The Ordination of Women in the Catholic Church ; Unmasking a Cuckoo's Egg Tradition Quotes

“Many Catholics think that the deposit of faith lies first and foremost with the hierarchy, with the Pope and the bishops. The model they have in mind is a top-down flow of knowledge and communication, like the commander-in-chief of an army and his staff who hold all the information, make the plans and pass them down to the ranks.

The true picture is different. The Church is more like a large family business in which the core of information is carried by all the family members jointly and individually, through a wide range of skill, experience and competence. The Pope and the bishops have the duty and the charism to articulate that knowledge as teachers of the Church. They can only do so by paying careful attention to the sensus fidelium, the faith that lives in the hearts of the faithful.”
― John Wijngaards, The Ordination of Women in the Catholic Church ; Unmasking a Cuckoo's Egg Tradition

“The presumption that Jesus who had wiped out the ancient bias against women in the common priesthood of the faithful, would reintroduce it in ministerial priesthood defies all logic. The contention that Jesus, who brought worship 'in spirit and in truth' and for whom love and service were the supreme characteristics of his ministry, would then introduce maleness as an essential requirement offends the inner consistency of the Gospel.”
― John Wijngaards, The Ordination of Women in the Catholic Church ; Unmasking a Cuckoo's Egg Tradition

“Though, with St. Paul, I fully subscribe to women being treated on equal terms as men in the Church, I am not a feminist. I am a man, and I cannot speak from my Christian experience as a woman, nor judge issues specifically from a womanly perspective as women theologians do. Neither did I enter the field with a feminist agenda, as I narrated in the first chapter. I am approaching the question of women's ordination as a theologian. And like other theologians — both men and women — I have come to the clear recognition that the reasons for barring women from ordination cannot be substantiated from Scripture or tradition. Sacred Scripture leaves the question wide open. In so-called Catholic "tradition", women were excluded from ministries because of social conditions and cultural prejudice. I will validate these claims in the next chapters. I am defending these conclusions as a man, as a professional theologian and as a Catholic.”
― John Wijngaards, The Ordination of Women in the Catholic Church ; Unmasking a Cuckoo's Egg Tradition

“...if people are to accept Christianity, it will not be because of our superior institutions, but because Jesus Christ is seen to contribute to primary values — authentic love, selfless service, ruthless honesty.”
― John Wijngaards, The Ordination of Women in the Catholic Church ; Unmasking a Cuckoo's Egg Tradition

“True loyalty to the Church implies loyalty to the truth. It requires willingness to question rather than readiness to conform. What may seem opposition and dissent at first, will eventually prove to be an active co-operation between the teaching authorities and the theologians towards the one aim of a better-formulated doctrine.”
― John Wijngaards, The Ordination of Women in the Catholic Church ; Unmasking a Cuckoo's Egg Tradition

“This Roman view is, moreover, imposed on bishops, theologians and parish priests by its incorporation in routine oaths of loyalty. It causes great anxiety to theologians who cannot admit the validity of Rome's arguments. 'I use mental restriction', one lecturer at a theological faculty told me. But are we allowed to compromise with truth? What if we know Rome is wrong? Does complicity with non-truth not undermine everything we are trying to do, as the community of Christ, as priests, as theologians? I believe it does.”
― John Wijngaards, The Ordination of Women in the Catholic Church ; Unmasking a Cuckoo's Egg Tradition

“Some of my friends tell me that the ordination of women is an issue that can wait. 'Rome has decisively turned against it,' they say. 'Change may come, but only in the future — under another Pope, when the heat has died down.' They point to a vast majority of bishops and theologians who have decided to keep their mouths shut, even though they realise Rome is wrong. Tact is needed, they argue. There is a time for speaking and a time for silence...

I disagree. Yes, for years I too thought that wisdom would slowly prevail in the Church and that the issue of women priests would ripen in the course of time. That is why, until three years ago, I too had adopted a strategy of wait-and-see. But now I have changed my mind. For the Roman authorities force us to take sides. They impose their own view so strongly as the truth, that by keeping silent now, we would compromise our own consciences.”
― John Wijngaards, The Ordination of Women in the Catholic Church ; Unmasking a Cuckoo's Egg Tradition

“If all the bishops in the world had been asked, two hundred years ago, whether slavery is allowed by God, 95 per cent of them, including the Pope, would have said, 'Yes, slavery is allowed'. Yet in spite of their number, they would all have been wrong.”
― John Wijngaards, The Ordination of Women in the Catholic Church ; Unmasking a Cuckoo's Egg Tradition

“The official Church, including the magisterium, has now — finally — come to the recognition that slavery is against basic human rights and 'contrary to God's intent'. It comes too late for the millions of slaves in previous centuries whose lot could have been alleviated by correct Christian teaching! But at least Church authorities should draw a number of lessons.

The so-called 'tradition' that was thought to endorse slavery and on which the magisterium based its justification of slavery, all those quotes from fathers and popes, proved, in fact, to have been spurious and contrary to the real tradition handed down from Christ. It had been a cuckoo's egg tradition. The true tradition that came down from Christ and the apostles was contained in the principle of fundamental equality for all, enshrined in the universal baptism of Christ applied to men and women, slave and free alike.”
― John Wijngaards, The Ordination of Women in the Catholic Church ; Unmasking a Cuckoo's Egg Tradition

“How could such an anomalous, un-Christian practice be tolerated in the Church in the first place? It seems that leaders were not prepared to listen to the prophetic voices raised by conscientious people in the Church.”
― John Wijngaards, The Ordination of Women in the Catholic Church ; Unmasking a Cuckoo's Egg Tradition

“This was to continue until 1866 when, as we have seen, the Holy Office under Pius IX still declared that slavery as such was not against human or divine law. What was wrong with these Church leaders? Were they heartless creatures who were not moved by the plight of helpless slaves in so many countries? The answer is that they were caught by their misguided awe for this solid 'tradition', which we know to be a cuckoo chick, but which they saw confirmed in the writings of the Fathers, the decrees of Church councils, the sanction of previous popes. They did not stop to think, 'What is the basis for all this?”
― John Wijngaards, The Ordination of Women in the Catholic Church ; Unmasking a Cuckoo's Egg Tradition

“When the facts of slave labour and especially the slave trade from Africa began to filter through to the Vatican chambers in Rome, popes began to express their concern. This was good. The popes began to criticise the exploitation of the native peoples. But unfortunately, they did not examine the principle of slavery itself. Thus Pope Paul III, in 1537, condemned the indiscriminate enslavement of Indians in South America. But when challenged, he confirmed ten years later that both clergy and laity had the right to own slaves. A century later, in 1639, Pope Urban VIII criticised unjust practices against the natives, but did not deny the four 'just titles' for owning slaves. Pope Benedict XIV condemned the wholesale enslavement of natives in Brazil — without denouncing slavery as such, nor the importation of slaves from Africa.”
― John Wijngaards, The Ordination of Women in the Catholic Church ; Unmasking a Cuckoo's Egg Tradition

“The legitimacy of slavery was incorporated into official Church law from the first collection under Gratian (1140). Then in 1454, through the bull Romanus Pontifex, Pope Nicholas V authorized the king of Portugal to enslave all the Muslim and pagan nations his armies might conquer. Pope Alexander VI extended this license to the king of Spain (1493), permitting him to enslave non-Christians of the Americas who were at war with Christian powers. The two major Catholic colonial empires thus acquired a blanket Church sanction for capturing the local natives and employing them on their estate as slaves.”
― John Wijngaards, The Ordination of Women in the Catholic Church ; Unmasking a Cuckoo's Egg Tradition

“But what about the popes? Did they not steer the Church away from slavery? The answer is: they did not. They too believed and taught that slavery was part of Catholic doctrine.

Understandably perhaps, popes consider themselves first and foremost guardians of tradition. And tradition is judged by what has been done in the Church throughout the centuries, without examining the credentials of the practice...

In AD 362 a diocesan council at Gangra in present-day Turkey ex-communicated whoever dared to encourage a slave to despise his master or escape from his service. Although this was a purely local event, it was a dangerous precedent. In AD 650, acting on this precedent, Pope Martin I condemned people who taught slaves about freedom or helped them escape.

A number of Church Councils imposed slavery as a form of punishment. It was used with a twisted sense of justice against priests who transgressed the new law of priestly celibacy. The ninth council of Toledo (AD 655) imposed permanent slavery on the children of priests — yet how could these poor boys and girls be held responsible for their father's violating a rule of Church discipline? The Synod of Melfi under Pope Urban II (AD 1089) inflicted unredeemable slavery on the wives of priests — again, a cruel form of misguided justice that betrayed every human right under the sun. But in terms of ecclesiastical bonding, it added weight to presumed tradition. The Church itself imposed slavery. So it can be done. Therefore it must be right!”
― John Wijngaards, The Ordination of Women in the Catholic Church ; Unmasking a Cuckoo's Egg Tradition

“Theologians were convinced that slavery belonged to Catholic doctrine. It was manifestly contained, they thought, in the Word of God. "It is certainly a matter of faith that slavery in which a man serves his master as a slave, is altogether lawful. This can be proved from Holy Scripture.”
― John Wijngaards, The Ordination of Women in the Catholic Church ; Unmasking a Cuckoo's Egg Tradition

“Aristotle's teaching on slavery was quoted implicitly and explicitly by the Fathers of the Church. It did not stop there. Through the collection of laws known as the Decree of Gratian (Bologna 1140), in entered into the official law book of the Church. St. Thomas Aquinas, the leading theologian of the Middle Ages, followed Aristotle. He agreed with all the pagan views, with just a dash of holy water. Slavery, he said, is 'natural' in the sense that it is the consequence of sin by a kind of 'second intention of nature'. He justified slavery in these circumstances: enslavement imposed as punishment; capture in conquest; people who sold themselves to pay off debts or who were sold by a court for that reason; children born of a slave mother.”
― John Wijngaards, The Ordination of Women in the Catholic Church ; Unmasking a Cuckoo's Egg Tradition

“Unfortunately, this original Christian vision of universal equality and freedom was soon obscured by Christians themselves. What happened, to cut a long story short, is that Christians almost from the beginning lacked the spiritual enlightenment and will of character to break with the existing social systems. Instead of reaffirming people's new freedom in Christ, they gradually fell back into an acceptance of the pagan world views of their own culture.”
― John Wijngaards, The Ordination of Women in the Catholic Church ; Unmasking a Cuckoo's Egg Tradition

“In 1866, the Vicar Apostolic of the Galla region in southern Ethiopia asked the Congregation for Doctrine: 'Is slavery in harmony with Catholic doctrine?' It should be remembered that at the time slavery had already been abolished in Great Britain and all its dominions, in the USA, in Austria, France, Prussia, Russia, Chile, Ecuador, Argentina, Peru, Venezuela and most other civilized countries. In spite of this, the Congregation answered with an emphatic 'Yes'.

"Slavery itself, considered as such in its essential nature, is not at all contrary to the natural and divine law, and there can be several just titles of slavery and these are referred to by approved theologians and commentators of the sacred canons.”
― John Wijngaards, The Ordination of Women in the Catholic Church ; Unmasking a Cuckoo's Egg Tradition

“For, believe it or not, for more than 1500 years Church leaders upheld as Catholic teaching that slavery was a legitimate institution. Worse than that, they argued that slavery was an institution actually willed by God!”
― John Wijngaards, The Ordination of Women in the Catholic Church ; Unmasking a Cuckoo's Egg Tradition

“But surely such a thing cannot happen in the Church?' you may argue. 'Surely the magisterium would not make such a colossal mistake?!' If this is what you believe, it will be instructive to study how the magisterium failed in discerning the true Christian teaching regarding slavery. It is the topic of the next chapter.”
― John Wijngaards, The Ordination of Women in the Catholic Church ; Unmasking a Cuckoo's Egg Tradition

“I maintain that opposition to the ordination of women does not come from Christ. It is not God who decreed the exclusion of women, but pagan sexist bigotry which squashed the true Christian tradition of women's call to ministry.”
― John Wijngaards, The Ordination of Women in the Catholic Church ; Unmasking a Cuckoo's Egg Tradition

“Cultural prejudice rather than God's will was responsible for relegating women to a purely passive role in the Church. Through this theological error, enormous damage had been inflicted on the faithful in previous centuries and the harm was still being done today. Cultural bigotry had invaded Christian beliefs and had succeeded in enthroning a pagan prejudice as if it were a genuine Christian practice.”
― John Wijngaards, The Ordination of Women in the Catholic Church ; Unmasking a Cuckoo's Egg Tradition