Triduum Thoughts

At last night’s Maundy Thursday liturgy, I felt a bit like Scrooge on Christmas Day: “I don’t deserve to be so happy.” But I was, despite the solemnity, perhaps because of it. Last year on Maundy Thursday I was in the hospital ER with a heart attack, waiting to be operated on the next day... yes, on Good Friday, under local anesthetic, able to watch my beating heart on the fluoroscope as the doctor threaded it with a stent, lying on the table in the same hospital in which I was born, intimations of mortality dancing in my head like preserved sugar plums.

But last night — through the washing of the feet (with painful knees on the stone floor) as I have done so many times before, but then to a liturgical act new to me, cleaning the altar with water carefully poured into the five incised crosses on the mensa, and wiping it down with the same sort of towel used to dry the parishioners’ feet, and then using that same moistened towel, folded, to stifle the light of the sanctuary lamp, watching it dim and die, stopping Ed the cantor’s voice as all the lights went out — I experienced the same inexplicable joy.

More apt for joy, perhaps, such moments as bearing the incomparable weight of the Body to the Altar of Repose, beneath the canopy, God’s parachute. But the most joyous moment came at the Sursum Corda. As I turned and looked down the long aisle of the nave, out through the clear glass doors and the open wooden ones, I saw a man across Charles Street, walking along, who at that same moment turned to look into the church. He stayed standing directly, centrally opposite, looking, through the call for lifted hearts, the call for thanks to be given. I was calling to him perhaps more than to the people already churched, already on board. I don't think he could have heard me — the glass doors, open earlier, had been closed to hush the sounds of traffic on that busy street — but I hoped he knew, and knows, that I was calling him, I was calling him on behalf of someone far greater than us all. And I hope his heart was touched by that mystery, if even only for a moment, and that perhaps those doors, or the doors of some other place where God is calling, will feel the press of his hand, and gently open wide.

I don’t deserve to be so happy. But I am.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Intimation of Mortality: Conversation with a Tumor

I asked my Cancer, “Why,” and like
a mountaineer it answered me, “Because.”
“But don’t you know,” said I,
“that when you kill me, you will die?”
The Tumor paused, then shrugged, and said,
“That’s life... I mean, we all have purposes,
reasons to exist, a will to live, and, sure,
a sell-by date. My goals are simple,
largely to enlarge, to spread, to colonize.
I realize you are the limits of my world,
and when I’ve built my empire, it will end.
That is my purpose, that’s my goal in life.
But while I am about it, let me ask,
Are you as eager to engage your task?
What is it, anyway? If just to ‘be’
what makes you any different from me?”
I thanked my Cancer for his wise advice,
but still allowed the surgeon to excise
my Tumor... conscious now to spend
a life in purpose lived, before it end.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
October, 2015

Update and disclaimer: This poem represents an imagined conversation from ten years ago. It came to me in a flash as a poem this past week, but the context is that I have been cancer-free for a decade now, and hope to so continue for at least one, or maybe two, more, other health and vitality permitting, and always under God's care and to God's glory!
TSH

The Butterfly

Taking a sabbatical on the bridge’s bannister
— a momentary flex or two of wings a major
interruption in your short life-span —
I notice that your dappled right-hand wing
has lost a section of the dexter chief
of your escutcheon, your family crest thus dis-
emblazoned by a proper relic of
some former battle with a spiderweb.

You rest — and when I move you flutter off,
but then return, to bask another moment,
to lengthen our unspoken consultation;
finally to flutter off and by — a Viceroy
or a Monarch (I too ignorant of
the heraldry of Lepidoptera to know) 
but rested, ready to reclaim the air
with wounded wing.

Envoi
You know my wounds, Lord; some of them you gave me,
some I gave myself. I still will fly —
but with your help, for you alone can save me.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG, 2006

Sacred Vows, Sacred Trust

a guest editorial

Fifty years ago, I was accepted as a postulant for Holy Orders. When I was ordained, our vows were referred to as “Sacred Vows” committing ourselves to a calling, a vocation and not just a job. The Vows were so significant that after we recited them, the service was stopped, while we went and signed a printed copy of the vows. I pasted my copy in my prayer book hymnal. I made those vows at ordination to the Diaconate and again at my ordination to the Priesthood. I was ordained by Bishops of a Diocese but for the Episcopal Church. In later years, when I was required to establish my identity by various secular authorities, I gave the page and edition number of the Episcopal Church Annual. My authority, my “license,” my legal standing as a priest, came from the Episcopal Church. When I moved to a Diocese, the first credential was to be in good standing as a Priest in the Episcopal Church.

The Episcopal Church welcomed me as a steward, not an owner, but a steward of ministry resources. When I was called to a parish, I was given the use of Church buildings and grounds; vestments, chalices and other altar appointments; organs, pianos, office equipment; funds for mission & ministry, endowments and designated funds for scholarships and outreach. I was responsible for working with the congregation to maintain all of the above and (see parable of the Talents) to enhance and grow those resources to the best of our ability. When it was time to leave, I turned all of the above over to my successor. I was told from day one, you are a steward not an owner and the Episcopal Church is trusting you with these resources because of your ordination to the priesthood and license within the Episcopal Church.

Bishops have a third set of vows. They are approved by the whole Episcopal Church before they may be ordained and consecrated to the Episcopate. The Diocese elects and the Episcopal Church, through a vote of Bishops holding jurisdiction over Dioceses and a majority of Diocesan Standing Committees, consents and affirms the election. When the consents are required within three months of General Convention, the House of Deputies of General Convention acts in the role of the Standing Committees. Once Consecrated, the Bishops receive the use of the resources of a Diocese as stewards not owners. When they leave, they are to turn it all over to the succeeding Bishop.

There have always been times when a Deacon, Priest or Bishop, as a matter of conscience, deems it impossible to continue in the Church which has empowered them. There are appropriate ways to declare such. Two Bishops I greatly respect, John Lipscomb formerly Bishop of Southwest Florida and Jeffrey Steenson of Rio Grande (New Mexico and part of West Texas) each have been received into the Roman Catholic Church. As Paul reminds us in Romans, we are to outdo one another in honor. These men took honor seriously.

Some are arguing that the property belongs to the current members of a Church or Institution. That requires forgetting the great contributions of the hundreds and thousands of Saints who have preceded them in those places. Trinity Cathedral is the mother Church of the Diocese of Pittsburgh and has served Western Pennsylvania for 25 decades. I had the privilege of being responsible for Trinity for two of those decades. Bp. Duncan was responsible for one. Does that mean I am twice as worthy to “own” the Cathedral? That is absolute nonsense.

Someone wrote that since the Episcopal Church has a polity of participatory democracy that the majority of current members has the right to property. ... I love our polity. While I am quick to point out its flaws, I have found it to be more helpful for me in ministry and mission for Jesus than other polities. But simply stated, we in Pittsburgh watched as the checks and balances of our polity were dismantled over the last eight years or so. At the end, we were not even permitted to have a roll call vote at Convention. I did not speak at our Convention to the issues of controversy during my six years as President of the House of Deputies, since I would have to preside over them. In November of 2006, in the two minutes I was allotted (and then only if you were near enough to the front of the line to be called on before debate was ended) I decried the fact that as someone who had served the mother parish of the Diocese for more than twenty years; as someone who had an unusual, if not unique, view of the entire Episcopal Church, that I was allowed only 120 seconds to speak to the most difficult and complex question the Diocese of Pittsburgh had faced since its founding following the war between the states.

I do not question the sincerity or commitment to Jesus of those with whom I may disagree. Like the late Bp. Herb Thomson said to the wardens and rector of a parish which chose to leave the Episcopal Church, “How may we help you board another ship in the fleet of Christ?” For fifty years, I have never once considered claiming ownership of property and resources entrusted to me and my colleagues. I was surprised, even shocked, when a Pittsburgh priest started talking about this twenty or more years ago. I think, like Bp. Thompson, we may work to find ways to make this painful period gracious and to give the Body of Christ in our areas the best opportunities to do ministry in Christ’s name. I still believe my vows are sacred. I still thank God for the sacred trust given me by the Episcopal Church. How blessed I have been.

George Werner
31st President of the House of Deputies.

posted with his permission, and my thanks, by Tobias Haller BSG

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Francis and the Naked Truth

Sermon for the Feast of St Francis of Assisi
Tobias Haller BSG
Convent of Saint Helena, Vails Gate
Ecclesiasticus 50:1-7 + Psalm 37:24-33 + Galatians 6:14-18 + Matthew 16:24-27

It is somewhat ironic that at the deacons’ retreat and on the feast of St. Francis the deacon we should hear a reading about Simon the high priest — which goes on to wax enthusiastic in its description of how absolutely fabulous he was in his high priestly vestments. This is especially ironic in light of Francis’ literal rejection of such finery, but I suppose the intent was to focus on Francis as a restorer of the church. You will recall that Francis had a vision in which the figure of Christ on the cross charged him to rebuild his church — and Francis took this literally at first and started to rebuild the ruined chapel. Only later would it become clear to Francis and to others that his task went far beyond historic building preservation!

But Francis would have shunned the finery of the high priest, and it is in his character as someone who sat lightly with the things of this world, someone committed to radical poverty, that I want to look at Francis the deacon and friar. He knew the naked truth that if you have nothing to hold you down you can be free to fly, to move with the Spirit as the Spirit wills, and gracefully to change to suit the needs and circumstances into which God leads you. Francis’ life was one of fairly constant but always graceful — that is, grace-filled — change, but always with one goal, and he went through many phases in his pursuit of his single-minded effort to become like Christ.

He began life as a well-off young man named Giovanni, but soon got the nickname Francis — Frenchy — which makes him sound like a refugee from the cast of “Happy Days”; the son of a wealthy cloth merchant, his head full of visions of being a war hero — finding the hard reality of war another thing altogether; then falling ill and having a conversion — much to the embarrassment of his family.

You know the rest of the story — you may even have seen the movie! But the thing that drove that story, that guided Francis along, was his pursuit of likeness with Christ. As you know, this pursuit ended with his being marked in his own body with the wounds of Christ — the stigmata. Our epistle and gospel today attest to this particular aspect of his life — his self-identification with Christ, losing himself in Christ, and his embrace of the cross and the wounds Christ bore upon it. That fits in well with the theme I have stressed in my other reflections: the motto, “it’s not about you.” Francis lost his life in order to find it.

+ + +

Francis came to be known by the title “alter Christus” — another Christ — a phrase that has in the popular mind become more associated with the priest, especially as celebrant of the Holy Eucharist. But Francis was known by that title for centuries, and Pope Pius XI made it official. It is good to be reminded that, in spite of the common application of this title to priests, there is also a very ancient tradition that reserves it for the deacon: in the early fourth-century Apostolic Constitutions the bishop is analogized with God the Father, the presbyters with the apostles, but it is the deacon who is seen in the likeness of Christ — remember how the deacon would stand in the door between the congregation and the sanctuary? and how in those early days the deacon was sent hither and yon into the world about the work of the church as the bishop’s agent? And how the deacon sends the congregation out on their apostolic mission? It is the deacon who stands for “another Christ” at work in the church and the world.

What I want to focus on is the manner in which the deacon Francis did that, how he went about his work, how he changed in himself but also brought about change in others — gracefully, and more importantly, in the manner of Christ. For Christ was a master both of the eloquent story and powerful words, but perhaps more importantly of the boldly acted gesture — the dramatic and striking action. And so was Francis of Assisi. He performed many such dramatic acts in his life, but I want to cite just one.

+ + +

It was at the very beginning of his call, the time young Frenchy’s father threatened to disinherit him. And Francis, standing in the public square with the bishop looking on — the bishop his father had called on to talk some sense into the boy — performed the dramatic gesture of disinheriting himself, stripping off even his clothing, that embarrassment of riches, to become a new creation. I am reminded of a Renaissance painting of this incident in which the kindly bishop has draped his cope over the naked young Francis. This was in the days before Safe Church Workshops. But you may also recall how Franco Zeffirelli’s film made a particular point of this stripping of clothing — Francis’ father being a cloth merchant. Throughout that film the clothing of the clerics and the citizens imprisons them, and only Francis is free — born again in his birthday suit.

Francis performed a dramatic gesture, and among other things it convinced everyone that he really meant it. He was telling the truth, the naked truth, about what he meant to do. That is important — being disinherited in the 12th century when you had no other visible means of support was no easy choice. Francis, however, had invisible means of support — he was eager to follow in the footsteps of his Lord and Savior, and he was clothed from above in the garment of grace, the Emperor’s new clothes: not of the Holy Roman Emperor but of God the Emperor of the Universe, of Christ the King, and Christ the Servant. He was already beginning to take up the only ornament that mattered: the cross of responsibility and dedication day by day. He had come to see that gaining the whole world — or even keeping his inheritance — would cost him his true life, the true life he knew he was called to live with God. He could not live that life bound and swathed in the clothing that represented all that was old, the outward and visible sign of his old life, the clothing that had come to feel like a mummy’s wrappings or a shroud. He was ready to lose everything that he might boast of nothing but the cross of Jesus.

+ + +

I said I was going to recount just one incident — but there is a sequel to this story of Francis’ divestiture in the town square, from the very end of Francis’ life, another dramatic gesture that not only echoes and bookends the first, but which continues the theme of naked truthfulness — of absolute authenticity and radical poverty. Like the first it was as much an instruction to those who stood by as it was for Francis himself.

As Francis was dying, he asked his brothers to remove his habit and lay him on the ground, so he could die, strictly speaking, without owning anything, as naked as the day he was born — or born again. They did so briefly, but couldn’t bear it for long, seeing their beloved brother sick and shivering on the ground. They pressed him to resume the tunic and cowl he had worn so long. Eventually he agreed he would do so, but on the sole condition that they understand he was only borrowing it. Even at that, he insisted that as Sister Death finally came for him, they strip off even this borrowed clothing, so that he could pass into the life of the world to come unburdened by any earthly property, and completely free. The dramatic gesture continued to the end — as much for them, and for us, as for himself.

For we come into this world with nothing, we leave with nothing. All we have is ourselves — our souls and bodies. We can choose to seek ourselves, to satisfy ourselves, to preserve ourselves — or we can choose to offer ourselves, as reasonable, holy and living offering for the good of others and the good of the world God loved so much that he gave himself up for it — for us. We who bear his name should not be afraid to do as he did. We can strip ourselves of all that encumbers us, all that disguises us even from ourselves, changing ourselves back to our birthday suit — to find the naked truth of our authentic self, the self that we save only by losing it in service to others. This was the path that Francis the deacon chose, following in the way of the cross his Lord had gone before. This is the path we are called to follow, and should we ever be doubtful of the way, the signpost is plain for all of us to see.

It is the cross, and Christ upon it.+

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The Church’s Treasury

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
Diocese of New York Warden’s Conference / April 26 2008
Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine
Proper 24: For Vocation in Daily Work
Eccl 3:1,9-13; 1 Pet 2:11-17; Matt 6:19-24
Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.+

I could briefly summarize today’s readings as: Don’t Worry be Happy, Be a Good Citizen, and Try Not to Make too Much Money. The first is better known in its Latin version, Carpe diem; the second — Be a Good Citizen — is sound advice as long as one lives in a good city.

It is the third, Try Not to Make Too Much Money, that appears directed at those who serve the church. Church wardens are volunteers, so you never expected to “live by the church;” but even the clergy who do — because the rectory is often next-door, are only very rarely embarrassed with riches. The matchbook-cover promise, Go to School to Increase Your Earning Power, doesn’t apply to seminary. Rather, the church compensates its clergy based on the biblical command to leave the threshing ox unmuzzled — as well as on a short leash and moving in circles.

So devoting your life church work, on a stipend or as a volunteer, is a good way to follow our Lord’s advice not to lay up treasure on earth.

+ + +

If, that is, we are talking about the kind with images of politicians, in various denominations. But there is another kind of treasure more beguiling than folding green. And it exists in various denominations, too: Episcopal, Roman Catholic, Lutheran.... It is a treasure the church and its workers are tempted to store up, perhaps compensating for getting less of the kind with a politician’s image and likeness: whether Tiberius Caesar or Andrew Jackson. It is the treasure of stable security, of becoming an institution.

Saint Peter shows this at work; he counseled good citizenship so the church could survive in the Empire. But the Empire soon got so bad that good citizenship became impossible for Christians, forced to choose between Christ and Caesar.

Those who had counseled obedience found themselves re-evaluating — Peter ended up crucified head-down; and Paul must have reconsidered the wisdom of appealing to Caesar’s justice when he faced Caeser’s sword. The apostles learned they could not serve two masters — Christ and Caesar — though too late to leave epistles to that effect.

Imperial persecution clarified the church’s vision as only the hangman can — to see that survival on Caesar’s terms was not worth it, and the time had passed for playing goody two-sandals. So, strange as it may sound, thank God for Caesar, who gave the church something to stand up to, something to stand up for. Persecution reminded the church of its mission: not to survive by ceasing to be itself — but to spend itself for the life of the world, as its Lord had done.

Caesar reminded the church that those who seek to save their life will lose it. Caesar reminded the church that it was the body of Christ — Christ crucified under Pontius Pilate, who suffered death and was buried, and only then was raised from the dead. Christ set the pattern for the church: Only by losing life can life be saved; only what dies can be raised again.

+ + +

Since those fiery days, the world’s animosity towards the church has cooled to chilly toleration. And how has the church responded? How does the church expend its energy these days, now that Caesar no longer persecutes? Isn’t most of the church’s warfare these days internal? Where is the church’s treasure being spent — on outgoing mission, or ongoing questions of self-definition? Is the church laying up treasure in heaven, safe from moth and rust and thieves — or squandering its resources on ecclesiastical mothballs, Rustoleum, and burglar alarms?

It happens in parishes, national churches — it even happens in cathedrals... so I’m told! The focus shifts from mission to talk about mission, from vision to the vision statement. When this happens, the church’s vision is obstructed by the bulk of its own precious self, and the church abdicates its title as a wonderful and sacred mystery and verges on becoming an institution like any other. Preoccupied with survival rather than with mission, it resigns its role as bride of Christ and becomes more like Miss Havisham in Great Expectations, the wedding banquet transformed into a shuttered room whose lonely inhabitant tries to preserve a past that never was.

+ + +

Am I exaggerating? Think of the resources spent on the present Anglican Communion disagreements. The Episcopal Church treasures the Communion, and rightly so — but here is an opportunity to reform and revive the very thing we treasure if we are willing to set aside preoccupation with its structure for a time to focus on its purpose: to develop a Covenant not based on who’s in and who’s out — but upon the mission we share to a suffering world, with the Communion as a vessel well-suited to bear the good news to the ends of the earth — because it’s already there!

We are called and commissioned to risk what we treasure, to spend ourselves for the sake of the gospel, in a gospel fashion. It is not that we don’t need structures and vessels, but that they are means to an end, not ends in themselves. We are meant to use them, and sometimes lose them. Indeed, we are called to lose our very lives and thus to save them; for only what dies can be raised; only what is spent can be redeemed. True wealth, after all, is revealed in what you spend, not in what you possess. The church is most truly itself when it spends itself with an abandon that matches the liberality of the spendthrift Christ — Christ who gave himself up on the cross, who spent himself completely, and all for the love of his bride, the church.

What a perfectly mad young couple, who store up no treasure, spend all they have on each other — but having each other need nothing else. You know the story: she cut off her hair to buy him a watch-fob; he pawned his watch to buy her a comb — gifts, in their purchase, rendered useless — yet infinitely precious.

What, then, is the church’s true wealth? Only Christ, and him crucified. And what is his treasure? He has told us how much he values each of us poor fragile creatures as chosen and precious. As Solomon’s old love song tells it, sung in a Christian key: Christ is our treasure, and we are his.

+ + +

Long ago, a good deacon faced Caesar, who demanded the church’s treasures. Expecting gold and silver, how angered he was when the deacon assembled the poor and said, This is the church’s treasure.

We members of Christ’s body are the church’s treasure still, because treasured by Christ, because we are where his heart is. And no moth, no rust, no thief can touch us. We are Christ’s treasure, and this holy place — and all of the parishes from which we come to gather here — are God’s treasuries. Don’t you ever let anyone tell you they are just institutions. And don’t you ever let anyone make them so. You who teach and you who learn, you who worship and you who proclaim, you who administer and steward and care for the fabric of these vessels, keep your vision clear, always turned to the needs of the world that the church is called to serve. Carpe diem: Seize the day — the time is now. Christ is risen and has given us the greatest treasure — given himself into our hands, fragile treasures of bread and wine that feed and strengthen us to spend ourselves in Christ’s service.

May we now and ever spend ourselves freely, all of us, who bought by Christ, are free to serve — Christ’s treasure on earth as he is ours in heaven.+

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The Bridge Spider

Crossing the pond’s bridge in the breezy morning
I saw a glint of sunlight suspended in
the air — a single strand of spider’s silk
tethered at my end to the bridge’s base
but pointing off towards the trees across
the windblown pond, as straight as any sunbeam.

I could not see the other end on which
the spider drifted on the shifting wind,
though moving on the bridge I tried to catch
the sun’s reflection on that silken beam.

The wind was fresh and as it shifted course
it blew the unseen spider side to side
above the pond — the only sign of this
the shifting angle of the shining silk
tethered at my end to the bridge’s base.

The spider did not know where it was going —
only the opportunity of the wind,
the tether of its silk, the chance of landfall
on the farther shore — or of watery
failure. But it trusted in the wind.

Envoi
Help me, Lord, to trust your Spirit, which
has borne me up thus far, to thank you for
the gift of skill to spin my course. I know
not where you send me, but I trust the wind.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

2006

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Prayers and answers

God always answers prayer. When we knock, the door will be opened. But it may be opened in rather than opened out. The answer to our prayer may be the call to convert our desire into a paschal mystery of giving rather than receiving. We may think we approach God's door as trick-or-treaters on the Eve of All Saints, ready to receive a sweet bounty; only to find ourselves commissioned and sent out to seek and serve others instead. Blessed is the gift, and blessed those who receive the gift to give. Thus are loaves and fishes multiplied, and prayers answered.

Tobias Haller BSG
back from Convocation and facing a pile of work with which to catch up!

Disordered Thinking

One way to tell if a proposition is correct or not is to see if the reasons advanced in its favor contradict other propositions already accepted.

It seems clear that one of the reasons the Roman Catholic Church gave up on trying to find reasons for its opposition to the ordination of women — now simply forbidding further discussion of the matter — must be the realization at some level that the reasons advanced against it were leading into erroneous waters.

It took them a while to reach the stonewall position. By 1976, in the official commentary on Inter Insigniores (1976), the leadership had come to realize the shakiness of Fortress Reason: “It is well known that in solemn teaching infallibility affects the doctrinal affirmation, not the arguments intended to explain it. Thus the doctrinal chapters of the Council of Trent contain certain processes of reasoning that today no longer seem to hold.” An interesting confession; yet still they were reluctant to stop trying to defend the position, and soldier on with arguments in support of the faltering cause: “But this risk has never stopped the magisterium from endeavoring at all times to clarify doctrine... Faith seeks understanding, and tries to distinguish the grounds for and the coherence of what is taught.”

Unfortunately, Inter Insigniores itself contains arguments, most of which apart from the unassailable “we’ve always done it that way” have now been dropped in favor of the total stonewall. Let me give an example from this document of the kind of disorder into which rational minds can descend in the interests of maintaining the status quo.

The priest is a sign, the supernatural effectiveness of which comes from the ordination received, but a sign that must be perceptible, and which the faithful must be able to recognize with ease. The whole sacramental economy is in fact based upon natural signs, on symbols imprinted upon the human psychology: “Sacramental signs,” says Saint Thomas, “represent what they signify by natural resemblance.” The same natural resemblance is required for persons as for things: when Christ’s role in the Eucharist is to be expressed sacramentally, there would not be this “natural resemblance” which must exist between Christ and his minister if the role of Christ were not taken by a man: in such a case it would be difficult to see in the minister the image of Christ. For Christ was and remains a man.

Leaving aside the fact that women are as “perceptible” as men, this leads to a kind of sacramental receptionism (in which the believer’s perceptions are what render the sacrament valid). This reduces the sacrament from an objective reality into a subjective experience. It also puts an undue focus upon one aspect of the priestly person: his (or her!) sex. Why, after all, should sex be any more determinative of perceiving Christ — if perception were the sine qua non for the validity of the sacrament — than any other quality. And isn’t a woman more “perceptible” as Christ than a loaf of bread is as his flesh? Personally, I don’t find the figure of a paunchy octogenarian cardinal to be as “natural” or immediate a reminder of Christ as a younger and more ascetical woman.

Which is, of course, my fault. For I should be able to see Christ in every member of Christ’s body, for Christ is in them. It is not Christ’s maleness that is of significance, in the Eucharist or in anything else, but his humanity, which obviously includes his maleness, but just as obviously is not limited to or by it.

Which brings us to the serious doctrine this position contradicts. For it is taught that what is not assumed (by Christ in the Incarnation) is not redeemed. And Christ assumed the whole of human nature. Otherwise how could women be saved? Christ assumed the totality of human nature when he became incarnate, and as the Chalcedonian Definition affirms, he received that totality of human nature solely from his mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary. And she was, obviously, a woman.

I first noted this contradiction with the Chalcedonian Definition, and the implications for the ordination of women, over twenty years ago. I am very pleased to say that some of the theologians in Eastern Orthodoxy — who hold the doctrine of the Incarnation very seriously and also highly honor the Theotokos — are beginning to see the implications as well. The summer 2002 issue of Anglican Theological Review included a number of essays from an Orthodox/Old Catholic conference that raised this question.

Facing the contradiction

Let’s look at the issue more closely, by asking what relationship sex has to human nature. The nature of any class must be something possessed by every member of that class. As Hooker says, “Now if men had not naturally this desire to be happy, how were it possible that all men should have it? All men have. Therefore this desire in man is natural. It is not in our power not to do the same...” (Laws, 1.11.4) The desire to happiness is thus a part of human nature. But what about sex? “Having a sex” is natural to all human beings. But the actual quality of being male only applies to men; being female only to women. So it is part of the manly nature to be male, the womanly nature to be female. But when human nature is considered as a whole, including both men and women, the specific sex is left to one side as a quality of the individual or of the class of men or women, and only the generic quality of “having a sex” applies to human beings. Maleness or femaleness applies only to individuals, and not to human nature as a whole. So, the “natural resemblance” argument already having been defeated both on objective grounds and on the grounds of a proper understanding of the nature of the sacrament, we are left with an assertion that there is something about maleness, as a human quality, that is required for ordination.

And this is where the conflict with Chalcedon arises: for the Council affirmed that whatever it is in human nature that is of saving importance (since that is the object of the Incarnation) came through a woman — the Blessed Mother of God — and she could not confer what she did not possess. Ergo, the male character is not essential, but accidental. Even if Christ’s maleness was necessary for the fulfilment of prophecy, there is no natural reason to think this carries over to the ministers of the church. To do so is to attach a greater significance to maleness than is warranted.

Some twenty years ago, I wrote the following brief comment in the style of Richard Hooker, addressing these questions. I think it still holds up, and so I offer it here, for the first time in the blogosphere:

They say that women may not receive the benefit of the sacrament of order. But how is this; seeing that they may receive the benefit of both of the sacraments ordained by Christ, and may be, as they will admit, the ministers of baptism, which is the prime sacrament of the church’s very being; and seeing that they may alike receive the benefits of the other sacramental rites of the church, in confirmation, penance, matrimony, and unction; wherefore then are they incapable of receiving benefit of this one only sacrament of orders? Is it that they are incapable of receiving this grace, as if they were a material unfit to receive the impress of a seal? What is the grace? and what that receives it? Is there somewhat in male humanity that exists not in the female? Is it not rather that male and female are qualities of the individual person, and not of collective human nature? For humanity as a whole is neither male nor female, but each individual is either one or the other. To say otherwise were an error, since we know that all that is of human nature in woman comes from man, as Eve was taken wholly out of Adam; and further, all that is in human nature resides in woman, for Christ’s humanity came to him wholly by way of his blessed mother, and she could not bestow that which she did not possess: and finally both man and woman come from God as made in God’s image. (1Cor 11.12) So if they say that either humanity or divinity is the form or image that a woman cannot possess, they are mistaken, for she has it both by nature of birth; and further by the grace of baptism whatever of the divine image is marred or obscured in man or woman is restored to its original likeness. Finally, we hold that the grace of the sacraments comes not from the ministers who perform the rites associated thereunto, but from God; and that the lawful performance of a sacramental rite assures us of its validity and of the grace imparted thereby.

Tobias Haller BSG
on the feast of Elizabeth, Amelia, Sojourner and Harriet: bearers of Christ’s likeness all, and ministers of his Truth!

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Of Doubts and Discipline

Many of you will no doubt have heard of the Episcopal priest who is attempting a personal reconciliation between Islam and Christianity, balancing the evidentially contradictory creedal claims (that Jesus is -- or isn't -- the Son of God) in a precarious syncretism.

When I saw this story I gave a sigh of sympathetic frustration. I can understand how people have doubts, and go through periods of further exploration in their religious development. None of us is, I dare say, full-formed in faith until we reach the point at which we know as we are known. But the church rightly expects conformity to its doctrine on the part of those ordained to ministry; one signs a statement to that effect at ordination -- but this oath need not mean a perfect acceptance or understanding of all of which that doctrine consists, but at least a willingness not to teach anything to the contrary. I take that to be the meaning that lies behind conformity.

Still, crises of faith are bound to arise. Our church might do well to have a process similar to that of religious orders for folks who are going through such crises of faith and/or vocation -- a kind of temporary withdrawal without the punitive note of "suspension" but with the same effect -- at the end of which they could either re-commit to or renounce (or be deposed from) their orders. I'm not sure what this kind of intentionally temporary renunciation would be called. What do the canonists out there think? Or do we need this kind of pastoral measure?

Tobias Haller BSG