Report of the Committee on Theology
Diocesan Press Service. August 15, 1974 [74217]
Part I- By The Rt. Rev. Donald J. Parsons, Bishop of Quincy
The Committee on Theology in no way seeks to minimize the genuine anguish so many in the Church feel at the refusal to date of permission for women to be considered as candidates for ordination to the priesthood. Neither does the Committee question the sincerity of the motives of the four bishops who acted as they did in Philadelphia. Yet in God's work ends and means must be consistent with one another. Furthermore, the wrong means to reach a desired end may expose the Church to serious consequences unforeseen and undesired by anyone.
Passionate preoccupation with the question of the ordination of women, either pro or con, may prevent our perceiving other significant issues raised by the way the thing was done, issues which affect the integrity of the Church's life. A thoughtful response to this event demands an awareness of these implications.
The action of these four bishops raises serious questions about (1) the nature of the Church, (2) the nature of ministry, (3) the authority of bishops, and (4) the meaning of ordination. These questions are not trivial matters; they are of profound consequences to the life of the Church. Consideration of them is required in order to reach a sound judgment on the validity of the alleged ordinations.
The points of concern may be briefly summarized as follows:
(1) The Church which God created is by its very nature a Community.
(2) Jesus Christ gave the ministry to serve the Church and to help express its essential nature.
(3) The bishop is the sign of the unity of both the local and the universal Church. This function does not belong to him as an individual, but by reason of his membership in the episcopal college.
(4) Ordination is therefore an action in and for the community, not simply to confer a gift but also to admit the ordinand into the ministerial community within the Church.
For convenience sake these principles have been stated in a bald fashion. The Committee recognizes that some fuller explanation is necessary and also believes that it may be helpful to our discussions to clarify just what is meant by the term "validity" and what is not meant. These two tasks have been entrusted to someone else, namely the Bishop of West Missouri.
Part II - By The Rt. Rev. Arthur A. Vogel, Bishop of West Missouri
My remarks will conclude with some comments on the accepted meanings of the terms irregularity, validity, and invalidity in the contemporary theological community.
But first I must say what I believe we all think; thus I hope I am speaking for all of us when I say that we must keep our concerns in perspective. The purpose of this presentation is to present a perspective to you. Our perspective is found within our vocation, and our primary vocation as Christians is to bear witness to the love of God for all persons in Jesus Christ and to serve the world in Christ's name. Let us even now bear our witness to the world, showing that we're Christians in all that we do.
I believe it is easier to let the recent service of ordination in Philadelphia be a political victory or defeat on the model of a secular, pluralistic society than it is to witness under present circumstances to the nature of the church as community and the role of the bishop in community. In Christian community we have a responsibility for each other and to each other which is not found in a secular society. Hugh of St.Victor said that where there is love there is clarity. Love produces community. So, in the name of love we must be clear about community. The church is community. It's a community of witness to the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
All Christian ministry, whether ordained or not ordained, is for the building up of community, and the instance of course most obvious, St. Paul's fourth chapter of his letter to the Ephesians, where he speaks about some being apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers, but all for the building up of the body.
Even in the New Testament, the diversity of ministries and activities within the community show the need for a focus of the community's unity, for the coordination of the community's activities, for the promotion of its ministry and for the discernment of the spirit within it.
The need for oversight or episcopate, and the centering of the functions I have just mentioned, led, as you know, to the development of episcopacy within the life of the church.
It's impossible at this point to keep out of consideration the Holy Eucharist, for the Christian community is most itself in the Holy Eucharist. The Eucharist is the paradigmatic act of Christian community, and as a matter of fact, again in the actual development, historical development, of our church, we know the church as the Mystical Body and that terminology came about because the early fathers saw the church to be most itself in the Holy Mysteries.
Now the bishop in that early church presided at the Eucharistic assembly. We see this as early as the Didache at the conclusion of the turn of the first century. The one who focuses the church's unity and exercises oversight in the church, would properly be the one to preside at the Eucharistic assembly, where the community is most itself. But even though the bishop presides at the Eucharistic assembly, in this instance I'm giving, certainly the Eucharist itself is offered by the whole community. The bishop unifies the action of the community by his presiding at the assembly. So the bishop at one time, and in a sacramental manner, represents the Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, to the assembly; he represents the people to God; and he represents the church to itself. He represents the unity of the people among themselves to themselves. Bishops, then, are in community, for community. They are the community's servants, enabling the community to be itself, for that is the purpose of all ministry. In the early church, bishops and community were never thought apart. The development of a monarchical episcopate and the prelatical style is a much later development. As presiding over the community and focusing its unity, the bishop, as we said, represents Christ to the church and the church to itself.
The bishop is able to do this because as bishop he is, as it has been very well put, the subject of the tradition of the community.
May I say a word here: a true community, the type we're talking about, a community as against a society, where people relate as wholes and as persons to each other, is governed by a lived fidelity to itself rather than by law. The name of this lived fidelity is tradition. Actually tradition is a way of life. It is not something found in a book. And in a true community, we find governance in this mode rather than an appeal to law and statutes.
Even the Greeks, Plato and Aristotle, said that if friends have to appeal to laws in their relations to each other, they're no longer friends. So we must see the laws and canons of the church in their true light; and that is, they're only to protect community in times of stress and crisis, and to specify details for good order. But they're called into obvious play only when the unity and community as it's meant to be personified in the bishop and other persons is for some reason disrupted or lacking.
Now the bishop is not the possessor of tradition. It's the tradition which informs him, enables him to be what he is. But that's why the bishop is the channel for conferring Holy Orders. By being the subject of tradition and passing it on to others he prolongs, enables, order in the community.
Bishops associate others with them in ordination, as we know -- presbyters and deacons. Presbyters and the bishop form a college, a community of their own. The deacons and the bishop form still another type of community. But the important point is this : that ordination is therefore entrance into a new community rather than the bare bestowal of a power.
On the later view of ordination which grew up, a view which I think all of us would say is perverse, we have what could be called the "baton" theory of ordination, where a person has something which is his and then he as an individual passes it on to someone else and says, "Now run with it, brother. " But that is to deny the correlation of bishop and community. So it is because ordination is entrance into a new community, the ministerial community, the ministry is itself a college. This is the collegiality. And we have the collegiality within the diocese. And we also have this collegiality, community, from bishop to bishop, among the bishops.
Now after all we've said about the role of the bishop in the church and in the Eucharist, it's most important to remember that ordination always takes place in a Eucharistic context. I hope that we don't accept that just as a casual tradition that grew up, because the Eucharist is perhaps the most pleasing and appropriate of our services. And other than its real significance, why is the Eucharist the only context for ordination in our church ? The answer is found in the fact that the ministry is always in and for community. The early centuries of the church's life are singularly instructive in this regard.
And just before going on now to a consideration of these terms I mentioned, I'd like to make some reference to points brought up by Dr. Zizioulas, who's an Orthodox Patristic scholar, who's on the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches in Geneva and Dr. Zizioulas writes, making the point that the term "the Catholic Church " was first used by Ignatius of Antioch, again just about the conclusion, just after the conclusion, of the first century. But when Ignatius used the term "the Catholic Church " he used it in reference to the local church, to the Eucharistic community, not to the church as spread around the world or the known world at that time. Because as the term Catholic was used by Ignatius, it was used in its Greek roots, which means "wholeness," and Ignatius' point is: the whole church is found in the local community, in the Eucharistic community which is centered and focused in the bishop.
I quote now the doctor : "A fundamental function of this one bishop was to express in himself the multitude of the faithful in that place." The bishop was, in other words, an expression of the wholeness and unity of an identifiable community. The doctor goes on to say that the conferring of orders was restricted to the Eucharistic community and that ordination was "an exclusive right of the bishop, not as an individual, but as the head of this Eucharistic community. " It was the Eucharistic context and the place of the bishop in the Eucharistic community which expressed the catholic, whole nature of the church.
Dr. Zizioulas goes on to say that the bishop possessed the exclusive right to ordain "because of his capacity as the head of the Eucharistic community and in relation to his role as the one who offers the entire community in the Eucharist to God, he must himself be existentially related to a community. There is no ministry in the catholic church that can exist in absoluto. " He concludes by saying "that there is no apostolic succession which does not go through the concrete community."
The point is, community is always in some place, and in the first place, intimate, and so, local. Ordination by the laying on of hands is the culmination of a process; it is not something done without continuity. The laying on of hands is the culmination of a process which begins in a local community which is to be served by the person to be ordained. And so it is that we require in our procedures that there be recommendations from persons on the local level who know the candidate -- from the rector, from the vestry, then from the commission on ministry, then the standing committee, and then the bishop -- all of this, you see, showing that the community is in process of stating its intention which is finalized and consummated by the bishop.
Now with that background I'd like to say a little something to you about the nature of irregularity and validity as I am able to understand it and how these words are used in contemporary theology.
Irregularity is a very simple term to understand, and I think by consent it can just he defined as "canonical impediment." If there is a canonical impediment, then something is irregular and on that definition I think there is no problem at all in our saying that the service of ordination in Philadelphia was irregular.
Now the slippery word, the difficult word -- because it's used in two different senses, and sometimes the senses are not made clear -- is the word valid. There is a newer use of a Roman Catholic scholar whose name is van Beeck, and he says, his contention is, that validity means ecclesiastical recognition. Then in this sense validity means ecclesiastical recognition. Does a given church as a communion juridically recognize a ministry? If so, it is valid.
The point here is that in this use of the term valid a ministry could be said by one church to be invalid but it would still be a genuine ministry in another church. You see, in this sense validity does not mean true; it does not mean genuine; it merely means that a ministry has been recognized in one ecclesiastical jurisdiction, not another.
Let me give you an illustration. This is used by Roman Catholics for ecumenical purposes, although to explicate the true nature of the situation, to be sure, it says in the Roman Catholic Church -- and that church is looking at the ministerial orders of Presbyterians and Methodists and Lutherans and so on, and ourselves too -- they would say, these people, they contend, they can say that those orders of Methodists, Presbyterians and others are invalid. But all that means is that they are not, they do not have ecclesiastical, juridical recognition in the Roman Catholic Church. It does not impugn the genuineness of that ministry in its own community, do you see? Now this would be, then, the one meaning of validity.
Now the other meaning of validity is the one with which I should think we are all most familiar. This is the one that would be found in the theological manuals to the extent that we have them, most of us, in our theology, and you find in such things as Dr. Hall's theological outlines and collection of books. There, validity means efficacious; validity means strength; that what is signified by the act is effected by the act. Here validity means -- and this is where beginning theological students had to commit five things to memory, we almost do this as a litany, I suppose -- if there is proper form, matter, minister, intention, and recipient, then by the little Latin phrase that exceptional students also committed to memory -- "ex opere operato, " by the work worked, the effect is produced. Which is to say, you see, that if these criteria are met, then the covenanted grace that is offered in the sacrament is unquestionably there for someone to receive. The person could still refuse the grace even though it was there offered, but there could be no doubt that the covenanted grace was there offered, if these five criteria were met.
Now, I would like to just focus with you in conclusion on these two criteria -- intention and ministry. I guess I should say I mentioned that I thought there was no doubt about the Philadelphia service of ordination being irregular on the first sense of valid that I've talked about. Proper intention is not just the presence of the right words. There are not words hanging around in abstraction anywhere. Words are always used by someone for some purpose. And so the proper intention of the sacrament must be held by the proper minister. It is the proper minister who must have the proper intention. Now the intention, it seems to me, on the basis of the little theological sketch I have presented to you, the intention of ordination must originate in the community. That's the purpose of our having all the certification through the parish and the diocese. The intention must originate in the community and be sacramentally personified by the community's bishop or his delegate within the episcopal college, for community must be maintained at all cost. Such authorization is necessary or the people and the bishop would not be acting as a community, as one, as a church. Where there is no such authorization, where jurisdiction of one bishop and community are usurped by a bishop or bishops without jurisdiction, community and collegiality are broken. But the ordination, I remind you, is entrance into the ministerial community.
And so the question to be posed is, can those who fracture community, by the very act of fracture, admit to the community? The only answer I can see is no. I would conclude, then, that only a service, only a rite, has been undergone in the Philadelphia service.
There are different levels of communication in the instance before us and I think we are sophisticated enough now in our understanding of communication and how it goes on to be able to see that this is an important consideration in anything personal, and everything Christian is personal. I think there are two levels of communication going on in that service. First of all, there are the words of the service itself as printed in the community's book, the Prayer Book, which were read. That's one message. The other message is the fracturing of the episcopal community by the way the service was done. That is another message, and I think it contradicts the first message.
So we find ourselves in what psychologists call a double bind situation. This is a type of communication in which there is great clinical evidence to show that it produces schizophrenia. The wife says to the husband, "Go ahead, I don't care." And does he go or does he stay? If he goes, she says, " I really told you not to go. " If he stays, she says, "Well, I said you could go. "
Which message should the church believe? One is wrong either way, because no one thing has been said, and if no one thing has been said, I think no one thing has been done.
I've been touched by the witness and testimony of my brothers at this meeting. I can accept the service in which they took part as an act of outreach and an act of concern as it was intended to be. But I cannot accept it as an ordination, because the ingredients of ordination simply were not present.
(NOTE: The text of Bishop Vogel's report was transcribed from a tape recording.)