The ultimate return: Dissent, apostolic succession, and the renewed ministry of roman catholic women priests

ABSTRACT

Significant numbers of practising Roman Catholics dissent from the Church’s orthodox teachings, especially those relating to sex, gender and contraception. Many such dissenters even occupy positions of ecclesiastical authority themselves. This raises interesting questions about how dissent manifests differently in various Christian traditions; how disagreement about fundamental principles only become legible if expressed in particular ways. This paper draws on research on Roman Catholic Woman priests whose claim to sacerdotal legitimacy rests on their having been ordained in apostolic succession by bishops within the Roman Catholic Church. It asks how do women priests negotiate both difference and repetition at the very same time. The ethnography prompts deeper reflection on Christianity’s long history of dissent which I argue has been written from a predominantly male and Protestant perspective. One in which dissent that leads to institutional differentiation is prioritized over dissent borne quietly that seeks to contain itself.

KEYWORDS:

• Christianity
• schism
• Catholic Church
• gender
• women’s ordination
• ritual
• dissent
• secrecy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Allen, John L. Jr. http://natcath.org/NCR_Online/archives2/2002c/071902/ordinations.htm

2. http://www.romancatholicwomenpriests.org/NEWhistory.htm

3. For more on shifting gender ideologies in Catholic thought, see Mayblin (2017).

4. Unbaptized attenders such as myself cannot receive the Eucharist, but may receive a blessing instead.

5. Cf. Wynne-Jones (2008) report in The Telegraph of Rev Patrick O’Donoghue, the Bishop of Lancaster, blaming university educated Catholics for decline and fragmentation of the Roman Catholic Church. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/3464073/Educated-Catholics-have-sown-dissent-and-confusion-in-the-Church-claims-bishop.html

6. Morag’s feminine ethics of ‘care’ could be seen as one refraction of wider strategy Western women have used in the course of drawn-out feminist campaigns. During the worst moments of the sex abuse scandal in the mid-1990s, organizations for Catholic women’s ordination agreed to scale down their activities out of solidarity to the Church as an institution. RCWP campaigners justified this scaling down on the grounds that the Church was sacred ‘despite having sinners within Her fold’. This move was itself reminiscent of British suffragettes who temporarily suspended their actions during the First World War.

7. See Gudowska (2012) who reports Roman Catholic Woman Priest Monica Kilburn Smith describing her vocation to the priesthood as stemming from a ‘loving rage and a raging love for the church, and a deep caring for women’.

8. For example, see Donnelly (2014) and Lents (2014).

9. See Handman (2014) and Bialecki (2014) for complex discussions of this theme in relation to Protestantism.