed from their starting points along logical and organic lines.
What this means is that as we trace through history and evaluate any given rite, we have to bear in mind that not all people at all times have had the same conception of what makes an ordination an ordination, what distinguishes a sacramental ordination from a non-sacramental one, or even what an ordination actually is.
Yet ultimately we have to pick some sort of a heuristic before we’re able to move forward. Dr. Gary Macy addresses this in his The Hidden History of Women’s Ordination, when talking about the different approaches of theologians and historians:
But to determine one particular definition of ordination as definitive is fundamentally a theological, not an historical, endeavor. Determining what counts as a valid ordination requires that theologians in each Christian denomination decide by what criteria an ordination is considered valid, and further, whether those criteria are eternally valid or mutable over time. Historians do not make such decisions. Historians ask, rather, what ordination meant at a particular moment in the past. Any ceremony called an ordination that fits the criteria established at that time and place was an ordination.
(Emphasis in original)
Dr. Macy’s book contained several “slippery moments” that turned me off, most notably on page 51 where he tells the reader history is a “contemporary construction of more or less plausible scenarios, none of which accurately represents what actually occurred in the past.” However I think his distinction between theological and historical is a valid one, and helps me clarify my interest as exclusively theological. Dr. Macy’s distinction also suggests – correctly, in my opinion – that it’s prudent to approach this subject from three different angles.
Firstly, my criteria for evaluation are those of Pius XII, because 1. it most closely matches the biblical practice of “prayer and the laying-on of hands,” 2. it avoids focusing on culture-specific traits of one or another rite or use, and 3. these two elements have been found in all ordination rites found in the Catholic and Orthodox churches from the earliest recorded documents to the present day.
My second angle is to ask not only “would this rite produce a valid ordination according to the aforementioned criteria,” but also to consider whether the rite would qualify as entrance into a sort of Minor Order. Since the Minor Orders have much broader criteria, this provides us with a stable middle ground.
Lastly, I will also ask the question of “Would this rite have been considered a valid sacramental ordination when it was written?” By approaching from these three angles, we can bring both the theological and the historical to the table.
Alternate Spiritual Currents, Gendered Lineages, and Esoteric Transmission
I owe a debt of gratitude to Jenny Tyson, Bartimaeus Black, and Fr. Kristopher Manghera for helping me work out the thoughts expressed in this section.
Exoteric readers will most likely feel uncomfortable with this section, especially if they’re attached to a triumphalist model of “doing church.” They may be even more put off by my explicit references to occult theory. Yet the existence of alternate currents (lineages) is a part of spiritual reality and therefore must be addressed.
When we talk about “valid ordination,” we typically mean whether a given ordination is valid according to Catholic standards, whatever those standards may be to the person who’s speaking. What a “valid ordination” means in this context is that the recipient has inherited a spiritual lineage, or a “current,” that traces itself back to one or other of the Apostles, and from them to Christ. This is the reason apostolic succession is considered important, because it is the lineage that transmits the spiritual current and by which believers participate in that current’s spiritual power.
What’s not readily understood in these conversations, or even acknowledged, is that while apostolic succession is the only line of transmission documented as coming directly from the Apostles, the fact is that many other lines of spiritual transmission exist “in the wild.”
For example, the Cathars claimed their own form of apostolic succession called an Ordo. Both French and Italian Cathars traced their Ordo from sources either in Bulgaria or a rival “Drugunthian” lineage brought to Europe by a missionary known as “Papa Nicetas.” Both Ordines in turn trace themselves to the founder of the Bogomils (“Pop Bogomil”), and we have no way of knowing for sure whether his lineage was derived from the Apostles, or an earlier sect such as the Euchites, or if he made the whole thing up and an egregore formed from his followers. In any event their ritual for transmitting the lineage, the Consolamentum, would be considered invalid by Catholic standards. But that does not mean it was not valid by their own standards, or that there was no spiritual current transmitted to the next buon’uomo being consoled (or the next buona mugliere!).
The same can be said with lineages from other sources, be they Reiki attunements, Golden Dawn initiations, the Doinel Lineage of French Gnosticism before Jean Bricaud brought the movement into the Vilatte succession, and even the transmission of the “Christmas Eve Prayer” for curing malocchio. And that’s not even close to the tip of the iceberg!
Not only that, some of these lineages are explicitly gendered.
One example of a gendered lineage is the Italian tradition of the Christmas Eve Prayer for curing the Evil Eye. The way I was taught is that only a woman can pass on the power to use that prayer; a man can receive it, he can use it, but he is not able to pass it on. This, then, qualifies as a gendered lineage along female lines.
A parallel example of an gendered lineage would be the Greek method for dealing with the Evil Eye, or the vaskania. The Greek prayer is taught on Good Friday, and can only be passed to a person of the opposite gender. Hence I could not pass it on to another man if I had it, and another man cannot pass it on to me if I don’t have it; I can only receive it from or pass it on to a woman. The transmission can be considered “balanced,” but the lineage definitely has a gendered component.
This brings us to the question of whether Catholic ordination is a gendered lineage, as were most priesthoods in the ancient world (of which the Vestal Virgins are a well-known example).
I am not a fan of Leadbeater, and certainly do not consider his work an authoritative source for theological debates (because clairvoyant insights qualify as either “private revelation” or “unverified personal gnosis,” neither of which anybody is required to believe). However, what he says on this subject may be relevant to our discussion. In his Science of the Sacraments, he tells us the following starting at the bottom of page 349:
It is often asked whether a woman could validly be ordained. That question has practically been answered in an earlier chapter. The forces now arranged for distribution through the priesthood would not work efficiently through a feminine body; but it is quite conceivable that the present arrangements may be altered by the Lord Himself when He comes again into the world. It would no doubt be easy for Him, if He so chose, either to revive some form of the old religions in which the feminine Aspect of the Deity was served by priestesses, or so to modify the physics of the Catholic scheme of forces that a feminine body could be satisfactorily employed in the work. As some of us hold that it will not be long before His advent, the question may be finally settled on unquestionable authority in the near future; but until He comes we have no choice but to administer His Church along the lines laid down for us.
What Leadbeater is claiming is that the “forces now arranged for distribution” constitute a gendered lineage. If this is true, then it would only be possible to impart the sacramental character (of Catholic ordination) onto the soul of a man, in the same sense that it is only possible for a woman to transmit the Christmas Eve Prayer. However, at the end of the day this is still a bald assertion without citations, and I can’t treat it as convincing.
Hence in my mind, the question of whether the “Catholic current” or “Yeshuic lineage” is a gendered lineage remains open. Though if we apply the occult theory of contacts, currents, and egregores, the lineage may have become that way simply by long history of habitual practice. Yet even here I cannot say that as an assertion.
What’s of more interest is the creation of new spiritual lineages, which Leadbeater also discussed in the above quote. This is something more openly discussed in occult theory than in theology.
In occult theory I’ve seen this process referred to as an “esoteric initiation” or “esoteric transmission,” in which the originator of the lineage is either contacted, or makes contact with the source of the lineage’s spiritual current. Theology would refer to this as a “divine commission” such as we saw with Moses or Isaias, and modern scholarship makes references to a “School of Isaias,” i.e. those whom Isaias had commissioned. In fact, once the originator (or originatrix) of the lineage passes it on to a successor, it then becomes an “exoteric lineage” and the beginning of a line of succession.
Another way that new lineages are founded, according to occult theory, is by the formation of egregores, a term that can refer to artificially-created energy pools or sometimes artificial entities that are created and nourished by the thoughts and emotions of the people who create them. In this case the group as a whole becomes the originator of the lineage, which then becomes an “exoteric” lineage as it goes through the process of becoming institutionalized and passed down through the generations.
This is actually an oversimplified definition and a concept foreign to orthodox theology (which relies exclusively on the Spirit Model), yet one I mention because I can’t rule it out. And also because to the best of my knowledge and ability, I try to leave no stone unturned.
Whether through contact or through egregore formation, alternate lineages may be formed, and it is possible for alternate spiritual lineages to have come from Christ himself. This may certainly be the case with any Protestant church that’s been around for enough years, and can be supported by a scriptural basis in Matthew 18:20 with a theological basis in the principle of “extreme economia,” while in occult theory this would line up with the concept of a “contacted lodge.” This would also match up with my experience of “degrees of presence” regarding the Eucharist in non-Catholic churches who neither possess nor care about Catholic notions of apostolic succession.
To put it simply, I would go as far as to speculate that different churches participate in different spiritual lineages, and there may already be functional spiritual lineages derived from Christ that are not dependent on the standard “apostolic succession.” I see no reason why churches who ordain women would be excluded from this possibility, and with enough time it is possible for a female-dominant or even female-only clerical lineage to form. Such may have been the case with the Collyridians in the fourth century, and may be – or may become – the case with present-day groups such as Roman Catholic Womenpriests or the Catholic Mariavite Church.
As with many of my theological meanderings, I again caution the reader that I say all this by way of speculation, not as hard-and-fast assertion.
Let me give a concrete example:
Four years ago (i.e., in 2019), I was approached by two men who had received priestly ordination from the same female bishop. One of them showed me a copy of the rite that was used, and I found the essential form doubtful at best. This means that gender was not a consideration; if the ordinatrix had been male, I would still have had to treat their ordinations as “invalid” insofar as Catholic criteria are concerned. Yet they described things to me about saying Mass that they wouldn’t know if they hadn’t received something. This is what led me to thinking about alternate spiritual currents. It was clear to me that they definitely received some kind of spiritual transmission, just not a big- or small-c catholic ordination.
In fine, my point is that we live in a universe that is very spiritually alive, more alive than the average pew-sitting Christian in the First World might perceive (or be quick to label as “demonic” if they do perceive!). I believe this to be relevant to our inquiry and will connect these dots when we come ot our conclusions. In the meantime, I think it prudent to keep an open view as to whether the “Catholic current” is being transmitted, or another spiritual current might be at play.
Outlier Situations: Women Ordained by Mainstream Bishops
We also need to discuss a phenomenon I refer to as outliers, i.e. individual women who have been ordained, especially to the priesthood and often in secret, either within the Roman Catholic or another church where women’s ordination is not considered “mainstream.” (The only reason I use the term “outlier” is to bring attention to the fact this happens in real life, while keeping it clear that the practice was not normative for the Universal Church at the time it happened.)
The most well-known such ordination is Ludmila Javorová, ordained to the priesthood by Roman Catholic Bishop Felix Maria Davidek on December 29, 1970. He is also reported to have ordained anywhere from four to seven other women to the priesthood, whose names are not publicly known. I say “four to seven women” because different sources give different numbers.
There is a similar and more public story that can’t presently be verified, but one that I’m strongly inclined to believe. The claim is that the first bishops of the Roman Catholic Womenpriests organization were originally consecrated by sympathetic Novus Ordinarian bishops in 2003; their names are kept secret for the time being, and a document bearing those names is said to have been notarized and sealed in a vault. When we remember that the movement’s early ordinations used the 1968 Ordinal “by the book,” and that these are women with advanced theology degrees who knew exactly what they were doing, I find it very easy to believe this story is true.
(Here’s an unrelated note that’s always given me a smile, even when I was still in the Traditional Movement: the RCWP organization calls themselves “Roman Catholic” using logic similar to my former fellow-Sedevacantists. This includes the fact that the known ordinators at the original Danube ceremony were bishops of the Costa-Ferraz lineage, and that the Costa-Ferraz lineage is well-represented within the Traditional Movement too!)
There is, however, one problem with discussing historical outlier ordinations: they were often performed in secret and thus almost impossible to document. We may, however, gain oblique hints from time to time. For example, in 494 Pope Gelasius I wrote a letter to the bishops of Lucana, Calabria, and Sicilia. In chapter 26 of this letter, he furiously tells the bishops he had heard stories of women being entrusted any sort of ministry:
We have impatiently heard of such a disrespect of divine affairs, that women are being confirmed to minister at the sacred altars, and all things appointed to the service of men are given to the employ of a sex which is not capable. Besides which, of all these crimes which we censure one-by-one, all the guilt for these heinous things looks toward the priests, whether those who commit them, or those show themselves to favor their depraved excesses by not publishing the names of the culprits.
(Source: Patrologia Latina, 59:55)
The meaning of this passage has been debated, and I will give two opinions before entering on my own. In 1982, Professor Giorgio Otranto concluded in his article Note sul sacerdozio femminile nell’antichità in margine a una testimonianza di Gelasio I, that Gelasius was referring to women actually being ordained as priests:
I definitively hold that Gelasius, moreso than the exercise of a female diaconal service, sought to stigmatize and condemn an abuse that must have appeared far more grave [to him]: that of true and proper priestesses who carried out all the works reserved solely to the men.
(Original Italian:)
In definitiva ritengo che Gelasio, piuttosto che l’esercizio di un servizio liturgico diaconale femminile, abbia voluto stigmatizzare e condannare un abuso che gli doveva apparire di gran lunga più grave: quello di vere e proprie presbitere che svolgevano tutti i compiti tradizionalmente riservati solo agli uomini.
Otranto further develops this line of thinking by the use of the Pope’s wording and tone suggesting the bishops were actively ordaining women, and correctly notices that Gelasius only cites violations of Church law and tradition without giving a scriptural or theological basis for his condemnations.
Another interpretation is given by Dr. Valerie Karras, who responded to Otranto’s reading of this passage in her 2007 article, Priestesses or Priests’ Wives: Presbytera in Early Christianity:
As for the papal letter, Gelasius never uses any specific clerical titles to describe the women he accuses of taking on liturgical functions. Otranto argues that the way in which Gelasius depicts their actions points to the priesthood, but is unclear 1) whether these women are actually ordained members of the clergy at all; and 2) if ordained, whether they are presbyters or deacons, the latter being a possibility since the word ministrare (“to serve” = Greek diakonein) is used, and since, as Otranto himself notes, southern Italy was strongly Hellenized and thus likely to be familiar with women deacons. In fact, it is entirely possible that the women to whom Gelasius referred were serving at the altar (feminæ sacris altaribus ministrare) either without ordination or as female deacons, since it is unclear what exactly was the nature of their altar ministry.
(Italics in original.)
I’m inclined to agree more with Karras than with Otranto, especially in light of the fact he’s quoting a variant reading of the text. Otranto gives the Latin text as “sacris altaribus ministrare firmentur” (“… are confirmed to minister at the sacred altars”), yet in the PL Migne gives “firmentur” in brackets as an alternate reading, while giving the main text as “sacris altaribus ministrare ferantur” (“… are brought to minister at the sacred altars”). This wording of “brought to the altar” has a weaker meaning than “confirmed at the altar,” and lacks the implication of any kind of rite. In all, we simply don’t know what the Pope heard that prompted him to write these words (or the outrage found in the rest of the letter), nor do we know what really happened.
That said, the level of emotion in the text leads me to think it plausible the Pope may have heard of either an outlier ordination, or at least a rumor of one. The problem is, we have no way of knowing for sure and any hard-and-fast conclusions can only be presumptive at best.
(Later we will come back to Gelasius’ letter, drawing comparisons with similar reports at the Sixth Synod of Paris in the section where we discuss on Local Councils.)
The largest historical outlier, however, may be the Celtic churches, specifically the Insular Celtic churches in Brittania and Hibernia. These churches imported a number of Eastern practices, including the female Diaconate, and there are hints that some form of sacramental women’s ordination may even have been a mainstream occurrence in these lands.
One potential historical example is found in the legend of St. Brigid, the Bethu Brigte, although we do not know if this story is factually true (a valid question with many Saints’ legends). Chapter 19 describes the episcopal consecration of St. Brigid by Bishop Mel:
The bishop being intoxicated with the grace of God there did not recognise what he was reciting from his book, for he consecrated Brigit with the orders of a bishop. ‘This virgin alone in Ireland,’ said Mel, ‘will hold the Episcopal ordination.’ While she was being consecrated a fiery column ascended from her head.
Another account of this incident is found in “On the Life of St. Brigit” in the An Leabhar Breac, a 15th-century manuscript currently housed at the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin. The translation is that of Whitley Stokes, and the entire text can be found at this link:
Brigit, and certain virgins with her, went to Bishop Mél, in Telcha Mide, to take the veil. Glad was he thereat. For humbleness Brigit staid, so that she might be the last to whom the veil should be given. A fiery pillar arose from her head to the ridgepole of the church. Bishop Mél asked: ‘What virgin is there?’ Answered MacCaille: ‘That is Brigit,’ saith he. ‘Come thou, O holy Brigit,’ saith Bishop Mél, ‘that the veil may be sained on thy head before other virgins.’
It came to pass then, through the grace of the Holy Ghost, that the form of ordaining a bishop was read over Brigit. MacCaille said that ‘The order of a bishop should not be (conferred) on a woman.’ Dixit Bishop Mél: ‘No power have I in this matter, inasmuch as by God hath been given unto her this honour beyond every woman.’ Hence, it is that the men of Ireland give the honour of bishop to Brigit’s successor.
These accounts mince no words. The Bishop accidentally read the wrong prayers from his book, and as a result Brigid was consecrated a Bishop in her own right. That a fiery column ascended from her head – again if this story is true – proved to Mel and any onlookers that the ordination was valid.
That “fiery column” makes for another interesting note however, and is open to two equally-probable interpretations. One may interpret this as referring to Brigid’s namesake, the goddess of fire, forge, and hearth. Yet one may also find the column of fire an apt metaphor for the psychic impressions one can receive at Sacred Ordination. Different people describe the experience in different ways, and for example my own experience could be summarized as a “massive opening up.” But this might hint – emphasis on the word might – that the author or compiler of St. Brigid’s legend knew something of the spiritual dynamics at play during sacramental ordinations!
We also possess an anonymous account of Irish Church history written in the 8th century, preserved in Arthur Haddan’s and William Stubbs’ Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents Relating to Great Britain and Ireland. The following On Volume 2, Part 2, page 292. In a marginal note, our editors inform that this section of the chronicle covers the years 440 to 543:
Here begins the Catalogue of the Saints of Ireland, according to diverse times.
The First Order of Catholic Saints was in the time of Patrick. And then they were all bishops, famous and holy and filled with the Holy Ghost, 350 in number, planters of Churches. One was the Head, Christ; and one they had one leader, Patrick; they suffered but one Mass, one celebration, one tonsure from ear to ear. One was the Easter they celebrated, on the fourteenth day of the Moon after the Spring Equinox; and what was excommunicated by one Church, was excommunicated by all. They did not rebuke the administration or consort of women; for being founded upon the rock of Christ, they did not fear the winds of temptation. This Order of the Saints lasted through four kingdoms; this is to say for the time of Læogarius, and Aila Muilt’ and Lugada son of Læogarius, and Tuathail. All these Bishops appeared from the Romans and the Franks and the Britons and the Scots.
(Emphasis added)
The next paragraph of the account continues with the “Second Order,” or “second period,” dating from 543-599 and telling us that by that point, “They rejected the administration of women, separating them from the monasteries.”
This text was quoted in 1885 by James Hastings in his Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, as demonstrating that the Celtic churches ordained women. In Volume 1, page 178, he tells us:
According to primitive Christian custom, no difference was made between man and woman (cf. Gal 3:28), and both were allowed to take part in Church functions. In the monastic houses, moreover, the priestly monks lived together with the priestly nuns, according to an old anonymous reporter, up to the year 543: ‘They did not rebuke the administration or consort of women; for being founded upon the rock of Christ, they did not fear the winds of temptation.’ … At the time, too, when the Irish, with their mission, undertook a forward movement toward Brittany, the Gallican bishops found it especially blameworthy in the incomers that they were accompanied by women, who, like the men, assumed to themselves sacramental functions (cf. the letter of the three bishops in the Revue de Bretagne et de Vendée, 1885, i. p. 5 ff.); they did not know that the Irish-Breton Church had preserved customs and principles of the most ancient Christian Church.
(Italics in original.)
We would do well to turn to this “letter of the three bishops” which Hastings mentions, especially since it speaks to the clash of cultures between the Celtic and Romano-Gallican Churches starting in the early 6th century. Some number of refugees from Brittania came to the Continent in the wake of the Germanic invasions, and the customs they brought with them are criticized in a letter from Bishops Eustochius of Angers, Licinius of Tours, and Melanius of Rennes, addressed to two expatriate Irish Priests named Lovocatus and Catihernus. The relevant text of the letter reads as follows:
To the most blessed lords in Christ, the brother priests Lovocatus and Catihernos. Licinius, Melanius, and Estochius, bishops. It has been brought to our attention by the report of the venerable man, the priest Speratus, that you cease not at carrying [portable] tables through the various hits of your people, and that you presume to celebrate Mass [lit. “to do Mass”] there with women involved in the divine Sacrifice, whom you have named “conhospitæ,” so that while you this distribute the Eucharist, the hold the chalices and presume to administer the Blood of Christ to the people.
We are aggrieved, and not lightly, by the novelty and unheard-of superstition of this thing, for as a horrendous sect which has never been proven to be in Gaul is seeming to emerge in our times, which the Eastern Fathers called “Pepodianism,” after Pepodius the author of this schism, and he presumed to have women associated with himself in the sacrifice; [the Eastern Fathers] commanding that whosoever should desire to belong to this error shall be cast outside the communion of the Church.
On account of which, we believe that in the first place we should admonish your Charity in the love of Christ, for the unity of the Church and the catholic faith, asking that when our letter [lit. “page of letters”] comes to you, you will immediately cease and desist, and make a correction of the aforesaid activities. That is to say from the aforesaid tables, which we do not doubt were consecrated by a priest, and from those women which you call “conhospitæ,” which name is not said or heard without some trembling of the soul, because it is detestable, defaming the clergy and striking shame and horror into holy religion.
According to the rules of the Fathers, we therefore command your charity, that not only should foolish women pollute the divine sacraments by illicit administration, but also that anyone who wishes to live together within the roof of his cell – with the exception of his mother, aunt, sister, or granddaughter – let him be restricted from the threshold of the most holy Church, according to the sentence of the Canons.
There’s a lot to unpack here, and if you’re wondering whether “drama queen mode” was the traditional response when Popes and Bishops heard about a woman being anywhere near an altar, the answer to that question is “Yes.”
In any case, I’ve heard people tell me this text “proves” the Celtic Church ordained women as priests and bishops. Sorry to disappoint, but there’s no “smoking gun” here. The letter is indeed speaking to two customs, both known by the name conhospitæ: one being the “co-ed” religious houses in the Celtic Church, the other being the women who assisted at the altar in a liturgical capacity; the fact these women “confirmed with the chalice,” as our Protestant friends would say, indicates this capacity could’ve ranged anywhere from a sacramental Deaconissate to the status of an “altar girl” in a suburban Novus Ordo parish. In a historical context, the fact that distributing the chalice is the job of a Deacon points toward a sacramental Diaconissate in the Celtic churches, but nothing in the text indicates that any sort of female Presbyterate or Episcopate was in play.
The same can be said about the “administration of women” in the above-quoted chronicle, yet here it can’t be ruled out either. Whether women were ordained to the presbyterate in pre-543 Ireland is something I can’t answer definitively on the basis of the texts under discussion. But if the letter of condemnation is reporting events accurately, I do think there’s enough to form a probable opinion in favor of a sacramental Diaconissate.
Of all these examples, I find the Davidek ordinations the most instructive. His reason for ordaining women to the Presbyterate was the situation of the Czech Church, which at the time was being heavily persecuted by the Cult of Hammer and Sickle. From what my reading has indicated, he expressly ordained them so the sacraments could be brought into women’s prisons and other places where a man could not go without tipping off the authorities. This latter-day example harkens back to the days when the Cæsars decreed Christianity a religio illicita, and Early Christianity was itself a persecuted religion.
Persecution has a way of making people get creative. So I would go as far as to speculate – but not assert – that if individual bishops in the Early Church ordained women to the priesthood, then it may likewise have been as a response to persecution; the bishops in question may have seen no other way to keep the Church alive in their geographical areas and thus opted to play the hand they were dealt. These would still qualify as “outlier” ordinations because they cannot be documented as part of the mainstream tradition, and might also account for the fact most murals alleged to depict ordained women also date from that period in the Church’s history.
My search for documented cases is still ongoing, and I will update this section of the blog post as I find them.
Differing Levels of Intellectual Honesty
This, right here, is the one thing that pisses me off the most about the women’s ordination debate and what makes it such a rabbit hole: the leaders on both sides have an agenda.
One side is led by subversives. The other side is led by control-freaks.
Not all people on both sides are dishonest, and certainly not even most. The problem involves the leaders in both camps: one side’s leaders have no problem twisting the facts, while the other side’s leaders just insist on shutting down all discussion. And both sides’ leaders capitalize on: 1. wishful thinking from their followers, and 2. the fact most people either cannot access the source texts, or understand the languages in which those texts are written.
Clearly, there are good and honest people on both sides, with many of them smarter than I’ll ever be. Yet both sides also harbor unhealthy extremes. So here is where I stand:
As I stated 13 years ago, the only question I’ve cared about is whether the sacramental character of Order capable of being imprinted onto the soul of a woman. That’s it. The question is functionalist and reductionist, because without the sacramental character there is no sacramental ordination. I’ve required a solid “Yes” found explicitly either within Sacred Tradition or as the fruit of Empirical experience – and that independent of mystical, speculative, symbolic, social-justice, or historical attempts to “explain it away” – because unless we know for sure whether it can happen, any conclusion reached can only be either an exercise in caution or an exercise in presumption.
The conundrum for me has always been this: I firmly believe the souls of man and woman are equal in their substance, because the soul itself is beyond gender; therefore I see no reason why the sacramental character of Order cannot be imprinted onto a woman’s soul. Yet we’ve discussed that gendered lineages do in fact exist, and this is a rare instance where Sacred Tradition offers no light to shed on the question, whether from cultural bias or from simply not caring enough to formulate a serious answer.
Fortunately, I have no intention to ordain anyone, male or female, and will most likely go to my grave that way. This goes back to my separation of talk from action which reduces my question to one of intellectual curiosity – in my mind you can talk as much as you want but don’t really take a side until you act on something – so I can afford a lack of urgency. However, my sense of honesty and fairness demand that I get to the bottom of this before I die.
Okay, enough wallowing. Let’s get to work, shall we?
Origins and Function of the Diaconissate
I would like to focus on the Deaconess now, because hers is the one female church office we can document with 100% certainty. The claim that “women were ordained as priests and bishops” tends to be based on less-than-careful interpretations of murals, inscriptions, and the occasional Papal letter or Synodical decree. While these make great visual representations and fodder for documentaries on the History Channel, I find these data ambiguous at best and any absolutist interpretation disingenuous at worst.
We will begin with a discussion of the Diaconate in general, which will then give us a context for discussing the Female Diaconate in particular.
I should warn my more knowledgeable readers that I’m going to risk oversimplifying, and so I ask for a small bit of indulgence. The reason is that some of my readers will know a lot about this subject, others will be dimly aware, and others will know nothing at all. Very few will be familiar with primary source documents, the contexts necessary to understand them, or the various twists and turns this subject has taken through history. Ergo I feel a need to condense these “broad strokes” into a somewhat digestible form.
The Diaconate in General: Origins and Intended Function
To begin, we should probably talk about the diaconate in general. Its original intent was as a “ministry of service,” and the Seven Deacons were chosen as assistants to the Apostles. As the text in Acts 6:1-7 indicates, the deacons were selected to perform the charitable work of the Church while the Apostles could continue the spiritual work, and the deacons were ordained with prayer and the laying-on of hands. Verse 6 is relevant in this connection: “These they set before the apostles; and they praying, imposed hands upon them.”
There are two things to note here. In this passage Luke tells us the Apostles laid hands and prayed over the Seven Deacons, but he does not tell us the content of the prayer nor the intent beyond their appointment beyond “serving tables.” In fact St. Jerome uses the same expression in the above-quoted Epistle to Evangelus, referring to the deacon as “a mere server of tables.”
Did the Apostles Ordain a Sacramental Diaconate?
This leads to the question of whether the Apostles intended for these first deacons to receive a sacramental ordination, especially according to our modern understanding of the term. One might be tempted to dismiss this possibility because the Early Church simply didn’t have the developed sacramentology that we have today. However we might start to answer this question if we look at the Apostles’ actions – i.e. laying-on of hands and prayer – in the context of Judaism.
For starters, the entire story of the Seven Deacons parallels the story of Moses ordaining the Seventy Elders in Numbers 11:16-17, and continued in verses 24-25:
[16] And the Lord said to Moses: Gather unto me seventy men of the ancients of Israel, whom thou knowest to be ancients and masters of the people: and thou shalt bring them to the door of the tabernacle of the covenant, and shalt make them stand there with thee, [17] That I may come down and speak with thee: and I will take of thy spirit, and will give to them, that they may bear with thee the burden of the people, and thou mayest not be burthened alone.
[24] Moses therefore came, and told the people the words of the Lord, and assembled seventy men of the ancients of Israel, and made them to stand about the tabernacle. [25] And the Lord came down in a cloud, and spoke to him, taking away of the spirit that was in Moses, and giving to the seventy men. And when the spirit had rested on them they prophesied, nor did they cease afterwards.
This passage – and the explicit mention of Moses’ imposition of hands when ordaining Josue as his successor in Numbers 27:23, “And [Moses] laying his hands on [Josue’s] head, he repeated all things that the Lord had commanded.”
These texts form the foundation for the Jewish practice of Semikhah, the “leaning of hands” by which the Rabbinate is ordained, and a spiritual process is explicitly depicted as happening, namely a transmission of lineage from Moses to the Seventy.
Another parallel is that Moses ordained the Seventy Elders to be his assistants, just as the Apostles laid hands on the Seventy Deacons to be theirs. Lastly, the Seventy Elders were said to “prophesy when the spirit had rested on them,” and Acts 6:8 speaks similarly of Stephen after his appointment: “And Stephen, full of grace and fortitude, did great wonders and signs among the people.”
There are enough parallels that we might safely assume the Apostles were imitating a practice already known to them by their Jewish backgrounds.
POINT OF CONTEXT:
Though the Semikhah is typified with Moses’ ordination of the Seventy, there are varying opinions about whether it actually originated there. Emmanuel Doronzo summarizes some of these opinions in his Tractatus Dogmaticus de Ordine, Volume 2, page 625:
“The origin and vicissitudes of the rabbinic SEMIKAH, or the institution of rabbis through the laying-on of hands, are uncertain. This practice certainly flourished around the beginning of the second century (between 100 and 150), and apparently already during the first century, the time of Christ and the apostles, and indeed may have risen at the time of the rebuilding of the temple after the Babylonian captivity. … Some Jewish teacher, like the noted Rambam (1135-1205; Commentary on the Mishna, c. 1), report that the Semikâh was instituted by the above-mentioned institution of the seventy men by Moyses; other erudites refer the origin of the Rabbinate more probably to the time of restoring the nation and the Jerusalem temple after the exile (6th century BC), and assign as a reason in that was necessary for providing the creation of certain judges and teachers for the Jewish people who dwelt among the pagans far away from Palestine; the redactors of the Talmud refer its institution to the age of the Hasmoneans, and more definitively the reign of Alexander Jannaeus (2nd century BC) and attribute it to the Pharisees who, in order to make a stand against the growing influence of the Saducees, introduced that particular rite for constituting judges, which was forthwith extended to the inauguration of teachers.”
(Italics and spellings as in original.)
Yet while the parallel can be drawn, there are enough differences to raise other questions.
The first difference is the difference in intent. By this I mean that the Seventy Elders were able to lay hands on others, who in turn laid hands on others, and so forth, with the lineage said to have gone extinct between 360 and 425 AD. The Seven Deacons, on the other hand, were not able to lay hands on others and ordain their own successors. This is enough to tell us the Apostles did not have the same intention as Moses and the lineage derived from him (this is also a point that no one is disputing).
The second difference is that we cannot say with certainty whether the Apostles themselves possessed the Semikhah lineage. It is likely they did, because Jesus’ title as “Rabbi” implies that he himself would’ve received it. Yet we know he was not part of the official Temple leadership – the leadership actively sought to have him discredited or dead – so we are left asking whether he received the Semikhah lineage or the title was given to him by his followers in imitation of Moses’ title of “Rabbeinu,” meaning “Our Rabbi.” Fortunately this question is only relevant insofar as whether the Apostles would’ve been able to bestow Semikhah, and the Deacons’ inability to hand on their own lineage leads us to conclude that the Semikhah was not the Apostles’ intention.
Lastly, Acts 5:13 describes the Apostles as “illiterate and ignorant men.” This calls into question how much the Apostles consciously knew when they laid hands on the Seven Deacons, or if they were simply making an imitation of Jewish ritual.
If the Luke-Acts account contains historical truth, then from these data-points we can only conclude that the apostles intended to transmit something to the Seven Deacons, and that there was a spiritual effect. What we cannot determine for certain is whether the intention was to transmit some spiritual power to the Seven, or a simple dedication to make them channels of God’s grace, or even a simple blessing accompanied with formal ceremony.
To that I would point out one last thing for the reader to consider: every historic rite for the Diaconate has included the laying-on of hands and express invocation of the Holy Ghost for the office of the Diaconate, and from an early period the Deacon’s job came to include liturgical functions – this “doing liturgy,” as we have seen above, is what came to mark the distinction between clergy and laity. Yet the deacon is not empowered to do anything, spiritually, that a layperson is not able to do, as laypeople are also validly able to celebrate baptisms and officiate marriages, and there is no biological or spiritual process that prevents a layperson from learning the Scriptures and speaking about them from a lectern. Now some may say deacons can do blessings and laypeople can’t, but I’ve already covered the problem with that assertion in detail in my blog post (which I’ve expanded into a book) about Holy Water.
In any case, everybody agrees that the ordination of a (male) Deacon is intended as a sacramental ordination, and I see no benefit to rocking the boat on this point. I only bring this up because the extent to which the Diaconate in general possesses a sacramental ordination – not just by the Bishop’s intention, but in actual spiritual reality – will determine the limitations within which we can argue for or against the Diaconissate’s sacramentality. Quia nemo dat quod non habet!
Taking all this information into account, I leave you to your own conclusions while admitting I have a difficult time seeing how the Diaconate qualifies as a sacramental office, outside of the Hierarchy’s say-so. The question does not trouble me and I’m not married to any particular conclusion. However, it’s becoming apparent to me that the chicken came before the egg in this case, and that the Diaconate came to be seen as sacramental only after they came to take on liturgical functions, and not before.
The Female Diaconate
While the Seven Deacons were men, we know that as the Church grew, women also came to assist the Apostles. Of note is Romans 16:1-2, where St. Paul refers to Phebe in the capacity of one doing business on account of the Church:
And I commend to you Phebe, our sister, who is in the ministry of the church, that is in Cenchrae: That you receive her in the Lord as becometh saints; and that you assist her in whatsoever business she shall have need of you. For she also hath assisted many, and myself also.
The important phrase here is “is in the ministry of the church,” for which the Greek text says “οὖσαν διάκονον τῆς ἐκκλησίας,” or, “being a servant [minister] of the church.” The Vulgate gives us “quæ est in ministerio ecclesiæ,” which translates to “[she] who is in the ministry of the church.”
Now the issue here is that we don’t know much else about Phebe or her duties, nor do we know much about the duties of the men appointed deacons other than administering the charitable work of the Church. The use of the Greek word διάκονος and the Latin minister do little to help, as without further context the words may simply refer to employment, service, or (according to wiktionary) working as a courier. We also don’t know whether the prayer and imposition of hands were intended as a sacramental ordination, whether for male or female.
What we do know is that the Diaconissate was connected with another order known as the Widows (Viduæ), older women who dedicated their lives to prayer and the service of God (presumably after the death of their husband, hence the name). The Widows were not considered ordained, and neither were the younger women who dedicated themselves, collectively known as Virgins. Over time, at least in the West, the Vidual and Virginal orders came to be grouped together as “Nuns,” with the role of the Deaconess subsumed by the Abbatissate, or the office of the Abbess.
Starting in the fourth century we begin seeing legislation from local Councils call for the abolition of the Diaconissate, sometimes referring to Deaconesses and Widows in the same sentence. We’ll discuss this legislation in its own section later on.
From third-century Egypt we find two discussions of deaconesses. For example Origen tells us women were given the ministry of the Church in their own right, in his Commentary on Romans, Book X:
And in this place [the text] teaches with apostolic authority, that even women were constituted in the ministry of the Church. In which office Phoebe was placed with the church that is in Cenchrae, Paul follows with great praise and commendation, enumerating also her outstanding works.
(Taken from PG 14:1278, my translation)
The other discussion of the topic can be found in Clement of Alexandria’s Stromata, where he clearly states the deaconess is the wife of an Apostle who ministers to women:
Even Paul did not hesitate in one letter to address his consort. The only reason why he did not take her about with him was that it would have been an inconvenience for his ministry. Accordingly he says in a letter: ‘Have we not a right to take about with us a wife that is a sister like the other apostles?’ But the latter, in accordance with their particular ministry, devoted themselves to preaching without any distraction, and took their wives with them not as women with whom they had marriage relations, but as sisters, that they might be their fellow-ministers in dealing with housewives. I t was through them that the Lord’s teaching penetrated also the women’s quarters without any scandal being aroused. We also know the directions about women deacons which are given by the noble Paul in his second letter to Timothy.
(Source, checked against the Latin edition at New Advent)
The earliest surviving ordination rites for a deaconess is Book VIII of the Apostolic Constitutions. The text tells to bishop to lay his hands on the deaconess-elect’s head, and say the following prayer:
O Eternal God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Creator of man and of woman, who replenished with the Spirit Miriam, and Deborah, and Anna, and Huldah; who did not disdain that Your only begotten Son should be born of a woman; who also in the tabernacle of the testimony, and in the temple, ordained women to be keepers of Your holy gates – do Thou now also look down upon this Your servant, who is to be ordained to the office of a deaconess, and grant her Your Holy Spirit, and ‘cleanse her from all filthiness of flesh and spirit,’ that she may worthily discharge the work which is committed to her to Your glory, and the praise of Your Christ, with whom glory and adoration be to You and the Holy Spirit forever. Amen.
(Source)
Notice that the prayer does not overtly specify a sacramental function, at least not by the heuristic of “essential form,” but instead asks for the Holy Ghost to “cleanse her from all filthiness” so that “she may worthily discharge the work.” However, the office of the deaconess is explicitly mentioned in the prayer, and the Holy Ghost is explicitly invoked so that she may “discharge the work.” This prayer thus meets the criteria I’ve outlined for validity. Whether this would qualify as a sacramental ordination, then, would depend solely on the intentions of the Bishop reciting the prayer.
The function of the Diaconissate is also outlined in the Apostolic Constitutions, specifically in Book III. Simply put, her function is the ministry of women for women. Specifically the office exists for the purpose of modesty, especially in situations where there may be occasion for scandal:
Ordain also a deaconess who is faithful and holy, for the ministrations towards women. For sometimes he cannot send a deacon, who is a man, to the women, on account of unbelievers. You shall therefore send a woman, a deaconess, on account of the imaginations of the bad. For we stand in need of a woman, a deaconess, for many necessities; and first in the baptism of women, the deacon shall anoint only their forehead with the holy oil, and after him the deaconess shall anoint them: for there is no necessity that the women should be seen by the men.
(Source)[Much later in the same document:]
A deaconess does not bless, nor perform anything belonging to the office of presbyters or deacons, but only is to keep the doors, and to minister to the presbyters in the baptizing of women, on account of decency.
This makes sense when we consider the culture of the ancient Mediterranean, and in fact many cultures where socialization is generally among same-gender lines (i.e. men hang out with men and women hang out with women); there are some places a man just cannot go.
This cultural connection is made plain in the Didascalia Apostolorum. The following lengthy passage instructs the bishop about the deaconess in chapter XVI:
Wherefore, O bishop, appoint thee workers of righteousness as helpers who may co-operate with thee unto salvation. Those that please thee out of all the people thou shalt choose and appoint as deacons: a man for the performance of the most things that are required, but a woman for the ministry of women. For there are houses whither thou canst not send a deacon to the women, on account of the heathen, but mayest send a deaconess. Also, because in many other matters the office of a woman deacon is required. In the first place, when women go down into the water, those who go down into the water ought to be anointed by a deaconess with the oil of anointing; … whether thou thyself baptize, or thou command the deacons or presbyters to baptize – let a woman deacon, as we have already said, anoint the women. But let a man pronounce over them the invocation of the divine Names in the water. And when she who is being baptized has come up from the water, let the deaconess receive her, and teach and instruct her how the seal of baptism ought to be (kept) unbroken in purity and holiness. For this cause we say that the ministry of a woman deacon is especially needful and important. For our Lord and Saviour also was ministered unto by women ministers, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the daughter of James and mother of Jose, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee (Mt 27:56), with other women beside. And thou also hast need of the ministry of a deaconess for many things; for a deaconess is required to go into the houses of the heathen where there are believing women, and to visit those who are sick, and to minister to them in that of which they have need, and to bathe those who have begun to recover from sickness.
(Source, redacted for space, emphasis mine)
Epiphanius of Salamis outlines the office of deaconess further, in the middle of his polemic against the Collyridians, a mostly-female sect in Arabia that he accused of Mariolatry. In the middle of a long diatribe against women serving at the altar, he tells us:
[It is plain] too that there is an order of deaconesses in the church. But this is not allowed for the practice of priesthood or any liturgical function, but for the sake of female modesty, at either the time of baptism or of the examination of some condition or trouble, and when a woman’s body may be bared, so that she will be seen not by the male priests but by the assisting female who is appointed by the priest for the occasion, to take temporary care of the woman who needs it at the time when her body is uncovered. For the ordinance of discipline and good order in the church has been well protected with understanding, by the standard of our rule.
(Panarion, §79, Frank Williams translation)
In the West, the earliest text we have for the “making” of a Deaconess dates to the 7th-century Gregorian Sacramentary, which does not give a rite but only a single prayer. This prayer was called the “Oratio ad Diaconam Faciendam” and we shall meet with it again in the Appendices, as it is the kernel from which developed the Diaconissal and Abbatissal rites I’ve translated in that section.
Hearken, O Lord, unto our prayers, and send forth the Spirit of thy benediction upon this thy servant, so that, being enriched by thy heavenly gift, she may be able to obtain the grace of thy majesty, and shew unto others the example of a well-lived life. Through Jesus Christ, etc.
(Original Latin:)
Exaudi, Domine, preces nostras, et super hanc famulam tuam Spiritum benedictionis emitte, ut cælesti munere ditata et tuae gratiam possit majestatis acquirere, et bene vivendi aliis exemplum præbere: per Dominum, etc.
Last but not least, however, it’s important to note that the Diaconissate did not catch on in the West the same as it did in the East. It is easy to chalk this up to biases, which I believe played a part, but the other thing to consider is that the institution of the Diaconissate is a product of the eastern Mediterranean’s cultural expectations on how men and women are to interact with each other.
Where the culture is different, then the institution from another (or previous) culture may either wither on the vine or come to be seen as unnecessary at best, irrelevant at worst. This does not make much sense though, as pre-industrial European cultures likewise tended to divide their spheres of socialization into “man’s world” and “women’s world.” I cannot pinpoint the cause for sure, and am unwilling to make any assertions. However I think it both useful and relevant to our inquiry.
An example of cultural change – or more accurately change of methods within a culture – can be found in Atto, bishop of Vercelli in first half of the 10th century. In a letter to “Ambrose the Priest,” He discusses the ministry of women, apparently from a historical standpoint. The letter is preserved in Patrologia Latina 134:113-115, and he connects the fate of the Deaconess to the changing traditions surrounding Baptism:
Now in the manner that those who were called “presbytides” took up the office of preaching, ruling or teaching, so too did the deaconesses take up the office of ministy or baptism; which now no longer takes place. This is because such young infants are now baptized on account of their parents’ religion, that there can be no shame to them, no stimulation of pleasure to get in the way of the ones doing the baptizing. (Lat. “nullus baptizantibus voluptatis possit stimulus impedire”)
Hence it is now established that a woman may not presume to baptize.
In other words, once the Church was no longer baptizing mostly adults and most baptizands were infants, the “baptizing women” part of the Deaconess’ job description became unnecessary and fell into disuse.
The same could be said for the Deaconess’ function of guarding the doors against unknown female visitors. During the persecutions this would’ve been a crucial task, but afterward when entire nations were atleast nominally Christian, this too was no longer needed. Much of the Deaconess’ job was phased out by the changing of times, of regimes, and of cultures.
For me, A side effect of this cultural framing makes it easy to see the pro-women’s ordination movement as a response to our modern post-industrial culture with its greater level of integration between the sexes; at the very least, this greater level of integration makes the question “why are we excluded” a natural and inevitable one.
Was the Diaconissate Sacramental?
The question remains of the Diaconissate’s sacramentality, i.e. was the deaconess sacramentally ordained, or just ceremonially appointed? The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches consistently tell us the answer is “no,” that she receives cheirothesia and not cheirotonia.
Within Catholicism, however, the question of “whether a woman can be ordained at all” did not seem to be taken up in earnest until the 13th century. We begin with St. Thomas Aquinas, in Book IV of his Commentaries on the Sentences, 25:2. We begin with Objections 1 and 3:
Obj. 1: To the first question we proceed thus. It seems that the feminine sex does not impede the reception of holy orders. For the office of prophecy is greater than the office of priest, since a prophet is an intermediary between God and a priest, just as a priest is between God and the people. But the office of prophecy was sometimes granted to women, as is clear from 2 Kings 22:14. Therefore, the office of priest can also apply to them.
Obj. 3: Furthermore, the power of holy orders is based in the soul. But gender is not in the soul. Therefore, difference in gender does not cause a distinction in the reception of holy orders.
Objection 1 makes sense (at least to us moderns), and Objection 3 is spot-on. Let us now read his responses to these objections:
And so even if all the things were presented to a woman that are done in holy orders, she would not receive holy orders, for since the sacrament is a sign, in those things that are done in the sacrament there is required not only the reality but also the signification of the reality; as it was said that in extreme unction it is required that someone be sick, so that a person needing healing might be signified. Therefore, since in the feminine sex no eminence of degree can be signified, for a woman, by the very fact that she is a woman, has a state of subjection, this is why she cannot receive the sacrament of holy orders. Now some have said that the male sex is necessary by precept, but not necessary to the sacrament, for also in the decrees a deaconess and a ‘presbytera’ are mentioned. But a woman who partakes in some act of a deacon, like reading a homily in the Church, is called a deaconess; while a ‘presbytera’ means a widow, for a presbyter is the same thing as ‘elder’.
Reply Obj. 1: Prophecy is not a sacrament but a gift of God; and so no signification is required, but only the reality. And since according to the reality, in those things that belong to the soul, a woman is no different from a man, since sometimes a woman is found to be better than many men with respect to her soul, this is why she can receive the gift of prophecy and others like it, but not the sacrament of holy orders.
And by this the answer is clear to the second and third objections. But concerning abbesses, it is said that they do not have ordinary governance, but governance as by commission because of the danger of cohabitation of men and women. But Deborah had governance in temporal matters, not priestly ones, just as now women can have temporal positions of rule.
Now that we’ve read this, I can make an observation: every word we just read strikes me as arbitrary and frankly unworthy of the Angelic Doctor’s great intellect. He is dismissing the question based on symbolic reasoning rather than making any real attempt attempt to grasp the underlying spiritual realities.
About 10 years before St. Thomas’ birth, we find a more terse dismissal in John the Teuton’s Apparatus to the Decretals of Gratian: “I respond that women do not receive the character, because of the impediment of their sex and the constitution of the Church: thence they cannot exercise the functions of Holy Orders.”
In fairness John the Teuton was writing a legal commentary, not a theological treatise. Yet he makes a theological statement that, again, cannot and does not stand up to the question of “How so?”
These two citations give the gist of Medieval opinion. When we turn to the Modern period, we start finding writers divided on the question.
To my knowledge, the first argument in favor of the Deaconess receiving a sacramental ordination was published in 1655 by French theologian Jean Morin, who published the following thought-exercise on page 143 of his Commentary on the Sacred Ordinations of the Church:
With one agreement and the same tenor, the three most ancient Greek Rituals hand down to us the ordination of a Deaconess, administered with similar rites and words proper to a Deacon. For either Ordination is called cheirotonia or cheirothesia. Either is celebrated by the Bishop at the altar, and at the same point in the Liturgy. And in either case is the hand imposed while the Bishop prays. In either is the stole placed on the neck, the [male] Ordained and the [female] ordained are communicated at the altar, and the Chalice filled with the Blood of Christ is placed into their hands that they may drink from it.
This may seem to overturn the common opinion of Theologians, which denies the capability of any ordination to women, indeed even attacks the contrary opinion with a grave censure. Yet the Greeks do not consider, by this ceremony, any proper cheirotonia to be imparted onto the women, as Saint Epiphanius most skillfully testifies: “Although there be an order of deaconesses in the Church, nonetheless they are not instituted for the work of the Priesthood, of for anything pertaining to its administraton; but so that the womanly sex may be counseled in modesty.” We refer to his entire pasasage in the third chapter [of this exercise].
Nor do I think some Theologians so severe that they would want to take away from women all the Church’s ministries directed toward women, along with conferring and receiving of some sacred acts by way of ceremonial inauguration. If someone were so harsh and severe as to contend that nothing pertaining to Ecclesiastical ordination can be granted to women, he will easily be refuted by the very ancient tradition of many centuries, and his harshness will lose its edge.
(Part III, Exercise 10:1:1)
Morin was simply musing, and I do not believe he could’ve possibly predicted the theological mushroom cloud that would spring from this simple thought experiment, which he describes on the title page to Part III as an exercise: “in which the scholastics customarily debate about the Sacrament of Order, and which may be advocated with plausibility according to the Fathers, and Rituals of every type: and the ancient teachings of the Eastern Church with which the West agrees.”
Interest in the subject increased sharply during the 20th century, especially after World War II, with a flurry of books and papers released on the subject.
The most significant debate during our time is a literary back-and-forth between Roger Gryson and Aimé Martimort, in the ten-year period between 1972 and 1982. The two scholars meticulously combed through the evidence and came to opposite conclusions, with Gryson asserting that deaconesses had been sacramentally ordained and Martimort asserting the contrary.
Martimort has also argued (convincingly, in my opinion) that the name “Deaconess” has meant different things in different centuries, having been forgotten and misremembered and then attached to a different kind of job description. If this is indeed true, then the terms “Deaconess” and “Female Deacon” become useless if we’re looking for a stable office exercised throughout the Western Church’s history. It becomes better to look for a consistent female office bearing the features of the ancient Deaconess, rather than looking for that particular name. I will not be pursuing that line of investigation, as this blog post is already too long and I don’t see much to help our current inquiry.
That said, I have no real interest in whether deaconesses were sacramentally ordained in the past, but only in whether a woman could be sacramentally ordained in any tense (past, present, or future). However that question cannot be answered unless we pay attention to what history has to say.
We can start with the Didascalia Apostolorum which may be read to imply the negative (emphasis on the word may), by forbidding women the ability to baptise in chapter XV:
That a woman should baptize, or that one should be baptized by a woman, we do not counsel, for it is a transgression of the commandment, and a great peril to her who baptizes and to him who is baptized. For if it were lawful to be baptized by a woman, our Lord and Teacher Himself would have been baptized by Mary His mother, whereas He was baptized by John, like others of the people. Do not therefore imperil yourselves, brethren and sisters, by acting beside the law of the Gospel.
My reading of this passage rests on contrasting its prohibition of women against its charge to the Bishop in chapter XVI, where the Bishop is told “whether thou thyself baptize [a woman], or thou command the deacons or presbyters to baptize.” Here we see that a Deacon is permitted to baptize, yet if the text forbids a woman in the previous chapter, and all Deaconesses are women, then it logically follows the text does not perceive the Deaconess on equal footing with the Deacon.
Another indication is that both Scripture and the Apostolic Tradition, as we have already mentioned, make a clear connection between the laying-on of hands and the intention to ordain. This makes it safe to assume that any rite that lacks the laying-on of hands – male or female – can automatically be ruled out as intending a sacramental ordination. However, there are many rites (especially in the East) that do involve the laying-on of hands, a similar prayer, the stole, and so forth. These must be understood according to the intention of the Ordinator, however all the Ordinators in question are long dead. The Catholic principle to be followed in this case is that “When form and matter are present and correct, intent must be assumed.”
However, the laying-on of hands isused for more than just ordination. According to Fr. Frank Bligh on page 91 of his 1956 book Ordination to the Priesthood: “the laying-on of hands simply serves to designate the precise persons upon whom the blessing of ordination is being called down, and to express the will of the bishop that they should receive it.”
Bligh cites Claude de Vert’s Explication simple, littérale et historique des cérémonies de l’église as an authority on this point. Bligh may have written in 1956, after Pius XII changed the norms for what constitutes a valid ordination, but Fr. de Vert wrote in 1710 when the medieval criteria were still very much in force. So let’s see what Bligh’s source has to say in Volume II, page 149:
Ordination has always been called chirotonia or chirotesia; though some relate the laying-on of hands over the Ministers at ordination, properly called chirotonia, to the ancient custom of raising and extending the hands to show and individually point out the subject upon whom they are laid, seen and chosen for some Office, or some charge, or some employ. And this, in effect, is the litteral meaning of the Greek word chirotonia, employed also in Holy Scripture for marking not only the ordination and consecration of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons; but also the election, elevation, and suffrage that they are given.
(Italics and capitalization as in original.)
In a footnote on the same page, he discusses cheirothesia: “It seems, in effect, that the chirotesia more specifically indicates the laying-on of hands done as part of Confirmation; and may also be understood for any other imposition of hands, even the non-sacramental or non-consecratory.”
This brings us back to our problem: in order to determine whether the deaconesses of the past received sacramental ordination, we need to find out whether the ordaining Bishop’s intention was cheirotonia or cheirothesia. Yet all the Bishops in question are long dead, and we do not yet have the technology to build a time machine and ask them directly. The best I can do is make a guess and hope it’s an educated one.
In any rite where the laying-on of hands was used and the prayer invoked the Holy Ghost for the office of deaconess, I think it safe to hazard a guess that “some women were, and some women were not.” My first reason for this is the description of the Insular Celtic conhospitæ matches the function of a sacramental Diaconate. For other regions, my second reason is that even if the rite for a deaconess was officially a cheirothesia, we can’t dodge the fact that there have always been individual bishops sympathetic to women’s ordination, and we have no idea how many kept those sympathies to themselves. Such bishops would have had no problem intending a cheirotonia while the world would’ve been none the wiser.
So let’s review what we’ve discussed thus far: the Diaconissate existed in the Early Church, and was connected to an order of Widows. It appears to have been instituted as part of the matrix governing gender relations within Eastern Mediterranean culture, and did not catch on as well in the West as it did in the East. What I have not been able to establish with certainty (and many minds better than mine have tried) is whether their ordination was intended as sacramental or non-sacramental, whether by the standards of their time or our own.
Church Councils and the Diaconissate
“Deaconesses appear to have been virtually unknown both in the ancient churches of the West and also in Egypt,” Fr. Paul Bradshaw tells us in his Ordination Rites of the Ancient Churches of East and West (p. 83). “Only in Gaul are any traces found of the existence of female deacons, and this institution was condemned by a succession of councils, Nimes (396), Orange (441), Epaone (517), and Orleans (533).”
While we have already seen two writings from Egypt discussing the office of Deaconess, Fr. Bradshaw is quite right about the Deaconess not catching on in the West. In fact it might be a good idea not only to talk about the Councils he mentions, but other councils the mention the Deaconess as well.
A point of context before we continue: the majority of councils discussed here are technically “synods,” that is, regional councils which legislated matters occuring at that place and time, and have no authority elsewhere. The Councils that do have authority are thus marked “Ecumenical,” and I have marked each entry accordingly. The Deaconess is only mentioned twice in the Ecumenical Councils however, once involving a decision whether to recognize those who convert from a heretical sect, and another decree setting the minimum age of the Deaconess at forty.
Ecumenical: First Council of Nicaea (325)
The First Ecumenical Council, Nicaea I, documents the Diaconissate as existing within a heretical sect. This is found within Canon 19:
Concerning the former Paulinists who seek refuge in the catholic church, it is determined that they must be rebaptised unconditionally. Those who in the past have been enrolled among the clergy, if they appear to be blameless and irreproachable, are to be rebaptised and ordained by the bishop of the catholic church. But if on inquiry they are shown to be unsuitable, it is right that they should be deposed. Similarly with regard to deaconesses and all in general whose names have been included in the roll, the same form shall be observed. We refer to deaconesses who have been granted this status, for they do not receive any imposition of hands, so that they are in all respects to be numbered among the laity.
(Source)
What we see here is that in 325 AD, the deaconesses of an heretical sect are not being denied clerical status because of their gender, but because their ordination took place without the laying-on of hands. However if we zoom out our focus to the “big picture,” this seems to be a moot point because the decree that ex-Paulinists must be “rebaptized unconditionally” implies they had no valid sacraments to begin with. Since it’s a truism that “no one can give what he does not have,” it stands to reason that a group who lacks valid sacraments cannot bestow them upon others, be they male or female. On that account I share this decree out of historical interest, while considering it irrelevant to our inquiry.
Other explanations would be: we could be dealing with biases on the part of the Council Fathers (which would be unlikely if deaconesses were well-established within fourth-century Catholicism), or that the Donatist Controversy was a long way from being resolved (probable), or that the Paulinists’ diaconissate ordination was intentionally non-sacramental (also probable), or that our current understanding of Holy Orders was a long way from being fully developed (very definitely true).
Regional: Synod of Laodicea (372)
The local Council of Laodicea gives us one canon on the subject, which has puzzled commentators. Canon 11 tells us: “Presbytides, as they are called, or female presidents, are not to be appointed in the Church.”
The puzzlement is over what the word “presbytides” means. It is plural for “presbytis,” and translates as something like “eldress” or “female elder,” possibly with the sense of “female priest.” Opinions vary on whether this word refered to an elderly woman who watched the behavior of other women in church, or a deaconess, or maybe an “arch-deaconess.” An extreme interpretation would be that an outlier bishop was either ordaining one or more women to the priesthood, or otherwise permitting them to exercise some or other priestly function (or atleast a function that looked “like something the priests do”).
Regional: First Synod of Nimes (396)
This is the first council expressly forbidding deaconesses. In its second Canon, we read: “Some persons have also suggested to us that against apostolic discipline and unknown even in the present time, in some places women may seem to be taken up into the diaconate (Latin: ‘ministerium leviticum’); which ecclesiastical discipline does not admit, because it is indecent and done against reason.”
This is a stronger condemnation than we find in later Councils, and what I find most interesting is the phrase “levitical ministry,” a euphemistic term for the Diaconate.
This suggests one of two things, either that 1. somebody was bestowing sacramental ordination on deaconesses, or 2. the Council framers misunderstood and thought that sacramental ordination was being bestowed. This may also be tied up with the Council’s focus on Priscillianism, yet we would expect the Canon’s wording to reflect that by saying “by the heretics” instead of “in some places.”
Regional: First Synod of Orange (441)
In the First Council of Orange, we begin seeing the prohibitions against the deaconesses in earnest. The 26th Canon tells us: “Deaconesses are on no account to be ordained. If any already exist, let them bow their heads to the benediction which is given to the people.”
I don’t see much need to comment on this, as this is a very simple “thou shalt not” type of decree.
Ecumenical: Council of Chalcedon (451)
We also have the Fourth Ecumenical Council briefly mention the diaconissate, this time as an institution within fifth-century Catholicism. The Canon simply declares a minimum age for diaconissal ordination, and then establishes a penalty for a deaconess who marries post-ordination: “No woman under forty years of age is to be ordained a deacon, and then only after close scrutiny. If after receiving ordination and spending some time in the ministry she despises God’s grace and gets married, such a person is to be anathematised along with her spouse.” (Source)
It is noteworthy that the word “ordination” in this Canon is actually χειροθεσία (cheirothesia) in the original Greek, which speaks to the core of the historical debate around women’s ordination: were women sacramentally ordained or were they non-sacramentally dedicated?
Regional: Synod of Epaone (517)
The Council of Epaone repeats the First Council of Orange, but identifies the Deaconess with the Order of Widows. The 21st Canon tells us: “The consecration of Widows, whom they call Deaconesses, we wholly abrogate from all our region.”
Regional: Second Synod of Orleans (533)
The Second Council of Orleans issues a ban on future diaconissal ordinations, while purporting to give a reason why. In Canons 17 and 18, we are told:
17. Women who, in opposition to the canons (sec. 231), have received the benediction as deaconesses, if they marry again, must be excommunicated. If, at the admonition of the bishop, they give up such a union, they may, after undergoing penance, be admitted to communion again,
18. To no woman must henceforth the benedictio diaconalis be given, because of the weakness of the sex.
Regional (Eastern): Quinsext Synod in Trullo (692)
The mention of Deaconesses tends to become more infrequent as we move forward in (Western) history, with one of the last mentions being in the Synod in Trullo. While this was primarily an Eastern Synod and never accepted by the Church of Rome, it gives us a snapshot of the thinking at the time.
In its 48th Canon, the Synod deals with the question of a married man who has been consecrated a bishop: “If anyone is consecrated bishop, his wife must go into a convent at a considerable distance. But the bishop must provide for her. If she is worthy, she may become a deaconess.”
Though this has no effect in the West and is thus outside our inquiry, it helps paint for us the historical picture in terms of the Deaconess’ history.
Regional: Sixth Synod of Paris (829)
Our final stop is the Sixth Council of Paris, which took place in 829. Most citations only give the title of the 44th chapter, about women being forbidden to approach the altar, handle sacred vessels, assist the priest with vesting, or distribute communion to the people. I give the entire chapter below, translated from Mansi 14:565, as I am unaware of another extant English translation:
We have learned through the relation of our true men, and also by sight, that in some provinces – contrary to divine law and canonical instruction – women have wantonly thrust themselves unto the holy altars and imprudently handled the sacred vessels, assisted the priests with their vestments, and (which is greater, more indecent, and more impertinent), distributed the Lord’s body and blood to the people, and to perform other things which are shameful to talk about. It should indeed be admired whence this illicit usage hath crept into the Christian religion, whereby women, whose sex is competent at nothing, have finally been able do, against the dictates of divine law, that which is forbidden to worldly men. There is no doubt that the carelessness and negligence of some bishops is the cause. So woe to you priests, unto whom pass the vices of those priests about whom it is read in the second book of Machabees: to wit when the priests postponed the duty of their religion, the temple of God being destitute of the sacred services, they themselves became free for illicit acts and carnal desires, so that with nothing prohibiting it, women thrust themselves into the sacred edifices, bringing in those things which the law did not allow (6:4, paraphrase). Now that women must not go near the altar, is abundantly found in chapter 44 of the Council of Laodicea, and title 26 in the decrees of Pope Gelasius. Therefore let this very illegal deed nevermore be done, because the entire Christian religion abhors it. It is forbidden! For this reason let each of the bishops very carefully and wisely take care that such a thing never again happen in their parishes.
Whoah, that was intense! I’d like to get a cup of tea and calm down for a moment before I continue writing.
[Waits a few minutes.]
Okay, I’m back. Let’s talk about what we just read.
In the first place, this chapter has a lot in common with the letter of Gelasius which it references, the same letter we discussed above in the section about “outliers.” However, the Synod gives us more detail than Gelasius did.
In both cases it’s clear that something was going on, because pre-modern governments typically didn’t make laws against something that nobody was doing. The Paris Synod lists four specific charges, namely: 1) entering the sanctuary, 2) touching the sacred vessels, 3) assisting priests with vestments, and 4) distributing Communion to the people. The Synod also claims other things were happening but refuses to name them, instead resorting to the language of sexual euphemism by citing “shamefulness” and then paraphrasing 2 Machabees 6:4.
The Synod also consistently appeals to legalism, and we find the same sort of hyperbole that we see in Gelasius’ letter, though considerably more toned down. Yet the real question is: who were these women and what were they actually doing?
The real answer is: we simply don’t know.
The Synod could be condemning anything from female altar servers, to sacristans, to extraordinary ministers of holy communion – literally any number of things that would be normal in a modern Novus Ordo parish – or it is possible the “careless and negligent bishops” had ordained these women to the Diaconate, or maybe some were among the “individual sympathetic bishops” we talked about before and ordained the women to even higher Orders.
Yet there is also another, darker, possibility: the priests may have been sexually abusing these women, and the Synod chose to lay blame on the victims. Readers familiar with pre-Vatican II documents will know that sexuality is almost never discussed directly, with euphemism and innuendo sometimes layered on so thick it becomes impossible to understand what the author is talking about. This possibility is compounded when we consider the Hierarchy’s discipline has a long history of prioritizing “avoiding occasion for scandal” and protecting the optics of holiness. Now I cannot and do not assert that this actually happened, but we likewise cannot be blind to the fact the text’s usage of sexual innuendo opens the door to that possibility.
In any case, there was definitely something happening in Gaul that motivated the Bishops to write about it, just as there was definitely something happening in Southern Italy that caused Gelasius to write his missive 335 years prior. The problem is that both accounts leave out important details, meaning we can only learn so much from these texts alone.
After the Councils
This should be sufficient to conclude our tour of Church Councils, from the mention of the Diaconissate as an established institution within Catholicism to the decrees of local Councils seeking to suppress it beginning in the late 4th century and continuing through the early 9th.
These Councils and Synods may or may not be the links in the chain by which the Diaconissate was subsumed into the Abatissate, and in some convents the Abbess would gain a status similar to that of a secular lord. The most powerful example of this would be the Abbess of Las Huelgas de Burgos; for 700 years – from 1187 to 1873 – the Abbess of this convent wore a miter, ruled over 50 surrounding towns and villages, had final say over which priests could minister within their boundaries or even be ordained, and answered to no one but the Pope himself. Similar authority was also exercised by the Abbesses at convents in Monteviliers, Wadstena, and Conversano, so we can easily confirm the Abbess of Las Huelgas’ situation was not an isolated one. In fact, to say that in some convents the medieval and early modern exercise of the Abbatissate was sometimes a strange mix of the diaconate, episcopate, and secular lordship would be an understatement indeed!
We started this section by quoting Fr. Bradshaw, and it seems appropriate to quote him at the end:
It is true that from the seventh century onward, the term “deaconess” appears in Italian sources, but here it apparently designates a category of women religious rather than an ecclesiastical ministry proper. Hence the Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus speaks only of an order of widows who, it insists, are not ordained and did not receive an imposition of hands. It seems, however, to have to protest rather too much against such an idea, if it were uncontroversial at the time, and the reasons given are not altogether logical: if “ordination is for the clergy, on account of their liturgical duties,” why are subdeacons and readers not ordained, according to this document, since they also have liturgical duties? It gives the impression that the author, or perhaps a later redactor, was anxiously seeking some rational grounds to defend a distinction that he believed to be right.
(Ordination Rites of the Ancient Churches of East and West, p. 83)
This bears out with what we have said of the Diaconissate’s later history, along with the past 370 years’ worth of debate over who or what the Deaconess actually was, sacramentally speaking.
Certain Arguments I Find Unconvincing
I’ve said repeatedly that the arguments of both sides don’t convince me. Let’s take a look at the least convincing arguments from both the “pro” and “con” side, and why I find them underwhelming.
Pro: “There Was a Break in the Understanding of Holy Orders”
Advocates for women’s ordination often argue that the Church has had many understanding of Holy Order through the centuries, something this article has already examined. But they often go further, claiming either a) the Early Church had no concept of sacramental ordination, b) ordination was a call from the community and not “a power the priest “possesses for himself,” or c) there was a major break in the Church’s theology of Order that developed between the Synod of Benevento in roughly 1091 and Lateran IV in 1215 (which brought about the distinction between “power of jurisdiction” and “power of order”).
Let’s deal with these individually.
Sacramental Concept of Ordination. As I’ve already established, the New Testament Church already had a concept of ordination as “transmission of spiritual power,” and a typological example in Moses’ ordination of the Seventy, with the resulting Semikhah lineage as the model the Apostles imitated (if they didn’t have it themselves). We also see Paul regularly mention the “seal,” and tell Timothy to be mindful “of the gift that is inside him with prophecy and the laying-on of hands.” It is clear to me that the Early Church had, at the very least, a nascent understanding that what they were doing was “an outward and visible sign of an inward invisible grace,” and the Biblical account in Acts 6 indicates the New Testament Church definitely understood ordination as a transmission of spiritual power. What was missing was the terminology, and the precise definitions, but not the sacramentality.
Ordination as Community vs Individual. I often see this is posited as an either/or, when this is actually a both/and. We have to begin with the fact the Early Church believed the Jesus narratives (and later the New Testament) as literal truth. And this Scriptural narrative is clear that Jesus did, in fact, transmit spiritual powers to the Apostles and the Seventy-Two; my point is not whether this is objectively true, but that the Early Church believed it to be objectively true. The narrative is also clear that the Apostles were able to the transmit some of this power to the Seven Deacons – and the full power to their successors, such as Matthias or Timothy – which indicates they possessed this power personally.
We see this again in St. Ignatius of Antioch’s emphasis on the Bishop as acting in persona Christi and the priesthood in persona Apostolorum, bearing in mind St. Ignatius wrote while at least one Apostle (St. John) was still alive, and was himself a student of St. Peter.
Yet that said, the only reason for ordination is the community. If the Scriptural narrative makes this clear in Jesus’ commission to the Apostles to “preach the Gospel” and culminating in the Great Commission. In fact without a community, there is no reason for ordination, not even a justification for it. This too is borne out both in Scripture and Tradition, as well as Reason and Experience. Thus, the reason I find this argument unconvincing is not only that it creates a false dichotomy, but justifies the dichotomy by putting words into the Early Church’s mouth that she didn’t actually say.
Break in Understanding Between 1091 and 1215. This argument is based on the distinction between “power of order” (the spiritual power to confect the sacraments) and “power of jurisdiction” (the juridical authority to govern), which came into full development around this time.
In context, the distinction between potestas ordinis and potestas jurisdictionis is properly a development within the history of Canon Law, not of sacramentology, with its object the question of “who gets to do what and when.” The basic concept behind this distinction clearly can be seen much earlier than the 12th century with Augustine’s distinction between validity and liceity, which we have already covered. In practice there is nothing in this distinction that affects the substance of the sacraments, only the discipline surrounding their administration. Thus I’m not convinced that this constitutes an inorganic rupture with the faith or practice of previous eras.
Con: “Jesus Clearly Intended for the Clergy to Be Male”
The typical form of this argument is that “Jesus only intended for male clergy because there were no female Apostles and he didn’t even ordain Mary!” This also takes the form of “The priest is male because Christ is male.”
The first form strikes me as a post-hoc justification, while the second strikes me as a post-hoc predicated upon symbolic reasoning. I cannot be convinced by this because it is second-guessing Jesus’ intentions at best. We do not know how much this decision was based on external factors such as concessions to the culture, or the Apostles’ contentions, or even his Mother’s opinions on individual candidates. (I know I’m reaching here, but my point is still made: there’s too much we don’t know and reading between the lines is presumptuous at best.)
The other problem here is that it presumes to gender God, whom the Church has always taught as transcending gender. This is something I’ve written about before, with Biblical and Patristic citations, amd something the modern Catechism states in CCC 239: “We ought therefore to recall that God transcends the human distinction between the sexes. He is neither man nor woman: he is God. He also transcends human fatherhood and motherhood, although he is their origin and standard.”
This is something we’ll discuss again after reaching the bottom of this rabbit hole. Yet it stands to reason that if God transcends gender, and this means all Three Persons of the Trinity transcend gender, then Christ the Second Person contains and transcends both genders too! And does, in the aspects of Logos and Sophia. Hence this does not hold water as an argument for prohibiting a woman from standing in persona Christi, and certainly does not prove that Jesus clearly intended for his priesthood to be male-only.
Pro: “We Can Prove the Early Church Had Women Priests and Bishops!”
This argument is the most public-facing, with “evidence” cited in the form of murals found in the catacombs, the occasional inscription bearing the words “presbytera” or “episcopa,” and the odd synodical canon or Papal decree (like Otranto’s reading of Gelasius that we discussed previously).
A point of context is in order here. It is fully legitimate to cite paintings and inscriptions as evidence for some or other event in Church history, as they form part of the archaeological record. My issue is not that the images or inscriptions are referenced, but that the public is told they “definitely” indicate things that do not conclusively follow. Many (but not all) of these interpretations seem to me an exercise in wishful thinking rather than a cautious reading.
I find these murals to be inconclusive, the readings of council documents strained, and the proposed meanings for “presbytera” and “episcopa” refuted by their actual use as referring to the wives of priests and bishops (the word “presbytera” is still used that way in Eastern Orthodoxy today, where a married priesthood is normative). For a detailed breakdown of why these are inconclusive, I will again refer the reader to Dr. Karras’ article Priestesses or Priests’ Wives where her conclusions come close to my own. I’ll only add that I’m a believer in cautious readings of the available data; and these types of conclusions cannot be said to follow from cautious readings.
Con: “Women Have Never Been Ordained in the Church’s History”
This is also false, as discussed in our section about “outliers.” While it is certainly not normative for Catholicism’s faith, praxis, or history, the fact remains that individual bishops in good standing have occasionally laid hands on individual women with the intent of diaconal, priestly, or episcopal ordination, albeit generally in secret. And the existence of even one ordained woman is enough to falsify the word “never.” You may dispute fact of sacrament all you like (whether the ordination was valid), but you cannot dispute fact of ritual (whether the ritual actually happened).
Pro: “The Words Benedicere, Consecrare, and Ordinare Used to Mean the Same Thing”
I’ve read enough Medieval Latin to know this is bogus. The contention here is that the Latin words for “bless,” “consecrate,” and “ordain” had identical meanings because medieval ordination rituals used them interchangeably. The truth is that these words had a lot of overlap in ritual texts, roughly analogous to how medieval and early modern exorcism manuals used the words “exorcizare,” “conjurare,” and “adjurare” interchangeably.
However, just as “exorcizare,” “conjurare,” and “adjurare” had three different technical meanings at the end of the day, the same is true for “benedicere” (a blessing which may be invocative or constitutive), “consecrare” (a setting-apart which may or may not have the implication of admission into a new Order not previously held), and “ordinare” (a setting-apart with the intention of admission into an order not previously held).
Con: “We Have to Judge Historical Questions According to the Current Teaching of the Magisterium”
This is a criterion given in Gerhard Cardinal Müller’s Priesthood and Diaconate, and it’s something I simultaneously disagree and agree with.
Where I can agree is in very a limited “institutional” sense, namely that within the context of any given institution, the members will have to agree on some basic premises in order for the institution to remain an institution; this includes the Roman Catholic Church and any other church. One of those premises is that the institution has a right to decide who can and who cannot serve as its officers. Whether these critera can (or should) change over time is related to what the institution sees as its First Principles. Modern-day religion is a free market, meaning those unwilling to accept the institution’s decisions have several options elsewhere.
Where I disagree is in the sense of free inquiry. This to me is both the more important sense and the entire purpose of this article. In a free inquiry – in order for it rightly to be called a free inquiry – all cards must be on the table, and no one is bound to accept the decrees of this or that magisterial body. However, they may take those decrees under advisement insofar as they rationally flow from the evidence and its conclusions. With that in mind I do believe Inter Insigniores and Ordinatio Sacerdotalis both logically flow from both the evidence insofar as theology’s limitations with handling the question, something we’ll discuss below, but at the same time their heavy-handedness is likely responsible for the debate becoming as toxic and rancorous as it has become, especially in Roman Catholic circles and those churches attempting to imitate Roman Catholicism.
Pro: “You’re a Misogynist if You Disagree with Even a Little of What I Tell You!”
This is not an argument, it’s a shaming tactic. And it’s a giant red flag about your personality.
It’s a truism that today’s activists are tomorrow’s authoritarians. I have no use or affection for either.
Con: “Shut Your Brain and Kowtow to What the Magisterium Tells You!”
This too is shaming combined with an argumentum ad auctoritatem fallcy, and equally a giant red flag.
That activist to authoritarian pipeline I just mentioned? Well, I half-jokingly point to this video claiming the Early Christians were the ancient world’s wokescolds.
Both: “Who Are You to Disagree with Me? I Have a Ph.D. in So-and-So!”
That’s not an argument, that’s called “Credentialism” and is a form of shaming. I encourage both disagreement and agreement (in that order), and most people who have something constructive to offer the conversation do so without feeling the need to hide behind some alphabet soup or shame the other party.
What Else?
These are not the only arguments I find unconvincing, just the major ones I can think of as I sit here writing. I’ll update this post as more come to mind.
Finally, we Have Our Context!
If you haven’t noticed, everything I said above – about 54 pages in Word – was intended to give the historical and theological context for everything we’re going to discuss past this point.
The debate looks simple at the surface level, at which both sides present probable interpretations of the available data and therefore, according to probabilism, have an equally valid claim. But I’m not interested in the surface level, which is why those 54 pages of context were necessary to grasp: 1.) why I find either side of the debate unconvincing, and 2.) why my conclusions do not follow the same lines of reasoning or even the same premises as almost everybody else’s.
But then, I’ve had 25 years to stew over this and deconstruct everything. Most people have neither the time nor the interest in that level of detail, and they’re probably better off because of it.
The Bottom of the Rabbit Hole
After 25 years, I’ve finally reached the bottom of the rabbit hole. While I may not have mapped it completely, at least I’ve been able to sketch out the contours along the way. So what have I learned?
From the perspective of formal theology, the question is unanswerable.
From the perspective of occult theory, the question is irrelevant.
Unanswerable
The question is unanswerable for formal theology, precisely because it lacks the conceptualization and vocabulary even to form the question, let alone provide a satisfactory answer. The problem is that formal theology lacks any framework for tackling the spiritual and energetic mechanics of initiatory lineages, the axis on which this question turns.
An example of this comes from a now-defunct blog by ISM bishop David Oliver Kling, who wrote on this question in the late 2000s. David being a fellow ex-Trad, I was very interested in what he had to say. He even led with the exact same question I did, stated verbatim: “Can the sacramental character be imprinted onto the soul of a woman,” and then immediately concluded “Because women have souls, the answer is yes.” The length of the present blog post should clue you in to my thoughts on his answer: at the time I found it simplistic, like a surface reading of Galatians 3:28 followed by “nothing to see here, move along.” Yet a “yes” position can go no further than that answer on theology alone, just as a “no” position can go no further than the Vatican’s.
I’ve reached the firm conclusion that the closest theology can get is a vague agreement with either Leadbeater’s “current arrangement,” David’s “women have a soul too,” and John Paul II’s “the Church has no authority.” This is because Sacred Tradition’s silence on the question of character assures us the only way to know for sure, without erring on the side of caution or presumption, is for Jesus to come back and tell us directly.
Irrelevant
Fortunately for us THAVMA readers, occult theory does give some insight into the mechanics of initiatory lineages, and a framework with which to tackle the question.
The question is irrelevant from the perspective of occult theory, because initiatory lineages have the potential to be malleable. That is, over the course of time lineages are able to are considered able to adapt, shift, change, or new lineages can even be created by way of contacting and egregores. Thus the question – “can the sacramental character be imprinted onto the soul of a woman” – becomes irrelevant because the “current arrangement” (as Leadbeater put it) is capable of being rearranged or being replaced entirely.
For example, if Jesus had received the Semikhah, it becomes an open question of whether he passed it to Apostles or gave them a new lineage entirely (his divinity suggests he could’ve done either). If the former, then Apostolic Succession would be a mutated form of Semikhah, or even a complete re-purposing of it. The fact that Apostolic Succession does not transmit the same spiritual abilities as the Semikhah lineage is what indicates this mutation. In essence the “current arrangement” of one exoteric lineage would effectively have rearranged into a completely new exoteric lineage and a completely new life.
In this context, the only remaining question is whether gendered lineages are capable of becoming other-gendered or both-gendered, a question I’m not aware of anyone investigating thoroughly. My present hypothesis, however, is that in such a cases either a) a new line may form based on the contacts of the old or b) an egregore can form and sustain the new lineage if either enough emotion is poured into it, or enough time has passed.
This Is Why There’s Always “Something Else”
I found it an important realization that theology alone is incapable of answering the question, as it forced me to realize why both sides of the argument turn to some non-theological arbiter and either dismiss or ignore the question of sacramental character.
For the extreme “pro” side, the something else is historical revisionism combined with the tenets modern of social justice movements.
For the extreme “con” side, the something else is historical revisionism combined with telling everybody to shut up and wishing the conversation would go away.
The majority of people on either side tend to be somewhere in between these extremes.
This “theology and” has also become true even for myself, and that during the course of writing this article. There are several places where I originally wrote about my positions in the present tense, only to go back and change “I insist” to “I’ve insisted.” Likewise when I first wrote the section discussing alternate and gendered lineages, I originally wrote that “I don’t see this subject as being very relevant to our inquiry.” Yet as I sit here writing two weeks later, I’ve come to see it as the only thing relevant enough to answer our inquiry.
For the rest of this blog post, I’m going “off the rails” theologically so you don’t have to take anything I say seriously. However, I’d like to flesh out some implications of the various things we’ve discussed.
What Would a Female-Lineage Christian Priesthood Look Like?
I honestly don’t know how to answer that question, but I a had recent DM conversation with a priest-friend gave me a clue on what to look toward the female aspects of the Trinity: the Mother, Sophia, and Shekhinah.
I might need to explain that remark, especially if you’re a first-time THAVMA reader. As I explained in God, Gender, and Modalism and amplified with a few Patristic citations in Mary, Matriarch of Christian Magic, God is simultaneously both genders and no gender; this implies that all three persons of the Trinity have both a male and female aspect. These aspects I respectively call Father-Mother, Logos/Son-Sophia, and Pnevma/Spirit -Shekhinah.
POINT OF CONTEXT #1:
There are several competing traditions regarding the identity of Sophia. The domonant position within orthodox Christianity is that Sophia is the Son, hence my association of Her as the female aspect of the Logos. However there was another tradition within orthodoxy that Sophia is actually the Third Person (Iranaeus voices this in Against Heresies, 4:20). Lastly there is the “Sophianist” tradition condemned by the Russian Orthodox in the 1930s and associated with Ecclesiastical Gnostics today, identifying Sophia with the Blessed Virgin Mary.
I am not the “theology police,” and Lord knows this article is already theologically weird. The reader is free to agree or disagree with any of these attributions, and is expected them to leave myself and other readers free to agree or disagree with their attributions as well.
And here’s another point of context, since most of my hate-readers like to jump to conclusions without having a “big picture” view, or caring to acquire one:
POINT OF CONTEXT #2:
Some may see the “male and female aspects” as analogous to the Wiccan claim that “The Goddess and the God are one.” It bears observation that Wiccan theology has a great deal of overlap with late 19th– and early 20th-century liberal Protestant theology except that Jesus’ redemption arc is taken out (which accords with Liberal Theology’s universalist bent), and their Trinity consists of Maiden, Mother, and Crone. This overlap is reinforced if we remember the founder of Wicca, Gerald Gardner, was himself a priest ordained within a very early-era ISM jurisdiction, the Ancient British Church; we should also recall that eclecticism and modernism were very much tolerated in some parts of the ISM. The fact that God has male and female aspects – and that Wicca’s theological basis is liberal Protestantism – implies this is something Wicca “baptized” from Christianity, although it often goes too far in overemphasizing the female just as pew-level Christianity often goes too far in overemphasizing the male.
This all reminds me that someday I need to read the copy of Wicca and the Christian Heritage that’s sitting on my bookshelf untouched. And the connection between Early Neopaganism and Liberal Protestantism is yet another rabbit hole I’ve been meaning to explore for a very long time (I began to explore it in a series of posts on the Stregoneria Italiana Project in 2006, but alas the site went down in 2010 and my notes were lost in the Great Hard Drive Crash of 2012).
With that understood – and please understand I’m only musing here – this is what my friend said to me: “In this scenario this is why the Church only has a male priesthood, as it only channels the power given it by the Logos which is masculine. It seems likely that women could channel the energies of [Sophia or Shekhinah], but that was not given to the Church directly as, frankly, it was not relevant to the mission given it by the Logos.”
I find this bordering on the “priest is male because Jesus is male” argument that I dismissed above, yet there’s an idea worth exploring here. The implication is that a female priesthood would be a Sophian lineage rather than a Logoic one, i.e. “The priest is female because Sophia is female.”
But what would a Sophian-lineage priesthood look like? If we take the aspects of Sophia – Wisdom and her daughters Faith, Hope, and Charity – we get a picture of a ministry dedicated to teaching, caring, healing, and praying. In other words a picture emerges similar to nuns with sacramental powers. An open question in my mind is whether these would be the same sacraments we know or another set of sacraments entirely.
It is also a related (but possibly minor) question of whether such a priesthood would vest the same as their male counterparts, or in a different style to represent their connection to Sophia. I think an example can be seen in the female bishops of the Catholic Mariavite Church. In every photograph I’ve ever seen, I’ve yet to see a miter but a veil with a crown (see image below). In occult theory this question is connected with the Principle of Correspondence, “as above so below”, in which one’s dress is indicative of the forces they represent and/or channel. Yet if a female priesthood channels the same force and aspect as their male counterparts, then the question becomes reduced from one of substance to one of style.
Image: Maria Izabela Wiłucka-Kowalska, first female bishop of the Catholic Mariavite Church, and first known woman to be ordained bishop in the modern era. (Credit: Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe)
Of course, this vision risks being over-simplistic as well as making the mistake of gendering God. It is also possible that the Catholic current is already simultaneously Logoic and Sophian, which would imply that the “current arrangement” could allow for the efficient flow of energy through a woman’s body and that it’s just not being implemented (or might require a Sophia-centric method of implementation).
The ideal place to investigate these speculations would be the Independent Sacramental Movement, which has ordained women to the priesthood and episcopate for roughly 100 years. The issue here is that we would need to find a jurisdiction that’s been around a few decades, and ISM jurisdictions are notoriously unstable. Failing that, we might look to find an all-female or at least predominantly-female lineage going back just as far (for example the case I mentioned earlier involving two priests ordained by a female bishop, who comes from an all-female lineage tracing back to 1986).
NOTE: I REMOVED SOME CASE STUDIES
I had originally wanted planned to write a brief discussion of the few stable ISM jurisdictions that ordain women, the even fewer successional lineages that have been all-female for at least 30 years, and the Roman Catholic Womenpriests organization. All of these would qualify as candidates for discerning whether the Yeshuic lineage/Catholic current was transferred intact, or whether the lineage may have “morphed” with the subtraction of gender as a consideration, or if they’re drawing current from an entirely different source, or whether a new egregore had formed entirely.
After researching what I could and writing several pages, I decided it was best not to commit that line of investigation to writing. The reason is that I would have to name names and make (likely very wrong) assumptions about several people I’ve never met and likely never will. I’ve been at the receiving end of such talk and assumptions, many times, and would prefer not to do such a thing to others.
I would like to share some general findings, though. From what interviews I was able to find, there were descriptions of female ordinands “feeling as though every molecule in her body was being re-arranged,” and similar verbal pictures that directly match the psychic impressions that come with receiving the sacrament of Holy Orders. This tells us nothing objective, though these impressions are hard to fake for those who have never experienced them, and generally not taken seriously by those who haven’t.
While this does not conclusively tell us whether the Yeshuic or any other lineage was being transmitted, it does tell us that something was happening with these women on a spiritual level.
Pastoral Considerations
This entire blog post has been speculative in nature, with no intention of being applied to the real world. However, it’s only fair if someone asks: if you’re suggesting it can be done, then should it be done?
I believe there is no “one size fits all” answer to that question, and that it depends on the denomination and on the individual congregation. I should probably explain.
One of the biggest issues to resolve is that of perception. In my own case, I was turned off by my in my initial run-ins with female clergy, because every last one I’d met was either a subversive pushing an agenda, or a broken person who’d rather have a chip on her shoulder than do some actual healing work. On the flip side I had also met several women whom I thought would be great at pastoral work, yet every last one firmly believed that women should not be ordained!
I had also noticed that among denominations that ordained women, there was a tendency to become subverted into modernism and preach politics rather than the Gospel. This turned me off even worse because I believe politicking has no place at the pulpit, not back then and certainly not now.
Yet in 2011, I encountered a different picture. I found myself in Orwigsburg, Pennsylvania, participating in an ordination with the Lutheran Orthodox Church (the ordinand, C. R. Bilardi, was a longtime friend and fellow-member of La Nostra Famiglia). This is an “Evangelical Catholic” synod that ordains women on equal footing with men, and three such women were present that day: two of the bishops were women, and so was the pastor of the church where the ceremony was held. To my surprise, the synod was conservative, the women were nothing like those I’d met previously, and basically everything I’d been led to believe was proven false. The reason for this is simple: there were no subversives, no agendas, and the synod was not attempting to imitate the Roman Catholic Church.
This leads us to our first point. There is too much bitterness in the Roman Catholic Church and in denominations and/or jurisdictions that try to imitate the Roman Catholic Church; a strong example can be found in the “Rome-o-Phobia” of many liberal ISM jurisdictions who constantly berate “the Romans” while trying to emulate them in practice. I believe there is a reason for the level of rancor and toxicty in those circles, and it may even be justified, but will not get into that here. Yet I’ve also noticed that as a denomination gets further away from Roman Catholicism (or its imitation or caricature), the less toxic and rancorous the discussion around women’s ordination.
The next point is at the parish level, where a given congregation’s openness to the prospect has to be taken into account and their convictions respected. There are congregations who simply cannot handle the idea of a woman at the altar (or even the pulpit), and forcing it them is a great way to empty your pews. Yet if you’re in any position to implement policies on this level, then I’m going to assume you passed your pastoral theology classes or at least read a couple of textbooks on the subject, so you should already know when to hold ’em and when to fold ’em.
Ultimately I think the best approach is that of the Anglican Church in North America, whose College of Bishops made a statement in 2017 stating that each individual bishop is at liberty to discern the matter for himself and decide whether to ordain women to the priesthood:
Having gratefully received and thoroughly considered the five-year study by the Theological Task Force on Holy Orders, we acknowledge that there are differing principles of ecclesiology and hermeneutics that are acceptable within Anglicanism that may lead to divergent conclusions regarding women’s ordination to the priesthood. However, we also acknowledge that this practice is a recent innovation to Apostolic Tradition and Catholic Order. We agree that there is insufficient scriptural warrant to accept women’s ordination to the priesthood as standard practice throughout the Province. However, we continue to acknowledge that individual dioceses have constitutional authority to ordain women to the priesthood.
On this subject I leave the last word to one of their female priests, Mother Hannah Miller King:
Since the inception of the ACNA, the College of Bishops has embraced a “dual integrities” approach to the ordination of women. … In other words, our bishops have agreed to disagree, honoring a diversity of convictions about ministry and mission. This is a model of Christian charity for all of us, a unity that does not demand unanimous agreement on every issue.
The dual integrities model gives us an opportunity to practice this graciousness. It provides the opportunity to “walk…with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” as the apostle Paul encourages us to do (Eph. 4:1-3).
I have seen this happen on the diocesan level when members of a task-force who represented a variety of perspectives on women’s ordination presented together on ways all of our churches can encourage and strengthen the ministry of women in their midst. In addition to a unified presentation, they shared stories of how they had personally grown in respect for each other and become true friends through the process, despite their differences of opinion. As I heard them speak, I felt grateful to be part of a church that creates space for this kind of connection to happen.
This practice of “bearing with one another” is not only good for the Church. It is also good for the world. We live in a society that is characterized by polarization and ultimatums. “If you don’t agree with me,” we are told, “you can’t have fellowship with me.” Often this goes much further: “If you don’t agree with me, you don’t deserve to exist.” In light of this, Christians who can live peaceably together – even with significant disagreements – can be a powerful apologetic to the broader culture.
Conclusions (Finally!)
Over the course of the past two years, I have found that Catholicism has many theological and historical rabbit holes; women’s ordination is not unique in this regard, nor is it the most convoluted. If anything it’s a secondary question that can only be answered after those of soteriology and ecclesiology, because one must first form a clear picture what the institution is and how it is supposed to function, before one can ask who is able to minister within that institution and how they may minister.
These rabbit holes, however, exhaust me. With each one I plumb, I find myself less and less inclined to defend or even identify with big-C Catholicism in its current, its post-Tridentine, or even its medieval form. I shall always continue to hold to the broad strokes of Catholic theology and spirituality, but with each new rabbit hole I discover, I find myself asking whether I should stop calling myself a big-C Catholic and just start doing my own small-c “catholicism-adjacent” thing.
And if someday I were to give up the name of “Catholic” and plant my own church, my core theological beliefs and sacramental abilities would remain the same as they are now. However, I would do a few things differently.
The Episcopate, Presbyterate, and Diaconate would be retained. All ordinations will be done by laying on of hands and the Ordination Prefaces found in the Roman Pontifical.
Polity would be semi-episcopal, semi-congregational. This is an approach I developed during my last exoteric ministry: “Everybody gets a say, but the buck stops at the Pastor.”
Women would be ordained to Commissioned Ministries (Lay Pastors and the Minor Orders) and a non-sacramental Diaconate.
I have no problem, in principle, with a woman assisting at Mass. Ten years ago I trained a woman to assist at the Latin Mass when David (an acolyte who followed me out of the Trad Movement) was unavailable. I then told her something I’ve felt bad about ever since, that she could only serve when a male wasn’t available; even this was beyond Trad operating procedure, but I had already long left the movement and was giving lip-service to something that didn’t feel right to me even then. My ne plus ultra for any layperson’s function is based whether said function requires the sacramental character of Order, which certainly isn’t required for someone to say “Ad Deum qui lætificat juventutem meam.”
Each bishop would be at liberty to ordain (or not ordain) women to the sacramental Diaconate and Presbyterate on a 10-year experimental basis, to give ample time for spiritual and energetic dynamics to be discerned. At the end of those ten years we will meet and discuss the results and make a final decision one way or the other.
For ecumenical reasons, all bishops will be male during that 10-year period. I see this as a pastoral matter. Until the 10-year experimental period is complete, I cannot and will not hold a definite position with any conviction; likewise the people in the pews deserve the chance to have a say in the direction their church is headed. Just as I favor cautious readings of the text and evidence presented, in sacramental matters I also favor erring on the side of caution for preserving successional lineages. Once a decision is reached with conviction it will become normative no matter which position that may be. Though for the sake of any Trads hate-reading this, the prospect of being the first to consecrate a woman into any Sedevacantist lineage carries a strange emotional appeal.
Each bishop is also at liberty to commission Lay Pastors to plant a congregation, preach, baptize, confer blessings, and perform weddings and funerals. This provision is intended as a temporary expedient for cases where an established community wishes to affiliate but there is no priest available, and a Pastor of some sort is needed until a Priest can be found, or (more ideally) one can be ordained from within the community.
Nobody is to be ordained without a community. The clergy are not ordained for themselves, but for the communities they serve. Each candidate is expected either to plant a community, or already be a part of an established community prior to ordination; this also applies to all clergy from other churches seeking incardination.
The Cure of Souls requires that the church be conscientious about the quality of her shepherds. Nobody shall be ordained to Sacred Orders, whom the bishop has not known for at least five years. Likewise all candidates for ordination (or incardination) will be required to undergo a Criminal Background check and Psychological Profile, at the candidate’s expense.
There will be a three-year training program before one is eligible for ordination to Sacred Orders, preceded by a Spiritual Year, making a total period of four years. The first two years will be dedicated to spiritual formation, and theology proper (dogmatic, moral, ascetic/mystical, and pastoral), church planting, public speaking, and so forth. The third year would focus on Pastoralia and would ideally include mentorship in ministering to a parish community.
Clerical Celibacy is not a requirement. I see this as unrelated to the question of women’s ordination, and is another rabbit hole I’ve yet to commit to writing. One benefit is that a careful observer can vet a married candidate more easily than a single one, simply by having a sit-down with the candidate and their spouse. Wives love to tell stories about their husbands, and husbands about their wives. Within two hours of watching their interaction you’re likely to learn more than you ever wanted to!
The only stipulation on the married/celibate question is that sexual continence will be required for a 24-hour period before saying Mass or confecting any other sacrament, with the exception of Extreme Unction on account of short notice. This is fully appropriate both out of respect to the sacraments, and the fact our clergy would likely also be magicians or at least magical-adjacent; I would answer any objections by pointing out that this stricture is far more lenient than the Grimoires.
This is all a fantasy. Doing this the right way would require more resources, more (wo)manpower, and more hours in a day than I can presently muster. This involves the well-being of souls, meaning that if you can’t do it right you have no business doing it at all.
All of this is to say, I came into this post with doubts and I still have doubts, at least from the perspective of theology. However I now realize this is a question that cannot be answered from theology alone, and that both sides have never intended to rely on theology to support their respective conclusions, nor on paying the mechanics of the sacrament much mind.
If I too must draw my conclusions from something other than theology, then logic dictates I should work from something that actually speaks to the substance and mechanics of the sacrament, which is exactly what I have done even if it is far outside the boundaries of what the Church is willing to allow.
That said, I end this on a note of hope. I may still have a doubt about whether the sacramental character of priestly ordination can be imprinted onto the soul of a woman, and a preference to err on the side of caution. But at least I now have a better framework for moving forward – based on Scripture, Tradition, Reason, and Experience – rather than perpetually sitting on the damned fence for another two and a half decades. This alone is worth the 64 pages that I needed to write, edit, and rewrite to get to this point, and from there to whatever conclusion I may find in the future.
Appendices: The Ritual-Texts that I Found
Laying-on of hands at the ordination of an Abbess. From a Roman Pontifical printed in 1595.
What Texts Did I Find?
In the main, we are talking about three Latin ritual-texts preserved in Melchior Hittorp’s De Divinis Catholicae Ecclessiae Officiis et Mysteriis (1568 and 1610), and also in Ludovico Muratori’s Antiquitates Italicae Medii Aevi (1778). Hittorp lists these rites as having come from the Ordines Romani in his table of contents, and Muratori tells us his source is “a book preserved in the Bibliotheca Casatenensis” on column 544 of his text.
The rites under consideration are the “Order for Making a Deaconess,” its original Latin title “Ordo ad Diaconam Faciendam,” and two rites both titled “the Ordination of an Abbess” that differ markedly from the rite for “Blessing an Abbess” found in the post-Tridentine Roman Pontifical.
For each text I give a commentary followed by a complete translation. As is common in older liturgical texts, sometimes the Latin gives an “incipit,” or the first words of an antiphon or scriptural reading. In these cases I have endeavored to reconstruct the text by referring to both the Bible and the Cantus database. Yet with a few exceptions, these are ultimately my “best guess” and there is plenty room for others to disagree.
Appendix A: Order for Making a [Female] Deacon
The Order for Making a Deaconess, from an 11th-century Romano-Germanic Pontifcal. (Manuscript CCC MS 163. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College.)
Commentary
Our first text is exactly what it says, and bears the title Ordo ad Diaconam Faciendam, which literally translates: “Order for Making a [Female] Deacon.”
Martimort, in his Deaconesses: An Historical Study, tells us this rite originates in the Mainz Pontifical, and is a synthesis of what he calls two “manuscript families,” one he calls the “Bamberg family” and the other “Cassino-Vallicellian.”
The texts from which I’m working are those found on column 161 of Hittorp, and column 554 of Muratori. The text in both sources is the same, so I’ll be following Hittorp’s edition in the main as it is more complete, while referencing Muratori when the texts diverge.
The rite begins with the bishop placing a diaconal stole over the candidate’s neck, followed by the rubric that as the candidate goes into the church while both tips of the stole are showing under her tunic (original: portat illud super collum suum, sic vero ut summitas orarii ex utraque parte sub tunica sit). The text does not tell us whether “tunica” refers to an ordinary tunic or to a tunicle.
The ritual text then gives us the Mass propers for a diaconissal ordination, with only the incipits for the Introit, Gradual, Offertory, and Communion antiphons as well as the pericopes. In the full translation given below, I will supply the missing text as best I can figure it out. I would point out that there is room for legitimate disagreement should someone perceive a different scriptural citation than mine, owing to the ambiguity of some of the incipits.
The Orations are given in full, of which the Collect summarizes the theme of the rite:
O God, lover of chastity and preserver of continence, graciously hearken unto our prayers, and gaze mercifully upon this thy servant, so that she who, for fear of thee, vows herself to the purity of continence, may receive the sixty-fold fruit of chastity from thy largesse, and also live everlasting. Through Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord, etc.
(Original Latin:)
Deus, castitatis amator et continentiæ conservator, supplicationem nostram benignus exaudi, et hanc famulam tuam propitius intuere, ut quæ pro timore tuo continentiæ pudicitiam vovet, et sexagesimum fructum continentiæ, et vitam æternam te largiente percipiat: per Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum, etc.
The ordination proper takes place after the Gradual, which is the same place as the ordination of a male deacon. This begins with the Prostration and the Litany of the Saints, followed by this prayer:
Hearken, O Lord, unto our prayers, and send forth the Spirit of thy benediction upon this thy servant, so that, being enriched by thy heavenly gift, she may be able to obtain the grace of thy majesty, and shew unto others the example of a well-lived life. Through Jesus Christ, etc.
(Original Latin:)
Exaudi, Domine, preces nostras, et super hanc famulam tuam Spiritum benedictionis emitte, ut cælesti munere ditata et tuae gratiam possit majestatis acquirere, et bene vivendi aliis exemplum præbere: per Dominum, etc.
This is followed with the actual prayer of ordination, “in the manner of a Preface.” In the Roman Rite, this “prefatial” form is used for all ordinations and solemn consecrations, so this is in keeping with the usual format. The prayer mentions the gift of prophecy in general and the example of the Prophetess Anna in particular, but the closest I can find to an essential form, i.e. the part that expresses the intent of the ritual, is singularly focused on the ordinand’s living of a holy life:
Grant therefore unto our petition, O Lord, unto this thy servant the thirtieth fruit amongst the married, [and] amongst the widows the sixty-fold. Be there within her mercy with clarity, generosity with humility, honesty with liberty, sobriety with humanity.
(Original Latin:)
Da ergo, Domine, ad petitionem nostram huic famulæ tuæ inter conjugatas tricesimum, cum viduis sexagesimum fructum. Sit in ea cum misericordia districtio, cum humilitate largitas, cum libertate honestas, cum humanitate sobrietas.
From here the Tradition of the Instruments follows, involving the stole (which makes no sense to me as she was already wearing it!), a veil which she places on her own head, a ring, and a crown, after which the Mass continues with the Gospel. The Mass continues as usual, with the newly-ordained deaconess receiving communion inside the sanctuary.
Sacramentality. Thu ends our quick survey of the rite, and now time to ask whether this rite would’ve qualified for a sacramental ordination then, or whether it could qualify for one now.
To both questions I have to answer in the negative, for the simple fact there is no laying-on of hands.
As we’ve discussed earlier, the laying-on of hands, at minimum the right hand, is absolutely necessary for a sacramental ordination to be valid. This is called the essential matter, and was understood as such at the time this rite was composed as well as in our own time. As we traced the laying-on of hands through history, we have already established that this action is so essential, that without it there is no ordination. Nor is there indication of even an intention to ordain.
Even if an imposition of hands were inserted into the rite, it would still fall short in both ancient times as well as modern. For this I suggest focusing on the consecratory preface as a whole rather than cherry-picking for an essential form. If we do so, we find the preface includes references to the gift of prophecy in general and the Prophetess Anna in particular. However we find neither an explicit nor implicit invocation of the Holy Ghost within this preface, nor mention of the office to which the candidate is being ordained.
The Lingering Question. What I’d really like to find is some primary-source documentation of the rite’s context, particularly what the future held for women who underwent this ritual. Were they nuns who exercised a function within their convents? Were they on the level of the “lay readers” and “eucharistic ministers” we find in the Novus Ordo, or were they documented as performing a liturgical ministry alongside their male counterparts?
The closest hint to that seems to come from Martimort, who speaks to this rite by name and concludes that: “The ceremony as a whole is nothing more than the consecration of a widow, only more solemn than the formulary of that name, the [Consecration of a Widow Who Has Professed Chastity], which follows it in the Mainz pontifical.”
Translation of the Ritual Text:
(Source: Hittorp 1610, columns 161-162. With reference to Muratori 544.)
When the Bishop blesses [Lat. “benedicit”] a deaconess, he places an Orarium (a stole) on her neck. Now when she proceeds to the Church, she carries it upon her neck, but thusly so that the tips of the stole show from underneath her tunic.
The Mass for consecrating a Deaconess:
Introit Antiphon: (Ps. 53:3) Save me, O God, by thy name, and judge me in thy strength.
(Psalm 53:4): O God, hear my prayer: give ear to the words of my mouth.
V. Glory be to the Father. Save me, etc.
Collect.
Let us pray. O God, lover of chastity and preserver of continence, graciously hearken unto our prayers, and gaze mercifully upon this thy servant, so that she who, for fear of thee, vows herself to the purity of continence, may receive the sixty-fold fruit of chastity from thy largesse, and also life everlasting. Through Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. R. Amen.
A Lesson from the Epistle of Blessed Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians. (1 Cor. 6:15-20)
[The text only gives the incipit and then says “Look at the Wednesday after the 12th Sunday after Pentecost.” For convenience, I give the pericope in full. Interested readers might turn to the Sarum Lectionary, where these Wednesday pericopes were preserved long after fading from the Roman Lectionary.]
Brethren: Know you not that your bodies are the members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them the members of an harlot? God forbid. Or know you not, that he who is joined to a harlot, is made one body? For they shall be, saith he, two in one flesh. But he who is joined to the Lord, is one spirit. Fly fornication. Every sin that a man doth, is without the body; but he that committeth fornication, sinneth against his own body. Or know you not, that your members are the temple of the Holy Ghost, who is in you, whom you have from God; and you are not your own? For you are bought with a great price. Glorify and bear God in your body.
[Note: The complete text of the Gradual is not given in either manuscript, just hints that the text expects the bishop to know. Between scriptural references and the Cantus database, I have attempted to reconstruct the full text to the best of my ability.]
Gradual. (Psalm 24:17b) Deliver me from my necessities. V. (Ps. 24:1) To thee, O Lord, have I lifted up my soul.
Alleluia, Alleluia. V. (cf. Ecclus. 45:9) The Lord loved her and adorned her, and clothed her with a robe of glory. Alleluia.
[Muratori does not give the entire Gradual but only the Verse: “The Lord loved her and adorned her, etc.”]
Then with the candidate prostrate before the altar, the Litany of the Saints is begun. Which being finished, the Bishop says this prayer over her:
Hearken, O Lord, unto our prayers, and send forth the Spirit of thy benediction upon this thy servant, so that, being enriched by thy heavenly gift, she may be able to obtain the grace of thy majesty, and shew unto others the example of a well-lived life. Through Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. R. Amen.
The consecration follows in the manner of a preface.
[It is truly meet and just, right and salutary, that we should at all times and in all places give thanks unto thee, O holy Lord, almighty Father, everlasting] God, who kept Anna the daughter of Phanuel in eighty-four years of undefiled widowhood, after the lot of the conjugal yoke had fallen to her for barely seven years, so that by mixing pray with fasting day and night thou, the just remunerator, mayest lead her to the grace of prophecy at the circumcision of thy Christ. And who hast ordered, through the Apostolic intention of this ordination to the hands of holy women, that the younger and adolescent members of her sex be provided for by the visitation of holy chrism: vouchsafe, O almighty and most loving God of all things, the arduous and laborious dedication of this thy servant, a dedication not far from agreement with perfect virginity. For thou, the maker of every creature, rightly understandest the world’s enticements cannot be avoided, but when she is come to thee, the souls once brought to life through thee are never seduced by the terrible delights and lure or pleasures. For by the senses which thou hast vouchsafed to infuse, nothing is more desirable than thy kingdom, nothing more terrible than thy judgement. *Grant therefore unto our petition, O Lord, unto this thy servant the thirtieth fruit amongst the married, and amongst the widows the sixty-fold. Be there within her mercy with clarity, generosity with humility, honesty with liberty, sobriety with humanity.* May she meditate on thy work day and night, so that on the day of her calling she may merit to be such as thou willed through the spirit of prophecy. Through Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. R. Amen.
Then let the Bishop place the stole on her neck, saying:
May the Lord clothe thee with the stole of joy.
Before everyone, she places on her own head the veil which she received from the altar, with the antiphon: [She is] betrothed to him, [whom] the Angels…
Prayer:
Hearken, O Lord, we beseech thee, unto the prayers of thy servant, that with thine assistance she may safeguard the grace of chastity which she has received. Through Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. R. Amen.
At the giving of the ring:
Receive the ring of faith, the seal of the Holy Ghost, that thou mayest be called the spouse of Christ, if thou serve him faithfully. Through Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. R. Amen.
At the crown:
Receive the seal of Christ on thy head, that thou mayest be made his bride: and if thou remainest in him, thou wilt be crowned for eternity.
Then let him say the Antiphon: With this ring the Lord hath purchased me.
This prayer follows:
Lord, we beseech thee, that with thine assistance, a pious devotion may lead thy servant into thy favor, insofar as she merits to be cleansed from all sordid deeds, and reconciled to thee through Christ. Look upon her with a serene countenance and forgive her sins; mercifully suspend the severity of thy judgement against her, and kindly pour upon her the clemency of thy mercy. Through the same Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. R. Amen.
Then begins the Gospel according to John. (John 3:27-29)
[Note: Again the text does not give the entire pericope, only the incipit. The ending-point of the pericope is only my best guess based on context.]
[The Sequence of the Holy Gospel according to John.]
At that time: Jesus responded and said: A man cannot receive any thing, [unless it be given him from heaven. You yourselves do bear me witness, that I said, I am not Christ, but that I am sent before him. He that hath the bride, is the bridegroom: but the friend of the bridegroom, who standeth and heareth him, rejoiceth with joy because of the bridegroom’s voice. This my joy therefore is fulfilled.]
After the Gospel she makes an offering to the hand of the Bishop, while the choir begins the Offertory:
(Psalm 50:3) Have mercy on me, O Lord, [according to thy great mercy. And according to the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my iniquity.]
[The Offertory antiphon is missing in Muratori, who goes immediately to the Secret and calls it the “Offertory of the Mass.”]
Secret Prayer.
O Lord we bessech thee, that the gifts of thy servant and consecrated one, which she has offered to thee on account of the consecration of her body, may at once bring healing for her soul. Through Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. R. Amen.
Within the Action [proper Hanc igitur].
We therefore beseech thee, O Lord, graciously to accept this oblation of our service, as also of thy whole family: which I offer to thee for the welfare of thy servant, mayest thou receive her lovingly and mercifully on account of the devotion of her mind, gladly vouchsafing to hear and protect those who seek thine aid. Dispose our days in thy peace: deliver us from eternal damnation, and count us amongst the number of thine elect. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Benediction.
– Bless, O Lord, this thy servant, purchase with the precious blood of thy Son. R. Amen.
– May the blessing of thy grace follow forth, for which she longs: and without offense may she shew forth a worthy service to thy majesty. R. Amen.
– May she finish her course of life without any stain of sin, and by good works may she overcome the enemy. [Muratori adds:] R. Amen.
– What thou thyself vouchsafe to grant, [who livest and reignest, God, world without end. R. Amen.]
Communion antiphon.
(Psalm 2:11) Serve ye the Lord with fear: [and rejoice unto him with trembling.]
Postcommunion.
O God, the originator of good works, purify the heart of thy servant, that thou canst find within her nothing worthy of punishment, but worthy of wearing a crown. Through Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. R. Amen.
Now the Deaconess receives communion within the sanctuary [lit. “receives communion amongst the sacred mysteries”], and after Mass the Bishop confirms the peace to her by way of pastoral proclamation, so that she may possess it in quietness and security.
Here endeth the Ordo ad Diaconam Faciendam.
Appendix B: Ordination of an Abbess, Text #1
Commentary
If the above-mentioned rite was underwhelming, then I promise that Abbatissal ordinations will put us on more interesting ground. In fact what fascinates me is that these rites look like they were deliberately constructed (or pruned) to prevent the transmission of a sacramental ordination, as we shall see when we examine the texts.
In Muratori, text under consideration is found in column 560, and titled (in Muratori), “Ordination of an Abbess Professing a Monastic Rule. A Chapter from the Canon of Theodore, Archbishop of the English.” (Lat. “Theodori Anglorum Archiepiscopi”)
Hittorp’s text is found on column 164 and bears a similar title, except he refers to Theodore as “Theodore, Bishop of the Angels.” (Lat. “Theodori Angelorum Episcopi”)
The reference is to St. Theodore of Tarsus, archbishop of Canterbury from 668 until his death in 690. So Muratori more likely has the correct reading.
The rite is essentially the same in both Muratori and Hittorp, with the latter sometimes supplying texts the former expects the celebrant to know.
We begin with the words, “In the Ordination of an Abbess, the Bishop should sing Mass and bless her in this manner.” No set of Mass propers is given, so the Bishop would likely say the Mass of the Day, or an appropriate Votive Mass as the rubrics for that say allow.
The Mass is said “… up until the Gospel, the Abbess-Elect prostrates herself before the altar behind the bishop, with two or three of her Sisters, and there let the Litany [of the Saints] be said.”
Thus far the Mass, the prostration, and the Litany are all features of proper ordinations, so there’s nothing untoward here and nothing special.
After the Litany the text prescribes the Our Father, followed by suffrages, that is to say a series of versicles and responses, many of which are also found in the Rite of Exorcism. These suffrages conclude with the Dominus vobiscum and three Collects. The most important of the three Collects is the following, as it mentions the Abbess-Elect by name and states the reason for the ritual:
Graciously hear, we beseech thee, O Lord, the prayers of our humility, and upon this thy servant (Name) pour forth the grace of thy benediction, insofar as, through the imposition of our hands, she may be found among the faithful stewards, and may she merit to please thee along with the flock placed under her care. Through Jesus Christ, etc.
(Original Latin:)
Exaudi, quæsumus, Domine, preces humilitatis nostræ, et super hanc famulam tuam N. gratiam tuæ benedictionis infunde, quatenus per nostræ manus impositionem inter fideles dispensatrices inveniatur, et cum subditis sibi gregibus placere tibi mereatur: Per Dominum.
After these Collects follows the Preface of Ordination, preceded by the rubric: “Then he places his hand on her head while saying this Preface.”
We can assume that the bishop would use his right hand, which is also found in the rite for the ordination of a deacon, though either hand will be sufficient. Keep this in mind.
During the Preface, there are a few sentences that could be taken as an essential form. The strongest candidate among these sentences looks like it was adapted from the rite of Confirmation:
Send into her, O Lord, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and fortitude, the spirit of knowledge and piety, and fill her with the spirit of thy fear, by thy prevenient grace, insofar as she neither commands, does, teaches, nor instructs nothing to the contrary.
(Original Latin:)
Inmitte ei, Domine, spiritum sapientiæ et intellectus, spiritum consilii et fortitudinis, spiritum scientiæ et pietatis, et reple eam spiritu timoris tui, quatenus tua gratia præventa nihil contrarium præcipiat, faciat, doceat, constituat, vel jubeat.
After the Preface, Hittorp’s text moves to the Tradition of the Instruments, directing the Bishop to hand the Abbess a copy of her order’s Rule. Muratori’s text, however, directs the bishop to say another prayer while keeping his hand on her head:
Almighty everlasting God, for the sake of us who pray to thee, pour forth the affluent Spirit of thy benediction upon thy servant, N., so that she who is today made Abbess through the laying-on of our hands, may be instructed in thy sanctification, may remain thy worthy elect, and never afterward be unworthily separated from thy grace. Through Jesus Christ, etc.
(Original Latin:)
Omnipotens sempiterne Deus, affluentem Spiritum tuæ benedictionis super famulum tuum N. nobis orantibus propitiatus infunde, ut quæ per manus nostræ hodie impositione abbatissa instituitur, sanctificatione tua, digna et electa permaneat, ut nunquam pusmodum de tua gratia separetur indigna. Per Dominum, etc.
For those interested, this prayer is something of a plot twist: in the Gregorian Sacramentary, this is the exact same prayer used in the Benediction of a Queen. The only difference is that the word “Queen” is swapped out for “Abbess,” and evokes for us an image of the powerful Abbesses of Las Huelgas and Conversano.
After this the Te Deum is sung and the rubrics differ depending on whether the ceremony is being carried out in the new Abbess’ own monastery or in another one. The rubrics do not say to continue the Mass (though this may be assumed), and that’s pretty much that.
So what can we say about this rite? We can pretty much say that it was constructed by somebody who knew what they were doing, in that they wanted to give the “look and feel” of an ordination without actually giving one. In fact the closest thing an an essential form is pretty much ripped from the rite for Confirmation, and is accompanied by a “quatenus” clause that can restrict the grace being given. While this is a step up from what we found in the “Ordo ad Diaconam,” we still find that this rite cannot bestow an ordination in the sacramental sense, and to me it is clear that the rite’s composer never intended for such a thing to happen.
Thus far you may find yourself disappointed. I promise that the next section will be more interesting.
Translation of the Ritual Text
At the Ordination of an Abbess [Lat. “In Ordinatione Abbatissæ”], the Bishop should sing Mass and bless her in this manner: after the introit antiphon – and the given collect, and the remaining office of the Mass, until the Gospel – the Abbess-Elect prostrates herself before the altar behind the bishop, with two or three of her Sisters, and there let the Litany [of the Saints] be said.
Then, the Our Father.
With these suffrages:
V. Save thy servant.
R. Lord God, who trusteth in thee.
V. May the Lord preserve her and give her life.
R. And make her blessed on earth.
V. May the Lord keep watch over thy going out and thy coming in.
R. From henceforth now and forevermore.
V. May the Lord keep thee from every evil.
R. May the Lord watch over thy soul.
V. May the Lord send thee aid from on high.
R. And from Sion watch over thee.
V. May the enemy accomplish nothing within her.
R. And the son of iniquity shall bring her no harm.
V. Be unto her, O Lord, a tower of strength.
R. From the face of the enemy.
V. Arise, O Lord, and help her.
R. And deliver her on account of thy name.
V. Lord, hear my prayer.
R. And let my cry come unto thee.
The suffrages being finished, the bishop shall bless her, [her] head bowed, saying:
V. The Lord be with you.
R. And with thy spirit.
The prayer follows.
Let us pray. Grant, we beseech thee almighty God, the effect of thy mercy unto our affections, and for thy servant to follow the gift of thy grace, she whom we have chosen for the oversight of souls. So that by thy generosity, we may please thee by her election. Through Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. R. Amen.
Another.
Graciously hear, we beseech thee, O Lord, the prayers of our humility, and upon this thy servant (Name) pour forth the grace of thy benediction, insofar as, through the imposition of our hands, she may be found among the faithful stewards, and may she merit to please thee along with the flock placed under her care. Through Jesus Christ, etc.
Another.
O God, the initiator of all works, who through Moyses thy servant.
[Note: the text says to “Look at the ordination of an abbot” for the remainder of the prayer. I provide it in its entirety below from Hittorp, as it is missing in Muratori.]
O God, the initiator of all works, who through Moses thy servant instituted decrees for the governance of congregations, we humbly pour forth our prayers to thee, and exhort by reason of devout minds, that thou wilt deign to fortify this thy servant N. with the grace of thy protection, who by election and restraint hath been made Abbess of thy sheep this day. And thus grant her to rule the sheep commended and subject to her, and obtaining with them the kingdoms of heaven. And by thy help, O Lord, may she, upheld by Apostolic teaching, enter joyfully into the gates of paradise with hundred-fold fruit, and in praising thee, O Lord, may she be worthy to hear: “Well done, good and faithful servant, because thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will place thee over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord” (Matt. 25:21). Which do thou vouchsafe to grant: who livest in perfect Trinity.
The he says in a clear voice.
V. World without end.
R. Amen.
V. The Lord be with you.
R. And with thy spirit.
V. Let us give thanks unto the Lord our God.
R. It is meet and right so to do.
Then he places his hand on her head while saying this Preface.
It is truly meet and just, right and salutary, that we should at all times and in all places give thanks unto thee, O holy Lord, almighty Father, everlasting God. Look, we beseech thee, upon this thy servant, whom we ordain in thy name to the place of watching over these nuns. *Send into her, O Lord, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and fortitude, the spirit of knowledge and piety, and fill her with the spirit of thy fear, by thy prevenient grace, insofar as she neither commands, does, teaches, nor instructs nothing to the contrary.* But may she instruct the minds of her disciples by the example of good works as much as by words: and may she judge that anything contrary to what she teaches her students is not to be done. May she be in all things prudent and considerate: may she be chaste and sober, may she be of worthy life, may she be wise and humble, may she be kind and charitable, may she be assiduous in receiving the poor and the pilgrim, may she be joyful in hospitality, may she be pious and merciful, and may she always hold up mercy above judgement, that by right decisions she may find favor with thee. Make her, O Lord, to love thee alone with all of her powers, to love fasting, to discipline her body, not to be attracted to illicit delights, to shoulder her tribulations, to view no one with hatred, to be zealous in eschewing injustice and jealousy, to avoid having any kind of suspicion, and to pray fervently in thy name for her enemies. Make her always acknowledge that she must render an account of her stewardship to thee, and as many souls as she hath under her care, let her bring them, without a doubt, before the seat of thy majesty. On which account we beseech thee, most loving shepherd, that thou wilt illuminate her heart with the grace, according to the prayers of our humility; by virtue of which [heart] may she be able to discern and temper each case, so that the strong have what they want, and the infirm that from which they do not fly. Grant unto her, O Lord, the spirit of compunction, that she may always love the things of heaven, and keep before her mind’s eyes the unquenchable fire of Gehenna; insofar as she may keep herself blameless in the sweetness of supernal joys, and the bitterness of infernal torments; so that she may rejoice with those sheep entrusted to her at the tremendous judgment, and may receive her unfading crown amongst thy saints in the kingdom of heaven. Through Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. R. Amen.
[Muratori’s text directs the bishop to say the following prayer, which is adapted from the Benediction of a Queen:
[Almighty everlasting God, for the sake of us who pray to thee, pour forth the affluent Spirit of thy benediction upon thy servant, N., so that she who is today made Abbess through the laying-on of our hands, may be instructed in thy sanctification, may remain thy worthy elect, and never afterward be unworthily separated from thy grace. Through Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. R. Amen.]
Then he hands her the Rule [of her religious order], saying:
Receive the rule handed down from the holy fathers, for ruling and keeping watch over the flock entrusted to thee by God. Insofar as God himself hath comforted thee, and human weakness hath permitted thee.
Prayer.
Almighty Lord God, who made Moyses’ sister Maryam to go forth with the other women between the sea-waters, then to come joyfully to the shore with timbrels and choirs: we humbly pray thee for this thy servant, who this day on her motherly throne hath been made Abbess over all subject to her, that she may so guard all thy servants in the monastic rule, insofar as she, by thy help, may enter joyfully with all of them into thine everlasting glory, and there exulting with all the Angels singing new songs, may she follow the lamb whither he goeth, Christ our Lord. Who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. R. Amen.
Another.
Grant we beseech thee, Almighty God, that thine Abbess-servant may instruct souls by showing and exercising what is right, and by the example of her good works. And may she, O most loving shepherd, receive the gift of everlasting reward. Through Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. R. Amen.
Another.
O Lord, fountain of all that is good and reward-giver of all that is just, grant unto thy servant, we beseech thee, to bear well the dignity she has obtained, and by good works may she make good her standing. Through Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. R. Amen.
For if the ordination of an Abbess takes place within her own monastery, then the “Te Deum” is begun. The people acclaim “Kyrie eleison.” Afterward this prayer is said on account of the dignity obtained:
O God whom all power and dignity are made to serve, give unto thy servant’s dignity a prosperous effect, by which she may always fear thee and ceaselessly contend to please thee. Through Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. R. Amen.
Likewise if the Abbess is consecrated elsewhere, the entire chorus of nuns proceeds back on the way to the monastery in a fashion that shews honor, with crucifixes, holy water, incense and the Gospel-book, and at the very entrance to the church is begun the “Te Deum.” The crowd acclaims the “Kyrie eleison.” And the priest follows by saying the aforementioned prayer, “O God whom all power and dignity.”
Here endeth the Ordinatio Abbatissæ monasticam regulam profitentis, Capitulum ex canone Theodori Anglorum Archiepiscopi.
Appendix C: Ordination of an Abbess, Text #2
Commentary
The final rite we will discuss is the “Ordination of an Abbess Professing a Canonical Rule,” and is found in column 162 of Hittorp. Muratori gives this text in Column 549.
The rite begins much like the one above, instructing the Bishop to sing the Mass up until the Gospel, then the prostration and the Litany. After the Litany the Bishop then says, verbatim, the Collect “Hearken, O Lord, unto our prayers” as we shared above in the Ordo ad Diaconam Faciendam.
This is followed by another prayer that specifically asks God to pour his benediction upon “this thy servant whom thou hast deigned to take up into Holy Orders.” (Latin: “…super hanc famulam tuam, quam ad sacrum ordinem assumere dignatus es.”)
The Bishop then says the ordination Preface, without being instructed to lay hands on the candidate’s head. The essential form, however, reads like an expanded version of the essential form for the ordination of a (male) Deacon:
Pour forth upon this thy servant whom we faithfully dedicate unto thy divine office, we beseech thee O Lord, the grace of the Holy Ghost, so that at all times her service may worthily please thee, and with the right hand of thy power do thou vouchsafe to bless, sanctify, and consecrate her unto the condign work of thy ministry, insofar as the act of ministration entrusted to her is faithfully executed, and may she be strengthened by the virtue of seven-fold grace from the same Holy Ghost.
(Original Latin:)
Effunde quæsumus Domine super hanc famulam tuam, quam in officium divinum fideliter dedicamus, gratiam Spiritus Sancti, ut tibi omni tempore ejus servitutus dignanter complaceat, eamque dextera tuae potentiæ benedicere et sanctificare, sive consecrare digneris in opus ministerii tui condignum, quatenus actum ministrationis sibi creditæ fideliter exsequatur, et ejusdem sancti Spiritus septiformis gratiæ virtute corroboretur.
For comparison, here’s the essential form for the ordination of a Deacon:
Send forth into him, we beseech thee, O Lord, the Holy Ghost, by whom he may be strengthened with the gift of thy seven-fold grace for the work of executing thy ministry.
(Original Latin:)
Emitte in eum, quæsumus, Domine, Spiritum Sanctum, quo in opus ministerii tui fideliter exsequendi septiformis gratiæ tuæ munere roboretur.
This, right here, 100% fulfils the requirement for a valid sacramental form, although qualified by a “quatenus” clause that implies an intention not to impart a permanent character. Between this and the lack of imposition of hands, it is clear that whoever composed this rite intended for it not to bestow a sacramental ordination, but my mind can’t help but raise the question of whether this ordination preface may have been redacted from a text already extant.
The rite continues in the usual way, the Mass ends, and so on.
Translation of the Ritual Text
At the Ordination of an Abbess [Lat. “In Ordinatione Abbatissæ”], the Bishop should sing Mass and bless her in this manner: after the introit antiphon – and the given collect, and the remaining office of the Mass, until the Gospel – the Abbess-Elect prostrates herself before the altar with two or three of her Sisters, and there let the Litany [of the Saints] be said.
Which being finished, the Bishop blesses her, head bowed, saying:
V. The Lord be with you.
R. And with thy spirit.
Let us pray.
Hearken, O Lord, unto our prayers, and send forth the Spirit of thy benediction upon this thy servant, so that, being enriched by thy heavenly gift, she may be able to obtain the grace of thy majesty, and shew unto others the example of a well-lived life. Through Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. R. Amen.
Another.
Humbly, O Lord, do we implore thine omnipotence, so that upon this thy servant whom thou hast deigned to take up into Holy Orders, thou mayest pour forth the gift of thy benediction. And grant her the grace of consecration, that whatever precepts she giveth – by thy leave – she may guard in Jesus by thy protection. Through the same Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God.
V. World without end.
R. Amen.
V. The Lord be with you.
R. And with thy spirit.
V. Let us give thanks unto the Lord our God.
R. It is meet and right so to do.
[Note: At this point in the previously-discussed rite, the Bishop was directed to lay his hand on the Abbess-Elect’s head for the ordination preface. For whatever reason, no such rubric occurs here.]
Preface.
It is truly meet and just, right and salutary, that we should at all times and in all places give thanks unto thee, O holy Lord, almighty Father, everlasting God. Be thou near to our prayers, be thou near to our vows, be near to our acts of service, be near to our consecrations, O thou who marvelously dispensest all things through the Word of thy power, and administer that which thou hast dispensed! Who dost beautify thy Church with many flowers, while thou dost make her radiant, instructed by the examples of men and of illustrious women. Thou who hast also deigned impress this thy handmaid, of the weaker sex [de infirmiori sexu], into the work of thy service. *Pour forth upon this thy servant whom we faithfully dedicate unto thy divine office, we beseech thee O Lord, the grace of the Holy Ghost, so that at all times her service may worthily please thee, and with the right hand of thy power do thou vouchsafe to bless, sanctify, and consecrate her unto the condign work of thy ministry, insofar as the act of ministration entrusted to her is faithfully executed, and may she be strengthened by the virtue of sevenfold grace from the same Holy Ghost.* Therefore we pray, O Lord, may the Spirit of wisdom and piety rest over her, and fill her with the Spirit of thy fear. Grant also unto her weightiness of her actions and oversight of her living, that she may meditate on thy law day and night, keep thy commandments, obey thy words, pursue sacred readings, look away from earthly and transitory affairs, and at all times occupy herself with good works. May she overcome all depravity of lust and hold fast to the love of honest chastity, so that she can run forth with an inextinguishable lamp at the bridegroom’s arrival and enter into the royal gate joined with the chorus of prudent maidens; and may she not be cast out with the foolish. May there abound within her the form of every virtue, modest authority, a constant sense of propriety, a purity of innocence, and an observance of spiritual discipline. May thy precepts shine forth in her keeping of them, so that by the example of her chastity, she may shew an example worthy of being imitated by thise subject to her. May she persevere in Jesus Christ with firmness and stability, shewing forth the pure and good witness of conscience. And by thine aid may she so perform the ministry she has received, and by thy gift may she merit to come unto her reward. Through the same Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. R. Amen.
Then he hands her the Rule [of her religious order], saying:
Receive the rule of holy conversation, and straightaway the grace of divine benediction, and thus through this, may thou prevail to be shown to the Lord undefiled on the day of strict judgement, together with the flock entrusted to thee. May he vouchsafe to help thee, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. R. Amen.
The prayer follows:
Almighty Lord God, who made Moyses’ sister Maryam to go forth with the other women among the sea-waters, then to come joyfully to the shore with timbrels and choirs: we humbly pray thee for this thy servant, who this day on her motherly throne hath been made Abbess over all subject to her, that she may so guard all thy servants in the monastic rule, insofar as she, by thy help, may enter joyfully with all of them into thine everlasting glory, and there exulting with all the Angels singing new songs, may she follow the lamb whither he goeth, Christ our Lord. Who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. R. Amen.
Another.
May thy grace, O Lord, we beseech thee, always bless thy servant, and lead her blameless unto life everlasting. Through Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. R. Amen.
For if the ordination takes place within her own house, the “Te Deum” is begun. The people acclaim “Kyrie eleison.” Afterward this prayer is said on account of the dignity obtained:
Let us pray.
O Lord, fountain of all that is good and reward-giver of all that is just, grant unto thy servant, we beseech thee, to bear well the dignity she has obtained, and by good works may she make good her standing. Through Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. R. Amen.
Likewise if the Abbess is consecrated elsewhere, the entire chorus of nuns proceeds back on the way to the monastery in a fashion that shews honor, with crucifixes, holy water, incense and the Gospel-book, and at the very entrance to the church is begun the “Te Deum.” The crowd acclaims the “Kyrie eleison.” And the priest follows by saying the aforementioned prayer, “O Lord, fountain of all that is good.”
Here endeth the Ordinatio Abbatissæ canonicam regulam profitentis.
Appendix D: Benediction of an Abbess from the Roman Pontifical
Commentary
I include this last rite to give a basis for comparison, so one may observe how the Rite evolved from its origins in the Ordines Romani or the Mainz Pontifical, into the form it was later to take. This rite comes to us in the aftermath of the Council of Trent, so we must keep in mind that the compilers of the Roman Pontifical likely had a different mindset than those of the book’s predecessors.
The Rite’s title is “De Benedictione Abbatissæ,” or, “Of the Benediction of an Abbess.” I am working from a Pontifical dated 1859 and digitized at the Internet Archive, and from the transcription found at Liturgia Latina.
This rite follows the general format of the preceeding and even keeps several of the prayers, while introducing elements also found in post-Tridentine formulae of ordination.
One example of this is the Oath, which we did not encounter in previous rites. The Oath comes in two forms, one for houses under the Bishop’s jurisdiction and another for those exempt from it. In the second form, there were some strange Latin constructions such as at the end of this clause: “I … shall be faithful and obedient to Peter the Apostle and the holy Roman Church, and to our lord, the Lord N. Pope N.” The Latin here is “et Domino nostro Domino N. Papae N.” and I cannot figure out what the text is trying to say, so I have translated the words exactly.
The consecratory preface is entirely different from the above rites. During this preface, the Bishop is instructed to place both hands on the Abbess-Elect’s head for a space of words, and then told to remove his hands for the rest of the preface. For us this delineates the intended essential form:
So that she who has been chosen by thee and is constituted Abbess by the imposition of our hands, may remain worthy by thy + sanctification; and may she never be unworthily separated from thy grace.
(Original Latin)
Ut quae per nostrae manus impositionem hodie Abbatissa constituitur, + sanctificatione tu digna, a te electa permaneat; et nunquam postmodum a tua gratia separetur indigna.
While this does not constitute a valid sacramental form, the preface later directly compares her to St. Stephen and by extension the Seven Deacons, asking God to help her “persevere in this ministry.”
The Tradition of the Rule is similar to those in the rites given above. The one thing the Pontifical adds – or makes more explicit – is the enthronement of the Abbess, which takes place before the Te Deum.
For those wishing to see how the rite looks in practice, I direct you to this video on YouTube, “The Blessing of Mother Cecelia as Abbess and Professions.” The audio is very quiet when either the Bishop or the Abbess is talking, but it should be possible to follow along if you have a copy of the text in hand.
Translation of the Text
The woman chosen and confirmed to be an Abbess should be blessed [Lat. “benedici debet”] on a Sunday, or at other days on which virgins are consecrated, if no one is consecrated and veiled beforehand. Otherwise it may be done on any day, in this manner: the Bishop is prepared with all Pontifical vestments made ready at the altar and credence table, and says Mass in the customary manner as far as the Alleluia, if it is said, or the last Verse of the Tract or Sequence exclusive. Meanwhile the Abbess-Elect, wearing her habit, hears Mass in choir. The Mass of the day should be said with the Bishop as celebrant, with a Collect for the Abbess-Elect under one conclusion, as below.
Prayer.
Grant, we beseech thee, O Lord, unto this thy servant whom thou hast vouchsafed to beautify with the honor of virginity, a completed effect of the work being begun: so that she may merit to lead to completion that which she has begun, and offer unto thee the fullness of perfection. Through Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. R. Amen.
After the Gradual, or Tract, or Sequence has been said until its final verse exclusive, the Bishop goes to the faldstool before the center of the altar, and sits there wearing his miter. Now the Abbess-Elect – after having come out of the monastery accompanied by two senior matrons, and the veil being put off from before her face, having been presented to the Bishop, knelt before him, holding in her hands the written mandate of election [lit. “written paper”], its signed signature hanging therefrom – makes the due oath of fidelity to her Bishop ordinary, in this manner:
I, N., of the monastery of N., about to be ordained [Lat. “ordinanda”] Abbess, promise before God and his Saints, and before this solemn congregation of sisters: fidelity and worthy subjection, obedience and reverence, to my mother the Church of N. (she names the Church under whose ordinary jurisdiction she is subject), and unto thee, N. my lord, Patriarch (or Archbishop, or Bishop) of the Church of N., and to thy successors, according to the instructions of the sacred Canons, and according as the inviolable authority of the Roman Pontiff commands.
But is she is exempt, the makes the oath this way:
I, N., of the monastery of N., of the order of Saint N., of the diocese of N., from this hour and previously, shall be faithful and obedient to Peter the Apostle and the holy Roman Church, and to our lord, the Lord N. Pope N. (Lat. “Domino nostro Domino N. Papæ N.”) and to his successors canonically entering, and to thee, or for the time being my religious Superior, according to the rule of our holy Father N. and the aforesaid constitutions of the Order.
Then Bishop holds over his knees the book of the Gospels, with the bottom part of the book facing the Abbess-Elect. The Abbess-Elect places both hands on the Scriptures, and touches them while saying:
So help me God, and these holy Gospels of God.
She then hands the mandate to the Bishop, who rises with his miter, and prostrates himself over the faldstool. The Abbess-Elect prostrates herself on the carpet, to his left, and the choir says the Litany [of the Saints].
[After the petition] “That thou wilt vouchsafe to give rest to all the faithful departed,” the Bishop rises with his miter, hold the crozier in his left hand, and turns toward the Abbess-Elect, saying:
That thou wilt vouchsafe to bless this Elect. R. We beseech thee, hear us.
Then he says:
That thou wilt vouchsafe to bless and sanctify this Elect. R. We beseech thee, hear us.
Then he again prostrates, and the Litany is continued. Which finished, the Bishop rises while the Abbess-Elect remains prostrate. And standing facing her, he takes off his miter and says:
Our Father, etc.
V. And lead us not into temptation.
R. But deliver us from evil.
V. Save thy servant.
R. Lord God, who trusteth in thee.
V. May the Lord send thee aid from on high.
R. And from Sion watch over thee.
V. She shall receive a blessing from the Lord.
R. And mercy from God her savior.
V. Remember thy congregation.
R. Which thou hast possessed from the beginning.
V. May the Lord keep watch over thy going out and thy coming in.
R. From henceforth now and forevermore.
V. May the Lord keep thee from every evil.
R. May the Lord watch over thy soul.
V. Lord God of power, convert us.
R. And shew us thy face, and we shall be saved.
V. Lord, hear my prayer.
R. And let my cry come unto thee.
V. The Lord be with you.
R. And with thy spirit.
Let us pray.
Let us pray. Grant, we beseech thee almighty God, the effect of thy mercy unto our affections, and for thy servant to follow the gift of thy grace, she whom we have chosen for the oversight of souls. So that by thy generosity, we may please thee by her election. Through Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. R. Amen.
Let us pray.
O God, the initiator of all works, who through Moses thy servant instituted decrees for the governance of congregations, we humbly pour forth our prayers to thee, and exhort by reason of devout minds, that thou wilt deign to fortify this thy servant N. with the grace of thy protection, who by election and restraint hath been made Abbess of thy sheep this day. And thus grant her to rule the sheep commended and subject to her, and obtaining with them the kingdoms of heaven. And by thy help, O Lord, may she, upheld by Apostolic teaching, enter joyfully into the gates of paradise with hundred-fold fruit, and in praising thee, O Lord, may she be worthy to hear: “Well done, good and faithful servant, because thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will place thee over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord” (Matt. 25:21). Which do thou vouchsafe to grant: who livest and reignest God:
These things being said, the Abbess-Elect rises, and kneels before the Bishop, who extends his hands before his breast and says the following:
V. World without end.
R. Amen.
V. The Lord be with you.
R. And with thy spirit.
V. Let us give thanks unto the Lord our God.
R. It is meet and right so to do.
It is truly meet and just, right and salutary, that we should at all times and in all places give thanks unto thee, O holy Lord, almighty Father, everlasting God. Pour forth the affluent spirit of thy + benediction upon this thy servant, graciously in answer to our prayers.
The Bishop places both of his hands, fingers held together [lit. “not disjoined”] upon the Abbess-Elect’s head, and holds them there while he continues:
So that she who has been chosen by thee and is constituted Abbess by the imposition of our hands, may remain worthy by thy + sanctification; and may she never be unworthily separated from thy grace.
The Bishop removes his hands from the Abbess-Elect’s head, continuing with his hands extended before his breast:
This day, O Lord, may she receive from thee perseverance in good works, constancy among adversities, tolerance among tribulations, desire among fasting, mercy among impieties, princeliness [Lat. “principatum”] in her lowliness, hatred for pride, love her faith, vigilance in Teaching, continence in chastity, abstinence in lust, moderation in diversities, doctrine in morals. By thy help, O Lord, may she persevere in this ministry, as the holy Stephen merited by the Apostles to be chosen a Levite. May she despise worldly conversation from this day forward: by thy generous blessing, O Lord, may she scorn the things of the present, love the things of heaven, and desire that which is eternal. May she be a figure and example of justice, for governing and ruling her Church faithfully; and may she behave as a worthy speculatrix amongst her colleagues. May she be of great counsel, industrious of oversight, and efficacious of discipline. By thy grant, O Lord, may she so serve thee blamelessly with a clean heart, so that she may come to the reward of the supernal vocation, with the hundredfold fruit in compounded interest, with the crown of justice, to the gifts of thy heavenly treasures.
He says the following in the low voice which can only be heard by those close to him.
By the gift of our Lord Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with the Father and the Holy Ghost, world without end. R. Amen.
Then the Bishop, still not wearing the miter as above, says while standing:
Let us pray.
O God whom all power and dignity are made to serve, give unto thy servant’s dignity a prosperous effect, by which she may always fear thee and ceaselessly contend to please thee. Through Christ our Lord. R. Amen.
Let us pray.
O Lord, fountain of all that is good and reward-giver of all that is just, grant unto thy servant, we beseech thee, to bear well the dignity she has obtained, and by good works may she make good her standing. Through Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. R. Amen.
Let us pray.
Grant we beseech thee, Almighty God, that thine Abbess-servant may instruct souls by showing and exercising what is right, and by the example of her good works. And may she, O most loving shepherd, receive the gift of everlasting reward. Through Christ our Lord. R. Amen.
Let us pray.
Almighty Lord God, who made Moyses’ sister Maryam to go forth with the other women between the sea-waters, then to come joyfully to the shore with timbrels and choirs: we humbly pray thee for this thy servant, who this day on her motherly throne hath been made Abbess over all subject to her, that she may so guard all thy servants in the monastic (or canonical) rule, insofar as she, by thy help, may enter joyfully with all of them into thine everlasting glory, and there exulting with all the Angels singing new songs, may she follow the lamb whither he goeth, Christ our Lord. Who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. R. Amen.
Then the Bishop sits down and pouts on the miter. He places the Rule [of her Order] in hands of the Abbess, who is kneeling before him, saying:
Receive the rule handed down from the holy fathers, for ruling and keeping watch over the flock entrusted to thee by God. Insofar as God himself hath comforted thee, and human weakness hath permitted thee. Receive motherly care for the Lord’s flock, and the care of souls. And by walking in the precepts of divine law, mayest thou be for them a leader toward the pastures of heavenly inheritance, by the help of our Lord Jesus Christ, who with the Father and Holy Ghost liveth and reigneth God, world without end. R. Amen.
Then, if she had not previously been veiled while a nun, the Bishop removes the miter, rises, and blesses the veil, which is held in front of him by one of the ministers. He says:
Humbly we pray thee O Lord, that thy benign + benediction may descend upon this vestment about to be placed on the head of thy servant; and may this vestment be blessed, consecrated, immaculate, and holy. Through Christ our Lord. R. Amen.
Let us pray.
O God, the head of all the faithful and savior of the entire body, with thy right hand + sanctify this veil, which is given thy servant on account of thy love, and about to be placed on her head for love of thee and thy most blessed mother, for through this is ti given to be mystically understood; and may she keep her body and soul without contamination, so that when she shall come to the perpetual reward of the Saints, she may, prepared alongside the wise virgins, under thy leadership, merit to enter into the wedding-banquet of everlasting happiness. Thou who livest and reignest God, world without end. R. Amen.
Then he sprinkles the veil with holy water; then sitting, having put on the miter, he places is upon the head of the Abbess so that it hangs upon her shoulders, and before her breast, and up until her eyes, thus saying:
Receive the sacred veil, by which thou mayest be known to have contempt for the world, and to have subjected thyself truly, humbly, and with the effort of thine entire heart, a spouse perpetually to Jesus Christ, who shall defend thee from all evil and lead thee unto life everlasting. R. Amen.
If the Abbess is already veiled, then the above is omitted. These things being finished, all rise and the Bishop proceeds with the Mass, which the Abbess hears in her place [Lat. “in loco ad partem audit”]. Once the Offertory has been begun by the choir and read by the Bishop, the Bishop sits on the faldstool before the center of the altar, putting on the miter. And the Abbess, preceded by two servants carrying two lighted torches, comes from her place accompanied by the two matrons, and kneels before the Bishop, and in succession offers him the two aforesaid torches, and kisses the hand of the bishop receiving them. Then she returns to her place.
Now the Bishop washes his hands, rises, takes off the miter and continues the Mass.
[NOTE. The text does not specify whether the Bishop goes to the faldstool right after the Offertory antiphon or after having offered the gifts (i.e. after the Veni sanctificator). The rubric for the Bishop to wash his hands indicates this could happen at any time between the Antiphona ad Offertorium and the Lavabo.]
Secret.
By these offerings, O Lord, we beseech thee, make this thy servant fit for perpetual virginity; so that the doors being opened, at the advent of the highest King she may be worthy to enter the heavenly kingdom with joy. Through Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. R. Amen.
After the Bishop receives communion himself, he gives communion to the Abbess. Then, putting on the miter, he washes his hands, thence continues the Mass up until the Benediction exclusive.
Postcommunion.
Regard, O Lord, the due service of thy servant, so that among the uncertainties of human weakness, she who trusts in thy protection may be oppressed by no adversity. Through Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. R. Amen.
After saying “The Mass is ended, go in peace,” or “Bless we the Lord” and the “Placeat tibi,” etc.
The Bishop, wearing the miter, enthrones the Abbess on the throne if she is in her own monastery, saying:
Receive full and free power to rule this monastery and its congregation, and all things known as pertaining to its regimen: interior and exterior, spiritual and temporal.
But if the benediction takes place outside her monastery, the Bishop says:
Stand in justice and sanctity, and take the place delegated to thee by God. For God is powerful, and may he increase his grace unto thee.
Then the Bishop stands at the Abbess’ right hand, facing the altar. Taking off the miter, he begins singing the Te Deum, the choir continuing it.
The Te Deum is said in its entirety, and the Bishop by the throne without the miter until the end of the Hymn.
Meanwhile as the Hymn is being sung, the Abbess goes back to the monastery accompanied, as before, and she is followed into the door by the senior nuns, and led to the choir, where all the nuns make reverence to her, genuflecting before her one by one, and she receives them kindly by a kiss.
The Hymn being finished, the Bishop, standing without a miter, the Abbess sitting on her throne in the choir. The Bishop says over her:
V. Confirm, O Lord, that which thou hast wrought within us.
R. From thy holy temple which is in Jerusalem.
V. Save thy servant.
R. Lord God, who trusteth in thee.
V. Be unto her, O Lord, a tower of strength.
R. From the face of the enemy.
V. May the enemy accomplish nothing within her.
R. And the son of iniquity shall bring her no harm.
V. Lord, hear my prayer.
R. And let my cry come unto thee.
V. The Lord be with you.
R. And with thy spirit.
Let us pray.
May the guardianship of piety enrich thy servant, O Lord, that by thy protection she may keep unharmed the purpose of holy virginity, which she received by thine inspiration. Through Christ our Lord. R. Amen.
The the Bishop puts on the miter, solemnly blesses the people, saying “Blessed be the name of the Lord,” etc.
And the benediction finished, all leave in peace.
Here endeth De Benedictione Abbatissæ.
THAVMA: Catholic Occultism and Magic in General 
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I have an endless frustration with the Church’s inability to describe its spiritual mechanics. I come from a qigong and spiritualist background and the second I start using such terms to explain Catholic concepts I get harassed and banned. So, I perfectly understand what you’re doing here.
Questions: Are there other spiritual lineages in Catholicism, such as the Confirmation, or maybe enrollment in scapulars and medals?
To me, the spiritual experience at ordination sounds like something is happening to the shen. Could you describe it more?
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