Editor’s note: In recent weeks, Paul Baumann’s essay on women’s ordination and the ritual logic of the priesthood has generated passionate reactions from Commonweal readers. Below, we’re sharing some of your sharpest letters and a response from Baumann.
More than a Steppingstone
In his article “The Priesthood’s Ritual Logic” (February 10, 2026), Paul Baumann states, “It is the Vatican’s contention that this gendered imagery is indispensable to the Church’s identity.” Baumann agrees with that error and compounds it by linking the diaconate to the priesthood.
Lumen Gentium: The Dogmatic Constitution of the Church (29), the Catechism of the Catholic Church (no. 1569), and Pope Benedict’s Motu proprio Omnium in mentem (2009) all distinguish the diaconate as a separate order from the priesthood. Such was the determination of the Council of Trent and the Second Vatican Council.
Baumann opines that advocates for the restoration of women to the ordained diaconate see the diaconate as a steppingstone to the priesthood. Any diocesan vocation director will tell you that married men who approach diaconal discernment as a consolation prize for their inability to enter candidacy for the priesthood are turned away. The diaconate is not the priesthood, and diaconal ordination does not imply eligibility for priestly ordination.
Despite the teachings of Vatican II and the Council of Trent, Baumann collapses the two distinct orders and proceeds to present arguments against women priests: what is known as the “iconic argument” and the argument from authority. Both were present in Inter Insigniores (1976) against women priests; only the argument from authority appears later in Ordinatio sacerdotalis (1994).
Since there is no formal teaching against ordaining women as deacons, a well-known practice of the early Church which, as Baumann points out, has continued in Orthodoxy, the questions should not be combined. Women called to the diaconate do not combine them. The restoration of women to the diaconate stands on its own theological and historical foundations.
The reason women should be restored to the ordained diaconate in the West is certainly symbolic, but not in the ways Baumann presents. If only men proclaim the Gospel in the liturgy, what formation occurs in the hearts of the faithful? Is there a genuine effort to equate Christ-likeness only with maleness? Such obscures the fullness of the Incarnation. Christ assumed human nature. Women and men alike are baptized into him; women and men alike bear his image.
Jesus called, and still calls, women to discipleship. Women first proclaimed the Resurrection. He sent them forth as witnesses to the Good News. This is not fundamentally a question of rights or modern notions of equality. It is a Christological question. Whom did Jesus authorize to proclaim his word? Whose ministry did he receive and bless?
Because of the radical inclusivity of Christ’s call, fidelity demands not retrenchment but discernment, and discernment about women deacons is Magisterially mandated. The question is not about priesthood or clericalism or power. It is whether the Church is willing to examine how its refusal to include women as ordained deacons shapes the faithful and whether it is willing to fully accept the implications of the Incarnation.
Casey Stanton and Ellie Hidalgo
Codirectors of Discerning Deacons
Durham, N.C.
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Symbols of Servitude
In Paul Baumann’s excellent article, the crux of the issue is the meanings of the symbol(s) that the presider embodies and communicates. Rather than double down on the nuptial imagery (Mary Douglas’s suggestion), I argue we should expand the categories of our imaginations. The presider at the Eucharistic liturgy, i.e. the Mass, could be seen as Christ the prophet, Christ the healer, Christ the shepherd, Christ the storyteller, Christ the teacher.
The main image of Jesus at the Last Supper is the one who washes feet, the lowliest work, like that done by a hospital orderly or LPN today. The presider should be one that serves, not the center of the celebration (as are the bride and bridegroom at a wedding).
Limiting the symbolism of the Eucharist to “Christ the bridegroom” as the dominant or sole imagery is problematic, not just because it seemingly excludes females. It also makes the nuptial imagery of the priest as bridegroom, taken too literally, a confusing symbol of the presider in relation to men in the congregation. And Jesus’ practice of celibacy seems to mitigate against exclusively imaging him as a bridegroom.
Today, we have dozens of married priests. We have many women priests. We just don’t ordain them. Priesthood is all about preaching and service. The presider at the Eucharist is a symbol of unity with the bishop, but also one who brings together the Church as a community and institution dedicated to the values and ideals of the reign of God that Jesus inaugurated and continues to animate today.
May the use of many symbolic interpretations help us deepen our awareness of, and appreciation for, the mystery of the symbolic realism of the Eucharist.
Fr. Rick “Mugs” Malloy, SJ
Chaplain of the College and Assistant to the President for Mission Integration
Le Moyne College
Syracuse, N.Y.
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A Wider Embrace
Reading Baumann put me in a place where I have not walked in more than thirty years. I could pick over the arguments he brings from a variety of voices, but truthfully, what a waste of time when the world needs a wide embrace of truthfulness, love, and graciousness.
I was a Roman Catholic nun for seventeen years, and I loved the women with every fiber of my being. I loved my ministry. But the paternalistic edge of the Roman Church drove many of us out of the tradition. Of the twenty-one women who entered as postulants in my group, not one remains in the community. All of us continued in roles of service and love of God. We are faithful, as are the nuns who stayed, as are the women who left and remain in the Roman Church. Did some of them feel called to ordination? Yes.
After leaving, I was accepted as an Episcopal seminarian and have served as a priest in this tradition for thirty-one years. I have learned that yes, symbols have power. As a woman priest, I have heard and held the pain and joy of women and men and, hopefully, helped those who have been abused, ignored, and hurt by the established Church and by society. I have seen women break into tears when they saw me breaking the bread, blessing wine. Does this create a different theology? Of course it does. It says that Christ who is in the bread and the wine has a face that looks like everyone who holds out their hands for that bread and wine. We women have baked bread for thousands of years. We continue to bake and give it to the community with open arms. We are the body of Christ. Come, eat. Yes, we are a symbol. And we have bodies. And we are women.
My greatest blessing is to hold out the bread and say, “The body of Christ.” The response from men, women, children, the rich, and the poor is the simple phrase, “The bread of heaven.” I no longer argue over the ordination of women. I have been gifted to serve in that role. I am so thankful for the members of the Christian community who placed their hands on my head and said, “Let the whole world see and know that things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new…through your son Jesus Christ.” Now that is ritual.
Rev. Kathleen Kinney
Port Townsend, Wash.
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In Persona Totius Ecclesiae
I see Paul Baumann’s point on how the priest’s representation of Christ—acting in persona Christi—can call for masculine imagery, even embodiment, at some level. But I think it’s important not to jump too far too fast from the mystical to the practical.
Just as clearly, the priest acts “in persona totius Ecclesiae” in celebrating the sacraments. That understanding is fundamental to St. Thomas Aquinas’s description of how the sacraments are effective—and the phrase “in the person of the Church” is Thomas’s. It is Christ who principally acts through the sacraments, while the minister serves in the person of the whole Church in carrying out the rite (Summa, III, q. 64, no. 8, ad 2).
That didn’t cause Thomas to claim that all priests from time immemorial have been women, somehow in disguise. But it might allow us to ask whether the liturgy might benefit if some of the stand-ins for the Bride of Christ were, in fact, women.
Joseph F. Brinley Jr.
Washington D.C.
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Ordination Justice
For decades, discussions and coverage of the ordination of women to the diaconate and priesthood have been framed as “women’s ordination.” However, this language is deeply problematic, recasting a matter of injustice as a special-interest concern that affects only a subset of the Church. It suggests that women are somehow the problem, while the system itself is presumed to be neutral and just.
In reality, ordination is not a women’s issue; it is an issue of justice that distorts the sacramental life of the Church and wounds not just women but the entire Body of Christ. Further, responsibility for righting this wrong belongs to the whole Church, most especially the male bishops and pope entrusted with shepherding the Church into integrity with the Gospel.
I urge a shift in our language from “women’s ordination” to ordination justice. This change moves the focus from women as petitioners—a framing that is itself faulty, because the demand for justice is not gendered—to the Church as moral agent. It also locates the issue squarely within Catholic social teaching, which insists that structures, laws, and practices promote the full dignity and flourishing of the human person.
Our language is instrumental: words shape imagination, imagination shapes conscience, and conscience shapes action. It’s time to speak honestly about what’s at stake and who bears responsibility for bringing about what is right.
Fr. Anne
Albuquerque, N.M.
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Bold Innovation
Mary Douglas, on whom Paul Baumann relies to ground one more proposal for not ordaining women, died nearly twenty years ago. That was well before same-sex marriage and nonbinary realities challenged many long-held cultural assumptions. As Canadian theologian Bernard Lonergan said, “Concepts have dates.” I doubt that she would propose reinforcing and reinscribing nuptial imagery today.
Thank goodness her notion of a Catholic Commission on Women to deal with “female” things never got a toehold. Contemporary debates over diaconate and presbyterate for female-identified persons at least assume that ordained persons serve all, not some, people. People, not ritual forms, carry the blessed freight of religions.
Baumann’s tepid suggestion that “bold innovation may be necessary” is on a wobbly foundation. There are far bolder innovations than he seems to imagine that are rock solid in light of Gospel values. One is dispensing with hierarchy and embracing equity in the service of pastoral care and social justice.
Mary E. Hunt
Codirector, Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual (WATER)
Silver Spring, Md.
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Ritual Illogic
Paul Baumann argues that the debate over ordination of women is more properly considered in the context of the ritual logic of priesthood rather than equality. I agree with him that adding women clerics will not necessarily diminish problems arising from clericalism and that the argument from papal authority against ordination for women is not sufficient. However, I have difficulty with some of his other points.
Jesus, the Christ, was male, but could it have been otherwise in that time and place? He had to be either male or female unless we admit of another possibility that many still find troubling. Could a woman have conducted public ministry at that time and place? Logically, the historical Jesus could not have been other than male, but if the Incarnation happened today, would the same thing be true?
The argument from the “nuptial mystery” is also awkward. The Old Testament refers to a spousal relationship between God and his people but the New Testament identifies the Church as the Body of Christ. If Christ was definitively male then why is his body, the Church, not male? How do we make sense of that?
The article continues to argue that “like the bread (which must be bread) and wine (which must be wine), the priest is a sign in a ritual.” The wine used in Catholic churches is recognizably wine, though usually much sweeter than what we might imagine was available at the Last Supper. But the “bread” is typically not really like any bread we might buy or bake. The flat disks seem more like crackers than bread. How is it acceptable to depart from using real bread, but not from the requirement for a man to represent Christ?
None of these arguments against the ordination of women is persuasive when set against Genesis 1:27, “God created man in his image…male and female he created them” unless we are prepared to accept that “man” excludes “woman” and women are not created in the divine image. Neither can they stand against Galatians 3:28, “There does not exist among you Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female. All are one in Christ Jesus.”
After more than two centuries, it is past time to interpret scripture and tradition in light of the “signs of the times” rather than cling to understandings most likely developed in the Middle Ages rather than in the first decades of Christianity. In these ways, the “priesthood’s ritual logic” seems illogical.
Peter Albion
Toowoomba, Queensland
Australia
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Paul Baumann responds:
My interlocutors have found my argument unconvincing, and one even found it a “waste of time.” Ouch. As I wrote, I have a great deal of respect for those who believe that ordaining women to the diaconate or the priesthood is the right thing to do, both as a matter of justice and as a legitimate development of Church practice and doctrine. They might be right and I might very well be wrong. But as I also noted, I am not competent to judge the merits of the historical case made by Casey Stanton and Ellen Hidalgo. It is an argument, however, that the Vatican and other scholars dispute. Fr. Malloy writes that “priesthood is about preaching and service,” which of course is true. But there is also a cultic aspect to priesthood which is fundamental and defining, one that I tried to illuminate using arguments developed by the anthropologist Mary Douglas. Douglas was an expert on the logic of cultural symbols that often appear to be irrational to contemporary observers. Obviously, I don’t think her argument, as Joseph Brinley suggests, “jump[s] too fast from the mystical to the practical.” The mystical and the practical are not easily separated in what Douglas calls efficacious rituals.
The Rev. Kathleen Kinney has found a home for her vocation in the Episcopal Church. There is much to admire about the Episcopal tradition, but as I pointed out, the Episcopal understanding of the Eucharist differs from that of Catholicism. Fr. Anne contends that the failure to ordain women “is an issue of justice that distorts the sacramental life and wounds not just women but the entire Body of Christ.” If that is true, the entire tradition, including Jesus’ selection of the Apostles, has been in error. That doesn’t seem plausible to me. Mary Hunt suggests that Mary Douglas would not still argue for the importance of the nuptial mystery. I am a former student of Douglas, and I am sure Hunt is wrong about that. Peter Albion argues that Jesus’ male identity was dictated by the practices and prejudices of his “time and place.” But that sort of cultural relativism undermines the whole authority of Revelation. G. K. Chesterton warned of that danger more genially. “Tradition means giving a vote to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead,” he wrote. “Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about…. Tradition asks us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our father.”
I have been engaged in these debates for more than forty years. In my opinion, there is little likelihood that the Church is going to ordain women to the diaconate or to the priesthood. I thought it might be helpful to propose a different way of thinking about the question. I thank my correspondents for their attention to my essay; I don’t think it has been a waste of their time or mine.
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