Seminary rector responds to ‘Conclave’ movie: why only men can be priests

CNA Staff, Oct 24, 2024 / 06:00 am

Arriving on moviegoers’ screens this Friday, the new movie “Conclave” bills itself as a star-studded mystery-thriller centered on the selection of a new pope for the Catholic Church. The film, which opens Oct. 25 in the U.S., is poised to make a splash at the box office and is already generating awards-season buzz.

In the weeks leading up to its release, however, the film has already garnered considerable controversy and biting criticism — with much of the ire from Catholics centered on the film’s twist ending.

Based on a 2016 novel by British author Robert Harris, “Conclave” follows a group of the Church’s cardinals as they navigate ecclesiastical politics, personal rivalries and scandals, and other obstacles as they seek to elect the Church’s new leader.

In the end, the cardinals inadvertently elect to the papacy a person who they believed to be a man — but in reality, the cardinal they elected was born a woman and raised as a male by her parents because she was born with an intersex condition.

Though not a new idea by any stretch of the imagination, the question of whether the Catholic Church could or would ever ordain women — either as deacons or as priests, bishops, or even pope — has been hotly debated lately, especially amid the ongoing Synod on Synodality, despite Church officials reiterating that women’s ordination is off the table.

To explore this question, CNA spoke with Father Carter Griffin, a Princeton graduate and former Navy officer who is today a priest of the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., rector of St. John Paul II Seminary, and author of several books on priestly celibacy and other topics.

The Church’s constant teaching on this question, reiterated strongly by recent popes, is that the Church won’t — and in fact, can’t — ordain women.

Perhaps the best-known of these teachings is contained in Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, an apostolic letter from St. John Paul II in which he stated categorically 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.”

Pope Francis has repeatedly taught the same, notably in October 2023 when he publicly reaffirmed the impossibility of women becoming priests, or even modern Church deacons, stating that “holy orders [are] reserved for men.”

Griffin acknowledged, however, that some women — especially those who feel drawn to the idea of becoming a priest — might view the Church’s prohibition on female ordination as sexist, discriminatory, and unfair, as well as a missed opportunity to put the gifts of women to work as ordained ministers.

Some might think, Griffin told CNA, that “limiting priestly ordination to men alone would be unfair and unjust if there were no rational basis for the distinction. After all, women and men are created in the image and likeness of God with equal dignity and with reason, freedom, and immortal souls.”

But, he stressed, equality doesn’t mean identical roles — men and women have different roles to play in the Church, as well as in life in general.

“God created us differently in part so that we could exercise different roles and complement one another as mothers and fathers. This is true in the natural sphere but also in the order of grace,” he continued.

While the Church is unable to ordain them, there are countless ways that women have long served and continue to serve the Catholic Church, such as through religious orders, in parish life, education, health care, in other Catholic ministries, and within Catholic families.

It’s also vital, Griffin said, to recognize that one role in the Church is not necessarily “better” than another. Priesthood is, or at least ought to be, more about service to others than about power over them — the biblical image of Christ washing his disciples’ feet is a good illustration of this, he said.

“Inasmuch as some priests have historically failed to fulfill Christ’s command and his example of love — indeed, none of us fulfills it perfectly — we priests are partly responsible for these erroneous standards of power associated with the priesthood,” he added.

“The fact that the priesthood has lost some of its social esteem in recent years, especially in the turbulent wake of the clerical sex-abuse crisis, is in some respects a blessing … The implicit claim that the priesthood is about wielding power in the Church seems less believable today than it has for many decades, perhaps centuries. That’s a good thing.”

Griffin also pointed out that the human being most highly revered in the Catholic Church was not a priest or a bishop but rather the Virgin Mary.

It goes to show, he said, that the priesthood is about far more than prestige and rather points to a deeper reality about Christ’s relationship with his people, the Church.

There are other scriptural reasons to support the Church’s teaching as well. By involving women in his ministry at a time of deeply entrenched discrimination, Jesus himself was clearly unafraid to celebrate women and challenge the social norms of first-century Israel — and yet his 12 apostles, the first bishops, were all male. 

“If Jesus wanted to ordain women priests, he would have,” Griffin commented.

Sacramental worldview

To better understand the Church’s teaching about the all-male priesthood, Griffin said it is vital to understand the “sacramental worldview” — a deeply Catholic recognition of spiritual realities hidden beneath visible signs. 

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The sacraments “were instituted by Christ and make present his grace in powerful ways through ordinary signs,” Griffin said. For example, the water used in baptism is not “just” water but symbolizes the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on a new Christian. 

The priesthood, specifically, is a visible sign meant to point to the invisible reality of Christ’s presence as the “spouse” of his bride, the Church, which has always been understood to be female.

In the Old Testament, God revealed himself as a bridegroom of Israel; in the New Testament, Jesus extends that teaching and reveals himself as the bridegroom of the Church, Griffin noted. 

“Priests are conformed and united to Christ in such a way that they exercise their spiritual fatherhood in union with the feminine Church. Ordaining women would obscure that priestly paternity as well as the femininity of the bride of Christ.”

The fact that Jesus chose to become a man, then, is “not just one physical characteristic among many, such as his height or hair color, but an essential element of his revelation as spouse of the Church,” Griffin noted.

In priestly ordination, Griffin explained, a man is conformed to Christ in such a way that Jesus truly becomes present through him. Throughout his priestly ministry, but especially at Mass, the priest stands in the place of Christ who, as a bridegroom, lays down his life for his bride, the Church.

As for the question of women who feel that God is calling them to be ordained, Griffin — who works with discerning seminarians in his role as rector — pointed out that just because someone feels drawn to something, even deeply, that doesn’t mean they have a calling from God. 

The Church should treat those who feel hurt by the Church’s teachings with empathy while not reneging on those teachings, he said.

“Today, when there is so much confusion about human sexuality and gender, the clarity surrounding priestly ordination is a healthy sign of contradiction. Precisely when so many are downplaying the differences between men and women or erasing objective gender distinctions altogether, the Church reaffirms in the male priesthood the gender differentiation willed by God,” Griffin said.

What about the ‘tough cases?’

In the “Conclave” book as well as the film, the fictional cardinal who is ultimately elected pope is revealed to be a biological woman, born intersex, who was raised as a male and believed herself to be a male. In the narrative, it is also revealed that the late pope elevated the woman to a cardinal, even after learning her true identity. 

Statistics vary, but according to some estimates, about 1.7% of people are born intersex, which means they have reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn’t appear to fit the typical definitions of male or female.

The Catholic view of this phenomenon, as explained by Father Tad Pacholczyk of the National Catholic Bioethics Center, is that intersex people do not possess a “third sex” but rather exhibit variations within the male or female sex. While advocating for compassionate care for intersex individuals, Pacholczyk acknowledged that these individuals might face unique challenges in supporting their “intrinsic maleness” or “intrinsic femaleness.”

Any treatment that an intersex person undergoes should aim to restore bodily functions that align with a person’s underlying biological sex rather than affirming a different gender identity, Pacholczyk said.

For his part, Griffin explained that “a stable, secure, and well-ordered sexual identity is a necessary condition for priestly formation and ordination.” A biological female identifying as a male would not, in fact, be a male — and thus would be ineligible for the priesthood.

“It is our individual and unique creation as either male or female that identifies us as man or woman, not our subjective feelings or choices,” he said.

While intersex cases like the one in the film are rare, Griffin said that as a seminary rector, he has had to grapple with the possibility that biological women who identify as men may seek entry, even secretly, into the seminary — a possibility that is not as remote as you might think. 

A couple of years ago, Archbishop Jerome Listecki of Milwaukee, then chairman of the bishops’ national canonical affairs committee, warned his fellow bishops in a memo that the committee had received multiple reports of women living under transgender identities being “unknowingly admitted” to U.S. seminaries or formation houses.

In one case, Listecki said, “the individual’s sacramental records had been fraudulently obtained to reflect her new identity.” At the time, Listecki suggested that bishops should consider requiring DNA tests or physical examinations to ensure that all seminarians are biological men.

Griffin said the question of how to make sure that women are not being clandestinely ordained is “an issue we’re all looking at more carefully.”

“Among the many elements of an application for priestly formation, every seminarian receives a full physical examination from a medical professional to ensure that he has the necessary physical health for priestly ministry. While historically such an examination would not have included testing for biological sex, increasingly dioceses are requiring just that,” he continued.

“In addition, an application for priestly formation includes references from individuals from different phases of a candidate’s life, including his family members, pastors, teachers, friends, and employers. No system is perfect, but if we take these precautions seriously it would be extremely difficult for someone who is not male to enter the seminary under false pretenses.”