Of course the Church can ordain women; it’s already done so.

ardi­nal Müller claims wom­en’s ordi­na­tion is impos­si­ble. He has Ama­zon Syn­od Derange­ment Syn­drome, and has called it a “wreck­ing ball” bent on “restruc­tur­ing the Uni­ver­sal Church.” We learn from this that the car­di­nal is very inept with metaphor, since wreck­ing balls don’t “restruc­ture” any­thing. Maybe this is a minor prob­lem. The big­ger issue with Müller is that he says no pope, no syn­od, no coun­cil “could make pos­si­ble the ordi­na­tion of women as bish­op, priest, or dea­con.” “It would be invalid,” Müller says.

So we learn from this that Müller is unfa­mil­iar with Sacred Scrip­ture, specif­i­cal­ly Romans 16:1. Here it is in the RSV-CE: “I com­mend to you our sis­ter Phoebe, a dea­con­ness of the church at Cen′chre-ae.” Yes, and the Greek word here is διάκονον, diako­nen. Which means what it sounds like it means.

So who ordained Phoebe, and why was St. Paul com­mend­ing peo­ple to her instead of com­plain­ing about the wreck­ing ball that was restruc­tur­ing Rome? Oh, but Alt, but Alt. There were dea­con­ness­es in the ear­ly Church; we all know this, but it was­n’t ordi­na­tion! I mean, even you said that! Remem­ber?

Yes, I implied as much in a post three years ago. And I still think it’s a wild spasm of easy creduli­ty to think, as the Nation­al So-Called Catholic Reporter did at the time, that female dea­cons would con­sti­tute “cler­gy.” But on the ques­tion of ordi­na­tion, we know from the fifth-cen­tu­ry Coun­cil of Chal­cedon that women were ordained as dea­cons in the Church. We know that because Canon 15 set a min­i­mum age upon the ordi­na­tion of women to the dia­conate:

No woman under forty years of age is to be ordained a dea­con, and then only after close scruti­ny. If after receiv­ing ordi­na­tion and spend­ing some time in the min­istry she despis­es God’s grace and gets mar­ried, such a per­son is to be anath­e­ma­tised along with her spouse.

So we learn from this that Car­di­nal Müller must think that the Coun­cil of Chal­cedon was invalid. He denies the author­i­ty of Chal­cedon now. Does Müller also deny the two natures of Christ? Chal­cedon defined that dog­ma. Does Müller deny that Christ is ful­ly human and ful­ly divine? That is what Chal­cedon said, and Pope Leo the Great affirmed it. Does Müller mean to tell us that Leo was an antipope? Was Chal­cedon a wreck­ing ball aimed at the restruc­tur­ing of the Church? (I still have fits of laugh­ter over that one, dear read­er.)

Now, certainly—it should be cer­tain­ly—women may not be ordained to the priest­hood. Nor is this Holy Orders we are talk­ing about, lest Faith­ful­Catholics™ suc­cumb to seizures. St. John Paul II has set­tled that ques­tion in Ordi­na­tio Sac­er­do­tal­is:

[I]n 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.

And it is worth not­ing here, once more, that Pope Fran­cis has affirmed this teach­ing him­self. “That can­not be done,” the pope has said on the ques­tion of women becom­ing priests.

But priest­ly ordi­na­tion is a dif­fer­ent ques­tion from dia­conal ordi­na­tion. (Nor is this Holy Orders we are talk­ing about, lest Faith­ful­Catholics™ suc­cumb to seizures.) And it may be, too, that a female dea­con nec­es­sar­i­ly must have a dif­fer­ent role to fill in the Church than a male dea­con. And the Church would have to decide what that role is and make the nec­es­sary dis­tinc­tions and set the nec­es­sary caveats.

There’s always the prob­lem of “give ’em an inch and they’ll expect a mile” with regard to those whose ulti­mate aim is a female priest­hood. But that does not touch on the fact that there is noth­ing pro­hibit­ing the ordi­na­tion of women in the Church as dea­cons, for the Church has done this before. And that means the Church can do so again. (Nor is this Holy Orders we are talk­ing about, lest Faith­ful­Catholics™ suc­cumb to seizures.)

Sor­ry to say, but Car­di­nal Müller is wrong.