Cardinal Piacenza on Women Priests, Celibacy and the Power of Rome (Part 1)
Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy Speaks on Service and Unity
By Antonio Gaspari
ROME,
SEPT. 18, 2011 (Zenit.org).- Cardinal Mauro Piacenza, prefect of the
Congregation for the Clergy, rarely intervenes in public debates. He is
known, rather, for his quiet and untiring work and his insightful
observations on contemporary culture.
The 67-year-old Italian will next month complete his first year as head of the Vatican's clergy congregation.
He
spoke with ZENIT about what power in the Church really is and what
women could be doing to offer their feminine genius to Church
leadership.
Part 2 of this interview, on celibacy and increasing vocations to the priesthood, will be published Monday.
ZENIT:
Your Eminence, over the past decades, with surprising regularity, the
same set of ecclesial questions resurface in public debate like
clockwork. How can we explain this?
Cardinal Piacenza: There have
always been in the history of the Church "centrifugal movements,"
attempts to "normalize" the extraordinary Event of Christ and of his
Living Body in history, the Church. A "normalized Church" would lose all
of its prophetic force; she would no longer say anything to man and to
the world and, in fact, she would betray her Lord. The major difference
in the contemporary age is media-related and, at the same time,
doctrinal.
Doctrinally, there is an effort to justify sin, not
entrusting oneself to mercy, but trusting in a dangerous autonomy that
has the odor of practical atheism. With regard to the media, in recent
decades, the physiological "centrifugal forces" receive attention and
inappropriate amplification from the media, which in a certain way,
lives on conflict.
ZENIT: Is women's ordination to be understood as a doctrinal question?
Cardinal
Piacenza: Certainly, and -- as everyone knows -- the question was
clearly confronted by both Paul VI and Blessed John Paul II and, the
latter, with the Apostolic Letter "Ordinatio Sacerdotalis" of 1994
definitively closed the question. Indeed there it is stated: "Wherefore,
in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great
importance, a matter which pertains to the Church's divine constitution
itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk
22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer
priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be
definitively held by all the Church's faithful." Some, grasping at
straws, have spoken since then of a "relative definitiveness" of the
doctrine, but frankly, the thesis is so odd as to lack any foundation.
ZENIT: So, is there no place for women in the Church?
Cardinal
Piacenza: On the contrary, women have a most important place in the
ecclesial Body and they could have one that is even more evident. The
Church is founded by Christ and we human beings cannot decide on its
form; therefore the hierarchical constitution is linked to the
ministerial priesthood, which is reserved to men. But there is
absolutely nothing to prevent the valuing of the feminine genius is
roles that are not linked with the exercise of Holy Orders. Who would
stop, for example, a great woman economist from being head of the
administration of the Holy See? Who would prevent a competent woman
journalist from being the spokesman of the Vatican press office? The
examples could be multiplied for all the offices that are not connected
with Holy Orders. There are tasks in which the feminine genius could
make a specific contribution!
It is another thing to think of
service as power and try, as the world does, to meet the quota for this
power. I maintain, furthermore, that the devaluation of the great
mystery of maternity, which has been the modus operandi of the dominant
culture, has a related role in the general disorientation of women. The
ideology of profit has stooped to the instrumentalization of women, not
recognizing the greatest contribution that -- incontrovertibly -- they
can make to society and to the world.
Also, the Church is not a
political government in which it is right to demand adequate
representation. The Church is something quite different; the Church is
the Body of Christ and, in her, each one is a part according to what
Christ established. Moreover, in the Church it is not a question of
masculine and feminine roles but rather of roles that by divine will do
or do not entail ordination. Whatever a layman can do, so can a
laywoman. What is important is having the specific and proper formation,
then being a man or a woman does not matter.
ZENIT: But can someone really participate in the life of the Church without having effective power and responsibility?
Cardinal
Piacenza: Who said that participation in the life of the Church is a
question of power? If this were the case, we would unmask the real
equivocation in conceiving the Church herself not as she is -- human and
divine -- but simply as one of the many human associations, maybe the
greatest and most noble, given her history; she would then have to be
"administered" by a division of power. Nothing is further from reality!
The hierarchy in the Church, besides being of divine institution, is
always to be understood as a service to communion. Only an equivocation,
historically stemming from the experience of dictatorships, could make
one think of the ecclesiastical hierarchy as an exercise in "absolute
power." This is known to be false by those who, every day, are called to
assist the Pope in his personal responsibility for the universal
Church! So many and such are the mediations, the consultations, the
expressions of real collegiality that practically no act of governance
is the fruit of an individual will, but always the outcome of a long
process, listening to the Holy Spirit and the precious contributions of
many people. First of all the bishops and bishops' conferences of the
world. Collegiality is not a socio-historical concept, but derives from
the common Eucharist, from the "affectus" that is born from taking the
one Bread and from living the one faith; from being united to Christ:
Way, Truth and Life; and Christ is the same yesterday, today and
forever!
ZENIT: Doesn't Rome have too much power?
Cardinal
Piacenza: To say "Rome" is simply to say "catholicity" and
"collegiality." Rome is the city chosen by providence as the place of
the martyrdom of the Apostles Peter and Paul and communion with this
Church has always historically meant communion with the universal
Church, unity, mission and doctrinal certainty. Rome is at the service
of all the Churches, she loves all the Churches and, not infrequently,
she protects the Churches most threatened by the power of the world and
of governments who are not completely respectful of that inalienable
human and natural right that is freedom of religion.
The Church
must be seen from the perspective of the dogmatic constitution of
Vatican Council II "Lumen Gentium," obviously including the note
attached to the document. There the early Church is described, the
Church of the Fathers, the Church of all ages, which is our Church of
today, without discontinuity; which is the Church of Christ. Rome is
called to preside in Charity and in Truth, the sole sources of authentic
Christian peace. The Church's unity is not compromise with the world
and its mentality, rather it is the result, given by Christ, of our
fidelity to truth and to charity that we will be capable of living.
I
think that it is indicative, in this regard, that today only the
Church, as no other, defends man and his reason, his capacity to know
the real and to enter into relationship with it, in sum man in his
totality. Rome is at the service of the whole Church of God that is in
the world and that is an "open window" on the world. A window that gives
a voice to all those who do not have a voice, that calls everyone to a
continual conversion and through this contributes -- often in silence
and in suffering, paying the price herself, even being unpopular -- to
building a better world, the civilization of love.
ZENIT: Doesn't this role that Rome plays hinder unity and ecumenism?
Cardinal
Piacenza: On the contrary, it is their necessary presupposition.
Ecumenism is a priority for the life of the Church and it is an absolute
exigency that flows from the prayer itself of the Lord: "Ut unum sint,"
which becomes for every true Christian the "commandment of unity." In
sincere prayer and in the spirit of continual interior conversion, in
fidelity to one's own identity and in the common striving for the
perfect charity bestowed by God, it is necessary to commit oneself with
conviction to seeing to it that there are no setbacks on the journey of
the ecumenical movement. The world needs our unity; it is therefore
urgent that we continue to engage in the dialogue of faith with all our
Christian brothers, so that Christ be a leaven in society. It is also
urgent that we work together with non-Christians, that is, in
intercultural dialogue to contribute together to the building of a
better world, collaborating in good works and making a new and more
human society possible. Even in that task Rome has a unique role of
propulsion. There is no time for division; our time and energies must be
spent in seeking unity.
[Translation by Joseph G. Trabbic]
Categories:
Renungan - Wawasan
