Question Two. Whether Female Sex or Childhood Impede the Reception of Orders

64. Second I ask whether female sex or childhood impede the reception of orders.

65. That they do not:

Galatians 3.28: For in Christ Jesus “there is neither slave nor free, neither female nor male;” therefore, there is no difference between male and female in the Law of Christ, as neither between slave nor free; therefore, a sacrament of the evangelical Law that a male can receive the female can as well, just as it is what slave and free can receive.

66. Again in Gratian, Decretum, p.1 d.32 ch.18 “Priest,” mention is made of a priestess,“A certain priest was ruling the church committed to him with great fear of the Lord and, from the time of having accepted orders, was loving his priestess as a sister...” ⁷⁴ and ibid. p.2 cause 27 q.1 ch.23, “A deaconess should not be ordained before the age of forty.”

67. Also about childhood the argument that it does not impede [orders] is that it does not impede reception of other sacraments, as baptism and confirmation. And the point about confirmation seems most strongly to the purpose because that sacrament is given for the worthy confessing of the faith of Christ; this act cannot belong to anyone save to an adult, just as the act of orders cannot either;     therefore etc     .

68. To the opposite: ibid. p.1 d.23 ch.25, “That women or nuns sacred to God were handling the sacred vessels or sacred garments, carrying incense round the altar, was reported to the Apostolic See - and that all these things are full of reproof and censure is not doubted by anyone thinking rightly.” All ministry of a woman is full of censure.

69. Likewise, 1 Corinthians 11.6, “It is shameful for a woman to be shaven;” therefore also to receive orders, because tonsure accompanies orders, as a signifying sign.

70. Again, Gregory IX, Decretals III tit.1 chs.4-5, ‘About the life and honesty of clerics’, and Gratian, Decretum, p.1 d.23 ch.22; it is found there that clerics may not grow long hair but be tonsured.

71. Likewise about childhood there is found in Gratian, Decretum, p.1 d.77 ch.1, “Let not a subdeacon be ordained younger than 20 years old.”

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.

II. To the Initial Arguments

79. To the first argument [n.65] I say that, as concerns possessing grace and attaining glory, there is no distinction in the law of Christ between female and male, because she can have as much grace and attain as much glory as he can; but, as concerns possessing an excellent rank, it is well fitting that there is a distinction between man and woman in the law of Christ, because this is consonant with the law of nature.

80. To the second [n.66], perhaps in Greece, where priests licitly use a marriage contracted before [ordination], the wife of a priest can be called a priestess. But among us Latins, where there is not only conjugal chastity but chastity simply, priestess has been taken away. But some woman can be called a good matron, a widow, or perfect among other women, or perhaps in a college she who is superior over all the others, as an abbess among nuns. But by this she does not have a more excellent rank of order; nor indeed preeminence with respect to a man. The like can be said to the point about a deaconess, that she to whom, by ordination of abbess or the college, it belongs to read the homily at Matins can be said to be a deaconess; but that is not an act of any order.

81. To the next [n.67] it can be said as Gratian says in Decretum, p.1 d.4 ch.3: “In the case of the manners of those who use a contrary practice, several laws have been abrogated,” as he afterwards there proves through many examples, and especially when contrary manners rest on a new reason. So here. In the primitive Church children were not at once instructed in the things that pertain to divine cult and office; on the contrary, the fully adult were ignorant enough in such things. But now children are instructed and exercised at once in such things, and therefore someone of thirteen years is more sufficiently instructed now in such acts than perhaps was then a rustic of twenty-five years. And so it is not surprising that decrees about keeping to age limits have been abrogated.

82. And let it be that children should by right be assigned to due reception [of orders] in every way (which I do not believe), yet neither is it simply necessary to observe it by necessity of that precept, nor is it simply necessary by necessity of fact. Not but what if (setting this aside) order is conferred, it is truly received and a determinate rank of ministering in the Church is conferred - he being the author who, in this time, “from the mouth of babes and sucklings has perfected praise” [Psalm 8.3, Matthew 21.16]. To whom be honor and praise for ages of ages. Amen.