The Natural and Sacramental Significance of Human Sexuality and the Question of Admitting Women to the Ordained Diaconate

GIVEN THE CULTURALLY prevalent rupture between sex and procreation in both thought and practice, we should not be surprised that gender fluidity is quickly replacing the so-called binary model of sexual differentiation, which is characterized by what is now considered a belief (having previously been considered a fact) that human sexual differences are more than skin deep. Indeed, for most of human history—at least until the onset of the sexual revolution—it was simply taken for granted that sexual differences are characterized by far more than the sexual stereotypes, which are all too often employed by curious or disconcerted youth today to determine not only their chosen “gender” but even their desired “sex.”¹ For beyond all that might be culturally determined or personally chosen, and even beyond all that nature provided in terms of physical sexual traits, lay the indisputable scientific and experiential evidence of sexual powers: powers that were lifegiving, but only as united with those of the “other” sex. Because, however, these powers have since been widely usurped by contraceptives or replaced by artificial reproductive technologies, the determination of a human person as male or female is no longer of apparent consequence. As Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger observed already in 1985,

Detached from the bond with fecundity, sex no longer appears to be a determined characteristic, as a radical and pristine orientation of the person. Male? Female? They are questions that for some are now viewed as obsolete, senseless. . . . The answer of current conformism is foreseeable: ‘whether one is male or female has little interest for us, we are all simply humans’. This, in reality, has grave consequences even if at first it appears very beautiful and generous. It signifies, in fact, that sexuality is no longer rooted in anthropology; it means that sex is viewed as a simple role, interchangeable at one’s pleasure.²

Even motherhood is often regarded as merely an “accidental function,”³ Ratzinger remarks. In short, as he put it later from the seat of St. Peter, “Sex is no longer a given element of nature that man has to accept and personally make sense of.” Instead, “it is a social role that we choose for ourselves, while in the past it was chosen for us by society.”⁴

Such a context does not lend itself to a serious entertaining of the question of whether women could be admitted to the ordained diaconate. If “male” and “female” are merely socio-cultural constructs, reflecting nothing of what St. Thomas calls the divine “art”⁵ of nature—replete with God-given significance to be discovered or discerned in natural orientations to nature-specified goals—then certainly there is no reason to believe that any ecclesial mission might be reserved to a man. If, on the other hand, human sexuality really is charged with divinely invested meaning—meaning that is not simply, nor arbitrarily, imposed by the human will, but belongs to it in virtue of creation—then the question of ordaining women is of consequence, and merits pondering. Indeed, as Pope St. John Paul II proposed within the context of addressing “the dignity and vocation of women” as well as “their active presence in the Church and in society,” we must seek to understand “the reason for and the consequences of the Creator’s decision that the human being should always and only exist as a woman or a man.”⁶

Our contemplation of that divine reason will undoubtedly be of consequence for the significance that human sexual differentiation and complementarity assume within the sacramental order—within, that is to say, the economy of “signs,” which includes what tradition calls the “sacramentals”—and more particularly within the order of the diaconate. For just as grace presupposes and elevates nature without destroying it,⁷ so also does the sacramental order build upon and elevate the natural order—for the purpose of elevating and healing it of course, but also for our instruction.⁸ That is why the sacraments—including the sacrament of orders...