c. 1997 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ U.S. Roman Catholic bishops have told American theologians that the church’s teaching barring women from the priesthood has”as much of a claim to definitiveness as one might reasonably expect.” And in light of that finality, the bishops said, the theologians should give the teaching their”internal assent”even if discussion and debate on the theological arguments for the ban continue.

The bishops’ comments were made in an 11-page statement,”Some Observations on the Catholic Theological Society of America Report on Tradition and the Ordination of Women,”issued this week and being circulated among the hierarchy.”It has been the constant conviction of the Catholic Church that women cannot validly receive priestly ordination,”the statement said.”Given the absolutely vital place of valid episcopal and priestly orders in the entire sacramental economy and liturgical practice of the church, it would be doctrinally and theologically unthinkable, as well as pastorally irresponsible, for her to depart from the way pointed out by Christ and the Apostles in this matter.”In the end, the issue turns, not on a decision of the church, but on her obedience to Christ and the Apostles,”it said.

The statement is a response to a report,”Tradition and the Ordination of Women,”adopted by the Catholic Theological Society of America (CTSA) at their annual meeting in Minneapolis in June.

Both statements were sparked by the on-going debate in Catholicism, in the United States and abroad, over the volatile issue of women’s ordination, and the Vatican’s effort to put a halt to the discussion.

Lay groups such as We Are Church, for example, have collected millions of signatures on petitions calling for the ordination of women and the end to priestly celibacy, among other things.

And in an effort to dramatically symbolize their unhappiness with the church’s prohibition of women priests, a group of feminist Catholic laywomen have announced plans to publicly celebrate an outdoor Mass in Oakland, Calif., on Oct. 5, although under church rules it will not be a valid celebration.

The turmoil caused by such events has prompted a number of Vatican responses, including a statement by Pope John Paul II in 1994 in which he reaffirmed the church’s tradition of a male-only priesthood.

In 1995, the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, headed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, issued a ruling claiming the ban enjoyed a level of”infallibility,”even though John Paul had not used that word in his 1994 apostolic letter.

The theologians, in the statement adopted in June, said there were”serious doubts about the nature of the authority”of the teaching barring women’s ordination. The theologians’ report, which argued neither for nor against women’s ordination, examined Ratzinger’s use of Scripture, tradition and authority in supporting the church ban on ordaining women.

It found fault with Ratzinger on all three counts, concluding:”There is serious, widespread disagreement on this question not only among theologians, but also within the larger community of the church.” But the U.S. bishops response, drafted by the Committee on Doctrine of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, criticized the theologians on virtually all aspects of the CTSA report.

The bishops said the theologians’ report misconstrued a 1976 report by the Pontifical Biblical Commission, which it had cited to support the biblical possibility of women’s ordination.”The biblical evidence,”the bishops said,”can be construed as supplying at least a partial warrant for the reservation of priestly orders to men, especially … when the relevant scriptural passages are read within the context of the church’s living tradition of interpretation.” The bishops said the theologians’ report”profoundly understates and undervalues the significance of the consensus”against women’s ordination”already in place in the church, and over-rates the doctrinal significance of the dissent from that consensus at the present time and in certain quarters.” The bishops said that”only in the past few decades, and then only because of the initially unauthorized ordination of women in the Episcopal Church in the United States, have any serious questions about the reservation of priestly orders to men been raised in the Catholic Church.”

MJP END ANDERSON