A theme to which Chris Matthews returned again and again was the role of women in the Church. Like most liberally minded Catholics, he thinks that women get the short end of the stick most of the time and that simple justice demands that they be given equal opportunity. Once he baldly introduced the subject to me this way: “Bishop, isn’t it true that, in the Catholic Church, the management is all male while the women do most of the grunt work? Why can’t women be priests?”
In responding to these questions, I tried a technique that the philosopher Wittgenstein referred to as “letting the fly out of the fly bottle.” This means to move the discussion into an entirely different register so as to prevent all the disputants from spending a lot of energy only to end up in frustration. How can women find more power? By becoming world-transforming saints!
Brian Williams posed a question to all of the commentators: “Isn’t it odd,” he asked, “that those without families are setting the moral agenda for families?” Borrowing a phrase from the scholastic philosophers, I said, “Brian, in regard to your question, nego majorem (I deny the major premise). Priests, I explained, have families. I then indicated the ring that I received upon being ordained a bishop and I said, “That’s a wedding ring, and we are explicitly told never to take it off, for it symbolizes our marriage to the people we serve.” Then I quoted my mentor, the late Cardinal Francis George: “Priests are not bachelors; they are married men, and they have spiritual children.” ….. Complete article at aleteia.org
Bishop Robert Barron is the founder of Word on Fire Catholic Ministries and the host of CATHOLICISM, a groundbreaking, award-winning documentary about the Catholic Faith.