I. To the Question

72. Here I say briefly that to be excluded from reception of orders, or not to be able to receive orders, can be understood in three ways: either not to be able duly and honorably, or not to be able licitly (because it is against a precept), or not to be able in any way, even in fact.

73. In the first way a child and he who does not have ‘years of discretion’ cannot receive orders, because he cannot receive with due reverence such rank as is conferred in ordination.

74. In the second way a child cannot receive Holy Orders, though he could in the second way receive lower Orders. The proof of the first is that to the reception of Holy Orders is annexed a vow of continence, as is contained in Gratian, ibid., d.28 ch.5; but a child and one who does not have ‘years of discretion’ does not have ability for that vow, either tacitly or expressly. The proof of the second is that no prohibition is found holding children back from receiving non-sacred Orders.

75. About the third ‘not being able’ [n.72] I say that ‘not being able’ is not found in a child, and this with respect to any Holy Orders; because the power to carry out some act, or the rankDeleting the parentheses round ‘or the rank’ in the edited Latin text. ⁷⁵ by which someone is able to carry out that act, can precede the act in duration or the power proximate to the act. Order is only a rank disposing one to being minister in a determinate ecclesiastical rank, as was said in the preceding distinction [d.24 n.19]. Therefore, it can belong to anyone before he is in proximate power (when the impediments are removed) for exercising the act; and consent is not there required for the impression of a character, as neither is consent required in minor orders.

76. However, this ‘not being able’ does exist in a woman. And this is not to be held as if it was something determined precisely by the Church, but it is obtained from Christ. For the Church would not have presumed, without her own fault, to have deprived the whole female sex of an act which could licitly belong to that sex, which would have been ordained to the salvation of the woman and of others in the Church through her -because this would seem to be a matter of very great injustice not only in a whole sex but in a few persons; and if now ecclesiastical order could by the divine law licitly belong to women, it could be for the salvation of them and of others through them.

And what the Apostle says to Timothy [I Timothy 2.12], “I do not permit a woman to teach in the Church,” meaning public teaching in the Church, is not a statement of the Apostle as laying down a statute. Rather I think that Christ did not permit it either. An evident argument for this is taken from the fact that neither did he put his Mother in any rank of order in the Church, with whom however no other woman was able or will be able to be equal in sanctity. Now there is a reason of some sort in agreement with this, and the Apostle indicates it in 1 Corinthians 14.34-35,“Let your women keep silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak; but they are to be submissive, as the law also says...” ⁷⁶ for nature does not permit the woman, at least after the Fall, to hold an eminent rank within the human species, which indeed was said to her as punishment for her sin, Genesis 3.16 [“You will be under the power of the man;” cf. 1 Timothy 2.12-15].

77. Against this: where there is the same agent and a passive subject of the same species, the same effect is there; but a bishop is the same agent, and let it be posited that his intention is the same way here and there; man and woman, and the soul of man and woman, are passive subjects of the same species; therefore if, when the bishop does something, the soul of a man receive a character, it follows that when the bishop does the same thing concerning a woman, she will receive the same.

78. I reply:

The major is true of an agent inducing a form and is a natural agent; but if the agent act voluntarily and contingently, it is not true that it do the same thing, but it is able not to act. And if it not do the inducing but only does some act whereat another agent does the inducing and induces it voluntarily in the passive subject it proposes to induce in, the major is false. And so it is in the issue at hand. And this is a good argument that the minister does no necessary act on which the effect of the sacrament necessarily follows but only contingently, for the most part, by divine pact.