A Former Woman Lutheran Pastor on How She Realized Women’s Ordination is Wrong
Yes, I’m reporting on a former Lutheran, turned Roman Catholic, who renounced her ordination. Let me say that I do not necessarily endorse every word in this article, but it is safe to say that one of the tragedies in this story is the fact that she could only escape the grip of feminist/liberal theology at her ELCA seminary by moving to Romanism. It is important however to see in her story her recognition that the ordination of women has never had any good, solid theological justification. In Australia, where the struggle to push through the ordination of women has now failed, the theological arguments for the ordination of women simply could not stand up to the clear, and theological arguments made against it. Finally, the demand that women be ordained rests on social/cultural and emotional arguments, and it is absolutely no coincidence that the very same foundations are the reason why the ELCA has embraced homosexual clergy and homosexual “marriages.” Here is the source for this article.
Jennifer Ferrara Was Won Over by the Pope’s Theology of the Body
SPRING CITY, Pennsylvania, 21 JUNE 2004 (ZENIT)
When she was younger, Jennifer Ferrara never would have foreseen the day when she became a sort of apologist for the all-male Catholic priesthood.
But that’s what the former Lutheran minister who converted to Catholicism has become.
Ferrara, who became Catholic in 1998, recently told her conversion story in “The Catholic Mystique: Fourteen Women Find Fulfillment in the Catholic Church” (Our Sunday Visitor), which she co-edited with Patricia Sodano Ireland, another former Lutheran pastor.
Ferrara shared with ZENIT how her search for theological justification of women’s ordination in Lutheran seminary eventually changed her mind about the priesthood and opened her heart to the Catholic Church.
Q: How did you as a former Lutheran pastor come to realize that women should not and cannot be ordained as priests?
Ferrara: When I entered seminary, I was a garden-variety feminist who believed men and women were basically the same. I thought it patently obvious that women should be ordained.
I really gave the issue little thought, but to the extent that I did, it was a matter of equal rights. I also was not particularly orthodox in my beliefs. I had studied religion in college; I did not lose my faith in the process but adopted a mishmash of heretical ideas.
While in the seminary, I gradually became theologically orthodox, which was — considering the environment of mainline Protestant seminaries — a minor miracle. Slowly, it began to dawn on me that women’s ordination was a new development that needed theological justification. I did not come up with a full-blown defense until years later when I was a parish pastor.
By that time, I thought of myself as an “evangelical catholic.” Evangelical catholics view Lutheranism as a reform movement within and for the one Church of Christ. Therefore, Lutherans have a responsibility to work toward reconciliation with Rome.
The fact that I was a Lutheran pastor put me in an awkward position, theologically speaking. I was an impediment to that reconciliation for which I longed. This forced me to take a hard look at the issue of women’s ordination.
Q: What did Luther himself think of the idea of women priests?
Ferrara: Though Martin Luther did not believe in women’s ordination, I found support for it in his writings.
In his “Lectures on Genesis,” he argues that God did not intend for men and women to have different roles. Differentiation between the sexes is a result of the fall of our first parents. As a form of punishment, women have been subjected to men and, therefore, have been deprived of the ability to administer to affairs outside the home, including those of the Church.
Luther believed that male headship was a matter of natural law. As a Lutheran pastor, I disagreed. The acceptance of equality between the sexes throughout the Western world demonstrated otherwise.
According to Luther, societal arrangements should be preserved within the Church, lest we give scandal to the Gospel. I thought restricting ordination to men had become a modern-day scandal. Ordaining women seemed like the best way to serve our Lord in this time and place.
When I started to think about becoming Roman Catholic, I disagreed with the Church’s teachings on women’s ordination. I actually thought about writing an article outlining what I presumed to be the theological deficiencies with the Catholic position, which in retrospect seems like sheer hubris.
In order to prepare for it, I read John Paul II’s theology of the body. There I encountered a vision of creation that challenged all my feminist notions about men and women.
Q: How so?
Ferrara: According to John Paul, men and women were not created essentially the same. Masculinity and femininity are not just attributes; rather, the function of sex is a constituent part of the person. Men and woman both express the human but do so in different and complementary ways. Believe it or not, this was a radically new idea to me.
The differences between men and women lie in the way they express love for one another. Men have the more active role in the relationship: The husband is the one who loves while the wife is the one who is loved and, in return, gives love. True authority is exercised through service. As John Paul II says, “To reign is to serve.”
However, men and women serve in particularly masculine and feminine ways. At the heart of this diversity in roles is the difference between motherhood and fatherhood.
No matter what men and women do, they bring paternal or maternal characteristics to their vocation. This is just as true of those who have chosen the religious life as it is of those who become biological parents.
This means the Roman Catholic priest is not simply a father figure: He is a spiritual father. To state what has ceased to be obvious in a society governed by the principle of androgyny: Mothers and fathers are not interchangeable. Women are not men and, therefore, cannot be priests any more than they can be fathers in the physical sense. If women can step into the role of priest, then it is no longer one of fatherhood.
To understand all of this required me to give up my functional view of the ministry. In most Protestant denominations, the pastor serves a role within the priesthood of all believers. He or she preaches the Word and administers the sacraments.
In the Catholic Church, the priest acts “in persona Christi.” Christ is the bridegroom; the Church is his bride. This nuptial mystery is proclaimed throughout the Old and New Testaments.
According to the Catholic understanding of the priesthood, the priest represents Christ himself, the author of the covenant, the bridegroom and head of the Church. This is especially true in the case of the Eucharist, when Christ is exercising his ministry of salvation.
One must utterly disregard the importance of the nuptial mystery for the economy of salvation in order to make an argument for women’s ordination.
If the Church were to ordain women, the entire understanding of the importance of the feminine and masculine in the working out of our salvation would be lost. Much is at stake here. Once I really saw that, it was relatively easy for me to give up my ordination and embrace the Church’s position. ZE04062121
PART 2
Jennifer Ferrara on Proper Roles in the Church
SPRING CITY, Pennsylvania, 22 JUNE 2004 (ZENIT)
Women can find innumerable opportunities for service in the Church if only they embrace their proper role, says a former Lutheran minister who now extols the all-male Catholic priesthood.
Jennifer Ferrara, who became Catholic in 1998, recently told her conversion story in “The Catholic Mystique: Fourteen Women Find Fulfillment in the Catholic Church” (Our Sunday Visitor). She co-edited it with Patricia Sodano Ireland, another former Lutheran pastor.
Ferrara shared with ZENIT how women will find fulfillment in the Church if they understand that only Catholicism recognizes the importance of the feminine in society and in salvation. Part 1 of this interview appeared Monday.
Q: What role is left for women in the Church if they cannot be priests?
Ferrara: It is not a matter of a role “being left for women” but of women embracing their proper role. There has always been plenty for women to do in the Catholic Church.
Remember, the ordination of women in Protestant communities is a recent development. Before then, women had almost no role to play in those denominations. Protestant churches are starkly masculine.
As a Lutheran, I had no female models of holiness to turn to for comfort and guidance. Though many Protestant denominations ordain women, they do not recognize the importance of the feminine—mother Church embodied in Mary—in God’s plan for salvation.
I do not see why many Catholics discount the importance of the women religious in the life of the Church as if they were second-class citizens. They are our spiritual mothers.
Protestants have never recognized such a role for women. Moreover, there are also all sorts of lay apostolates, orders and associations women can join.
Q: Your conversion from a Lutheran minister to being a Catholic also meant giving up your former ministerial role, yet some women in the Church argue they feel excluded because they cannot become priests. What would you say to them?
Ferrara: I would begin by saying I understand their anger and frustration.
At first, I was bitter about the prospect of giving up my ordination in order to join the Church. However, I would also tell them my life as a Roman Catholic laywoman, wife and mother has taken on a new sense of definition.
For the first time, I am trying to listen to what the Church has to say about who I am rather than expecting the Church to conform to what I think she should be.
In general, modern people chafe against revealed authority because they expect the outer life of institutions to be rendered serviceable to the psychological inner life of individuals. Therefore, if women want to be priests and claim to feel pain because they are not priests, it automatically follows that they should be priests.
Yet women who insist they have a call to the priesthood and use their pain as evidence of an authentic interior call from God are, in fact, using the protean politics of pain and not Catholic theology to explain their experiences.
If they truly wish to empty themselves and renounce their own will for the sake of God and Church, they will find innumerable opportunities for service.
Q: How do you explain John Paul II’s claim that men and women were not created as identical beings to those who think men and women are the same, interchangeable?
Ferrara: I have found that those who are determined to embrace the principle of androgyny are not open to hearing about the Pope’s teachings.
However, the average person knows instinctively that men and women are not the same. This is especially true of those who have children. They see mothers and fathers, boys and girls, are inherently different.
John Paul II’s teachings explain reality. That is where I begin. If you can get people to acknowledge the simple premise that men and women—though equal in dignity and importance—are different, you can begin to talk about what this means for the roles they play.
Q: What can be done to combat the movement for women’s ordination?
Ferrara: Those of us who oppose women’s ordination cannot allow ourselves to be put on the defensive. We do not have to apologize for our stance. The best way to combat the movement for women’s ordination is to present the Church’s teachings in a positive light.
We do not raise the status of women by convincing them that they need to be men. Though women can and should be allowed to do most of the jobs traditionally filled by men—bringing to them a feminine sensibility—they cannot and never will be biological and spiritual fathers.
Those who insist otherwise effectively deny that which is noble and holy about being wives and mothers—biological and spiritual—in the plan by which God intends to redeem his creation.
The Catholic Church is one the few institutions, maybe the only one, left in the world that recognizes the importance of the feminine not only for the proper working of society but for our salvation. We need to be willing to say just that. ZE04062223
Why do many skip over the LCMS and swim the Tiber to Rome? Is it due to the fact that the LCMS is not vocal enough about who we are, what we believe and why?
I was Catholic when Jennifer Ferrara entered the RC. She subsequently wrote a very poignant article which was published in the January 1999 issue of First Things describing how difficult it was for her to find a parish offered the genuine Catholic worship and piety she sought:
Becoming Catholic: Making It Hard
http://www.firstthings.com/article/2008/11/002-becoming-catholic-making-it-hard-14#
Nevertheless, her observations about womens ordination are well taken.
Christine
@Steve Newell
Speaking from my personal experience, as someone who left Rome to come to
Lutheranism, when I started to question the church it effected my faith in the entire institution and its teachings. I rejected Rome in its entirety, I think that she did the same with Lutheranism.
I’ve never forgotten a conversation I had with a friend who was a seminarian, at the time when the ALC started ordaining women. I asked, “If they say the Bible is their final authority in all matters of faith and life, how can they institute a practice clearly contrary to the plain teaching of Scripture?”
He replied, “Well, they just had to do it to placate the feminists.”
He was not criticizing the decision in saying that. His implication was that if a pressure group makes enough trouble and noise, violating Scripture to pacify them is a reasonable institutional response.
We haven’t been friends in a long time, but I understand he’s had quite a successful career in the ALC and the ELCA.
“Though Martin Luther did not believe in women’s ordination, I found support for it in his writings.”
Now that is just goofy. But having said that….
“In his “Lectures on Genesis,” he argues that God did not intend for men and women to have different roles. Differentiation between the sexes is a result of the fall of our first parents.”
I must confess that I find this more than just a little distressing. Can you shed any light on what’s really going on with this?
It is indeed confusing why folks leave the Church. It seems to be such a copout actually. I was confused by this section. “As a Lutheran, I had no female models of holiness to turn to for comfort and guidance. Though many Protestant denominations ordain women…” Some of the most Godly women I know have been the wives of Pastors who have undershepherded my family. Also the opportunities for service abound for women in the LCMS. True, they can’t and shouldn’t be ordained (and the reason for your post Pastor is absolutely valid!) but at least in my church, women play a critical role and not roles men should be doing but aren’t but roles that are open to women. I’m really referring in part to this:
http://www.lcms.org/graphics/assets/media/CTCR/Women_in_Church3.pdf
It is a great article that has really helped me in trying to make my views more Scriptural. Besides that article, what about all the Godly women in the Bible other than Mary???
Steve, I think most who do it seem to be driven by a felt need to reunite with Rome as real heading of the Reformation. As for why not LCMS, I think it’s just the opposite. We know why we’re right and we are vocal, or we may wince or roll eyes, so they perceive that we rub it in. They perceive us as uncharitable “I told you so’s.” The same result is often seen in sibling rivalry.
I was going to say, “Short answer, Yes!” to that, but in a way that is too simplistic. There has been every effort on the part of the LWF types to exclude the Ineternational Lutheran Council / Missouri types from the dialogues, since we tend not to subscribe to joint statements. But it seems that dialogue partners prefer talking with us types because they know where we stand. We do need to stop being apologetic (in the craven sense) for our position, which sometimes seems to be the way we react to others, and start being apologetic (in the bold, confessing, reasoned defense sense), confessing to the rest of Christendom the reason for the hope that is within us. The LWF is starting to at least listen to the ILC and sent an observer to the most recent ILC seminaries’ conference (2007, so I do think our voices are beginning to be heard in some of these areas.
It’s completely tragic that this person felt that in order to find a church with a biblical view of gender and the pastoral office she had to leave Lutheranism altogether. Also, for many ELCA folk I imagine Rome is less of a swim that going to Missouri. If you can get over the women’s ordination hump, Rome has similar views on higher criticism of the Bible and evolutionary science. Plus, if you’ve accepted JDDJ you can believe justification has been largely ironed out. To go to Missouri, you would have to embrace the bogeyman of Biblical inerrancy and creationism of some form in addition to women’s ordination. That’s just a swim too far for most.
Bethany Kilcrease
Thanks for posting this. The information is worthy of the most serious study.
How interesting. Romanists may be left with the impression that they are the only Christians left standing who believe in the “priesthood” (I prefer “pastorate”) as the exclusive domain of men. Orthodox protestants (I prefer the term “catholic”) have their work cut out for them.
The interviewee claims “This is just as true of those who have chosen the religious life as it is of those who become biological parents.” Here we have a patently false papistical claim and false dichotomy: that becoming a “biological” parent cannot be a “religious life”. Sorry. The home is a God-ordained classroom; one can have all the religious orders, vows and ordinances that one wishes, but to claim that my role as father and husband is somehow a non-religious life is precisely the hypocrisy condemned by Christ and inveighed against most mightily by Luther and other reformers.
Steve,
Perhaps because like the former pastor says, most protestant denominations do not emphasize and teach the distinctly feminine aspects of God’s redemptive plan. How many men in our congregations understand and embrace their identity as a bride? How have our wives and girls been taught that this identity we share as the church is a wonderful expression of the feminine? Instead, we teach them that in order to identify with God’s plan of salvation, they must relate to a distinctly male identity. It’s no surprise then that we have young women asking why they can’t take on the pastoral role.
In the LCMS, it seems that whenever we discuss women’s ordination, we begin from a defensive posture. Instead, we should teach about “that which is noble and holy about being wives and mothers” as part of the whole plan God has for his people.
@Bethany
If you can get over the women’s ordination hump, Rome has similar views on higher criticism of the Bible and evolutionary science. Plus, if you’ve accepted JDDJ you can believe justification has been largely ironed out.
Right you are Bethany. Although I agree with Ferrara’s position that women should not be ordained I don’t at all agree with the rest of her arguments for Roman Catholicism.
Christine
@Rev. Joseph Eggleston
Perhaps these texts will help us out:
Isaiah 66:13 As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you . . .
Isaiah 66:12 For thus says the Lord, ‘ . . . you shall be nursed, you shall be carried on her hip, and be trotted on her [God’s maternal] knees . . .’
In a beautiful picture of maternal love, Jesus expressed the depth of divine compassion with the words:
Matthew 23:37 O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.
God also has maternal qualities.
@Kaleb Axon
You raise the critical questions regarding what Luther said about the relationship between the sexes. And, I agree, when I read Mrs. Ferrara’s argument that, on the one hand, Luther believed that the differences were based on natural law but that he, on the other hand, simply clung to social ideas current at the time, I thought: both of this can’t be right.
I’ve actually looked into Luther’s comments on this matter in his Lectures on Genesis and elsewhere. And while I didn’t write a dissertation on it, here’s what I’ve come up with: since both Adam and Eve were created in the image of God, both are equal before God, but also before the remainder of creation which they were to rule, as God’s representatives, so to speak. However, Luther also makes it clear that in relation to one another, Eve is clearly subordinate to Adam — since and by virtue of creation, not first as a deplorable result of the fall. It is thus all about relationships: between Eve and Adam; between Eve, Adam, and God; between Eve, Adam, and their household goods (incl. children and servants and cows).
Luther was too much of a biblical theologian as to be able to disregard what the NT teaches about God’s design in creation. Consider 1 Cor. 11; 1 Tim. 2, but also Eph. 5. In particular the last text is perhaps overlooked in this context because it, at first, does not seem to speak about creation, only about redemption and Christ. However, it is important to note that Paul in Eph. 4:24 speaks about putting on the new man (the new Adam) who is created according to God in righteousness and holiness (the parallel text is Col. 3:10: the new man is renewed according to the IMAGE of him who created him, i.e., God, see Gen. 1:26f.).
In other words, as Christians we, daily arising and emerging out of baptismal repentance and faith, are to live according to the way we were created by God, not only, but also in marriage, the husband being the head of the wife.
In general, it’s sad that Ferrara seems so intrigued by the Roman Catholic understanding of “vocation” (meaning mostly religious vocations, such as nuns etc.), that she only through them can come to an appreciation of her vocation as a mother.
She wrote: “As a Lutheran, I had no female models of holiness to turn to for comfort and guidance. Though many Protestant denominations ordain women, they do not recognize the importance of the feminine—mother Church embodied in Mary—in God’s plan for salvation.
I do not see why many Catholics discount the importance of the women religious in the life of the Church as if they were second-class citizens. They are our spiritual mothers.
Protestants have never recognized such a role for women. Moreover, there are also all sorts of lay apostolates, orders and associations women can join.”
True, we don’t have female monastic orders, at least not very many of them and certainly none in the Roman, meritorious sense of the word. And we also assign to Mary only that role in salvation which the Holy Spirit assigned to her, not as sinless co-redemptress but as Mother of God. Also, we don’t have fancy clericalized organizations for women in the church (what’s the role of the LWML?).
But that Mrs. Ferrara should not have found any models of feminine holiness in her life, wow. She must not have seen her mother, but maybe that’s because, as has been mentioned a few times already, Lutherans have been too shy about duly adorning mothers (and fathers) and their contribution to the spiritual life of their children. Luther, on the other hand, praised their contribution highly, which is why he called Christian mothers “bishopesses” without whose good and holy work in raising their children the pastors would labor in vain.
@Mark Veenman
The verses you cite demonstrate a common contemporary problem. You seem to be unable to tell the difference between a metaphor and a simile.
Ok, there is a difference between simile and metaphor, but what is it exactly? And this is a real question.
There is “God is our Father” (Lord’s Prayer) and “God is like a mother.” To me, the “is like” is somehow “weaker,” although both figures of speech operate with “points of comparison,” meaning not all the features etc. of the figure are applied to the object at hand.
The expression “God is like a hen,” based on Matthew’s gospel quoted above, should thus not lead us to pray: “Our dear and most gracious Hen…”, while metaphors do seem to lend themselves to be “names” of God mentioned / invoked in prayer.
Alright then: linguists to the front!
Hey Lars,
I didn’t say God is a woman. I said that scripture demonstrates that our Father also has maternal qualities.
For an interesting Roman perspective: http://deaconninure.0catch.com/Bible-related/God_our_Mother.html
Lars:
I was also responding to, and attempting to give scriptural answers to the Rev. Eggleston’s comment “[i]nstead, we teach them (women) that in order to identify with God’s plan of salvation, they must relate to a distinctly male identity.”
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t God genderless? I think I need to review the Lutheran Confessions….
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t God genderless?
Yes, He is. But Jesus isn’t. If He is the bridegroom the Church is of necessity the Bride, and it is the Bridegroom who fees His Bride with Word and Sacrament through the person of the Pastor who represents Him.
Christine
Lindsey & Christine:
We can’t really say that God is genderless. While it’s true that many have “anthorpomorphized” God in such a way that they think of or present him with very human maleness, we don’t want to overcorrect that error with another error.
In the first place, over and over again in Scripture God presents himself as male -the clearest example probably being that he is identified as “Father”, not a genderless “parent”. And when you study the original Hebrew and Greek, you see almost everywhere that the pronouns and verb endings and such are the “masculine” forms (the only notable exception being many references to the Holy Spirit, since “spirit” is a neuter noun).
Some might argue that God was constrained by human language and culture to refer to himself in the masculine, but that we moderns who are not similarly constrained, i.e. who have a language and culture that can express his nature in a more abstract and genderless way, should do so. But that’s essentially saying “We know better than the Holy Spirit.” God — who gave us language and controls all things, even culture — chose human gender to express his identity, and we will not presume to refer to him in any way other than the way he refers to himself.
(And of course, God the Son actually took on the identity of a human male!)
I’m not necessarily for throwing out all “gender-specific” language for “gender-neutral” terms for God (excluding Jesus because His dual identity is that of God and a human male), I just remember learning in Lutheran Doctrine classes that God is neither male nor female, at least not in the human classification of gender. Aren’t angels genderless as well?
And let me add that even though “spirit” is a neuter noun in Greek – and a feminine noun in Hebrew, the pronouns used to refer to the Holy Spirit are always masculine.
Aren’t angels genderless as well?
Seems to me they are. Angels are also, unlike human beings, pure spirit. We are enfleshed souls and will continue to have bodies in heaven, albeit glorified ones and I’m guessing that they will still retain the attributes of male and female as the Lord retained His masculine identity after the Resurrection.
The extreme of this, of course, is the view held by the Mormons that God the Father is a literal, physical replica of the human male, which orthodox Christians don’t believe.
We also have to make sure that we don’t identify God the Father in a way that makes it difficult for people who have lived in dysfunctional families or with abusive parents to carry over that image to God, who does not have the human weaknesses that earthly Fathers can have.