GENERAL INDEX TO THE THOMIST
VOLUME 85 (2021)
ARTICLES
Bauerschmidt, Frederick Christian, Liturgy, Word, and Charity in Thomas
Aquinas....................................................................................... 555
Butler, Sara, M.S.B.T., and Jenna Cooper, Ecclesial Roles Unique to Women:
Some Reflections ........................................................................ 625
Cooper, Jenna, and Sara Butler, M.S.B.T., Ecclesial Roles Unique to Women:
Some Reflections ........................................................................ 625
De Salvo, Michael R., and Roger W. Nutt, The Debate over Dignitatis
Humanae at Vatican II: The Contribution of Charles Cardinal
Journet ....................................................................................... 175
Di Noia, J. Augustine, O.P., The Teaching of the Second Vatican Council in
Current Catholic Theology ......................................................... 127
Haggarty, Joseph, The Intention and Unity of St. Thomas Aquinas’s
Exposition of Boethius, On the Trinity ........................................ 227
Ku, John Baptist, O.P., Divine Innascibility in the Theology of Ss. Gregory
Nazianzen and Thomas Aquinas .................................................... 57
LaNave, Gregory F., On the Speculative, Practical, or Affective Nature of
Theology ...................................................................................... 87
Mansini, Guy, O.S.B., The Sacramentality of the Diaconate: Council of Trent,
Second Vatican Council, and Postconciliar Magisterium.............. 511
Nutt, Roger W., and Michael R. De Salvo, The Debate over Dignitatis
Humanae at Vatican II: The Contribution of Charles Cardinal
Journet ....................................................................................... 175
Peters, Catherine, Common by Causality and Common by Predication:
Avicenna and Aquinas on a Twofold Division of Principles ......... 295
Porter, Nicholas, Aquinas and the Theory of the Empyrean Heaven .......... 443
Rooney, James Dominic, O.P., Survivalism, Suitably Modified .................. 349
Roszak, Piotr, How Should Christians Respond to Scandal? Replies from St.
Thomas Aquinas ......................................................................... 411
Schumacher, Michele M., The Natural and Sacramental Significance of
Human Sexuality and the Question of Admitting Women to the
Ordained Diaconate .................................................................... 581
Sirilla, Michael G., Saint Thomas’s Theology of the Diaconate .................. 539
Waldorf, Steven, The Historical Development of Cajetan’s Philosophy of Pure
Nature and Its Origins in the Thought of John Capreolus ............... 1
Wilkins, Jeremy D., Thomism as a Tradition of Understanding ................. 247
Wu, Tianyue, Aquinas on Human Personhood and Dignity ....................... 377

REVIEWS
Ayres, Lewis, and Medi Ann Volpe, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Catholic
Theology (Peter J. Casarella) ....................................................... 146
Budziszewski, J., Commentary on Thomas Aquinas’s “Treatise on Happiness
and Ultimate Purpose” (William C. Mattison III) ......................... 499
Colberg, Shawn M., The Wayfarer’s End: Bonaventure and Aquinas on Divine
Rewards in Scripture and Sacred Doctrine (Rik Van Nieuwenhove
and William Crozier) .................................................................. 489
Dauphinais, Michael, Andrew Hofer, O.P., and Roger Nutt, eds., Thomas
Aquinas and the Greek Fathers (Alexis Torrance) ......................... 154
Davies, Brian, and Turner Nevitt, trans., Thomas Aquinas’s Quodlibetal
Questions (Mary Catherine Sommers) ......................................... 170
Desmond, William, The Voiding of Being: The Doing and Undoing of
Metaphysics in Modernity (Gaven Kerr) ...................................... 167
Duby, Steven J., God in Himself: Scripture, Metaphysics, and the Task of
Christian Theology (Kenneth Oakes) ........................................... 344
Fédou, Michel, S.J., The Fathers of the Church in Christian Theology (John C.
Cavadini) .................................................................................... 150
Fitzpatrick, Antonia, and John Sabapathy, eds., Individuals and Institutions in
Medieval Scholasticism (Marcia L. Colish) ................................... 482
Flannery, Kevin L., S.J., Cooperation with Evil: Thomistic Tools of Analysis
(Gregory M. Reichberg) .............................................................. 329
Furton, Edward J., ed., Catholic Health Care Ethics: A Manual for
Practitioners (3rd ed.) (Basil Cole, O.P.) ....................................... 493
Hofer, Andrew, O.P., Michael Dauphinais, and Roger Nutt, eds., Thomas
Aquinas and the Greek Fathers (Alexis Torrance) ......................... 154
Hütter, Reinhard, Bound for Beatitude: A Thomistic Study in Eschatology and
Ethics (Simon Francis Gaine, O.P.).............................................. 163
Kappes, Christiaan, The Epiclesis Debate at the Council of Florence
(Hyacinthe Destivelle, O.P.) ........................................................ 503
Kereszty, Roch A., O.Cist., The Church of God in Jesus Christ: A Catholic
Ecclesiology (Gregory F. LaNave) ............................................... 485
Levering, Matthew, Dying and the Virtues (Craig Steven Titus) ................. 339
Moreland, Anna Bonta, Muhammad Reconsidered: A Christian Perspective on
Islamic Prophecy (Anthony Giambrone, O.P.) ............................. 139
Nevitt, Turner, and Brian Davies, trans., Thomas Aquinas’s Quodlibetal
Questions (Mary Catherine Sommers) ......................................... 170
Nutt, Roger, Michael Dauphinais, and Andrew Hofer, O.P., eds., Thomas
Aquinas and the Greek Fathers (Alexis Torrance) ......................... 154
Sabapathy, John, and Antonia Fitzpatrick, eds., Individuals and Institutions in
Medieval Scholasticism (Marcia L. Colish) ................................... 482
Silva, José Filipe, Robert Kilwardby (R. James Long).................................. 507

REVIEWS (con.)

Tabaczek, Mariusz, Emergence: Toward a New Metaphysics and Philosophy of
Science (William M. R. Simpson) ................................................ 159
Volpe, Medi Ann, and Lewis Ayres, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Catholic
Theology (Peter J. Casarella) ....................................................... 146
Wei, Ian P., Thinking about Animals in Thirteenth-Century Paris: Theologians
on the Boundary between Humans and Animals (Irven M. Resnick)
................................................................................................... 479
Williams, Rowan, Christ the Heart of Creation (Joseph Wawrykow) ......... 333

The Thomist 85 (2021): 511-37

THE SACRAMENTALITY OF THE DIACONATE:
COUNCIL OF TRENT, SECOND VATICAN COUNCIL, AND
POSTCONCILIAR MAGISTERIUM
GUY MANSINI, O.S.B.
Ave Maria University
Ave Maria, Florida

T

HIS ARTICLE OFFERS a brief review of magisterial
teaching relative to the sacramentality of the diaconate
by the Second Vatican Council and the Council of Trent,
and considers some more recent papal and curial teaching. The
principal question is whether and how it is taught that diaconal
ordination gives grace and imparts a character suitable to diaconal orders and does so by force of the validly confected
ordination rite (ex opere operato). After the Second Vatican
Council the question changes slightly, according as one considers in addition in what way the ordained deacon is a sacrament in the sense of being an icon of Christ. This change is in
line with a parallel change in conceiving the sacramentality of
the priesthood. But first an orienting word.
I. IN MEDIAS RES VICESIMI SAECULI
It may be important at the outset to realize that the question
of the sacramentality of the diaconate in the straightforward
sense—Is diaconal ordination a sacrament in the sense that baptism and penance are sacraments?—remained an actual question
for theologians in the years prior to the Second Vatican
Council, although for many, and perhaps for most, the question
was easily answered in the affirmative. The dogmatic basis for
the affirmative answer, setting aside the deliverances of
511

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GUY MANSINI, O.S.B.

Scripture, of the Fathers, of the history of rites, and of the
history of the ministry of the Church, was the standard way in
which the teaching of Trent on this question was taken, and the
much more recent teaching of Pope Pius XII on orders and the
diaconate.
Session 23 of the Council of Trent published a brief and partial résumé of Catholic doctrine on the sacrament of orders on
July 15, 1563. Among the eight canons, the following are
salient for our purposes. There exists a visible and external
priesthood by which the Body and Blood of Christ are offered
and by which sins are forgiven (can. 1). There are other orders
besides priesthood in the Church, major and minor, by which
one reaches that priesthood as by steps or grades (can. 2).
Ordination is a true and proper sacrament instituted by Christ
(can. 3). The Holy Spirit is given through ordination, such that
the bishop does not say “receive the Holy Spirit” in vain, and a
character is imprinted by it (can. 4). There is a hierarchy in the
Church consisting of bishops, priests, and ministers (ministris)
by divine ordination (can. 6). Bishops are superior to priests and
have a power to confirm and ordain that is not common to
them and priests (can. 7).1 In short: among other grades or
orders of ministry, there is a visible priesthood that does sacramental things which is itself sacramentally conferred by bishops.
The council does not say explicitly that the diaconate is a
sacrament. Canon 6 seemingly folds deacons into the category
of ministers that includes subdeacons and the minor orders
(porter, exorcist, lector, acolyte), but the sacramentality precisely of diaconal ordination has been thought to be an easy
deduction from the canons. For if orders includes things that
are less than but lead to the priesthood, it certainly includes the
highest of these things, the diaconate (can. 2). Ordination itself
is a sacrament instituted by Christ (can. 3), which gives grace
and imparts a character (can. 4), and is conferred by the bishop
who has the power of ordaining (can. 7). And since the bishop
bids the candidate for diaconal orders to receive the Holy Spirit
1

Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. Norman Tanner, S.J. (Washington, D.C.:
Georgetown University Press, 1990), 2:742-44.

SACRAMENTALITY OF THE DIACONATE

513

(can. 4), diaconal ordination must also be a sacrament. Thus J.
Forget in the Dictionnaire de théologie catholique (1911) writes
that Trent at least “insinuates” the sacramentality of diaconal
ordination.2 Karl Rahner was of the same mind as how to read
Trent. In the Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche (1959), he tells
us that the sacramentality of diaconal ordination is a “certain”
and “common” theological opinion, and that it follows from the
fourth and sixth canons of the 23rd session of Trent.3 To sum
up, Trent allows us to say, as something theologically certain,
that the diaconate is part of orders, and is itself imparted
sacramentally.4 Of course, denying what theologians commonly
take as theologically certain does not make one a heretic.5
One should take account also of the teaching of Pius XII,
who determined the matter and form of ordination in the
apostolic constitution Sacramentum Ordinis (November 30,
1947). He notes that in spite of the unity of orders, the course
of time has seen the elaboration of various rites in conferring it
(no. 2). He notes also that the effects of diaconal, presbyteral,
and episcopal ordination are power and grace (no. 3). Finally,
he determines that in each of these ordinations the matter is the
imposition of hands (no. 4) and the form is that part of the
consecratory preface that speaks most plainly of the effect of the
ordination (no. 5). So, from the unity of orders, the sacramentality of the rites as each effecting grace and power in the
recipient, and the similar, parallel ritual for each of them, one
easily concludes that diaconal ordination is a sacrament just as is

2

J. Forget, s.v. “Diacres,” DTC 4.1 (1911), col. 726.
Karl Rahner, s.v. “Diakon,” Lexicon für Theologie und Kirche, vol. 3, In der
Dogmatik (1959) col. 321.
4
See also A. Michel, s.v. “Ordre. Concile de Trent,” DTC 11.2 (1932), col. 1362;
and s.v. “Ordre. La théologie moderne,” DTC 11.2 (1932), col. 1381-82; Emmanuel
Doronzo, O.M.I., De ordine, vol. 1, De institutione (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1957), 646-47.
5
Rather, one makes distinctions: are the grades of ordo of divine or human
institution, and is the connection of the lower grades to priesthood intrinsic or
extrinsic?
3

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GUY MANSINI, O.S.B.

priestly ordination. But this is a conclusion, not an express
teaching of the Holy Father.6
Pope Pius also issued an important allocution on October 5,
1957, addressed to a conference on the Lay Apostolate. Here,
he says that the time is not ripe to restore a permanent diaconate, but he inserts deacons firmly into the hierarchical
apostolate—falling on the same side as priesthood in the
distinction between the lay and the hierarchical apostolates.7
This, too, implies the sacramentality of diaconal ordination:
deacons are not laymen; their ordination makes them
hierarchical, like priests and bishops; therefore, their ordination
is sacramental.
The standard thinking about the sacramentality of diaconal
orders summarized above was not unchallenged. It was forcefully challenged by Jean Beyer, S.J., Professor of Canon Law at
the Gregorian University and the great theoretician of Secular
Institutes. He argued in 1954 that, in view of the papal grants
of faculties to ordain subdeacons, deacons, and sometimes
priests to certain Cistercian abbots from the fifteenth century
onward, we must conclude that bishops and priests possess the
same power of orders, the same power to do all sacramental
things whatsoever, except that this power in simple priests is
ordinarily bound such that the priest cannot use it as he wills. It
is unbound either by an act of papal jurisdiction or by episcopal
consecration.8
For Beyer, just as one may conclude that there is no distinction of priestly and episcopal sacred power from the fact
that priests and bishops can do the same sacramental things, so
from the fact that deacons do nothing that laymen cannot do,
one may conclude that there is no distinction of their sacred
6
Acta apostolica sedes 40 (1948): 5-7. The conclusion that diaconal ordination is a
sacrament is most easily drawn from the first two sentences of no. 3.
7
AAS 49 (1957): 924-25.
8
Jean Beyer, S.J., “Nature et position du sacerdoce,” Nouvelle revue théologique 76
(1954): 356-73, at 368. It follows from Beyer’s view—something very strange—that
when a priest is consecrated a bishop, the rite imparts no character and gives no
sacramental grace, while if someone not ordained a priest is consecrated a bishop, the
very same rite imparts a character and gives grace (see ibid., 369).

SACRAMENTALITY OF THE DIACONATE

515

power (potestas ordinis)—which is to say that we conclude that
deacons have no sacred power and that diaconal ordination
gives none. “[Diaconal] functions are not sacramental, with the
exception of baptism. But a layman can validly administer baptism; it supposes therefore no special power of orders in
deacons.”9 Again:
If there is truly an ontological participation by the diaconate in sacerdotal
character, as some theologians affirm, we would have to be able to find in
diaconal functions an element that locates them on the level of sacerdotal
activity properly so-called.10

But there is no such element. Diaconal ordination is therefore
not a sacrament. Beyer thus returns to the position of Durandus
of St. Pourçain and Cardinal Cajetan that, absent any sacramental acts proper to deacons and not shared by laymen, the
diaconate itself is not sacramental.11
II. THE SECOND VATICAN COUNCIL AND THE SACRAMENTALITY
OF DIACONAL ORDINATION
When the Second Vatican Council took up the question of
the place of deacons and the nature of diaconal ordination in
the Church, therefore, it was strictly speaking and dogmatically
considered a real question. On the other hand, it was also a real
question whether deacons and the diaconate would be discussed
by the council at all. The first draft of the constitution on the
Church—the draft of the preparatory Theological Commission—said nothing about deacons or the diaconate, contrary to
the wishes of the Commission on the Discipline of the
9

Ibid., 370.
Ibid., 371.
11
Ibid. One cannot argue from the imposition of hands and Sacramentum ordinis,
for there is an imposition of hands for episcopal ordination, too, but ordinarily it is not
a sacrament, nor does Pius intend to settle the question of the sacramentality of the rites
he deals with in the constitution (ibid., 371-72). For discussion of Cajetan and
Durandus, see Doronzo, De ordine, 1:618-23.
10

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GUY MANSINI, O.S.B.

Sacraments of the Church. This commission processed the
initial, preparatory poll of bishops and universities regarding the
agenda of the council, and discovered that there was considerable interest in the restoration of a permanent diaconate.
This reflected German concerns for the proper ecclesial and
sacramental structuring of Catholic social work carried out by
such modern welfare and relief agencies as Caritas (founded in
1897), as well as concern for the Church in new lands short of
priests.12
To this commission Karl Rahner was called as a consultor in
January 1961, as one of the few theologians who had given
much consideration to the diaconate.13 His argument was to the
effect that nonordained men who are in fact discharging diaconal functions are doubtless already strengthened by diaconal
grace, but that this should be expressly and publicly and so
sacramentally signified—that is, the diaconate should be restored.14 It would be a diaconate not universally bound to the
law of celibacy.15 He and Franjo Šeper, the archbishop of
Zagreb, drafted a schema to that effect, the first chapter of the
commission’s schema De sacramento ordinis, entitled “De
diaconatu permanente seu stabili instaurendo.”16 This has been
called “the only truly innovative text” to come out of the period
12

For some historical notes on the restoration of the diaconate, see Joseph Hornef
and Paul Winninger, “Chronique de la restauration du diaconat (1945-1965),” in Le
diacre dans l’église et le monde d’aujourd’hui, ed. P. Winninger and Y. Congar (Paris:
Les Éditions du Cerf, 1966), 205-22.
13
See Giovanni Caprile, S.J., Il concilio vaticano II: Cronache del concilio vaticano
II, l’annunzio e la preparazione 1959-1962, vol. 1, p. 2—1961-1962 (Rome: Edizioni
“La civiltà catholica,” 1966), 125.
14
Karl Rahner, “The Theology of the Restoration of the Diaconate,” in Theological
Investigations V, trans. Karl-H. Kruger (New York: Seabury Press, 1966), 268-314. See
especially 286-89 for the nub of the argument. This essay first appeared in the volume
of essays Rahner edited with Herbert Vorgrimler, Diaconia in Christo: Über die
Erneuerung des Diakonates (Freiburg: Herder, 1962). In the United States, the Bishops’
Committee on the Permanent Diaconate published an English translation of some of
these essays in Foundations for the Renewal of the Diaconate (Washington, D.C.:
NCCB, 1993).
15
Rahner, “Theology of the Restoration of the Diaconate,” 292-96.
16
Acta et documenta concilii oecumenico vaticano II apparando, series 2 (Praeparatoria), vol. 2, p. 2 (Vatican City: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1967), 140-43.

SACRAMENTALITY OF THE DIACONATE

517

preparatory to the council.17 This draft “aroused strong
misgivings at the third sitting of the Central Commission” in
January 1962, but was reflected in the new draft on the Church
produced by Gérard Philips.18
In the Philips draft, the proposed restoration of the
diaconate is presented in the same chapter in which the collegial
nature of episcopal governance of the universal Church is
broached. This latter topic, to be sure, absorbed most of the
attention of the bishops. Moreover, when they did turn their
mind to the diaconate, it was the question of celibacy and the
many other practical questions attendant on a restoration that
mostly preoccupied them.
Let us begin with Cardinal Döpfner’s address since, together
with Cardinals Leo Suenens and Landázuri Ricketts, he is one of
the great leaders of the movement to restore a permanent diaconate.19 He offers a very theologically sophisticated intervention
(drafted by Rahner).20 First, the necessity of the sacraments as
taught by the Council of Trent (session 7, canon 4) applies also
to the diaconate—a sacrament—and so it is unsuitable for the
Church to be deprived of this sacrament, especially where
bishops and presbyters have need of help, which is the case in
many rural places in mission lands and in contemporary urban
parishes. Especially should the sacrament be restored for those
17

J. Komonchak, “The Struggle for the Council during the Preparation of Vatican II
(1960-1962),” in History of Vatican II, vol. 1, ed. Giuseppe Alberigo, English version
edited by Joseph A. Komonchak (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1995), 167-356, at 188.
18
Herbert Vorgrimler, “Chapter III, Article 29 [of Lumen Gentium],” in
Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, vol. 1, ed. Herbert Vorgrimler, trans. Lalit
Adolphus, Kevin Smyth, and Richard Strachan (New York: Herder and Herder, 1967),
226.
19
See the International Theological Commission’s 2002 publication, “From the
Diakonia of Christ to the Diakonia of the Apostles,” in International Theological
Commission, vol. 2, Texts and Documents 1986-2007, ed. Michael Sharkey and
Thomas Weinandy (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2009), 229-317, at 274.
20
Alberto Melloni, “The Beginning of the Second Period: The Great Debate on the
Church,” in History of Vatican II, vol. 3, ed. Giuseppe Alberigo, English version edited
by Joseph A. Komonchak (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 2000), 1-115, at 66 n. 256.

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GUY MANSINI, O.S.B.

men already prepared for and doing diaconal work; they should
be given the appropriate grace of the sacrament so as to do their
work in a restored permanent diaconate. All the more is this the
case according to the teaching of Trent that various ministries
should not be performed except by those constituted in those
ministries (session 23, canon 17 of the Reform Decree).21
This line of argument is taken up and repeated by Leo Cardinal Suenens for whom giving diaconal tasks to laymen overlooks the necessity of grace for these works to be efficacious. In
ringing tones, he declares that the principle of this matter is no
“natural realism”—by which he seems to mean a sort of
naturalistic weighing of what is practical or impractical—but is
rather “a supernatural realism,” “a vivid faith in the sacramentality of the diaconate.”22 Cardinals Richaud and Landázuri
Ricketts take the same line, as do Archbishops Paul Yü Pin and
Bernard Yago, and others.23 It is this line of thought that came
to conciliar expression in the Decree on the Missionary Activity
of the Church, Ad Gentes, number 16.24 Johannes Schütte,
Superior General of the Divine Word Fathers, maintains as well
that the grace of the sacrament effects a real distinction between
the sacramental and nonsacramental exercise of diaconal
functions.25

21
Acta synodalia sacrosancti concilii oecumenici vaticani II, vol. 2, Periodus secunda,
p. 2 (Vatican City: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1972), 227-28; hereafter Acta synodalia
2/2. This can be found also in Francisco Gil Hellín, Concilii vaticani II synopsis:
Constitutio dogmatica de ecclesia Lumen Gentium (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice
Vaticana, 1995), 1161-62.
22
Acta synodalia 2/2:318-18 (Hellín, 1186-87).
23
Richaud: Acta synodalia 2/2:346 (Hellín, 1198-99); Landázuri: Acta synodalia
2/2:315 (Hellín, 1179-80); Yü Pin: Acta synodalia 2/2:431 (Hellín, 1232-33); Yago,
Acta synodalia 2/2:406 (Hellín, 1213).
24
Tanner, ed., Decrees, 2:1026: “It would be helpful to those men who are
exercising what is in fact the ministry of a deacon . . . to be strengthened, and bound
more closely to the altar, by the imposition of hands, which has come down from the
apostles, so that they may be able to carry out their ministry more effectively through
the sacramental grace of the diaconate.”
25
Acta synodalia 2/2:879 (Hellín, 1363). Also Charles Helmsing, bishop of KansasSt. Joseph, Acta synodalia 2/2:781 (Hellín, 1177); and Pietro Carretto, S.D.B., vic. ap.
Ratburi, Thailand, Acta synodalia 2/2:608 (Hellín, 1331).

SACRAMENTALITY OF THE DIACONATE

519

As to the concerns of the fathers shaping the final text, we
can take guidance from the Theological Commission’s relatio of
July 1964 on paragraph 29 of Lumen Gentium. This report
sums up and organizes all the remarks and all the requests for
changes in paragraph 29 made by the fathers by word in the
General Congregations that met from October 4 to October 16
of 1963, as well as the 250 pages of written requests and observations of the same time.26 The report prominently notes the
requests of the council fathers expressly to assert the sacramentality of the diaconate.27 This sacramentality was not
asserted in what became the working draft for Lumen Gentium,
the draft based on the text of Gérard Philips. This draft
proposes the renewal of a permanent diaconate for reasons of
pastoral necessity in various regions, speaks of deacons as
belonging to an inferior grade of orders relative to the priests
and bishops they assist, and lists some of their functions, but
says nothing about the sacramental nature of the diaconate.28
But such an assertion was desired as part of a more extended
treatment of its relation to the priesthood29 and in order to take
up the teaching of Pius XII in Sacramentum Ordinis.30 We may

26
This extensive material is contained in the Acta synodalia 2/2. The report surveys
as well the earlier written observations contained in the Acta synodalia 2/1:397-801.
The report (relatio) itself can be found in the Acta synodalia 3/1:260-69, and also in
Hellín, 302-14.
27
The straw vote indicating the council’s mind on October 30, 1963 was not a vote
on the sacramentality of the diaconate. The proposal was “that the draft should deal
with the opportuneness of restoring the diaconate as a special and stable degree of
sacred ministry [officium], as demanded by the needs of the Church in various lands.”
See Gérard Philips, “History of the Constitution,” in Vorgrimler, ed., Commentary on
the Documents of Vatican II, 1:105-37, at 116.
28
Hellín, 192, col. 2; and 193, col. 2.
29
Paul Leo Seitz, bishop of Kontum, Vietnam, Acta synodalia 2/1:714 (Hellín, 956).
30
Maurice Baudoux, archbishop of St. Boniface, Canada, Acta synodalia 2/1:624
(Hellín, 969). The report also lists the Indonesian Conference of Bishops, Acta synodalia
2/1:986ff. (Hellín, 987); and Arturo Tabera Araoz, bishop of Albacete, Spain, Acta
synodalia 2/1:734 (Hellín, 1072), to which we may add Armando Fares, archbishop of
Catanzaro-Squillace (Calabria), Acta synodalia 2/2:530-31 (not in Hellín).

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GUY MANSINI, O.S.B.

add that such an assertion was supposed to express a greater
continuity with Trent.31
The report of the Doctrinal Commission picks out two and
only two interventions raising questions about sacramentality.
Francisco Franić, archbishop of Split–Makarska (Croatia),
thinks a married diaconate a threat to the law of priestly
celibacy, and wants laymen to do what it is proposed for
restored permanent deacons to do. Furthermore, it is not
certain that Christ instituted the diaconate immediately; it is
nothing more than a part of the presbyterate taken as a whole
and so is perhaps only mediately instituted by Christ. It would,
moreover, be unthinkable that the Church could have suppressed a permanent diaconate for centuries, as she did, did
Christ think such a diaconate necessary and useful for the
Church, which an immediate institution would have indicated.32
Archbishop Józef Gawlina is against the restoration of a permanent married diaconate, and thinks it inexact to say the
diaconate belongs to the essential constitution of the Church (as
Cardinal Suenens has it). For the constitution of the Church
comes from Christ, her founder, who said nothing at all about
deacons. If sacraments are instituted by Christ, and if he did not
institute the diaconate, then it is not a sacrament. Rather, it is
an apostolic institution, for practical purposes, and what the
Church institutes for practical reasons she can abandon. And
there are many practical reasons against a restoration of a
married diaconate. It would proletarianize the clergy (Gawlina
was Polish), threaten celibacy, and harm Catholic Action.33 To
these two, we may add Joseph Anthony Cordeiro, archbishop of
Karachi, who asks how it can be in the competence of episcopal
conferences to petition for a permanent diaconate according to
31
Julius Döpfner, card. arch. of Munich and Freising, Acta synodalia 2/2:227-28
(Hellín, 116-17).
32
Acta synodalia 2/2:383 (Hellín, 1151).
33
Acta synodalia 2/2:747-48 (Hellín, 1209-10). For Suenens, see Acta synodalia
2/2:317 (Hellín, 1186): “this question [of the restoration of a permanent diaconate]
belongs to the very constitution of the Church”; see also Döpfner, for the same line,
Acta synodalia 2/2:227 (Hellín, 1161): the three-fold division of the hierarchy is by
divine law, and “essentially proper to the constitution of the Church.”

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regional necessities if the diaconate really belongs to the
“structure” of the Church.34
In the end, of course, the great majority of participants in the
council think that diaconal ordination is a sacrament, and just
so does the council teach in Lumen Gentium 29. The council
begins its teaching on deacons by noting that hands are laid on
them “not for the priesthood but for the ministry,” according to
an ancient way of distinguishing deacons from priests, and then
says: “For strengthened by sacramental grace, they are at the
service of the people of God in the ministry of the liturgy, the
word and charity in communion with the bishop and his
presbyterium” (LG 29).35 The rite gives grace; it is a sacrament.
But just because of the fact that the question was a question—
because of theologians like Beyer—the teaching is rather understated. Herbert Vorgrimler comments: “The aim of the Council
was to affirm this sacramental nature in such a way as not to
cast a slur on these theologians; hence the cautious formula,
that deacons are ‘strengthened by sacramental grace.’”36
The council then lists diaconal functions: administering baptism, distributing the Eucharist, blessing marriages, taking viaticum to the dying, reading Scripture to the faithful, instructing
the faithful, presiding at prayer, administering sacramentals, and
presiding at funerals. It seems, however, to privilege the “duties
of charity and administration” (LG 29).
Tim O’Donnell thinks that supporters and opponents of the
proposal to institute a permanent married diaconate tended to

34

Acta synodalia 2/2:711 (Hellín, 122).
Tanner, ed., Decrees, 2:874.
36
Herbert Vorgrimler, “Chapter III, Article 29,” in Vorgrimler, ed., Commentary on
the Documents of Vatican II, 1:229. Vorgrimler comments on this paragraph by right,
since with Karl Rahner he edited the volume Diaconia in Christo mentioned above. See
more originally the relatio of the Doctrinal Commission of July, 1964, explaining the
emendations to the second draft schema of 1962: “the Council should be careful not to
seem to condemn those recent writers who have raised doubts about this matter”
(“cavetur ne Concilium paucos illos recentes auctores, qui de hac re dubia moverunt,
condemnare videatur”) (Hellín, 302).
35

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GUY MANSINI, O.S.B.

have markedly different “visions of the Church.” Proponents,
he finds, understood the Church as a communion and as a
servant of mankind, while opponents understood the Church as
an institution juridically structured and governed.37 However
this may be, and whatever clues it gives to the nature of the
diaconate itself,38 it remains that both the proponents and the
opponents, with the exceptions noted by the Theological
Commission in the preceding paragraph, granted and, as it
were, automatically granted, the sacramental nature of the diaconate. Opponents were content to give the required duties
into the hands of laymen in spite of the grace of the sacrament
which they readily acknowledged. Proponents wanted to restore
the diaconate precisely because of the grace of the sacrament.
Are there different “visions of orders” that define those in
favor and those opposed to the restoration? The International
Theological Commission rightly boils down the arguments in
favor of restoration to three: first, there is faith in Christ’s gift
of a grade of orders in and of itself of benefit to the Church;
second, pastoral need in mission lands and postwar urban
settings urges restoration (reflected in LG 29); and third, the
assurance of the grace of office for those already discharging
diaconal functions is most fitting.39 This last reason is reflected
in the council’s Decree on Missionary Activity, Ad Gentes,
number 16.
Those opposed to the restoration often recognized the
character and grace of the sacrament just as much as the proponents, as already mentioned. But this recognition did not
carry much weight. Giuseppe Battaglia, Bishop of Faenza, insists
that the effectiveness of St. Francis was owing to his personal
holiness, not to the fact that he was a deacon.40 Lorenzo
Bianchi, bishop of Hong Kong, wants catechists to do what
37
Tim O’Donnell, “How the Ecclesiological Visions of Vatican II Framed the
Ministry of Permanent Deacons,” Worship 85 (2011): 425-46, at 426.
38
For which see also Tim O’Donnell, “Should Deacons Represent Christ the
Servant?” Theological Studies 78 (2017): 850-78.
39
ITC, “From the Diakonia of Christ,” 278. See the deft summary of the conciliar
debate, 273-78.
40
Acta synodalia 2/2:672 (Hellín, 1390).

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523

restored deacons are supposed to do, and is confident that, even
without character and the grace of the sacrament, they will be
successful if virtuous.41 Alfredo Cardinal Ottaviani opposes
restoration, and while not questioning the sacramentality of the
diaconate, supposes grace will be given to the acolytes he
proposes to carry out their duties.42
If there is a difference in the dogmatic order between the
proponents and opponents of a restoration, it is to be located in
a matter of emphasis. Proponents have to enable their hearers to
imagine a diaconate that is not just, not merely, not only a step
or grade on the ascending way up to priesthood, as Trent spoke
of it (session 23, canon 2). Just so Franjo Šeper, who with
Rahner drafted the proposal for restoration: the diaconate is
not a “pure step” to a superior grade of orders.43 So also José
Clemente Maurer, archbishop of Sucre in Bolivia: it is a mistake
to think of the diaconate only as a step on the “honorum
cursus” of clerics.44 The idea is that, while of course one must
be ordained a deacon before being ordained a priest, one can as
it were settle down on the diaconal step.45 This is the very way
Rahner himself spoke in his great argument for a restored
diaconate: “The diaconate can indeed be a ‘step’ by which
someone ascends to the priesthood. . . . This practice, however,
is not essential but rather accidental to the diaconate.”46 And
again, the diaconate “is not merely a step to the priesthood.”47
Since diaconal office is a good thing in itself, it is something to
41

Acta synodalia 2/2:675 (Hellín, 1389).
Acta synodalia 2/3:149 (Hellín, 1471): “there can be married acolytes to whom
grace is thus given by this minor order, grace and a mandate to be exercised for certain
official duties” (“possunt esse acolythi uxorati quibus datur sic gratia per istum ordinem
minorem, gratia et missio ad quaedam munia exercenda”).
43
Acta synodalia 2/2:358. Not in Hellín.
44
Acta synodalia 2/2:411 (Hellín, 1220).
45
See also Bishop George Kémérer, Acta synodalia 2/2:534 (Hellín, 1293), who
speaks of restoring the diaconal grade of the hierarchy as something “effective et in
seipso” suitable.
46
Rahner, “Theology of the Restoration of the Diaconate,” 271.
47
Ibid., 278.
42

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GUY MANSINI, O.S.B.

which men can be called by God as a stable state of life.48 This
was something noted by the fathers.49
On the other hand, the opponents of the restoration easily
gravitate to insisting on the unity of orders, just as proposed at
Trent. This unity is firmly asserted by Cardinal Siri, Archbishop
Cordeiro, and Archbishop Franić.50 They do not explain; they
take it to be obvious. But Carlos Eduardo de Sabóia Bandeira
Melo, O.F.M., bishop of Palma (Brazil), offers a word of
explanation. The munera that Christ gave the apostles and the
apostles to their successors are all sacerdotal (sacerdotalia
munera).51 They are all given unto the end of building up the
body of Christ, whether they do so internally or externally.
They are all contained in the sacrament of orders, and they are
all contained in the episcopate, even if Trent could not define
that “on account of the opposition of the Thomists.”52 Nonetheless, all things are contained in the episcopate “from the
office of porter to the power of ordaining and consecrating.”
Whence it follows that the priesthood does not rest in the
presbyterate. Rather:
In the course of centuries, even millennia, bishops have little by little
transmitted their munera to others from the plenitude of their power,
especially to presbyters, following the example of the apostles. And to them,
namely to presbyters, they infused the priesthood in the true and strict sense.53

There is a true priesthood located in the presbyterate, with
power over the true and the mystical body of Christ, but it
derives strictly from the episcopate.54 So, the unity of orders is
sacerdotal, and the font of this unity is the bishop. If bishops
share their power especially with presbyters, however, they also

48

See the relatio of the Theological Commission, second argument (Hellín, 306).
For instance, Mikiel Gonzi, archbishop of Malta, Acta synodalia 2/2:761 (Hellín,
1373).
50
Acta synodalia 2/2:573; 711 (Hellín, 1272); 382 (Hellín, 1151), respectively.
51
Acta synodalia 2/2:118-19. Not in Hellín.
52
Acta synodalia 2/2:119.
53
Ibid.
54
Acta synodalia 2/2:120.
49

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525

can share it with deacons, who therefore themselves occupy a
grade of sacerdotium.55
Bandeira Melo here puts his finger on an ambiguity in the
council’s language. When it speaks of the diaconate in Lumen
Gentium 29, it picks up an ancient liturgical adage according to
which deacons are ordained “non ad sacerdotium, sed ad
ministerium.” Originally, there was mention of the bishop: “sed
ad ministerium episcopi.”56 The reference to the bishop, evoking
the role of deacons as instruments of episcopal administration in
the ancient Church, is dropped, and the council thus asserts a
distinction between the sacerdotal offering of the sacrifice and
the diaconal ministry of liturgical service, instruction, and
charity mentioned immediately afterward in the text.57 At
number 28a, however, bishops and priests and deacons are all
engaged in a “ministerium ecclesiasticum divinitus institutum.”
“Ministry” embraces all the grades. On the other hand, as A.
Kerkvoorde points out, where sacerdotium is especially aligned
with liturgical service in general, it is impossible to exclude
deacons from a work characterized as “priestly,” and sacerdotium then embraces all the grades.58 The conciliar assertions
of the sacramentality of the diaconate in Lumen Gentium 29
and Ad Gentes 16 leave us with questions about the unity of
orders, as the International Theological Commission notes.59
When Bandeira Melo looks to the future, he opposes the
restoration of a permanent diaconate. But when he speaks of
55

Acta synodalia 2/2:119-20.
For the history of the adage, see Augustin Kerkvoorde, O.S.B., “Esquisse d’une
théologie du diaconat,” in Winninger and Congar, eds., Le diacre dans l’église, 155-83,
at 163-71.
57
So the Theological Commission (Hellín, 303), replies to modus 220: “The words
signify that deacons are ordained not to offer the Body and Blood of the Lord but for
the service of charity in the Church.”
58
Kerkvoorde, “Esquisse,” 164, 169-70.
59
ITC, “From the Diakonia of Christ,” 271-72, 299-311, esp. 300 and 304-5. The
ITC makes the obvious suggestion to look for the unity of orders in the episcopate
(300)—obvious because of the assertion in Lumen Gentium 21, that episcopal
consecration confers the “fullness” of the sacrament of orders.
56

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GUY MANSINI, O.S.B.

the unity of orders, he is looking to the past. He is looking to
the Council of Trent.
III. THE COUNCIL OF TRENT AND THE UNITY OF ORDERS
The diaconate did not much occupy the minds of the fathers
of the Council of Trent,60 although they did undertake to
restore it as a more permanent fixture of ministry in the Latin
Church.61 This effort, obviously, did not bear fruit. Angelo
Massarelli, who kept the acts of the council, summarizes what
did occupy the minds of the fathers leading up to and at session
23:
Every question and all the difficulties were about three things: whether and
how the Roman Pontiff is to be located in the [ecclesiastical] hierarchy;
whether it should be said that bishops are instituted by divine right [iure
divino]; and whether bishops are superior to priests by divine right.62

However, in stating Catholic doctrine on orders and arriving at
the compromises they did, the fathers raise the issue of the
relation of the diaconate to orders.
Before we take up some observations on the text and the
history of the text of the dogmatic teaching on the sacrament of
orders of session 23 of the Council of Trent, let us remember an
important fact about this Tridentine teaching, namely, that it
follows upon and is closely bound up with the teaching of
60

For the history, especially political, of the council bearing on session 23, see
Hubert Jedin, Geschichte des Konzils von Trient, Band IV/2 (Freiburg: Herder, 1975),
50-79; and Josef Lecler, in Histoire des conciles oecuméniques, vol. 11, Trent (en
1551-1563), ed. Gervais Dumeige, S.J. (Paris: Éditions de l’Orante, 1981), 327-95 and
415-39. See also A. Duval, “The Council of Trent and Holy Orders,” in The Sacrament
of Holy Orders (Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press, 1962), 219-58. For Trent and
the diaconate, see Joseph Lécuyer, C.S.Sp., “Der Diakonat nach den kirchlichen Lehräusserungen,” in Rahner and Vorgrimler, eds., Diaconia in Christo, 205-19, at 207-13.
61
See Canon 17 of the Reform Decree of session 23 (Tanner, ed., Decrees, 2:750).
62
Concilium Tridentinum: Diariorum, actorum, epistularum, tractatuum nova
collectio, ed. Societas Goerresiana (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1901-2001), 9:43
n. 6; hereafter CT. There was discussion of the diaconate at Trent also in 1551-52, for
which see CT 7/1:375-489; and 7/2:343-689, but this essay concentrates on the
discussion immediately proximate to the teaching promulgated in 1563.

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session 22 on the sacrifice of the Mass—partly by plan, partly
by accident. This is, as it were, the mountain in comparison to
which textual variations and emendations are foothills. To say
this, moreover, is to take Trent at its own word as it introduces
its teaching on orders: “Sacrificium et sacerdotium ita Dei
ordinatione coniuncta sunt, ut utrumque in omni lege existent”
(“sacrifice and priesthood are so joined together by the
ordinance of God that they both are to be found under every
law” [chap. 1]). Thus, to the visible sacrifice of the Mass,
instituted by Christ, there corresponds a visible and external
priesthood, also instituted by Christ. In the Tridentine teaching,
the sacrament of orders is strictly ordered to the sacrifice of the
Mass, and the one sacrifice of Christ is the principle of the
nature of orders and so also the principle of its unity. This link
of sacrifice and priesthood is asserted from the first draft of the
decree of October 13, 1562, and in all subsequent drafts
(November 3, 1562; and December 6, 1562).63
Everything else is secondary to that great fact just enunciated. This is worth saying, because the textual history of the
decree and the canons can seem to back away from it. That is
just an appearance. Furthermore, this great fact evidently
weighs heavily on the question of the unity of orders, to which
we now turn.
Work on the doctrinal decree and canons began with the
theologians drawing up a list of heretical positions, the third
article of which read: “Orders [ordo] is not one sacrament, nor
are there least and middle orders as steps which lead up to
[tendere] the order of priesthood.”64 This was the foundation
for the first draft of the third canon, which read: “If anyone
should say that orders or holy ordination is not truly and
63

CT 9:105, 225. The only difference is that in the first draft, this conjunction is
said to be “from the very nature of the thing,” while in the second it is said to be “by the
will of God.” This last change displeased the Spaniards, and the compromise formula
was that the conjunction was “Dei ordinatione,” which could be understood in either
way. See Doronzo, De ordine, 1:216.
64
CT 9:5.

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GUY MANSINI, O.S.B.

properly a sacrament instituted by Christ the Lord, or is not one
sacrament, or is only a certain rite of choosing the ministers of
word and sacrament: let him be anathema.”65 There was also
notice taken in the fifth paragraph of the doctrina preceding the
canons: “Further, just as orders is a sacrament, so this holy
synod teaches that orders is but one sacrament,” after which the
paragraph speaks of distinct grades and powers “which are all
nonetheless referred to the one sacrament and sacrifice of the
Eucharist.”66
In the second draft of November 3, 1562, the doctrinal text
is altered, such that we read that “orders or sacred ordination is
truly and properly one of the seven sacraments,” and the
reference to the Eucharist (a repetition of the opening lines of
the decree) is dropped.67 The third canon remains unchanged.
But in the third draft, it too is emended, with less emphasis on
unity; the anathematized statement that it “is not one sacrament” is dropped.68 The assertion of unity is by no means lost,
however, for the second canon remains the same: the various
orders are grades by which one tends unto priesthood.69 We
should say with A. Michel, commenting on the second chapter
of the finished doctrina, where the diverse grades of orders are
named, that it is a question of distinguishing systematics from
dogmatics:
The Council does not speak here of the unity of the sacrament of orders: that
is a question more theological than dogmatic. It will say only one word, in the
next chapter, that “no one can doubt that orders is truly and properly one of
the seven sacraments.”70

On the other hand, there appeared several more systematic
ways to speak of the unity of the sacrament in conciliar

65

CT 9:40.
CT 9:39, ll. 37-39.
67
CT 9:106, ll. 16-17.
68
CT 9:228.
69
Compare CT 9:40, 107, 227, for the first, second, and third drafts.
70
Michel, “Ordre. Concile de Trent,” DTC 11.2, col. 1356.
66

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529

discussion, and these we must report in short order after one
brief remark about the diaconate and the minor orders.
As was apparent in the opening pages of this essay, it has
been largely taken for granted that the Council of Trent did not
doubt the sacramental nature of the diaconate, even if it did not
expressly assert it.71 Most theologians and fathers, moreover,
though not without exception, considered the subdiaconate and
the minor orders equally to be sacramentally conveyed, even as
the diaconate.72 The council, however, does not settle this issue,
and was of a certain mind not to settle it: it was a point
disputed by Catholic theologians, and did not enter into the
agenda of correcting Protestant error.73 Just so, it seems also to
be very unlikely that the council had any intention to settle the
question of the sacramentality of the diaconate, for the council
was certainly aware of Cardinal Cajetan’s denial of its sacramentality.74 And to repeat the point just made, the council was
careful not to condemn any Catholic theologian in reproving
the errors of the Reformers. This is important in judging what
the council intends to teach and what it does not intend to teach
about the diaconate.
71

The Tridentine fathers did not express themselves on the diaconate as fully as the
theologians. Theologians asserting the sacramentality of the diaconate include
A. Salmeron, S.J., from Spain, CT 9:7, l. 29, to 8, l. 3; D. de Paiva, secular, sent by the
king of Portugal, CT 9:10, l. 4; I. Cuvillonius, S.J., sent by the duke of Bavaria, CT
9:11, l. 44; V. de Messana, from Sicily, with the General of the Franciscans, CT 9:12,
ll. 17-18; B. de Mantua, O.P., with the bishop of Brescia, CT 9:12, ll. 39-40;
J. Valentino, Order of Hermits, from Spain, with his General, CT 9:14, ll. 18-20,
T. Masius, Carmelite, with the bishop of Cremona, CT 9:14, l. 42, to 15, l. 2; Juan
Gaglio, O.P., from Spain, sent by King Philip, CT 9:25, ll. 32-33, 36-37.
72
An exception is Didacus de Paiva, a Spanish cleric, delegate of the king of
Portugal, CT 9:10, ll. 5, 12-13.
73
See H. Lennerz, S.J., De sacramento ordinis, 2d ed. (Rome: Gregorian University
Press, 1953), nos. 198-99.
74
See Francisco Sancius, a Spanish cleric attending with the bishop of Salamanca, CT
9:11, ll. 28-29: “Although Cajetan in his commentary on the fourth chapter of
Ephesians and the twenty-first chapter of Acts denies the diaconate is a sacrament, this is
nonetheless reproved by others” (“Quamvis Caietanus in ep. Ephes. 4 et Act. 21
diaconatum neget esse sacramentum, id tamen ab aliis reprobatur”).

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How then was the unity of orders conceived? In the first
place, and as already indicated by the opening lines of the
decree, all the grades of order are united in their end, which is
the one sacrifice of Christ made present in the Eucharist.75 The
unity of orders as a whole is to be found not only in its end, the
Eucharist, but also in its exemplum, Christ, and in its head on
earth, the pope.76 Similarly expressed, orders are one by the
unity of end and perfection.77 Furthermore, if all ordinations
are sacraments and impress a character, then the intrinsic unity
of orders can be located in the character.78
There are dissenting voices, however, to this quite obvious
and manifest way of taking the unity of orders from its end and
perfection and exemplum. Vincent de Messana speaks of a
“generic” unity.79 The bishop of Segovia, speaking of canon 3,
thinks the council ought not anathematize those who deny the
unity of orders; the various orders ought rather to be spoken of
as many because of the many differences relative to their
genus.80
It is important to observe, however, that none of this theological speculation finds its way into the teaching of Trent on
orders. This teaching asserts certain facts, but leaves the understanding of these facts up in the air. Thus, chapter 2 of the
teaching tells us that it was “fitting” (consentaneum) that there
should be other orders (ordines) besides the priesthood. But
although these orders “serve” the priesthood (sacerdotio ex
officio deservirent), and though men “ascend” through them to
priesthood, we do not read that they share in or are “parts” of
priesthood. Similarly, canon 2 speaks of major and minor
75
See Ioannes Baptista Valentinus, Order of Hermits, CT 9:14. Not all understand
this: the bishop of Viviers, CT 9:84, ll. 3-4, asks how being a porter really connects one
to the Eucharist.
76
Cherubinus de Cassia, Order of Hermits, with the bishop of Vercelli, CT 9:21,
ll. 23-29.
77
Francisco Sancius, cleric with the bishop of Salamanca, CT 9:11, ll. 31-33.
78
For this way of thinking about unity, where all the grades possess their character,
but all characters are directed to the one character of the priesthood, see Theodore
Masius, O.Carm., CT 9:14, l. 42, to 15, l. 2.
79
CT 9:12, ll. 17-18.
80
CT 9:140, ll. 14-16.

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531

orders, by which one reaches the priesthood. But these as it
were “grades” or “steps” (velut per gradus) are not said to
belong intrinsically to the priesthood. It could just as well be a
fitting arrangement of ecclesiastical discipline by which one
must be an acolyte and a deacon before one is a priest.
Likewise, although the hierarchy of bishops, presbyters, and
ministers of canon 6 is arranged by “divine ordination” (divina
ordinatio), this says nothing about the intrinsic relation of
ministers, including deacons, to presbyters and bishops.81
A further question about unity arises from the seeming
disparity between saying that the minor orders end in sacerdotium (can. 2, and from the first draft onwards), on the one
hand, and saying also that bishops are superior to priests (can.
7, and from the first draft onwards). Is the sacerdotium of
canon 2 that of presbyters or of bishops? Confusion seems
evident also in the first draft of the doctrinal chapters. After
speaking of the grades of order, all of which are said to refer to
the Eucharist, there is expressly introduced the idea of a “hierarchy” of these “succeeding orders,” the apex of which hierarchy, we learn, is the Roman Pontiff.82 Only then do we have it
that “bishops belong to this hierarchy,” bishops who are superior to priests in sacramental power.83 But then what exactly is
the “hierarchy” to which bishops belong? The one whose unity
is a common reference to the Eucharist, or the one whose apex
is the Roman Pontiff? So, according to the bishop of Viviers, it
is badly said that the lower grades are consummated by the
priesthood; it is rather the episcopate that caps the hierarchy.84

81
To say the hierarchy is arranged divina ordinatione is not to say it is instituted iure
divino and so elides the question of the origin of episcopal jurisdiction. See Lennerz, De
sacramento ordinis, 84 (no. 150), and CT 3:691, ll. 30-32.
82
CT 9:39, ll. 37-43. For the teaching that all grades of ordo are related to the
Eucharist, see Aquinas, STh Suppl., q. 37, a. 2.
83
CT 9:39, ll. 49-52.
84
CT 9:83, l. 42 to 84, l. 6; see also for another example the bishop of Terni, CT
9:72, ll. 28-32.

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GUY MANSINI, O.S.B.

In the final draft of the doctrine and canons, the contrast
between sacerdotium and episcopatum on the one hand and
ministerium on the other can be seen as strengthened with the
assertion that the ecclesiastical hierarchy consists by divine
ordinance in bishops, priests (presbyteris), and ministers (can.
6). This is one way to understand why, at the last minute, “aliis”
was dropped from before “ministris”: it was dropped in order
that “aliis ministris” not imply that bishops and priests are
included among the “other minsters.”85 Sacerdotium, not
ministerium, remains the controlling category, as in canon 2.
Furthermore, since all reference to the pope disappears in the
final version of the doctrinal chapters, we do not read of the
pope as the supreme hierarch, and the only hierarchy is the one
whose apex is the sacerdotium. But on the other hand, chapter
4 of the doctrine prior to the canons explains that bishops
succeed to the place of the apostles and are “placed by the Holy
Spirit ‘to rule the Church of God’ (Acts 20:28),” and, with the
power to confirm and ordain, are superior to priests in postestas
ordinis (as also can. 7 asserts). Josef Lecler draws attention to
this tension.
In the definitive decree, the reference to the Eucharistic
sacrifice is maintained, but the hierarchical structure of the
Church is founded on another theological basis. After recalling
that ordination confers a “character,” a mark as indelible as that
of baptism and confirmation, the council declares that “beyond
all the other ecclesiastical grades, bishops come as successors to
the place of the apostles . . . and are the first and chief part
[praecipue] of this hierarchical order and that they have been
established, as the Apostle says, ‘to rule the Church of God’
(Acts 20:28).” The hierarchical order in its entirety depends not
only on the Eucharistic sacrifice, but first on its divine
institution in the person of the apostles and then in the person

85
See CT 3:690, where the bishop of Ourense (Galicia) seems to take the “aliis” as
referring back to bishops and priests, and 691. See also ITC, “From the Diakonia of
Christ,” 262.

SACRAMENTALITY OF THE DIACONATE

533

of the bishops, their successors for the government of the
Church.86
In this way, the unity of the sacrament of orders is
problematized. Lecler finds a principle prior to and more
comprehensive than the priesthood on which to found orders,
namely, apostolic authority. Is this authority prior to that of the
priesthood that celebrates the sacrifice? The definitive text
introduces the notion of hierarchy just after teaching that if any
one maintains that all Christians are priests (sacerdotes), then he
upsets the Church’s hierarchy (hierarchiam), confounding the
doctrine of St. Paul, according to which not all are apostles,
prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers (1 Cor 12:28-29;
Eph 4:11). “Priests” are not named in this list. In addition to
these ranks (gradus), the council then teaches that bishops “especially belong to this hierarchical order” (ad hunc hierarchicum
ordinem praecipue pertinent). There are two ways to take this.
First, if denying the distinctive priesthood given by ordination
means upsetting the hierarchy (in which priests themselves are
not named), then it seems to follow that the entire hierarchy is
“priestly.” Second, priests and the grades that lead up to
priesthood according to chapter 2 and canon 2 are all within a
more encompassing episcopal hierarchical order of rule established by the apostles.
Let us recall at this point the most important fact with which
this discussion of Trent began. Because there is a sacrifice of the
New Law, there is a priesthood of the New Law (chap. 1). The
service of this priesthood is distributed in many orders of
ministers who give assistance to priests (chap. 2). But ordo is a
sacrament (chap. 3). Therefore, the sacrament of orders in all its
parts is priestly through and through, and the priesthood is the
essence of orders. So reads Emmanuel Doronzo.87 If this is the
way to read Trent, then there were two paths to take after
86

Lecler, Trent (en 1551-1563), 394.
Doronzo, De ordine, vol. 2, De Institutione (cont.); De materia et forma
(Milwaukee: Bruce, 1959), 291.
87

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GUY MANSINI, O.S.B.

Trent but prior to the Second Vatican Council. First, as a sacrament, orders directly pertains to the Eucharist; the episcopacy is
not directly and immediately related to the Eucharist, but to
those who confect the Eucharist; therefore, Doronzo concluded,
it is not part of the sacrament of orders as defined by direct and
immediate relation to the Eucharist, though doubtless it
“pertains” to it.88 Jean Beyer drew a similar conclusion as to the
diaconate: it is not part of the sacrament of orders.89 But the
Second Vatican Council teaches that episcopal consecration
gives the fullness of the sacrament of orders (LG 21), and that
the diaconate is sacramental (LG 29). Can Trent’s insistence on
the priestly nature of orders be combined with the teaching of
Vatican II? A second path opens up. If it is supposed that the
episcopal munera of teaching and ruling are beyond and in
addition to the office of sanctifying, then we are prevented from
finding the unity of orders, essentially priestly and Eucharistic
according to Trent, in the episcopate. But let us suppose to the
contrary that the munera of teaching and ruling do pertain to
the munus of sanctifying. Arguably, they pertain to it as to their
end. In that light, that is, in light of their finality, episcopal
ruling and episcopal teaching turn out in fact to be priestly. And
it will be similarly maintained, and perhaps more easily, that the
diaconate is also sacerdotal.
IV. AFTER THE SECOND VATICAN COUNCIL
Regarding the sacramentality of the diaconate, there is not
much to report. Paul VI reaffirms it in his apostolic letter motu
proprio Sacrum diaconatus ordinem of 1967, which lays out
general norms for the restoration of the permanent diaconate.
The diaconate is not to be considered as a “mere step.” Further,
diaconal ordination gives grace and imprints a character, which
imprinting of a character was not mentioned by the Second
88
Doronzo, De ordine, 2:291-92; for the minor, 290-91. For a summary of postTridentine views on the distinction of the episcopacy from the presbyterate, see
Doronzo, De ordine, 2:223-27.
89
Perhaps it is useful to note that this conclusion was certainly not drawn by
Doronzo; see De ordine, 1:646-48, 792-93.

SACRAMENTALITY OF THE DIACONATE

535

Vatican Council. The nature of this character, however, is not
further specified by Pope Paul. In Ad Pascendum of August 15,
1972, he promulgates further norms. In the introduction, the
deacon is a “sign or sacrament of Christ the Lord himself, who
did not come to be served but to serve.” This seems to make the
deacon himself in his presentation of himself as a minister a sort
of visible image of the Christ who serves. This is new.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church straightforwardly and
importantly asserts that there are three degrees of the sacrament
of Holy Orders (CCC 1536, 1554), and expressly includes the
diaconate as a part of sacramentally conveyed orders (CCC
1569, 1570). The new Code of Canon Law (1993) speaks in
canon 1008 in its first edition of the deacon acting in persona
Christi, but the Catechism of the Catholic Church in its 1997
edition reserves this language for bishops and priests. By his
apostolic letter Omnium in mentem, Benedict XVI brought the
letter of the Code into conformity with the Catechism.90 According to the Catechism, the character imprinted by ordination
likens deacons to Christ, but this configuration is unto Christ
the “deacon” or servant of all (CCC 1570), not to Christ the
Head. This configuration should not be confused with the sign
value specified by Paul VI in Ad Pascendum. Baptismal or
diaconal characters are not apparent things, of course, except
indirectly through the visible rite that imparts them, but the sign
or sacrament of Ad Pascendum seems to be something of a more
immediate phenomenal order. It is rather the Ratio fundamentalis institutionis diaconorum permanentium of 1998 from
the Congregation for Catholic Education that seemingly returns
us to the phenomenal order in number 11:
So that the whole Church may better live out this spirituality of service, the
Lord gives her a living and personal sign of his very being as servant. In a
specific way, this is the spirituality of the deacon. In fact, with sacred

90

Omnium in mentem can be found at the Vatican website archives, along with the
Code of Canon Law (http://www.vatican.va/archive/cdc/index.htm).

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GUY MANSINI, O.S.B.

ordination, he is constituted a living icon of Christ the servant within the
Church.

The deacon’s functioning and way of life are to be easily
identified as “service” after the image of Christ.
CONCLUSION
After the council, Jean Beyer returned to the topic of the
sacramentality of the diaconate. He notes that the council forbore so to teach the sacramental nature of the diaconate in such
a way as to condemn anyone who would deny it, and its manner
is therefore indirect—”vox est timida,” he says.91 The voice is
timid, he says, not just in order to avoid condemnations, but
also because the dogmatic basis for the assertion is uncertain
and not fully worked out.92 The council fathers were not
unanimous.93 And sacramentality was rather supposed than
proven.94
Beyer thus reminds us of the nonbinding way in which the
council teaches the sacramentality of the diaconate. On the
other hand, it may be urged against Beyer that it is the role of
councils more to assert Catholic teaching than to prove it. And
the action of the Second Vatican Council leaves us with what
practically approaches an exercise of the universal episcopal
magisterium. If Trent leaves us with a big fact, the sacerdotal
nature of orders, Vatican II leaves us another, equivalently large
fact, namely, the sacramentality of the diaconate, which it
would be unseemly for a sacramental theologian to deny.
We may therefore sum things up as follows. Dogmatically,
the Council of Trent did not teach, nor did it intend to teach,
the sacramentality of the diaconate. It has been a common
opinion that the sacramentality of the diaconate indeed follows
from the teaching of Trent on the sacrament of orders and is
91
Jean Beyer, S.J., “De diaconatu animadversiones,” Periodica de re morali,
canonica, liturgica 69 (1980): 441-60, at 449.
92
Ibid., 449.
93
Ibid., 455.
94
Ibid., 458.

SACRAMENTALITY OF THE DIACONATE

537

therefore a certain conclusion from what has been infallibly
defined. Common opinion is not conciliar teaching, of course.
After Trent, however, theological writings and magisterial
statements have tended to presume or suggest—more or less
explicitly—the sacramentality of the diaconate. The Second
Vatican Council does teach that the diaconate is a sacrament.
Postconciliar papal and curial teaching has been more explicit in
stating the sacramentality of the diaconate.
While the Second Vatican Council held for the sacramentality of the diaconate, it did so in a way that has left certain
questions open. Systematically, it can be assumed that the principle that governs whether the diaconate is or is not a sacrament
is the unity of the sacrament of orders, the principle that makes
it specifically one sacrament, such that all instantiations of the
sacrament are defined, univocally or analogically, in the same
way. The International Theological Commission observed in
2002 that this systematic issue had not yet been satisfactorily
met. To my knowledge, this observation remains correct.95

95

I would like to thank Fr. Dominic Langevin, O.P., for his judicious help with this
article.

The Thomist 85 (2021): 539-54

SAINT THOMAS’S THEOLOGY OF THE DIACONATE
MICHAEL G. SIRILLA
Franciscan University
Steubenville, Ohio

A

LTHOUGH St. Thomas Aquinas did not produce a freestanding treatise on the office of deacon, his theology of
the diaconate can be culled from his treatment of the
subject throughout his opera. He treats both the sacrament of
ordination and the office of the diaconate in various articles and
chapters that may be organized by means of the four causes:
efficient, material, formal, and final. He also identifies certain
acts and properties (in the sense of “proper accidents”) of the
diaconate. We will look at how St. Thomas identifies the four
causes of the diaconate considered both as a sacrament and as an
office.1
Much of what St. Thomas has to say on deacons is found in
one of his least mature works, his commentary on Lombard’s
Sentences, and he stopped writing his Summa theologiae before
1

There is a very brief treatment of St. Thomas on the sacramentality of the diaconate
in the International Theological Commission’s 2002 document, “From the Diakonia of
Christ to the Diakonia of the Apostles” (https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/
congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_con_cfaith_pro_05072004_diaconate_en.html).
Also of some interest is the recent dissertation by Msgr. Marc Caron, “A Response to the
International Theological Commission’s Questions about the Diaconate in ‘From the
Diakonia of Christ to the Diakonia of the Apostles’” (S.T.D. diss., University of Saint
Mary of the Lake, 2021).
The research for this article included searching for every occurrence of the word
diaconus and related terms in St. Thomas’s opera omnia from the Aquinas Institute’s
“Aquinas Opera Omnia” project available at: aquinas.cc. In this article, all citations of
these works will be based on the Latin text found in the Aquinas project website and
identified according to the edition used there (e.g., Leonine, Parma, etc.). English
translations will be based on those found there.
539

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MICHAEL G. SIRILLA

reaching the topic of the sacrament of holy orders.2 This raises
the question of whether his thought on the subject underwent a
development. He did, however, deal with essential issues regarding the diaconate in his treatment of baptism and other matters
in the Summa and in them we find a remarkable consistency with
his earlier works. This article begins with an examination of what
he says about the diaconate as an instance of the sacrament of
holy orders and then proceeds to explore what he says about the
diaconate as an office.
I. DIACONAL HOLY ORDERS
In his commentary on Peter Lombard’s Sentences (in book IV,
written ca. 1256), St. Thomas affirms the Master’s definition of
the sacrament of holy orders, namely, “order is a certain mark of
the Church, by which spiritual power is conferred on the one
ordained.”3 He holds that there are seven degrees of orders that
can be given in this sacrament: the minor orders of porter, lector,
exorcist, and acolyte; and the major orders of subdeacon, deacon,
and priest. For St. Thomas, consecrating, offering, and distributing the body of Christ in the Eucharist is the end of all
sacramental orders, and so they are distinguished from each other
only insofar as each has a different relation to the Eucharist,
constituted by the different spiritual powers received in the different grades. For example, the minor orders have spiritual
powers to dispose people and things more or less remotely and
indirectly for the Eucharist, and the major orders have power
more directly to prepare, consecrate, and distribute the Eucharist.4 For this reason, St. Thomas holds that the episcopacy is
not a sacramental but only a hierarchical and juridical order: it
does not bestow on the recipient any new spiritual power
regarding the Eucharist other than that possessed by all priests.

2
The questions on holy orders in the supplementum of the Summa were drawn from
St. Thomas’s commentary on the Sentences by his disciples after his death.
3
IV Sent., d. 24, q. 1, a. 1, qcla. 2 (Parma edition, transcribed by Roberto Busa and
revised by the Aquinas Institute according to the 1947 M. F. Moos edition).
4
IV Sent., d. 24, q. 2, a. 1, qcla. 2.

ST. THOMAS’S THEOLOGY OF THE DIACONATE

541

A) Efficient and Material Causes
In De articulis fidei et ecclessiae sacramentis (ca. 1261), St.
Thomas notes that the efficient cause or minister of the sacrament
is the bishop who confers the orders.5 He describes the action of
the efficient cause in producing the sign (the matter and form) of
the sacrament in the fourth book of his commentary on Lombard’s Sentences as well. In distinction 24, question 2, article 3,
he asks when the character is imprinted in the sacramental rite.
He notes that the bishop prepares the ordinandi through a benediction, the imposition of hands, and (in the case of priests only)
an anointing. But he says that the conferral of the sacramental
character “happens by the fact that they [the ordinandi] are given
something pertaining to their proper acts.”6 In particular, the
ordinandus is given the instruments of the office he is receiving,
and for St. Thomas this constitutes the sacramental matter of holy
orders.7 Deacons are given the book of the Gospels; yet, as will
be discussed at greater length below, St. Thomas holds the
principal act of this office to be assisting the priest with the
Eucharist by distributing the precious Blood. Proclaiming and
teaching the Gospels in the liturgy is the secondary act of the
office of the deacon. Aquinas explains why the deacon is given
the book of the Gospels and not something more directly related
to his principal act:
The power of the deacon is a mean between the power of the subdeacon and of
the priest. For the priest directly has power over the body of Christ, but the
subdeacon only over the vessels, while the deacon has power over the body
5

II De articulis fidei et ecclesiae sacramentis, a. 7, “On Holy Orders” (Leonine edition,
edited by the Aquinas Institute).
6
IV Sent., d. 24, q. 2, a. 3.
7
The question of what constitutes the matter of the sacrament of holy orders has been
an issue of much debate over the centuries. This issue was settled by Pope Pius XII in his
apostolic constitution “Sacramentum Ordinis” in 1947 when he decreed that the matter
of this sacrament is the imposition of the hands of the bishop. By this, he determined the
essential matter. Nevertheless, the handing over of instruments pertaining to the various
offices still occurs in the Latin rite and has symbolic significance, even if it is nonessential.

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MICHAEL G. SIRILLA

contained in the vessel. Therefore, it does not belong to him to touch the body
of Christ but to carry the body of Christ on the paten, and to distribute the
blood with the chalice. And so his power could not be expressed for its principal
act by giving the vessels alone, nor by giving the matter, but his power is
expressed as to its secondary act in giving him the book of the Gospels; and in
this power the others are understood. And therefore in that giving his character
is imprinted.8

The sacramental matter of handing over the instruments impresses the character, which is a kind of spiritual power. In his
treatment of the nature of sacramental character in the Summa
theologiae (STh III, q. 63, a. 2 [ca. 1273]), St. Thomas argues that
the worship of God on the part of clergy consists in bestowing
divine gifts on others and for this a spiritual power is needed. He
cites Pseudo-Dionysius to show that this spiritual power makes
the man in orders God-like and a communicator of divine gifts
to the people.9 This is one of the principal effects (final cause) of
orders.
B) Formal Cause
Saint Thomas does not examine the specific form for the
sacramental conferral of any of the various degree of orders in
particular. Rather, in his commentary on the Sentences, he
remarks in general that in the form of this sacrament the bishop
commands the ordinandi to perform the acts proper to that
particular degree of orders. The form signifies the conferral of
the spiritual power to perform those acts by the use of the
imperative mood.10 Saint Thomas argues that it is also fitting that
in the sacramental form the bishop mentions a reward for the
faithful execution of the duties of the office since, unlike the
other sacraments, holy orders is received to perform hierarchical
actions in the Church. He understands hierarchical actions in a
distinctively Dionysian sense: those in the hierarchy bring the
faithful to an ever-deeper deification by purifying, illuminating,
and perfecting them.
8

IV Sent., d. 24, q. 2, a. 3, ad 5.
STh III, q. 63, a. 2 (Leonine edition, revised by the Aquinas Institute).
10
IV Sent., d. 24, q. 1, a. 1, qcla. 4.
9

ST. THOMAS’S THEOLOGY OF THE DIACONATE

543

C) Final Cause
The final cause or effects of the sacrament include the
sacramental character which gives the recipient a spiritual power
to dispense the precious Blood as the ordinary minister, as
mentioned above. This is the principal power (and hence act and
duty) of the diaconate. But the character also bestows on the
deacon the power officially to proclaim the Gospel and catechize
which is the secondary power of the order.11 The ultimate effect
of the sacrament (the res tantum) is an increase of grace for
performance of these duties.
In the sacrament of holy orders for the diaconate, a bishop
(efficient cause) blesses, imposes hands, then hands over the book
of the Gospels (material cause), and says the prayer of ordination
(formal cause). This produces the effects (final cause) of impressing a character and giving the grace needed to fulfill the duties
of the office, namely, to distribute the precious Blood, to proclaim the Gospel, and to instruct catechumens.
II. THE DIACONATE AS A HIERARCHICAL OFFICE
A) Efficient Cause
Saint Thomas recognizes that the apostles selected the first
deacons, as recounted in Acts 6, but he implies that it was under
the direction of the Holy Spirit. In his commentary on Ephesians
(ca. 1265), he says that after Pentecost the apostles no longer cast
lots in ecclesiastical elections as they did with Matthias (Acts
1:15-26). They had received the Holy Spirit who “will provide
his Church with good pastors,” and so when choosing the seven
deacons they did not cast lots as doing so “would be an insult to
the Holy Spirit.”12 And in his letter Liber de sortibus (ca. 1270),
11

IV Sent., d. 24, q. 1, a. 2, qcla. 2.
In Eph., c. 1, lect. 4, no. 33 (Marietti 1953 edition, prepared by Raffaele Cai, O.P.,
transcribed by Robert Busa, S.J., and revised by Enrique Alarcón and other editors).
12

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MICHAEL G. SIRILLA

St. Thomas cites Bede’s commentary on the Acts of the Apostles
where he remarks that the first deacons in the Church “were
ordained not by lot, but by the choice of the disciples, the prayer
of the Apostles, and the imposition of hands.”13 For Aquinas,
then, the efficient cause of the office of the diaconate is the
apostles guided by the Holy Spirit.
B) Material Cause
The material cause of the order of deacons consists in the
members who hold that office. Saint Thomas discusses the requirements and properties of a suitable candidate to the diaconate. In his commentary on the Sentences, he says that holiness
of life is required but as a matter of precept, not of necessity, so
that a man in mortal sin would still be validly ordained. But in
that case, there would be a severe incongruity, since a man in any
degree of orders “is established as a leader of others in divine
matters” and “it violently tears down God’s Church when the lay
people are better than the clerics.”14
Saint Thomas argues that ordination in general and to the
diaconate in particular is reserved to men as a matter both of
necessity and of fittingness. In his Sentences commentary, he
notes that if something is missing that is necessary to the
sacrament, then the person neither receives the sacrament
(sacramentum) nor the reality of the sacrament (res tantum, the
ultimate effect of the sacramental grace). He continues:
And so even if all the things were presented to a woman that are done in holy
orders, she would not receive holy orders, for since the sacrament is a sign, in
those things that are done in the sacrament there is required not only the reality
but also the signification of the reality; as it was said that in extreme unction it
is required that someone be sick, so that a person needing healing might be
signified. Therefore, since in the feminine sex no eminence of degree can be
signified [Cum ergo in sexu femineo non possit significari aliqua eminentia
gradus], for a woman, by the very fact that she is a woman, has a state of

13
14

Liber de sortibus, c. 5 (Leonine edition, edited by the Aquinas Institute).
IV Sent., d. 24, q. 1, a. 3, qcla. 1.

ST. THOMAS’S THEOLOGY OF THE DIACONATE

545

subjection [quia mulier ex hoc ipso quod mulier est statum subjectionis habet],
this is why she cannot receive the sacrament of holy orders.15

Saint Thomas, in fact, recognizes that the terms diaconissa (deaconess) and presbytera have been used to denote certain women,
especially in early Church history; but he insists that this does not
make the requirement of the male sex merely a matter of precept.
Deaconesses, he argues, are so called because they partake in
some act of a deacon, such as reading a homily in the church,
without holding the sacramental office.16 Presbytera is not used
the way presbyteros sometimes is, namely, to signify a priest. The
Greek term means “elder” and, when used in the feminine, he
points out, it signifies the nonsacramental order of widows in the
Church.17
What does it mean to say that a woman cannot signify
eminence of degree because she is in a state of subjection? In the
same article, St. Thomas says that, with respect to their souls,
women are sometimes better than men. Being equally receptive
to grace, women are capable of receiving charismatic gifts of
prophecy and the like. He also notes that Deborah, the judge,
held public governance in temporal matters, “just as now women
can have temporal positions of rule.”18 His argument centers on
the claim that women are unable to signify externally a state of
eminence over others and that being able to signify this is
necessary for a suitable recipient of holy orders. Saint Thomas
says that slaves cannot validly receive holy orders either, because
they are more evidently in a state of subjection than are women
(who, qua women, are not slaves).19
15

IV Sent., d. 25, q. 2, a. 1, qcla. 1.
In 1 Tim., c. 3, lect. 2, no. 118 (Marietti 1953 edition, prepared by Raffaele Cai,
O.P., transcribed by Robert Busa, S.J., and revised by Enrique Alarcón).
17
IV Sent., d. 25, q. 2, a. 1, qcla. 1.
18
IV Sent., d. 25, q. 2, a. 1, qcla. 1.
19
Ibid. The resolution of this apparent contradiction between St. Thomas’s denial of
women to orders and his recognition of the legitimacy of women holding temporal
authority is beyond the scope of this article, but will be found by a careful analysis of his
exegesis of 1 Tim 2:11-15 (In 1 Tim., c. 2, lect. 3).
16

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MICHAEL G. SIRILLA

In his commentary on 1 Timothy 3:8-11, St. Thomas discusses the qualities St. Paul lists for suitable candidates to the
diaconate. The deacon must not be double-tongued (bilingues),
since he is to be a minister of peace, which is destroyed by dishonesty and scheming. He must be avoid intemperance regarding
drink and also avoid greed for dishonest temporal gain since
failing in these matters turns a man not only from justice but also
from truth.20 Saint Thomas finds it significant that St. Paul says
that the deacon must “hold the mystery of faith in a pure conscience” (v. 9) and not simply “the faith.” This indicates that
deacons need not only faith, but also
an understanding of that which is hidden under faith. For a mystery is
something hidden: because ministers should know not only those matters about
the faith which are known to the people, but also its mysteries, because they are
obliged to instruct others.21

A pure conscience is needed as well, without which one is liable
to err in matters of faith. Saint Thomas interprets “having no
crime” (v. 10) to mean that the fit diaconal candidate must be
free both from mortal sin and from notorious delinquency since
the latter “would disgrace the keys of the Church.”22
At the beginning of this list of requirements for suitable diaconal candidates we read that deacons must be “chaste” (v. 8). Saint
Thomas explains that impurity “makes one unfit for spiritual
tasks, for it turns the spirit away from spiritual things, whereas it
is necessary that the spirit be elevated for the performance of such
tasks: ‘be clean, you who carry the vessels of the Lord’ (Isa
52:11).”23 A little later, commenting on the requirement for
deacons’ wives to be chaste (v. 10), he says that deacons should
ideally be entirely free from contact with women but since this is
possible for very few men, at least they should have only one
wife. In this case, remarrying after the death of one’s wife would

20

In 1 Tim., c. 3, lect. 2 (Marietti ed., nos. 111-12).
Ibid. (Marietti ed., no. 113).
22
Ibid. (Marietti ed., no. 114).
23
Ibid. (Marietti ed., no. 110).
21

ST. THOMAS’S THEOLOGY OF THE DIACONATE

547

be a sign of incontinence.24 Several years before writing this commentary, St. Thomas discussed the question of clerical continence
in the tradition of the Western rite in his Sentences commentary.
There he argues that men with holy orders who handle sacred
vessels (that is, priests, deacons, and subdeacons) need “to
preserve physical purity through continence” (munditiam corporalem per continentiam servent).25 He cannot be implying here
that the marital act in itself is impure, since he quite consistently
praises its temperate use throughout his writings and even says
that it is a means of supernatural merit if the motive is virtuous.26
His point, rather, is that the physical pleasure of the marital act
draws one away from recollection of spiritual things and this
renders one “impure,” that is, unable to offer God suitable worship, which is both exterior and interior. Saint Thomas explains:
Any licit occupation dealing with inferior things distracts the soul, so that it is
not capable of being joined to God actually. And this particularly happens in
carnal union, in which the mind is absorbed because of intense pleasure. And
because of this, for those men whose task is to contemplate divine things or to
handle sacred things, abstinence from their wives is enjoined for that time.27

He notes that the question of clerical continence stems from the
decision of the Church and that it is applied differently in the
Roman rite than among the “Greeks.” In the West, holy orders
impedes both marriage and the use of marriage; in the East, it
impedes only the contracting of a future marriage but not the use
of a marriage already present. Saint Thomas argues that ordination in the Roman rite entails a vow of continence: “By the very
fact that he receives orders, according to the Western rite of the
Church he is understood to have taken that vow.”28 Current

24

Ibid. (Marietti ed., no. 120).
IV Sent., d. 37, q. 1, a. 1.
26
IV Sent., d. 26, q. 1, a. 4.
27
IV Sent., d. 26, q. 1, a. 3, ad 2.
28
IV Sent., d. 37, q. 1, a. 1.

25

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MICHAEL G. SIRILLA

discipline in the West no longer requires strict continence for
deacons.
C) Formal and Final Causes
Because of their close connection, I will treat the formal and
final causes of the office of deacon together. The essence (or
formal cause) of the diaconate gives rise to the spiritual powers
that the sacramental character bestows on the office holder.
These powers enjoin duties on the deacon to execute the acts
corresponding to each power. Since an act proceeds from a
power, an act is a mean between the formal and final causes. It is
an actualization of potencies in the form in order to bring about
the final cause. So, after looking at some general remarks that St.
Thomas makes on the nature of the ecclesial hierarchy and the
diaconate in particular, we will briefly examine what he has to
say about the powers, duties, acts, and associated purposes of the
diaconate.
Saint Thomas follows Pseudo-Dionysius in The Ecclesiastical
Hierarchy in identifying the diaconate as one of three hierarchical
orders in the Church. The distinctive note of this hierarchy,
distinguishing it from that of the angels (treated by Dionysius in
The Celestial Hierarchy), is that in the ecclesial hierarchy the
divine light of God is “veiled through sensible likenesses both in
the sacraments and in the metaphors of the Scriptures,” whereas
there is no such sensible veil for angels, who receive God’s light
simply and directly.29 The ecclesial hierarchy consisting of the diaconate, the priesthood, and the episcopacy is established by God
so that those under authority may be brought progressively to
greater participation in the divine life of God by the actions of
the three orders of intermediaries. Deacons purify the beginners,
priests illuminate the proficient, and bishops perfect the spiritually advanced.30 Each higher order contains and can perform the
powers of the lower orders, and the lower orders, like the
29

II Sent., d. 9, q. un., a. 3.
See, e.g., STh I, q. 108, a. 2, obj. 3; In 1 Tim., c. 3, lect. 1 (Marietti ed., no. 87);
Contra Impugn., c. 2; IV Sent., d. 24, q. 2, a. 1, qcla. 2, ad 1; and De Perf. Spirit., c. 7.
30

ST. THOMAS’S THEOLOGY OF THE DIACONATE

549

diaconate, participate in a limited way in some of the powers of
the next higher order.31 Saint Thomas holds the traditional view
that the minor orders (porter, exorcist, lector, and acolyte) were
instituted by the Church as “divine worship became more
widespread,” making possible the distribution of many of the
deacon’s purifying activities among these lower ranks.32
“Purifying” ought to be taken in the sense of removing what
is unfitting and disordered in persons so that they may proceed
with fewer impediments to be illuminated by grace given by
priests through the administration of the sacraments. Deacons
purify beginners, according to St. Thomas, by proclaiming the
Gospel and by providing basic catechetical instruction in the
mysteries of faith, along with basic moral instruction and
exhortations to repent. These actions cleanse by removing errors
in matters of faith and rectify the affections in the will so that
catechumens and the faithful who welcome the deacon’s teaching
activity are well prepared to receive the illuminating grace of our
Lord present in the Blessed Sacrament. By way of example, St.
Thomas mentions deacons’ teaching the faithful how to participate in the liturgy, such as instructions to kneel at certain
times, or directions such as “Let all the unbaptized depart” and
“Bow down [humble yourselves] for the blessing.”33 This kind of
teaching, along with the deacon’s proclamation of the Gospel, is
a remote preparation for receiving the Eucharist.34 Thus, according to St. Thomas, a deacon sets forth Christ’s teaching “and
because Christ is not only man, but God, [before proclaiming the
Gospel] the deacon first says, ‘The Lord be with you,’ so that he

31
For a more detailed treatment of Dionysian hierarchy in the theologies of Sts. Albert
the Great, Bonaventure, and Thomas Aquinas, see chapter 2 of Michael G. Sirilla, The
Ideal Bishop: Aquinas’s Commentaries on the Pastoral Epistles (Washington, D.C.: The
Catholic University of America Press, 2017).
32
IV Sent., d. 6, q. 2, a. 3, qcla. 3, ad 1 and 2; see also IV Sent., d. 24, q. 2, a. 1,
qcla. 2, ad 2.
33
IV Sent., d. 5, q. 2, a. 1, qcla. 2.
34
IV Sent., d. 24, q. 2, a. 2, ad 4; and ScG IV, c. 75.

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MICHAEL G. SIRILLA

might make men attentive to Christ as God.”35 In the Tertia pars
of the Summa, when discussing the kind of teaching appropriate
to deacons, St. Thomas says that the deacon catechizes, noting
that catechumens need to be cleansed.36 Diaconal teaching is
distinct from that of bishops and other teachers in the Church in
that deacons are to provide rudimentary instruction in the
mysteries of faith and the moral teaching of Christ in order to
prepare catechumens for the reception of baptism.37 The “disciplinal instruction” of catechumens concerning what they are to
believe and how to approach the sacrament of baptism belongs
to the office of deacons, but also to priests who are able to
execute all the actions of the lower orders.38
The deacon also possesses a spiritual power regarding the
consecration of the Eucharist, and for this reason St. Thomas
teaches that the order of the diaconate is “holy”:
There are two ways that orders can be called sacred. In one way, essentially,
and then every degree of orders is sacred, since it is a certain sacrament; in the
other way, by reason of the matter about which it has an act, and then those
orders are called sacred that have some act concerning some consecrated thing.
And in this way there are only three sacred orders, namely, priest, and deacon,
who has his act concerning the consecrated body and blood of Christ, and
subdeacon, who has his act concerning sacred vessels. And this is why
continence is also prescribed for them, so that the ones who handle holy things
may be holy and clean.39

The holiness of the diaconate consists, foundationally, in the fact
that it is a sacrament. But the diaconate as an office is also “holy”
insofar as the deacon’s acts are holy. For instance, in the Mass
the deacon “supplies the oblations to the priest,”40 and in so
doing he cooperates with the priest “as to his principal act,
namely, consecrating the body of Christ.”41 But a deacon cannot
confer sacraments ex officio, since he receives only the spiritual
35

IV Sent., d. 8, exp. text.
STh III, q. 67, a. 1, ad 1.
37
See, e.g., STh III, q. 71, a. 4, ad 3.
38
IV Sent., d. 6, q. 2, a. 2, qcla. 2.
39
IV Sent., d. 24, q. 2, a. 1, qcla. 3.
40
IV Sent., d. 24, q. 2, a. 2, ad 3.
41
IV Sent., d. 24, q. 2, a. 2, ad 8.

36

ST. THOMAS’S THEOLOGY OF THE DIACONATE

551

power to purify, not to illuminate, and illumination comes by
means of sacramental grace.42 Nevertheless, deacons do “exercise
a ministry over the already-consecrated matter, inasmuch as they
distribute Christ’s blood to the faithful.”43
In his commentary on the Sentences, St. Thomas says that
deacons participate in a limited but concrete way in the
administration of the Eucharist,
For it belongs to him by office to dispense the Lord’s blood but not his body.
For the minister of the body must touch the body, but the minister of the blood
need not. However, it is not permitted for a deacon to touch the body of Christ,
since he does not have consecrated hands. And so he should not administer the
body except by the special command of the priest or bishop, or when the priest
is far away in an emergency.44

Saint Thomas reaffirms this same point in the Summa (STh III,
q. 82, a. 3, ad 1 and ad 3), which shows a consistency throughout
his academic career.45
In discussing how the many degrees of order are all granted
by one sacrament rather than by seven distinct sacraments, St.
Thomas argues that the various orders do not comprise discrete
parts of an integral whole. Rather, holy orders itself is a
“potestative whole” of which the particular lower orders have a
share but priests have the fullness.46 Thus, he maintains that the
diaconal character is a limited, metaphysical participation in the
sacred character of the priesthood. As such, the deacon’s state
and activity are forms of cooperation with his priest (and his
42

IV Sent., d. 23, q. 2, a. 1, qcla. 2.
ScG IV, c. 75 (Marietti 1961 edition [a reproduction of the text of the earlier
Leonine editions of 1918, 1926, and 1930, with some small corrections], revised and
edited by the Aquinas Institute).
44
IV Sent., d. 13, q. 1, a. 3, qcla. 2.
45
Indeed, in examining his opera omnia, I have found no significant changes in his
thoughts on the diaconate; rather, he reaffirms and develops, often more eloquently, his
less mature theological insights on the order of deacon. For example, in STh III, q. 82,
a. 3, ad 3, St. Thomas notes that in dispensing the precious Blood, the deacon participates
in the priest’s power of illuminating with the grace of this sacrament.
46
IV Sent. d. 24, q. 2, a. 1, qcla. 1.
43

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MICHAEL G. SIRILLA

bishop, the high priest) as a minister. Saint Thomas contends that
the very name “deacon” signifies minister or servant, and his
service is not only to the faithful but also to the priest. The
principal manifestation of this is in the distribution of the
sacrament of the Eucharist, specifically the chalice. But the
deacon also ministers to the priest during the consecration, as
well as in other sacramental rites, such as baptism, the rite of the
chrism, and so on.47 Saint Thomas notes that deacons are also
helpers to their bishops and that they must not do anything
“without the command and advice of their bishop.”48 In fact, St.
Thomas so closely associates the deacon’s work with that of his
bishop as to claim that the bishop purges through the activity of
deacons; but it is God, not the bishop, who is the ultimate source
of the purificatory activity.49
According to St. Thomas, even though deacons are not the
proper minister of any of the sacraments (save the distribution of
the precious Blood) because they have purifying power only (not
illuminating power), they are proper ministers of certain
sacramentals that involve purification, such as exorcisms,
blessings, and the like.50 In addition, St. Thomas asserts that
deacons are able “to make indulgences” (indulgentias facere)
because this has to do with the power (or “key”) of jurisdiction
rather than the power of sacramental orders. Jurisdictional power
can be delegated to a deacon serving as a bishop’s legate, or it can
be ordinary, as when a deacon becomes a bishop-elect.51 This
power also encompasses matters of the external forum and
includes the power to judge and punish cases, even with
excommunication. We have not seen such a delegation of power
in the Church (especially not to deacons) in centuries. Bishops of
particular Churches may excommunicate (though even this is
quite rare in recent decades) but the granting of indulgences is
reserved to the Apostolic See. Saint Thomas bears witness to a

47

STh III, q. 67, a. 1.
De Perf. Spirit., c. 27 (Leonine edition [1969], edited by The Aquinas Institute).
49
De forma absolutionis, c. 1.
50
IV Sent., d. 5, q. 2, a. 1, qcla. 2.
51
IV Sent., d. 20, q. 1, a. 4, qcla. 2.
48

ST. THOMAS’S THEOLOGY OF THE DIACONATE

553

time when the Church was less centralized, with a much greater
emphasis on subsidiarity.
This survey of St. Thomas’s theology of the diaconate can be
completed with two additional points that he makes regarding
deacons. First, he notes briefly and almost in passing that deacons
have a duty to administer temporal goods in the Church and to
be in charge of alms.52 Lastly, in book four of his commentary on
the Sentences, he offers a beautiful reflection on the symbolism
of liturgical vestments:
The vestments of the ministers . . . designate the suitability required in them for
handling divine things. And since there are some things that are required for
everyone, and some that are required for superiors, which are not so needed in
inferiors, this is why some vestments are common to all ministers, but some are
only for superiors. And therefore the amice applies to all ministers, covering the
shoulders, by which is signified fortitude for executing divine offices, to which
they are dedicated. And likewise the alb, which signifies purity of life, and the
cincture, which signifies the repression of the flesh. . . . But the deacon also has
a stole on his left shoulder as a sign that he is employed for the ministry in the
sacraments themselves; as well as a dalmatic, which is a large garment, as was
said, for it was first used in the regions of Dalmatia, to signify that he is
considered the dispenser of the sacraments first, for he distributes the blood,
and largesse [generosity] is required for a distribution.53

These vestments are retained in the Latin rite to this day.
CONCLUSION
Throughout his works, St. Thomas provides a rich and
comprehensive theology of the diaconate in which he treats it
both as a sacrament and as a hierarchical office. In each case, he
shows its origin, nature, material constituents, and purpose. He
regards the diaconate as a hierarchical office, a degree of the
sacrament of holy orders, and a participation in the priesthood
by means of the spiritual power of the sacramental character. It
52
See STh II-II, q. 91, a. 2, ad 3; In Matt., c. 21, lect. 1 (Marietti ed., no. 1698); and
In Eph., c. 4, lect. 4 (Marietti ed., no. 212).
53
IV Sent., d. 24, q. 3, a. 3.

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MICHAEL G. SIRILLA

empowers the recipient officially to proclaim the Gospel and to
give basic instruction in the faith, as well as to assist with the
consecrated vessels at Mass and distribute the precious Blood. By
means of the character, deacons are the proper ministers of all
sacramentals that involve purification and, in St. Thomas’s day,
they were able to receive powers of jurisdiction regarding
indulgences and other matters in the external forum.
For St. Thomas, the diaconate is not an ephemeral step in the
ecclesial ladder to the priesthood. It has divine and apostolic
origins, and those who hold this hierarchical office serve to
purify, to prepare catechumens and the faithful both to be
illuminated by the sacramental graces communicated by priests
and to be perfected in spiritual charity by the bishop, whose role
in the hierarchical order is to unveil the mysteries of faith in his
teaching.

The Thomist 85 (2021): 555-80

LITURGY, WORD, AND CHARITY IN THOMAS AQUINAS
FREDERICK CHRISTIAN BAUERSCHMIDT
Loyola University Maryland
Baltimore, Maryland

T

HE SECOND VATICAN COUNCIL, in calling for the
restoration of the diaconate as an order permanently
exercised, stated that deacons are “at the service of the
people of God in the ministry of the liturgy, the word, and
charity.”1 This threefold articulation of diaconal ministry—
which seemingly reflects the threefold munera of Christ as
priest, prophet, and king—has attained a kind of canonical
status in defining diaconal ministry.2 A proper exercise of the
office of deacon ought to include liturgical ministry (both
serving at the Eucharist as well as presiding at the Liturgy of the
Hours, baptisms, weddings, and other rites), proclamation of
God’s word (whether in preaching or catechetical ministry), and
service to those in need (which would include both direct
assistance and the promotion of social justice). Discussion and
debate concerning the order of deacons often takes the form of
what the proper balance ought to be among these three, and
1
Lumen Gentium 29, in Norman Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils
(Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1990).
2
See, for example, the National Directory for the Formation, Ministry, and Life of
Permanent Deacons in the United States (Washington, D.C.: United States Conference
of Catholic Bishops, 2005), §§31-38. Shawn McKnight, while recognizing the obvious
affinities between the threefold ministry of deacons and the priestly, prophetic, and
royal offices of Christ, takes pains to distinguish this from the threefold munera of the
bishop as described in Lumen Gentium 24-27. See W. Shawn McKnight, Understanding
the Diaconate: Historical, Theological, and Sociological Foundations (Washington, D.C.:
The Catholic University of America Press, 2018), 48-49.

555

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FREDERICK CHRISTIAN BAUERSCHMIDT

whether one of them, usually the ministry of charity, ought to
have priority over the others.
In this essay I will seek insight from Thomas Aquinas, not by
looking at what Thomas has to say about the ministry of deacons per se, but rather by looking at what light his theology can
shed on the threefold ministry of liturgy, word, and charity in
which deacons share. Discussions of the interrelation of liturgy,
word, and charity need a theologically thick account of each of
them that will allow the connections among them to emerge,
and Thomas, even apart from any ex professo treatment of the
diaconate, offers us such an account.
I. LITURGY
Perhaps because most Catholics encounter deacons in the
context of the Sunday liturgy, the liturgical ministry of the
deacon has a particular prominence in popular awareness. It is
also the aspect of ministry that features most prominently in
Lumen Gentium’s discussion of a restored diaconate:
To the extent that he has been authorized by competent authority, he is to
administer baptism solemnly [i.e. not simply in an emergency situation], to
reserve and distribute the eucharist, to assist and bless marriages in the name
of the church, to take viaticum to the dying, to read sacred scriptures to the
faithful, to instruct and exhort the people, to preside at the worship and
prayer of the faithful, to administer sacramentals, and to preside at funeral
services and burials.3

There follows the briefest mention of “duties of charity and
administration,” but the emphasis of the constitution on the
Church seems to fall overwhelmingly on the deacon’s liturgical
and sacramental actions.
Liturgical ministry is also, however, a source of significant
anxiety about the identity of the deacon and the nature of
diaconal ministry, since one of the most common criticisms one
finds of the restored diaconate is that many deacons are simply
3

Lumen Gentium 29.

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557

“glorified altar servers” who are too much occupied with ornamenting the sanctuary and too little occupied with serving the
poor and the outcast. And while doing the baptisms and
weddings that the pastor would rather not do might be seen as
somewhat more useful than cluttering up the sanctuary during
Mass, even here deacons come in for criticism for aspiring to be
“mini-priests” rather than proper deacons—by which is meant
spending time in soup kitchens and homeless shelters. This
criticism is found even at the highest level of the Church. In his
address to participants in the plenary meeting of the Dicastery
for the Laity, the Family and Life in November 2019, in the
course of denouncing the “clericalization of the laity,” Pope
Francis remarked:
I also see this phenomenon in deacons: they become permanent deacons and
instead of being the custodians of service in the diocese, they immediately
look at the altar and end up being “wannabe priests [preti mancati],” demipriests [preti a metà strada]. I advise the bishops: “Keep deacons away from
the altar,” let them go to service. They are the custodians of service, not firstclass altar boys or second-class priests.4

When even the Universal Pontiff sees the liturgical ministry of
deacons as something that at least potentially undermines the
true nature of their office, it is clear that more reflection is
needed on that ministry.
Thomas might seem an odd figure to turn to for insight on
liturgical ministry. He not only offers no ex professo discussion
of liturgy such as we might find in modern liturgical studies, but
by the estimation of many liturgists of the modern era he lived
in a time that was, despite the visual and aural splendor of the
liturgy, an era of liturgical dilapidation, in which the proper
4

Pope Francis, “Address to the Plenary Meeting of the Dicastery for the Laity, the
Family and Life,” November 19, 2019, https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/it/
speeches/2019/november/documents/papa-francesco_20191116_laici-famiglia-vita.html.
The pope’s remarks are puzzling in the context of a discussion about clericalizing the
laity, since deacons are clerics and not laity. I think it can be safely said that such offthe-cuff remarks, while interesting, do not carry much magisterial weight. My thanks to
Christopher Ruddy for helping me track down this statement.

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FREDERICK CHRISTIAN BAUERSCHMIDT

role of the laity had been lost and the theology of the liturgy
was dominated by allegorical interpretations.5 Moreover,
Thomas’s specific views regarding the ministry of deacons are
often shaped by liturgical norms that differ from current legislation (for example, Thomas holds that deacons, like lay people,
can only baptize in cases of emergency).6
Yet though he has no separate treatise on liturgy, and lived in
an era that did not conform to certain modern liturgical ideals,
Thomas thought profoundly about the role of human ritual
activity in the context of the drama of creation, redemption,
and consummation. Claims of some contemporary theologians
notwithstanding, his discussions of sacramental theology are
informed less by the metaphysics of Aristotle than they are by
the rites of the Church, and with regard to the Eucharist he
offers careful (albeit sometimes allegorical) interpretations of
the words and actions of the liturgy.7 His understanding of how
it is that Christians worship God is integrated with his understanding of human nature in a way that suggests certain
fundamental principles regarding how we ought to approach

5

See, e.g., Joseph Jungmann, The Mass of the Roman Rite: Its Origins and
Development (Missarum Sollemnia), vol. 1 (Notre Dame, Ind.: Christian Classics,
2012), 103-18. One might also note that Theodor Klauser, in A Short History of the
Western Liturgy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), titles his chapter on the high
Middle Ages “Dissolution, Elaboration, Reinterpretation and Misinterpretation.” For a
counterbalance to this line of interpretation of medieval liturgy see Eamon Duffy, The
Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400-1580 (2d ed.; New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Press, 2005); and Augustine Thompson, Cities of God: The
Religion of the Italian Communes, 1125–1325 (University Park, Pa.: The Pennsylvania
State University Press, 2005).
6
See STh III, q. 67, a. 1. While we might point to the example of Philip in the books
of Acts as a precedent for deacons baptizing, it seems clear that in most places at most
times, prior to the modern era, it was unusual for deacons to baptize. Likewise, there is
little evidence of deacons presiding at weddings.
7
See, e.g., STh III, q. 83, aa. 4-5. For a discussion of how Thomas has been
evaluated by contemporary sacramental theologians and liturgists, as well as how he
might be reevaluated, see Bernhard Blankenhorn, “Receiving Aquinas’ Sacramental
Theology Today,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Reception of Aquinas, ed. Matthew
Levering and Marcus Plested (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 689-704.

LITURGY, WORD, CHARITY

559

the celebration of the liturgy and how liturgical ministers ought
to understand their roles.
Thomas is clear that liturgy exists to meet the needs of
human beings, not the needs of God. Commenting in the
Summa contra gentiles on the rituals prescribed by divine law,
Thomas notes:
Certain sensible works are performed by man, not to stimulate God by such
things, but to awaken man himself to divine matters by these actions, such as
prostrations, genuflections, raising the voice, and hymns. These things are
done not because God needs them . . . rather, we do these things for our
sakes, so that our attention may be directed to God by these sensible deeds
and that our love may be aroused.8

Thomas’s hylomorphic anthropology informs his understanding
of the human need for embodied rituals, preeminently in the
sacraments, but also in the entire repertoire of bodily gestures
that make up the liturgy. Thomas faults heretics—presumably
the Cathars—who reject such bodily rituals, noting, “they have
not remembered that they are human beings . . . for it is evident
from experience that the soul is stimulated to an act of
knowledge or of love by bodily acts.”9 Human beings are, as
Wittgenstein put it, “ceremonial animals,” and the liturgical
worship of God answers to a primal human drive for ritual, a
drive that can move in a distorted, superstitious direction, or
can be directed toward the one true God.
Part of what distinguishes the salutary from the superstitious
in ritual behavior is a proper understanding of the end toward
which such behavior is ordered. The end of liturgical rites is
found not in meticulous adherence to ritual laws, as if magically
to coax a favorable response from God, but in the interior state
of those celebrating those rituals. Thomas locates liturgical
action within the realm of the virtue of religion, and sees
“devotion” (devotio) as the principal act of that virtue. What
8

ScG III, c. 119. Cf. STh II-II q. 91 a. 1: “we need to praise God with our lips, not
indeed for his sake, but for our own sake; since by praising him our devotion is aroused
towards him.”
9
ScG III, c. 119.

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FREDERICK CHRISTIAN BAUERSCHMIDT

Thomas writes of the ceremonies of the Old Law is no less true
(mutatis mutandis) of those of the New: “The priests pleased
God in the ceremonies on account of their obedience and
devotion, and by their faith in the reality foreshadowed, not on
account of the things considered in themselves.”10 For this
reason, “the internal acts of religion take precedence over the
others and belong to religion essentially, while its external acts
are secondary, and subordinate to internal acts.”11 But this
devotio is not purely inward. Thomas sees a close relation between outward ritual action and interior devotion, since “the
human mind, in order to be united with God, needs to be
guided by the sensible world.”12 The devotio that human beings
must have in order to please God is not merely subjective,
because it is both engendered and expressed by the rituals of
worship that are the common property of the baptized.
Answering to a human exigence, liturgies are, as Thomas sees
it, subject to change in their form, so as to address varied
human situations. This is seen most clearly in his discussion of
the transition from the Old Law to the New. The Old Law
determined liturgical forms with great precision, since these
forms, as Thomas notes in the passage quoted above, had to
fulfill the purpose of typologically prefiguring Christ. The New
Law, in contrast, has fewer rituals, and only the key sacramental
forms are fixed and unchanging. The comparative freedom with
which ritual is approached in the New Law is itself a sign of the
freedom associated with the Spirit of Christ. While Thomas
would undoubtedly have found the pace of liturgical change in
the past sixty years bewildering, the principle that liturgical
forms can change in order to foster greater interior devotion is
one that he would embrace.
At the same time (and perhaps this should go without
saying), Thomas does not think of liturgy as something that
should be tampered with willy-nilly to meet human needs. In his
10

STh I-II, q. 103, a. 2, ad 2.
STh II-II, q. 81, a. 7.
12
Ibid.

11

LITURGY, WORD, CHARITY

561

theological practice he presumes a generally stable body of
liturgical texts and actions, which can often be used to justify
certain theological positions, particularly, but not exclusively,
with regard to the sacraments. As Liam Walsh notes, “In his
treatment of the sacraments the usus or consuetudo Ecclesiae,
the ritus ab Ecclesiae servatus, is a solid unquestioned auctoritas.”13 Thomas treats the liturgy in a way that is analogous to
his treatment of Scripture, inasmuch as both take the form they
do in response to the needs of human beings as rational animals
that come to knowledge through their senses.14 But despite their
anthropologically determined form, neither Scripture nor
liturgy have human beings as their subject matter. Like
Scripture, the liturgy, though meant for human beings, is not
primarily about human beings, but about God. It finds its end
not in human subjectivity, but in the glorification of God.
Indeed, without ceasing to be a human work, it is first and
foremost a work of God.
All of this is summed up in Thomas’s response to the objection that contemplation of God cannot be the chief cause of
devotio, since people are most often stirred to devotion not by
Christ’s divinity but by contemplation of his humanity. Thomas
writes:
Matters concerning the Godhead are, in themselves, the strongest incentive to
love and consequently to devotion, because God is supremely lovable. Yet
such is the weakness of the human mind that it needs a guiding hand, not only
to the knowledge, but also to the love of divine things by means of certain
sensible objects known to us. Chief among these is the humanity of Christ,
according to the words of the Preface, that through knowing God visibly, we
may be caught up to the love of things invisible. Wherefore matters relating to
Christ’s humanity are the chief incentive to devotion, leading us there as a
guiding hand, although devotion itself has for its object matters concerning
divinity.15

13
Liam G. Walsh, O.P., “Liturgy in the Theology of St. Thomas,” The Thomist 38
(1974): 557-83, at 560.
14
See Thomas’s discussion of the role of metaphor in Scripture in STh I, q. 1, a. 9.
15
STh II-II, q. 82, a. 3, ad 2. Thomas is quoting the preface of the liturgy of
Christmas.

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Here, Thomas draws together the anthropological form and the
theological object of liturgical worship, which coincide in the
sacred humanity of Christ hypostatically united to the divine
nature. Thomas rejects the view that an unmediated contemplation of the divine nature is to be preferred to making use of
creaturely means of inciting devotio, above all the created
humanity of Christ. He quotes the liturgy itself to describe the
movement of liturgical prayer: our senses are enraptured by the
Word made flesh dwelling among us, raising us to love of the
invisible Godhead. The anthropological and theological dimensions of the liturgy are not at odds with each other, any more
than the humanity and divinity of Christ are at odds with each
other. Indeed, the liturgy participates in the theandric activity of
Christ, who is the chief liturgist of God’s people.
What, then, can all this tell us about the deacon’s ministry of
liturgy? Bishop Shawn McKnight’s recent study, Understanding
the Diaconate, interprets the diaconate as a medius ordo, by
which he means that what has characterized the ministry of
deacons, both in the patristic “golden age” of the diaconate and
in current Church documents, is the role of deacon as a kind of
go-between, both between the laity and the hierarchy and
between the Church and the world.16 This mediating role
achieves ritual expression in the Eucharistic liturgy. This is
perhaps most evident in the liturgies of the Eastern churches, in
which the deacon constantly shuttles back and forth from one
side of the iconostasis to the other, linking the people to the
largely hidden action at the altar, and repeatedly calls on them
to pay attention to the liturgical action. But in the Roman Rite
the deacon also serves a mediatorial role, drawing the assembly
into the act of priestly prayer. It is worth noting that, with the
exception of the third form of the penitential rite (which is an
innovation of the postconciliar reforms), every word the deacon
speaks aloud (the gospel, the petitions of the universal prayer,
the invitation to the sign of peace, and the dismissal) is directed
not toward God, but to the people. The deacon’s role is not the
16

See McKnight, Understanding the Diaconate, esp. 109-43.

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priestly one of presenting the Church’s prayer to God, but a
ministerial one of exciting the devotio of the people so that they
exercise their own priestly offering in the sacrifice of praise.
In this way, the deacon is particularly attentive to the anthropological dimension of the liturgy, serving the assembly and
exercising care that the liturgy is effective in engendering and
expressing the devotio of God’s people. This focus is entirely
appropriate, since the deacon is an icon of Christ who takes on
the form of a slave by being born in human likeness. One might
say that, within the theandric unity of the liturgy, the deacon’s
role is a particularly incarnational one, “humanizing” the liturgy, whether this is by bringing the joys and sorrows of
humanity into the liturgy through the petitions of the universal
prayer or by reorienting the assembly at the end of the liturgy
back from sacred time and space toward profane time and space
by bidding them to go forth. At the same time, deacons should
never seek to “subjectivize” the liturgy, to put some sort of
personal stamp on it by, for example, coming up with creative
forms of dismissing the people (“Go set the world on fire!”).
The deacon serves the liturgy as received from the Church, so
that God, and not the deacon, remains the focus.
Thomas’s understanding of the relationship between devotio
as an interior act and the exterior acts of the virtue of religion
can also help us think about what we might call the “nonutility”
of deacons in the liturgy, their seemingly “decorative” role. The
term Thomas uses to identify the proper adornment of the
exterior acts of religion that serves to foster devotio is solemnitas. Though the English word “solemnity” might suggest a
certain stodginess or pomposity, what Thomas means by
solemnitas is festivity, albeit a festivity possessed of a certain
gravity or seriousness.17 It is serious festivity produced by the
employment of human means that correspond to and put on
17
For a discussion of Thomas’s notion of solemnitas, see Sr. Thomas Augustine
Becker, O.P., “The Role of solemnitas in the Liturgy according to Saint Thomas
Aquinas,” in Rediscovering Aquinas and the Sacraments: Studies in Sacramental Thelogy,
ed. Matthew Levering and Michael Dauphinais (Chicago: Hillenbrand Books, 2009),
114-35.

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display the hidden mystery that is coming to pass in the
liturgical act. So, for example, washing with water is part of the
substance of the sacrament of baptism, while anointing with
chrism pertains to solemnitas, since it both distinguishes baptism from ordinary washing and drives home the Christological
significance of the act.18 Ritual acts that add solemnitas pertain
not to the esse of the liturgical act, but to the bene esse.19
The ministry of the deacon, both in the Eucharist and in
other liturgical celebrations, is one part of that solemnitas.
Thomas himself seems to allude to this in noting that when a
bishop celebrates Mass it is fitting for there to be assisting
ministers “for the sake of greater solemnity.”20 Because liturgy is
a complex system of signs engendering and expressing devotio,
and not a utilitarian set of operations by which something is
accomplished, the ministry of the deacon, while expressive in
nature, is not merely decorative. It enhances the solemnitas of
the celebration, giving fuller expression to the mystery that is
transpiring there by visibly representing Christ as the one who
took the form of a servant. In this, the deacon is something
more than either a glorified altar server or a mini-priest, but
rather fulfills a symbolic role distinctive to his office.
II. WORD
The deacon’s ministry of the word typically takes the form of
preaching and catechesis. Deacons generally have faculties to
preach at the Eucharist, as well as at other liturgies. Deacons are
often involved in catechesis in the context of the Rite of
Christian Initiation of Adults and in sacramental preparation,
particularly preparing parents for the baptism of their children
and couples for matrimony. All of this can be seen as falling
under the ministry of the word.
18

STh III, q. 66, a. 10.
Ibid., ad 4. In this way solemnitas can be distinguished from the merely decorative
in the way that a “proper” or per se accident is distinguished from other accidents. See
STh I-II, q. 2, a. 6.
20
STh III, q. 83, a. 5, ad 12.
19

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565

Preaching is perhaps the aspect of diaconal ministry that has
experienced the most growing pains since the restoration of the
permanent diaconate. Anecdotal evidence suggests that early
postconciliar formation programs did not pay much attention to
preaching, and in many places deacons rarely if ever preached.
This has changed, though even with greater homiletic competence there is still some resistance to diaconal preaching,
particularly in the Eucharistic liturgy. This is not entirely a
function of the quality of deacons’ formation or of their
preaching. The General Instruction of the Roman Missal itself
suggests that ordinarily the preacher at Mass is the celebrant,
and that delegation of that task to a deacon should only occur
“from time to time and if appropriate.”21 Some bishops have
even directed that deacons should not preach at the Eucharist
“on a routine or regularly scheduled basis.”22 Others have interpreted the clause “if appropriate” to mean that diaconal
preaching ought to be restricted to certain topics, such as social
justice or family life (in the latter case, presumably because most
permanent deacons are married). There seems to be less controversy over deacons preaching at other rites over which they
preside, or over their ministry of the word in various catechetical settings.23 And, it is often pointed out, deacons bear
witness to God’s word with their daily lives. So deacons are
ordained to minister God’s word in many and varied ways, not
only (or, perhaps, even primarily) at Sunday Mass.

21

GIRM 66.
Bishop Alexander K. Sample, Diocese of Marquette, 2011 Pastoral Letter, The
Deacon: Icon of Christ the Servant section VI, https://www.dioceseofmarquette.org/
UserFiles/Bishop/PastoralLetter-Diaconate2011FullText.pdf.
23
Thomas says that catechesis is more properly the purview of the deacon than is
liturgical preaching: “It pertains to the deacon to read the Gospel in church, and to
preach it in the manner of one catechizing; therefore Dionysius says that a deacon’s
office is one of power over the unclean, among whom he includes the catechumens. But
to teach—that is, to expound the Gospel—pertains properly to the bishop, whose action
is to perfect, according to Dionysius in the Ecclesiatical Hierarchy (c. 5), and ‘to perfect’
is the same as ‘to teach’” (STh III, q. 67, a. 1, ad 1).
22

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FREDERICK CHRISTIAN BAUERSCHMIDT

For someone who belonged to an order of preachers, and
one in which handbooks on preaching proliferated, 24 it is
perhaps surprising that Thomas offers no extended discussion
of preaching. He clearly had thought a lot about the preacher’s
task. One place we can turn for a discussion of the ministry of
the word is Thomas’s sermon Exiit qui seminat, on the parable
of the sower.25 Thomas divides his topic into three elements:
the seed, the sower, and the act of sowing.
The seed, Thomas says, following Jesus’ own exposition of
the parable, is the word of God, which he further specifies as
“the seed of Christ”—not simply the seed sown by Christ, but
Christ himself, the eternal Son of the Father. In his commentary
on Matthew, he states explicitly that the seed sown “is the
Word of God, which proceeds essentially.”26 But how do we
know that what we sow is actually the word of God and not
someone else’s word, from which weeds will grow?27 How, in
other words, do we identify preaching that is authentic in its
content? A seed can be identified by the plant from which it
comes, the way it is contained in the plant’s seed pod, and its
capacity to produce similar plants. Since the seed is Christ’s
seed, it must be from Christ as efficient cause, coming down
from the wisdom from on high, as evidenced by its capacity to
engender humility, peace, and the rectitude of the virtues.
Second, the word is the seed of Christ if it is in Christ as its
exemplar cause: “if someone came and confronted you with a
doctrine whose exemplar is not in Christ, it is not a seed of
24

See Michèle Mulchahey, First the Bow Is Bent in Study: Dominican Education
Before 1350 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1998), 400-479.
25
I follow the translation of Mark-Robin Hoogland in Thomas Aquinas, The Academic Sermons (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2010) and
use the divisions he provides of the text in citations. For a discussion of this sermon, and
Thomas’s understanding of the preaching of Christ in general, see Jean-Pierre Torrell,
O.P., “The Sower Went out to Sow: The Image of Christ the Preacher in Friar Thomas
Aquinas,” in Christ and Spirituality in St. Thomas Aquinas, trans. Bernard Blankenhorn
(Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2011), 159-73.
26
Super Matt., c. 13, lect. 1 (ed. R. Cai [Turin and Rome: Marietti, 1951], 1086).
27
Here Thomas links the parable of the sower to the parable of the wheat and
weeds, which immediately follows it in Matthew (Matt 13:25-30).

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God” (1.2). Preaching that is in Christ takes the incarnate Word
as its criterion. Third, the word is the seed of Christ if it leads
toward him as final cause: just as the seed of an apple tree
produces another apple tree, so the word of Christ ought to
produce sons and daughters of God by adoption: “You ought to
imitate Jesus Christ, so that you may become like him.” It is
apparent that Thomas sees the content of preaching as
resolutely Christological: it has Christ as its source, its criterion,
and its goal.
If the seed is Christ, the Word that is sown, so too is the
sower. But in the economy of salvation Christ is not the only
sower; the sower is also the others who preach the word of God
in the name of Christ. Thomas underscores the difference
between Christ and other preachers: Christ “goes out” only
once, “from the hidden bosom of his Father” (2), whereas other
preachers must go out repeatedly. Given this, in what sense
does the preacher replicate Christ’s once-for-all coming forth?
First, by leaving sin without delay and clinging to Christ’s cross,
so as to preach with authenticity. Second, by leaving the world
by entering religious life, which is a “land of vision or contemplation” (2.2).28 Third, by the act of preaching itself. But all
three of these ways are intertwined, since the preacher’s
effectiveness depends upon his holiness of life, and must come
forth as the fruit of contemplation: “a preacher ought to draw
in contemplation what he will pour out later in preaching”
(2.3). Here the sower of God’s word, in emerging from the
silence of contemplation, is most closely conformed to “the
Savior’s going out from the secret dwelling place of the Father
into the public area of what is visible” (ibid.). In going out, the
preacher does not leave Christ behind, but takes Christ with
him as the one who inspires his preaching: Thomas quotes the

28
In his sermon, Thomas then digresses on a topic of pressing concern at the time he
was preaching: whether people ought to enter religious life in their youth. He uses the
sower’s going out early to argue that the zeal of youth can be an aid in attaining
perfection in the religious life, particularly when that perfection involves following
Christ, whose yoke is sweet and whose burden is light.

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Song of Songs 2:10: “Let us go out in the field.” The preacher
who preaches authentically is ever accompanied by Christ.29
Thomas’s association of preaching and religious life is meant
to underscore the relationship of the ministry of the word and
contemplation, not to restrict preaching to religious. Indeed,
Thomas is aware of the novelty of a religious order dedicated to
preaching (he sees bishops, as successors to the apostles, as the
primary preachers of the Church) and he is, if anything, trying
to justify that novelty by showing how the contemplative vocation of the religious is not contrary to the apostolic task of
preaching. Yet in the course of doing so, he forges a profound
understanding of the ministry of the word as a matter of
contemplata aliis tradere—handing on to others what has been
contemplated.30 His discussion of the identity of the preacher
also underscores the Christological character of preaching: the
preacher emerging from contemplation imitates Christ coming
forth from the Father.
At the end of his sermon on the parable of the sower,
Thomas turns to the act of preaching itself and its reception by
its hearers, discussing first what hinders the sowing of God’s
word from bearing fruit, and second what the fruit of such
sowing is. Regarding hindrances, Thomas knows that preachers
need some awareness of the things with which their listeners
struggle, things that hold them back from fruitfully receiving
God’s word. Taking his cue from the parable, he sees three
basic obstacles to effective reception of preaching. He associates
the hard-packed road upon which some seed falls with
“emptiness of affection” (vanitas affectus): a love for earthly
things, which gives no opening at all to God’s word. He
associates the rocky, shallow soil with the hard-heartedness of
self-love, which might allow the seed to sprout (perhaps because
of a self-interested fear of hell that leads one to give some initial

29

At this point Thomas launches into a further digression concerning youth and
religious life, now concerned as to whether preachers ought, in their preaching, to try to
persuade young people to enter religious life. Unsurprisingly he thinks they should.
30
STh II-II, q. 188, a. 6.

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569

heed to what is preached), but not to put down roots. He
associates the soil infested with thorns with “concupiscence or
cupidity”: such a heart has a genuine openness to the word of
God, but it seems open to other loves as well, which choke out
the shoots of the word, and “lacerate the soul” (lacerant
animam). If the obstacles are diverse, so too are the fruits of
effective preaching. Thomas (assisted by traditional glosses)
engages in some fanciful numerology in interpreting the thirtyfold, sixty-fold, and hundred-fold crop, but the upshot is to
argue that preaching can lead to an initial conversion to belief
in the triune God and to obedience to God’s commandments,
but it can also lead people to embrace the more perfect life of
the counsels, a life that, he says, is meant to make obedience to
God’s commandments easier, not more difficult.
Some of what Thomas says about preaching in this sermon
might seem a bit distant from the concerns of deacons, or any
other preachers, in the twenty-first century. Most deacons are
not in religious orders, or vowed to a life of contemplation;
indeed, secular employment is something of a de facto hallmark
of permanent deacons. And the style of Thomas’s preaching,
depending as it does on chains of scriptural quotations and, at
least in his academic sermons, minute divisions of the text,
would not fare well in the modern context. But his wisdom
regarding the sowing of God’s word retains its relevance.31
First, Christ is the content of the ministry of the word. This
is because he is the Word of God who sows God’s word so that
it might grow more abundant. As Thomas puts it in his Aristotelian idiolect, Christ is the efficient, formal, and final cause
of Christian proclamation. This means that preaching must
begin with Christ’s words and deeds as recorded in Scripture,
must speak a word that is new and yet formed in accordance
with the words and deeds of Jesus, and must seek to lead its

31

For a more general discussion of this topic, see Randall Smith, “What Lessons Do
Thomas Aquinas’s Sermons Hold for Modern Preachers?” Homiletic and Pastoral
Review, June 12, 2017 (https://www.hprweb.com/2017/06/what-lessons-do-thomasaquinass-sermons-hold-for-modern-preachers/).

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hearers into deeper incorporation into Christ. This does not
mean, of course, that preachers should only preach on gospel
texts, since all of Scripture, the Old Covenant as well as the
New, ultimately consists of words sown by the Word. But the
words and deeds of Jesus in particular become the lens through
which those words are read and the prism through which they
are refracted in our world. Moreover, union with Christ
through faith, hope, and love is the end of preaching. Preaching
is not for entertainment, nor for reporting on some interesting
or funny thing that happened to the preacher in the previous
week, nor for commenting on something seen on the internet or
television or at the movies. It is not for analyzing current events
or promoting a political position. Preachers might do all these
things, depending on the context, but only as a means to the
end of conveying faith in Christ, hope in Christ, and the love of
Christ.
Second, the deacon’s ministry of the word is a participation
in the prophetic ministry of Christ. As Thomas notes, Christ
says to those to whom he has entrusted his word, “Let us go out
in the field.” The word uttered by the deacon is accompanied by
the Word. This is not to say that each word that falls from the
mouth of the deacon is God-ordained. Rather it is to say that
the deacon should humbly acknowledge that any efficacy his
words possess derives not from his exegetical or rhetorical skill
but from the power of God. Whether in preaching or engaging
in catechesis, “the Holy Spirit makes use of the human tongue
as of an instrument; but he it is who perfects the work
within.”32 Commenting on Paul’s observations in Romans
10:14-16 on both the need for and the limitations of human
proclamation, Thomas writes, “He says this to show that the
outwardly spoken word of the preacher is not sufficient to cause
faith, unless a man’s heart is attracted inwardly by the power of
God speaking: everyone who has heard and learned from the

32

STh II-II, q. 177, a. 1.

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571

Father comes to me (John 6:45). Consequently, if men believe,
it should not be attributed to the industry of the preacher.”33
If the preacher is nothing more than an instrumental cause of
faith, he is also nothing less. That is to say, we must also take
seriously what Thomas says about the nature of instrumental
causes, which contribute something of their own form in the
bringing about of the effect of the principal cause that employs
them. This is why Thomas is concerned with the formation and
character of the preacher, and why he thinks that even those
who are engaged in active ministry must find time for prayer
and reflection. As Thomas remarks, “in order to teach preachers
that they ought not to be for ever before the public, our Lord
withdrew himself sometimes from the crowd.”34 In order to be a
suitable instrument, the deacon, even while still living in the
world, must cultivate a life of prayer so that the word may come
forth in him from union with the Father through Christ and the
Spirit. Study, too, is not to be neglected, since the ministry of
the word involves something more than off-the-cuff reflections
on life experience. Thomas gives us a compelling account of
how the primacy of God as the cause of effective proclamation
of the word can still call for studious preparation on the part of
the one entrusted with that proclamation.
Third, the ministry of the word, like any act of human communication, involves both speakers and hearers, and thus calls
for attentiveness not only to the words spoken but to the
hearers to whom one speaks. As noted earlier, Thomas, like
Jesus himself in the parable of the sower, points to various
factors that can inhibit receptivity to the word, as well as to the
fruits brought forth in those who do receive the seed of God’s
word. The perhaps obvious point is that the ministry of the
word has an anthropological dimension that requires attentiveness not only to the word, but to the hearers of the word. What
obstacles do they face in hearing the word? How does the
vanity of empty love manifest itself in this particular place and
33
34

Super Rom., c. 10, lect. 2 (ed. R. Cai [Turin and Rome: Marietti, 1953], 842).
STh III, q. 40, a. 1.

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time, in the lives of these particular hearers? What are the
specific thorns that threaten to choke out the word that is being
sown: what distractions and allurements are springing up from
the particular soil in which the hearers are planted? What are
the signs of the word having taken root? What fruits might we
look for, by which we might judge the efficacy of our proclamation? If deacons are, as McKnight suggests, a medius ordo,
then they should be particularly aware of the circumstances of
those in whom the word is sown—their joys and hopes, their
sorrows and anxieties. It is perhaps this proximity to God’s
people that is the distinctive gift that the diaconate brings to the
ministry of the word. So while diaconal preaching should not be
arbitrarily restricted to the topics of social justice or family life,
there is good reason to think that an awareness of the particular
obstacles faced by Christians in their daily lives, as well as the
distinctive fruits produced by the Spirit that manifest
themselves, is part of the charism of deacons as ministers of the
word.
Finally, Thomas stands in a long line of those who unite
proclamation of the word to holiness of life. The ideal of
preaching through word and example is summed up by
Thomas’s Dominican confrere, Stephen of Bourbon, who
writes, “we display in our deeds what we have told you about in
our words.”35 Thomas himself, in his inaugural sermon as a
Master at Paris, quotes Gregory the Great’s Pastoral Rule: “The
preaching of those whose life is despised will also be despised.”36 This suggests that part of the challenge for deacons—
indeed for all Christians—is to see the ministry of the word as
not exclusively located at the ambo, but woven into the fabric
of life. The deacon must make a constant touchstone of his life
the words the bishop speaks to him at the rite of ordination, in
handing over the book of the gospels: “Receive the Gospel of

35

Stephen of Bourbon, De septem donis Spiritus Sancti, §83 (in Simon Tugwell, ed.,
Early Dominicans: Selected Writings [Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1982], 87).
36
Principium Rigans montes, c. 2.

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Christ, whose herald you have become. Believe what you read,
teach what you believe, and practice what you teach.”
III. CHARITY
It might seem at first glance that the ministry of charity
would be the aspect of diaconal ministry that would be clearest,
since deacons are so associated with practical service to those in
need. But the clarity of charity might be more apparent than
real, since questions persist regarding this no less than the
ministries of liturgy and the word. Indeed, the seeming obviousness of the ministry of charity might itself provide unique
pitfalls to those who are ordained to it, since they may fail to
see the need to think more deeply about this ministry.
We can begin with the term “charity” itself. In modern
English it can suggest ameliorative acts that attend to the effects
rather than the root causes of various forms of human suffering.
Given modern concerns about social justice, “charity” can even
take on a negative connotation—a kind of religious noblesse
oblige that serves to keep the poor from rising up and changing
the systems that keep them poor. Writing in 1847, Karl Marx
summed up this critical suspicion of Christian charity: “The
social principles of Christianity preach the necessity of a ruling
and an oppressed class, and for the latter all they have to offer is
the pious wish that the former may be charitable.”37 From this
perspective, the tradition of Christian charitable action masks its
true nature as an instrument of oppression, and deacons,
charged with the ministry of charity, are therefore agents of
oppression.
The sting felt by Christians in the face of such charges can be
seen in the rise of Catholic social teaching, which pairs a concern for ameliorative charity with a concern for social justice.
This pairing of charity and justice receives a sophisticated
exposition in Church documents such as Benedict XVI’s
37
Karl Marx, “The Communism of the Rheinischer Beobachter,” in Marx, Engels: On
Religion (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1975), 74.

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encyclical Deus Caritas Est,38 and a fairly simple (or, possibly,
simplistic) account in the notion of charity and justice as the
“two feet of love in action,” where charity is conceived of as
concerned with short-term needs and direct action, while justice
is concerned with the long-term systemic causes of social ills.
Charitable actions would include feeding the hungry, providing
shelter to those experiencing homelessness, or offering monetary assistance to those in need, whereas social justice would
involve working to change discriminatory laws or advocating
for public policies that help the poor.39 This approach to charity
and justice raises the question of whether the deacon’s ministry
of charity is exclusively one of direct service to those in need,
apart from any concern for questions of justice, or whether it
would be better described as one of charity and justice, better to
reflect the social teachings of the Church.40
If the deacon’s ministry of charity is understood to include a
concern for social justice, this raises a further question of how
that ministry relates to the overall mission of the Church in the
world, and in particular to the mission of the laity. After all, the
Second Vatican Council teaches,
It is the special vocation of the laity to seek the kingdom of God by engaging
in temporal affairs and ordering these in accordance with the will of God.
They live in the world . . . and it is here that God calls them to work for the
sanctification of the world as it were from the inside, like leaven.41

If the work of bringing the temporal order into accord with
God’s will—the work of charity and justice—belongs to the
laity, what does it mean to have a clerical order whose charism
38

Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est 26-29.
See, for example, the teaching materials of the USCCB office of Justice, Peace, and
Human Development: https://www.usccb.org/beliefs-and-teachings/what-we-believe/
catholic-social-teaching/two-feet-of-love-in-action, accessed 12/30/21.
40
This is suggested by William Ditewig’s book, The Deacon’s Ministry of Charity and
Justice (Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press, 2015). The language of “charity and
justice” is also used in National Directory on the diaconate in the U.S.
41
Lumen Gentium 31; cf. Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est 29: “The direct duty to
work for the just ordering of society . . . is proper to the lay faithful.”
39

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575

is charity and justice? Is this clerical usurpation of what is
proper to the laity? Or is a deacon’s ministry of charity and
justice different in kind from that of the laity? How then are
these two things related? We can begin to see how the
seemingly simple notion of deacons as “ministers of charity” is
in fact quite complex.
For Thomas, of course, the term “charity” (caritas) does not
mean only ameliorative acts—indeed, he does not seem ever to
use the term in that way.42 Rather, for Thomas and other
medieval theologians, “charity” identifies what the New
Testament calls agape, the love that is characteristic of God, and
which is properly directed toward God by human beings. Thus
Peter Lombard defined charity as “the love [dilectio] by which
God is loved for his own sake, and our neighbor is loved for the
sake of God or in God.”43
Thomas gives an Aristotelian twist to this definition by
construing charity as a species of friendship, by which he means
a love characterized by well-wishing (benevolentia) and
mutuality (mutua amatio).44 What distinguishes charity from
other forms of friendship is its object: “Charity is friendship,
but adds something beyond friendship commonly so-called,
namely, a specification of who the friend is, since it is friendship
toward God, who is more precious and dearer than all things.”45
Thus charity is the virtue that unites us to God in a relationship
of mutual well-wishing.46 Though informed by Aristotle’s account of friendship, however, Thomas departs from Aristotle in
significant ways, particularly in his rejection of Aristotle’s view
that divine-human friendship is impossible.47 For Thomas, the
grace of Christ makes possible friendship with God, based on
42

Thomas does see almsgiving as an action that springs from the virtue of charity
(STh II-II, q. 32, a. 1).
43
Peter Lombard, Sententiae III, d. 27, c. 2 (ed. Ignatius Brady [Grottaferrata:
Editiones Collegii S. Bonaventurae ad Claras Aquas, 1971], 97).
44
STh II-II, q. 23, a. 1.
45
III Sent., d. 27, q. 2, a. 1.
46
STh I-II, q. 23, a. 3.
47
See Aristotle, Nic. Ethic. 2.7.1158b-59a.

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FREDERICK CHRISTIAN BAUERSCHMIDT

the gift of charity, which gives us a share in God’s own life.48
And while God is the principal object of charity, our neighbor is
included in that same charity if we love him for the sake of
God,49 so the gift that makes possible friendship across the
divide between the human and the divine also makes friendship
possible with other human beings across boundaries that Aristotle thought insurmountable: barriers of race, social status, or
gender. Ultimately, charity is the virtue that enables us to live
with God, and with others in God. As Thomas puts it:
The divine essence itself is charity, in the same way that it is wisdom and
goodness. Therefore just as we are said to be good with the goodness which is
God, and wise with the wisdom which is God . . . so too, the charity whereby
formally we love our neighbor is a participation of Divine charity.50

Charity is therefore the gift of friendship with God that overflows into honorable friendship with others.51
Charity is an odd virtue from an Aristotelian perspective
because, like the virtues of faith and hope, it is not acquired
through practice, nor does it observe a mean in the way that
moral virtues do. As Thomas puts it, “we can never love God as
much as he ought to be loved, nor believe and hope in him as
much as we should.”52 While it is certainly possible to seek to
love God by means of actions that are not appropriate to one’s
circumstances—for example, giving away all of one’s money
when one has financial obligations to one’s family, or fasting to
the point of ruining one’s health—the act of charity itself is not
subject to measure by anything else. Moreover, there is no limit
48
In his commentary on John 13:34 Thomas writes, “Christ loved us as similar to
himself by the grace of adoption, loving us in light of this similarity in order to draw us
to God” (Super Ioan., c. 13, lect. 7 [ed. R. Cai (6th ed.; Turin and Rome: Marietti,
1972), 1838]).
49
STh II-II, q. 23, a. 5, ad 1.
50
STh II-II, q. 23, a. 2, ad 1.
51
Thomas clearly gives priority to friendship with God over friendship among
human beings: “God is the principal object of charity, while our neighbor is loved out of
charity for God’s sake” (STh II-II, q. 23, a. 5, ad 1).
52
STh I-II, q. 64, a. 4; cf. Super Rom., c. 12, lect. 1 (Marietti ed., 964).

LITURGY, WORD, CHARITY

577

to charity’s increase in this life: not only can one not have too
much charity, but also one can never declare oneself to have
attained maximum charity, since “the capacity of the spiritual
creature is increased by charity, because the heart is expanded
[dilatatur] by it.”53 In this way, we might call charity an “unruly” virtue, inasmuch as it is ruled by nothing but God’s call to
step into the abyss of divine friendship.
Charity is also that virtue of which Paul wrote, “If I give
away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I
may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing” (1 Cor 13:3).
For Thomas, charity is the preeminent virtue that gives “form”
to the other virtues: it is what perfects them as virtues and
makes them meritorious of salvation.54 Though virtues without
charity can be true virtues, they only operate at their full stretch
when joined to charity.55 In a sense, all the other virtues are
ruled by charity’s unruliness. This applies to justice as much as it
does to any of the other virtues. So perfect justice requires
charity—not in the sense of ameliorative action of direct service
to those in need, but in the sense of the virtue that places justice
within the infinite horizon of love of God.
Commenting on Aristotle’s statement that “if people are
friends, there is no need of justice, but just men do need
friendship,”56 Thomas writes:
If men are friends, there should be no need of justice in the strict sense,
because they should have all things in common; a friend is another self and
there is no justice to oneself. But if men are just, they nevertheless need
friendship for one another. Likewise, perfect justice seems to preserve and
restore friendship. Therefore, it pertains to ethics to treat friendship much
more than justice.57

This suggests something about the interrelation of charity and
friendship and justice. Ultimately ethics is more about
53

STh I-II, q. 24, a. 7, ad 2.
STh II-II, q. 23, aa. 7-8.
55
STh I-II, q. 65, a. 2.
56
Aristotle, Nic. Ethic. 8.1.1155a.
57
VIII Nic. Ethic., lect. 1.
54

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FREDERICK CHRISTIAN BAUERSCHMIDT

friendship than it is about justice, because justice without the
friendship that is charity fails to be justice in the fullest possible
sense. Justice that is “perfect”—which in Thomas’s terminology
suggests the infused virtue of justice-formed-by-charity—is no
longer ruled by calculations of what is owed to whom, but
rather places us at the service of God and neighbor in which we
are called to ever-deeper friendship.58
Thinking about diaconal ministry in light of Thomas’s account of charity suggests that the term “ministry of charity” is
wisely chosen, because what the deacon brings to both the
amelioration of human suffering and the quest for a society
characterized by justice is precisely a focused concern for that
friendship with God and others that Thomas calls “charity.”
Indeed, what Thomas has to say about charity might be more
significant for diaconal ministry that what he says about justice.
Though his thought forms much of the construction material
for modern Catholic social teaching,59 it is evident to anyone
familiar with his writings that his conception of human society
is far more hierarchical and organic than is that of the modern
West. As Stephen Pope has pointed out, Thomas had a kind of
patience for inequality—seeing at least some differences of
status and power as part of God’s providential ordering of the
world—that might seem to limit his usefulness in seeking justice
in the modern context. But, as Pope also points out, Thomas
brings to the discourse of social justice an expansive notion of
the virtue of charity that is “much more stringent than are
modern approaches, and is therefore less amenable to cavalier
dismissal on the grounds that it is superfluous.”60 It is worth
58
See STh II-II, q. 23, a. 3, ad 1: “It might be said that [charity] is a moral virtue
about works done to another person, but under a different aspect than justice. For
justice is about works done in respect of another person, under the aspect of what is
legally due, while friendship considers the aspect of a friendly and moral duty or, even
more, the aspect of a freely granted favor.”
59
Apart from one reference each to Tertullian and Gregory the Great, Thomas is the
only theologian cited in Leo XIII’s landmark encyclical Rerum Novarum (1891).
60
Stephen Pope, “Aquinas on Almsgiving, Justice and Charity: An Interpretation and
Reassessment,” Heythrop Journal 32 (1991), 167-91, at 186.

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579

noting that Thomas includes under the virtue of charity both
almsgiving and fraternal correction, which means that the
exercise of this virtue includes not simply service to direct needs
but also denunciation of injustice and other forms of sin. This
might not be exactly the two feet of love in action of popular
presentations of Catholic social teaching, but it is close enough
to suggest that Thomas’s profound reflections on charity might
form a solid basis for thinking about the public demands that
love of God and neighbor make upon us.
This points us toward a proper understanding of the deacon’s ministry of charity, which is irreducibly theological.
Diaconal ministry is not simply social work carried out under
the ecclesiastical umbrella; rather, it is the making present of the
theological virtue of charity in the concrete circumstances of
people’s lives through friendship. Deacons will in many cases
lack the technical expertise that members of the laity possess
with regard both to direct service to the poor and to grasping
the complexities of injustice in modern societies. But what the
deacon does bring to situations of human suffering and deprivation is witness to the unruly, extravagant love of God that can
cross the most extreme divisions to create bonds of friendship.
He does this by witnessing to Christ, who out of charity became
what we are so that we might be what he is, God’s beloved
children and heirs to God’s kingdom. This witness transforms
the service of Christians into worship of God present in Christ.
As McKnight puts it, “Hospitals and prisons are truly sacred
sites for Christians, for Christ is present among the suffering
and neglected of those institutions.”61
CONCLUSION
A final point on which Thomas might help us think about
the deacon’s ministry of liturgy, word, and charity is that he
knew how to draw distinctions for the sake of clarity without
dismembering the concrete reality of things. We speak of the
61

McKnight, Understanding the Diaconate, 246.

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FREDERICK CHRISTIAN BAUERSCHMIDT

deacon’s ministries of liturgy, word, and charity in order to
attain a certain kind of clarity about what deacons can and
should be doing, but in reality there is a single diaconal
ministry—the ministry of being a servant of Christ, as Christ
was the servant of God. The distinctions between liturgy, word,
and charity can be helpful, but only so long as they are not
thought of as separate buckets into which the activities of
deacons can be sorted. Into which category should we sort the
deacon who visits the sick or imprisoned to share with them the
Gospel and to bring them Christ in holy Communion? Which
ministry is a deacon exercising when he preaches at the Eucharistic liturgy about a pressing social-justice concern?
The deacon’s ministry of liturgy is inseparable from his
ministry of word and charity, which are in turn inseparable
from each other. The proclamation of the gospel at Mass is both
a liturgical act and a prophetic act. The dismissal of the assembly from the liturgy does not simply mark the end of the
liturgy, but is also a call to go forth to do works of charity and
justice. Denunciation of injustice through fraternal correction is
a direct application of the word of God to concrete situations.
Though the categories of liturgy, word, and charity serve a valid
heuristic function, there is a sense in which every diaconal act
should be simultaneously liturgical, kerygmatic, and agapeic.62
Thomas, in addition to the light that he can shed on the
ministry of the liturgy, word, and charity, can also help us
through his own practice of distinction-drawing to see how we
ought to distinguish in order to unite the various facets of
diaconal ministry.

62
The integral wholeness of diaconal ministry is well described in the National
Directory, 37.

The Thomist 85 (2021): 581-624

THE NATURAL AND SACRAMENTAL SIGNIFICANCE OF
HUMAN SEXUALITY AND THE QUESTION OF
ADMITTING WOMEN TO THE ORDAINED DIACONATE
MICHELE M. SCHUMACHER
University of Fribourg
Fribourg, Switzerland

G

IVEN 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

1

As Abigail Favale has pointed out with no uncertain irony, once feminism had
unmoored the concepts of masculinity and femininity from the body, gender was
subsequently “defined by the very cultural stereotypes that feminism sought to undo. In
other words, when a girl recognizes that she does not fit the stereotypes of girlhood, she
is invited to question her sex rather than the stereotype” (“The Eclipse of Sex by the
Rise of Gender,” Church Life Journal [March 1, 2021]: https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/
articles/the-eclipse-of-sex-by-the-rise-of-gender/). Hence, the decision to present oneself
socially as masculine or feminine has in fact become a slippery slope towards the
decision actually to “change” one’s sex: to transform the primary sexual characteristics
(including the suppression of their natural powers) to “match” the secondary sexual
characteristics with which one has come to identify.

581

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MICHELE M. SCHUMACHER

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 sociocultural constructs, reflecting nothing of what St. Thomas calls

2
Joseph Ratzinger and Vittorio Messori, The Ratzinger Report: An Exclusive
Interview on the State of the Church, trans. Salvator Attanasio and Graham Harrison
(San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1985), 95.
3
Ibid., 96.
4
Pope Benedict XVI, Christmas address to the Roman Curia, December 21, 2012:
http://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/speeches/2012/december/documents/
hf_ben-xvi_spe_20121221_auguri-curia.html.

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583

the divine “art”5 of nature—replete with God-given significance
to be discovered or discerned in natural orientations to naturespecified 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
5
“All natural things were produced by the Divine art,” St. Thomas holds, “and so
may be called God’s works of art” (STh I, q. 91, a. 3) (Summa theologiae, trans.
Laurence Shapcote, ed. John Mortensen and Enrique Alacon, vols. 13-20 of the Works
of St. Thomas Aquinas [Lander, Wyo.: The Aquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred
Doctrine, 2012]).
6
Pope St. John Paul II, Mulieris Dignitatem, Apostolic letter on the Dignity and
Vocation of Women (Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 1988), 1. As if to anticipate an
obvious objection, Karol Wojtyła already wrote in 1960 (date of the original Polish
edition): “This fact is not abolished by the phenomenon of so-called hermaphroditism,
as in the same way every other disorder or even abnormality does not abolish the fact
that human nature indeed exists, and that every human being, even one afflicted with an
abnormality or a disorder, possesses this nature and is a human being precisely thanks to
it” (Love and Responsibility, trans. Grzegorz Ignatik [Boston: Pauline Books & Media,
2013], 31).
7
See STh I, q. 1, a. 8, ad 2.

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MICHELE M. SCHUMACHER

also for our instruction.8 That is why the sacraments—including
the sacrament of orders, wherein the diaconate receives its
meaning and mission9—employ the things of this world in their
natural significance, or intelligibility, to “confer the grace that
they signify.”10
My purpose in what follows is not to bring closure to the
important question of admitting women to the ordained diaconate. More humbly, I seek to provide an essential framework
wherein the question might be adequately addressed, namely,
that of the created meaning of human sexuality: of masculinity
and femininity considered from the perspective of the divine art
of nature, and thus as ontologically ordained to an end determined by the Creator (I). Such, more specifically, is an end transcending not only the good of the individual (II), but also the
good of the natural realm, so as to signify a divine mystery of
salvation (III), which is also operative in the sacramental realm
(IV). I will conclude (V) by arguing that just as there is nothing
arbitrary about natural male-female differences—which in fact
(and despite widespread cultural campaigns to have us believe

8
See Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2d ed. (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice
Vaticana, 2016), 1123.
9
As the International Theological Commission puts it in their important document
on the diaconate: “The most reliable doctrine and that most in accord with ecclesial
practice is that which holds that the diaconate is a sacrament. If its sacramentality were
denied the diaconate would simply represent a form of ministry rooted in baptism; it
would take on a purely functional character, and the Church would possess a wide
faculty of decision-making with regard to restoring or suppressing it, and to its specific
configuration. Whatever the context, the Church would have a much greater freedom of
action than is granted to her over the sacraments instituted by Christ. A denial of the
sacramentality of the diaconate would dissipate the main reasons why the diaconate is a
theologically disputed question [including of course, the question that concerns us in
these pages: that of the admittance of women thereto]” (“From the Diakonia of Christ
to the Diakonia of the Apostles,” in International Theological Commission: Texts and
Documents, 1986-2007, edited by Michael Sharkey and Thomas Weinandy [San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2009], 229-317, at 290-91).
10
CCC 1127.

HUMAN SEXUALITY AND WOMEN DEACONS

585

otherwise)11 are naturally orientated by way of their
complementary life-giving powers toward the shared mission of
procreating, nourishing, and educating new members of the
human race—so too there is nothing arbitrary about the “essential”12 differences between the Marian and apostolic dimensions
of the Church, and more largely between the divine Bridegroom
and his Bride, the Church.13 On the contrary—and this is no
small point to consider in the discussion concerning admitting
women to the ordained diaconate—we have good reason to
believe that these differences are orientated toward spiritual
life-giving complementarity: a complementarity that is in fact
actually built into the sacramental order of signs instituted by
Christ in view of both our sanctification and our instruction.
I. SEXUAL DIFFERENCE: A DIVINE CREATION
To summarize our intentions here, we propose to consider
the question of the female diaconate as one that presupposes a
consideration of sexual difference from the perspective of what
Alice Hildebrand appropriately calls “a divine invention.”14 As
11
See Michele M. Schumacher, “Gender Ideology and the ‘Artistic’ Fabrication of
Human Sex: Nature as Norm or the Remaking of the Human?”, The Thomist 80
(2016): 363-423.
12
Cf. CCC 1547; 1592.
13
As I have pointed out elsewhere, it is this connection that is called into question,
“when, for example, Susan S. Ross insists that ‘a feminist theology of ordained ministry
takes seriously human embodiment’ but argues in the next phrase that distinctions of
sex are as ‘irrelevant’ to this theology as those of race and class; or when Mary Aquin
O’Neill insists upon ‘the mystery of being human together’ but argues that sacramental
realism requires ‘mothers as well as fathers at the altar’” (Michele M. Schumacher, “The
Unity of the Two: Towards a New Feminist Theology of the Body” in idem, ed.,
Women in Christ: Towards a New Feminism [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans 2004],
201-31, at 222). See Susan A. Ross, “God’s Embodiment and Women” in Freeing
Theology: The Essentials of Theology in Feminist Perspective, ed. Catherine Mowry
LaCugna (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1993), 185-209, at 203; and Mary Aquin
O’Neill, “The Mystery of Being Human Together,” in ibid., 139-60, at 157.
14
See Alice von Hildebrand, with the assistance of Henry Russell, Man and Woman:
A Divine Invention, with forward by Benedict J. Groeschel (Ave Maria, Fla.: Sapientia
Press, 2010).

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MICHELE M. SCHUMACHER

such, sexual difference cannot be reduced to a sociocultural
construct, which would render it the product of human invention, in keeping with the feminist idea of a “man-made
woman.”15 Nor, on the other hand, might it be considered a
product of biological determinism, as befits a Darwinian
universe, governed by the survival of the fittest,16 which in turn
reduces the Creator to a figure like Voltaire’s clockmaker.
Having set the apparatus of the world in motion, he simply
withdraws to his heavens and lets the “machine” work things
out on its own. In contrast to the opposition of extreme subjectivism, which regards the human mind as assigning all
meaning to an otherwise meaningless body,17 and extreme
objectivism, which reduces the human bodily person to one
being, or “object,” among others, is the recognition of the
human person and human sexuality as created and thus as
invested with meaning. God creates with purpose or intention,
15

For a development of these ideas, see, for example, Michele M. Schumacher, “A
Woman in Stone or in the Heart of Man? Navigating between Naturalism and Idealism
in the Spirit of Veritatis Splendor,” Nova et vetera (Eng. ed.) 11 (2013): 1249-86; and
idem, “The ‘Nature’ of Nature in Feminism: From Dualism to Unity” in Schumacher,
ed., Women in Christ, 17-51.
16
As Janet Radcliffe Richards astutely remarks, “there are many ways in which we
have not yet appreciated how radical, when it goes far enough to provide a foundation
for materialism, the Darwinian revolution really is. People who theoretically accept the
materialist version still often take for granted many of the presuppositions that belong
to earlier views of the world. For instance, it does seem to be widely taken for granted,
even among people who left religion behind long ago, that the sexes are designed to suit
each other in a harmonious pairing and that all we need to do is find what that design is
and keep to it. This could not be further from the gene-machine view, that what
determines the natures of males and females is not some overall plan. It is just a struggle
between genes that happens to have resulted in some good and harmonious elements,
but also in a great deal that is not in the least harmonious” (Janet Radcliffe Richards,
Human Nature after Darwin [London and New York: 2000], 257). As a concrete
example of this thought, see Richard Dawkins, “God’s Utility Function,” Scientific
American (November 1995): 80-85; and idem, The Selfish Gene (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1976, 2006).
17
Hence, for example, even “the materiality of sex” is said by Judith Butler to be
“constructed through a ritualized repetition of norms” (Judith Butler, Bodies That
Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” [New York and London: Routledge, 1993],
x).

HUMAN SEXUALITY AND WOMEN DEACONS

587

being the cause of things by his intellect and will, “just as the
craftsman is cause of the things made by his craft.” A human
artisan, to follow through on this analogy, creates not only by
his will—by, that is to say, a desire that motivates his action—
but also, St. Thomas explicates, by way of “the word conceived
in his mind”:18 a mental image of what he wishes to construct.
Hence, as Josef Pieper summarizes, “every created reality is
what it is—apart from its inherent nature and anterior to it—
through its relation to a creative knowledge, a creative intelligence. Through the creative will a reality possesses its existence, the fact that it is; through the creative knowledge a
reality possesses its quality, what it is.”19
To address the what question—the question of nature—is
thus to allude to what St. Thomas calls the divine ideas (inseparable from the one divine essence),20 or what Josef Pieper
calls the “primal blueprint”21 whereby God fashions each one of
his creatures and knows it from all eternity. Both “originally
and virtually,” each creature “pre-exists” in the divine mind “as
in its first cause,”22 which Pieper calls the “pre-form” of its
natural form.23 That is why St. Thomas designates the divine
intelligence as “the first measure of all things,”24 including the
human intellect. Conversely, the natural things of this world are

18

STh I, q. 45, a. 6. See also STh I, q. 27, a. 1, ad 3.
Josef Pieper, “Reality and the Good,” trans. Stella Lange, in Josef Pieper, Living
the Truth (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989), 107-79 at 121-22. Pieper continues,
“The concepts ‘what’, ‘nature’, ‘true’ pertain to knowledge; the concepts ‘that’,
‘existence’, ‘good’ pertain to the will” (ibid., 122).
20
See, for example, STh I, q. 44, a. 3; q. 15, a. 1; q. 45, a. 6; q. 91, a. 1; De Verit. q.
3, a. 1 (Questiones Disputatae de Veritate: On Truth, trans. Robert W. Mulligan
[Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1952]); and ScG IV, c. 11, 14 (Summa contra
Gentiles, trans. Anton C. Pegis, James F. Anderson, Vernon J. Bourke, and Charles J.
O’Neil [Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997]).
21
Josef Pieper, “Future without a Past and Hope with No Foundation?”, trans. Jan
van Heurck, in Josef Pieper: An Anthology (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989), 207-21,
at 211.
22
STh I, q. 79, a. 2.
23
Pieper, “Reality and the Good,” 122.
24
ScG II, c. 12.
19

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MICHELE M. SCHUMACHER

said by St. Thomas to “represent the divine idea, as a material
house is like to the house in the architect’s mind.”25 They “are
nothing but a certain real expression and representation of the
things comprehended in the conception of the divine Word.”26
Because, in fact, the interior forms of things exist in the divine
intellect before they actually exist within the things themselves27—just as a house exists in an architect’s blueprint—they
are “measured” according to that same blueprint (the divine
ideas). That is why each thing’s relation to the divine mind
necessarily “takes priority” over its relation to the human mind,
for the former is “creative in an absolute sense.”28 Unlike the
human intellect, which is “as a potentiality to act” toward universal being, the divine intellect is the very “act of all being.”29
Consequently—to return to the limitations of the human
intellect that we all too often project upon the divine intellect—
it is necessarily from the things of this world that we obtain our
scientific knowledge, and that is why these same things are said
by St. Thomas, in the wake of Aristotle, actually to “measure
our intellect.”30 Our knowledge is considered true when it
accurately reflects the real things of this world: when it captures
their forms and thus also their powers and inclinations, as
“measured by the divine intellect, in which are all created
things.”31 If, then, we wish to give an account of—or a rationale
for—sexual difference or any other created reality for that mat25

STh I, q. 44, a. 3, ad 1.
ScG IV, c. 42.
27
Because divine knowledge is their “exterior formal cause,” the model for all
creatures is to be found in the divine intellect. Consequently, Pieper explains, “the
interior forms of all reality exist as ‘ideas’, as ‘preceding images’ in God” (Pieper,
“Reality and the Good,” 122).
28
Josef Pieper, “The Truth of All Things: An Inquiry into the Anthropology of the
High Middle Ages,” trans. Lothar Krauth, in Pieper, Living the Truth, 11-105, at 55.
29
STh I, q. 79, a. 2: “potentia ad actum . . . actus totius entis”.
30
De Verit., q. 1, a. 2; STh I, q. 21, a. 2. Cf. Aristotle, Metaphys. 10.1.1053a31-33;
10.6.1057a10-12 (Metaphysics, trans. W. D. Ross, in Barnes, ed., The Complete Works
of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation, vol. 2 [Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, 1984], 1552-1728, at 1664, 1669-70).
31
De Verit., q. 1, a. 2.
26

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ter, then we can do no better than to appeal to the reasons “that
things have to be that which they are”: namely, as Marie-Joseph
Nicolas summarizes, that they are “the work of a [divine]
Thought.”32 In short, they both are and are meaningful—and
thus also intelligible to us—because they are created by an
intelligent, indeed omniscient, God.
Because, moreover—to return to the objection posed by
Voltaire’s presentation of God as a clockmaker—the Christian
God is not absent from his work (having created and left, as it
were), he continues to provide for his creatures according to his
purpose: by way, namely, of their natural inclinations to their
natural ends. Such is the work of his providence, whereby his
eternal law—the rule and measure of all things created—exists
not only in him who rules (God), but likewise in those who are
ruled (creatures). It is “imprinted on them,” St. Thomas explains, in the manner whereby “they derive their respective
inclinations to their proper acts and ends.”33 In the reasoning of
St. Thomas, “whatever God wills to do according to the natural
order of things may be observed from their nature.”34 Hence,
for example:
That natural bodies are moved and made to operate for an end, even though
they do not know their end, was proved by the fact that what happens to them
is always, or often, for the best; and, if their workings resulted from art, they
would not be done differently. But it is impossible for things that do not know
their end to work for that end, and to reach that end in an orderly way, unless
they are moved by someone possessing knowledge of the end, as in the case of
the arrow directed to the target by the archer. So, the whole working of
nature must be ordered by some sort of knowledge. And this, in fact, must
lead back to God, either mediately or immediately, since every lower art and
type of knowledge must get its principles from a higher one, as we also see in

32
Marie-Joseph Nicolas, “Vocabulaire de la Somme théologique” in Thomas
d’Aquin, Somme théologique I, trans. Albert Raulin (Paris: Cerf, 1984), 91-120, at 115:
“les raisons mêmes qu’ont les choses d’être ce qu’elles sont.” Such, he suggests more
specifically, are what are referred to by St. Thomas as “the eternal reasons” (“raisons
éternelles”).
33
STh I-II, q. 91, a. 2.
34
STh I, q. 104, a. 4.

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MICHELE M. SCHUMACHER

the speculative and operative sciences. Therefore, God governs the world by
His providence.35

It is, therefore, precisely in the teleological structure of each
thing—both in its specific perfecting end and in the natural
means thereto—that God’s intentions for each of his creatures
are to be discerned. For the Creator does not “act on things, or
against things—as we are obliged to do,” as Pierre-Marie
Emonet observes.36 Instead, his creative power exists and acts
within the very depths of creatures, pushing them from within
toward the good that is perfective of their respective natures.
This is what St. Thomas calls “eternal law”: the name given to
the divine wisdom “as moving all things to their due end.”37
Of course, man too is naturally inclined by the Creator to
ends that are perfective of his hylomorphic nature. Because his
reason makes him capable of recognizing these inclinations,
moreover, he is able to cooperate with the Creator in the work
of his own perfection. More specifically, he apprehends as
good—and thus as “objects of pursuit”—everything to which he
is naturally inclined, and as evil—and thus “objects of
avoidance”—all that is contrary to his natural inclinations.38
That is why he is said to partake of divine providence “in the
most excellent manner, by being provident for himself and
others.” This is the name that St. Thomas gives to natural law:
“the rational creature’s participation of the eternal law.”39
From this perspective, it is not surprising that the precepts of
natural law are ordered “according to the order of natural
inclinations.” Furthermore, it is of no little significance for the
subject at hand—that of discerning the meaning of human
sexual difference as determined by the Creator—that among the
35

ScG III, c. 64. See also STh I, q. 2, a. 3.
Pierre-Marie Emonet, The Dearest Freshness Deep Down Things: An Introduction
to the Philosophy of Being, trans. Robert R. Barr (New York: The Crossroad Publishing
Co., 1999), 55.
37
STh I-II, q. 93, a. 1.
38
STh I-II, q. 94, a. 2.
39
STh I-II, q. 91, a. 2.
36

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six natural inclinations enumerated by St. Thomas is that of
“sexual intercourse” and the “education of offspring.”40 As St.
Thomas puts it in another context, the appetitive powers are
naturally drawn—by way of pleasure—to those activities that
are “necessary for man’s well-being, as regards the preservation
either of the individual or of the species.” Hence the integrity,
or right measure, of our desires is to be discerned in light of
their accord with the end from which they draw their perfection, that is to say, the end serving the well-being and preservation of both the individual and the species: in this case, the
end of sexual reproduction.41 It thus seems obvious enough that
if we are sexually differentiated, this is because the Creator has
willed that we procreate and work together to educate the
children born to us. Indeed, he has told us as much: “Be fruitful
and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it” (Gen 1:28). “The
inventor of the human machine was telling us,” C. S. Lewis
points out in his typically humoristic style, “that its two halves,
the male and the female, were made to be combined together in
pairs” as “one flesh” (Gen 2:24), so as to form “a single
organism,” just as “a lock and its key are one mechanism” or “a
violin and a bow are one musical instrument.”42
II. THE ONTOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF MALE-FEMALE
COMPLEMENTARITY
From the perspective of God’s creative and providential
intentions for his creatures as male and female, the question of
sexual differentiation thus entails more than considering
whether or how man and woman might complement, enhance,
or enrich one another within the ministerial domain, without
due regard for a common teleological goal inscribed within
40

STh I-II, q. 94, a. 2.
STh II-II, q. 142, a. 1. For an application of natural-law theory within the domain
of sexual ethics, see Michele M. Schumacher, “The Reunification of Naturalism and
Personalism in the Conjugal Act: A Contribution by Servais Pinckaers,” The Thomist 84
(2020): 435-66.
42
C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (London: Collins, Fount Paperbacks, 1952), 93.
41

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MICHELE M. SCHUMACHER

human nature. After all, the notion of complementarity that is
being proposed for our consideration is not simply a functional
one—as befits a work of human artifice—but rather, or more
profoundly, an ontological one, as characterizes a divine invention. Such is a complementarity that corresponds to the very
being of man (homo) as man (vir) and as woman (mulier) and as
together inclined to a common natural end—“common” not in
the sense that each is equally capable of realizing it independently from the other, but in the sense that it can be realized
only in unison. In other words, we are not simply entertaining
the question of the benefit to be incurred from diversity—from,
that is to say, the vast richness that individual women offer to
the Church in virtue of each one’s particular gifts; insights;
manners of acting, relating, and thinking; and ultimately each
one’s particular “fruit” independent from man. Nor even are we
considering the question of the richness to be incurred in
ministry when we call upon the uniqueness of woman as such,43
except when this is considered as ordered from within (by
nature), not mechanically or artificially from without (by artifice), to a common end, or good, which can be achieved only in
union with man.
This is not to belittle, far less to deny, real sexual differences
and their importance within the natural order, since the natural
order provides the foundation for the supernatural order. In so
doing, however, it is important that we consider sexual complementarity from the perspective of what Angelo Scola
identifies as a model of identity-difference in contrast to a model
of equality-diversity (with the latter corresponding to the notion
of functionality). The second model calls to mind, Scola
suggests, multiplicity and plurality, because diversity relates

43
Such is what Pope St. John Paul II calls a “feminine genius.” See, for example,
John Paul II, Mulieris Dignitatem 30-31; and idem, “Letter to Women” on the occasion
of the Fourth World Congress on Women in Beijing (June 29, 1995): https://
www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/letters/1995/documents/hf_jp-ii_let_29061995_
women.html.

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“two realities which are in themselves separate and extrinsic.”44
In other words, they are not necessarily and intrinsically
ordered to one another, but only accidentally and extrinsically,
as befits human invention and artifice, but not natural
orientation, whereby things are ordered from within to ends
expressive of the Creator’s intentions for them. From the
perspective of diversity, the union of the sexes might thus be
regarded as a simple coming together by chance or by human
device, but not by natural necessity, and thus not by divine
intent, much as the loaf of bread and the apple in my picnic
basket might have been crackers and cheese instead. Lacking, at
any rate, is due regard for the notion of natural teleology, and
thus the idea that the sexes are related to one another in view of
a common (shared) natural goal.
To consider complementarity from the angle of difference,
on the other hand, Scola explains, “always refers to a unity in
which there remains a polarity, a duality—not as a dialectical
opposition,” which implies conflict and division, “but rather as
an openness,” or even an orientation, “to the other.”45 Such is
an intrinsic ordering from within unity to still greater unity:
from within a common nature (“bone of my bones”) toward the
good of this same nature, indeed, that of the very preservation
of the species (“be fruitful and multiply”). The notion of
identity-difference thus accords with the scriptural presentation
of Yahweh creating man and woman together, such that they
are, as the Catechism comments, “willed each for the other” (cf.
Gen 2:18).46 This is not to say that they were left “half-made
and incomplete,”47 in which case their complementarity might
be considered a “fractional” one,48 and their differences an
44

Angelo Scola, “Sexual Identity and Difference,” in Pontifical Council for the
Family, ed., Lexicon: Ambiguous and Debatable Terms regarding Family Life and Ethical
Questions (Front Royal, Va.: Human Life International, 2006), 907-14, at 908.
45
Ibid.
46
See CCC 371 and John Paul II, Mulieris Dignitatem 7.
47
CCC 372.
48
See the treatment of the concept in contrast to that of integral sex
complementarity in Sr. Prudence Allen, R.S.M., “Integral Sex Complementarity and the

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MICHELE M. SCHUMACHER

“expression of a deficiency or partiality to be overcome.”49
Rather, they were created “to be a communion of persons, in
which each,” as the Catechism would have it, “can be [indeed,
each is “called” to be]50 ‘helpmate’ to the other.”51
Such is the mystery implied by the Genesis teaching that
woman comes forth from man (Gen 2:24). On the one hand,
sexual difference presupposes natural unity—that is to say, a
common human nature—and thus also “equal personal
dignity.”52 It is, as Scola puts it, “structurally related to
identity,” which entails “intra- [and not inter-] personal”
communion,53 for man and woman are naturally orientated
toward, and not away from (as befits the etymology of
“diversity,” meaning “to turn aside”) one another. On the other
hand, sexual difference serves this unity. Their complementarity
as “male and female” (Gen 1:27) provides for, or makes
possible, the “one-flesh” union (Gen 2:24), whereby is realized
the command to be fruitful (Gen 1:28). As the Catechism puts it
matter-of-factly, “Physical, moral, and spiritual difference and
complementarity are oriented toward the goods [or ends: telos]
of marriage and the flourishing of family life.”54 That is how, I
suggest, we read the important affirmation by Pope St. John
Paul II that “in the ‘unity of the two’, man and woman are
called from the beginning not only to exist ‘side by side’ or
‘together’”—in, that is to say, a simple vis-à-vis—but also “to

Theology of Communion,” Communio: International Catholic Review 17 (1990):
523-44; and idem, “Man-Woman Complementarity: The Catholic Inspiration,” Logos:
A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture 9, no. 3 (2006): 87-108.
49
Margaret McCarthy, “‘Husbands, Love Your Wives As Your Own Bodies’: Is
Nuptial Love a Case of Love or Its Paradigm?”, Communio: International Catholic
Review 32 (2005): 260-94, at 285.
50
See John Paul II, Mulieris Dignitatem 7.
51
CCC 372.
52
CCC 2334.
53
Scola, “Sexual Identity and Difference,” 908.
54
CCC 2333. Indeed, “the harmony of the couple and of society depends in part on
the way in which the complementarity, needs, and mutual support between the sexes are
lived out” (ibid.).

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exist mutually ‘one for the other’.”55 Theirs, more specifically, is
a union that does not simply serve the personal fulfilment of
each one, but also produces a fruit surpassing both of the sexes
and their union.
It follows that, as the biologist and ethicist Leon Kass
observes, “as a sexual being, none of us is complete or whole,
either within or without. We have need for and are dependent
on a complementary other, even to realize our own bodily
nature.” After all, neither woman without man, nor man
without woman, is a fertile being. When it comes to achieving
fertility, we are, as Kass puts it, “halves, not wholes, and we do
not command the missing complementary half.”56 Precisely
because, on the other hand, man and woman are united in the
same nature, while remaining nonetheless asymmetrical—that is
to say, they are not identical halves, but really different
wholes—their union gives rise to a “synergy” that supersedes
their own isolated powers in what is nonetheless a natural,
organic action.57 In other words, their complementarity is
“more than the sum of sex differences. It is a multiplication of
the differences that elevates both men and women and their
relationships to new levels of fruitfulness.”58 Because it is
together and only together that they therefore realize the call to
be fruitful and multiply (Gen 1:28), their communion
constitutes more than the “self-realization” of two isolated

55

John Paul II, Mulieris Dignitatem 7.
Leon Kass, Toward a More Natural Science: Biology and Human Affairs (New
York: The Free Press, 1985), 291.
57
As Christopher Gross, Lisa Klewicki, Paul C. Vitz, and Craig Steven Titus put it,
“To say that males and females are complementary is to say that when taken together
they provide a synergy that is a greater good than when they are considered as separate
and different without respect to their relevance for the other” (“Man and Woman:
Equality, Differences, and Complementarity, with Application to Vocations and Virtues,
Especially Courage,” in Paul C. Vitz, William J. Nordling, and Craig Steven Titus, eds.,
A Catholic Christian Meta-Model of the Person: Integration with Psychology and Mental
Health Practice [Sterling, Va.: Divine Mercy University, 2020], 169-209, at 171).
58
Ibid., 193.
56

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MICHELE M. SCHUMACHER

individuals. It is the foundation of the human family. Hence, in
the sponsal union, one plus one always exceeds two.59
From this perspective of their natural differences and
complementarity, men and women together “are never just
lawyers or pilots together,” Allen Bloom explains. “They have
something else, always potentially very important, in common,”
namely, “ultimate ends, or as they say, ‘life goals.’” These goals,
moreover, are precisely that which motivates their common
action, Bloom suggests:
Is winning this case or landing this plane what is most important, or is it love
and family? As lawyers or pilots, men and women are the same, subservient to
the one goal. As lovers or parents they are very different, but inwardly related
by sharing the naturally given end of continuing the species. Yet their working
together immediately poses the question of “roles” and, hence, “priorities,” in
a way that men working together or women working together does not.60

Their complementarity, Bloom suggests in short, is one that
aims beyond their own personally and even commonly limited
“here and now” to a finality of lasting significance. Such, presumably, is one that accords with the Creator’s command, “Be
fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have
dominion over every living thing that moves upon the earth”
(Gen 1:28).

59
Obviously, this means admitting that the spousal union is fruitful in ways that
surpass the purely physical understanding of procreation. See CCC 1653-54.
60
Allen Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has
Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students (New York: Simon
and Schuster, 1987), 102.

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III. SEXUAL DIFFERENCE CONSIDERED FROM THE PERSPECTIVE
OF GOD’S PLAN OF SALVATION61
Having considered the natural, ontological significance of
human sexual difference, we are now better able to raise the
question of the Creator’s decision to fashion the human person
as male or female at the beginning of time from the perspective
of “the fullness of time” (Gal 1:10; 4:4)—the time corresponding to the fulfillment of the Creator’s intentions—when
“God sent forth his Son, born of woman . . . so that we might
receive adoption as sons” (Gal 4:4-5). For it pleased God to
reveal “the mystery of his will, according to his purpose which
he set forth in Christ” (Eph 1:9) “before the foundation of the
world” (Eph 1:4; cf. 1 Pet 1:20). Such, St. Paul tells us, is his
plan to “unite all things” in Christ (Eph 1:10) and to form one
“body” with the Church, whom the apostle presents as “the
fulness of him who fills all in all” (Eph 1:23).
From this perspective, it is certainly of no little significance
that God has chosen to reveal his love for us in terms of the
marital alliance that he established on the sixth day of creation.
If, in fact, God makes use of the analogy of marital love to
express his own redemptive love for mankind already in the Old
Testament (Hos 1-3; Isa 54:1-17; 62:1-5; Jer 8; Ezek 16) to
prophesy what would be realized in the New Testament with
the union of Christ and the Church (Matt 9:15; Mark 2:19-20;
Luke 5:34-35; John 3:29; 2 Cor 11:2; Eph 5:27; Rev 19:7-8;
21:2-9), we might conclude that he knew exactly what he was
doing. It is St. Paul himself who reminds us of this, when—
within the context of exhorting Christian spouses to be
mutually submissive for love of Christ (Eph 5:21)—he argues:
Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the
head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its
61

For a more extensive development of the ideas in this section, see Michele M.
Schumacher, “Revelation and Human Sexuality,” in Balázs M. Mezei, Francesca Aran
Murphy, and Kenneth Oakes, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Divine Revelation
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 571-86.

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Savior. As the church is subject to Christ, so let wives be subject in everything
to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and
gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the
washing of water with the word, that he might present the church to himself
in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy
and without blemish. Even so husbands should love their wives as their own
bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no man ever hates his own
flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, as Christ does the church, because we are
members of his body. “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother
and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one [Gen 2:24].” This is a
great mystery [mysterion],62 and I take it to mean Christ and the church;
however, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that
she respects her husband. (Eph 5:22-33; emphasis added)

If, indeed, “a man shall leave his father and mother and be
joined to his wife” in a marital union, he does so—St. Paul
teaches in Ephesians 5:31—“in reason of” the Creator’s
intentions from the beginning (see Gen 2:24), intentions that
refer, St. Thomas is convinced, “to Christ principally” and to
others (that is to say, other bridegrooms) as “types of Christ.”63
For “the spiritual marriage [between Christ and the Church, or
between Christ and the blessed] is signified by the carnal
marriage.”64 “Even in the beginning, when woman was made
from a rib in the side of the sleeping man, that had no less a
purpose than to symbolize prophetically the union of Christ and
His Church,” St. Augustine explains.65 That is why, St. Thomas
reasons, St. Paul adds the final phrase, “however, let each one
62
According to Max Zerwick, the term is used to refer to “matters made known
through revelation” (A Grammatical Analysis of the Greek New Testament [3d ed.;
Editrice Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 1988], 589).
63
Super Eph., c. 5, lect. 10 (Commentary on the Letters of Saint Paul to the
Galatians and Ephesians, trans. Fabien R. Larcher and Matthew L. Lamb, ed. John
Mortensen and Enrique Alarcón, vol. 39 of the Latin/English Edition of the Works of
St. Thomas Aquinas [Lander, Wyo.: The Aquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred
Doctrine, 2012]).
64
STh Suppl., q. 95, a. 1, s.c.
65
St. Augustine, The City of God, books 17-22, trans. G. G. Walsh and D. J. Honan,
The Fathers of the Church 24 (Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America
Press, 1954), 464 (De civitate Dei, vol. 37 of Bibliothèque Augustinienne, La cité de
Dieu, books 19-22 [Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1960], 622).

HUMAN SEXUALITY AND WOMEN DEACONS

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of you love his wife as himself” (Eph 5:33). It is “as though he
asserted: the above example is principally related of Christ, but
not only about him since it must be interpreted and fulfilled in
other persons as types of Christ.”66 Or, to put it still more
straightforwardly, as I have done in another context,
The logic of St. Paul [in Ephesians 5] thus surpasses the invocation of the same
Genesis passage by Christ in defense of the unbreakable bond of natural
marriage (see Matt. 19:5; Mark 10:37), for the apostle is suggesting that the
created difference and the original unity of man and woman is “in reason
of”—namely, to serve as a sign, or revelation, by way of its participation in—
the divine nuptials between God and his people in the “sacrament” of Christ
and his Church. That is why St. Thomas Aquinas acknowledges67 that the first
Adam, even without knowledge of the fall, necessarily had an explicit faith in
the Incarnation of Christ, and that in his own love for Eve he had a certain
knowledge of “the great mystery” (Eph 5:32) of the love of Christ and the
Church.68

By way of comment on this passage, let the obvious be made
still more explicit. To speak of a divine reason, or a divine creative intention, such as this one, is not to address an afterthought. God does not look upon his works and reflect upon
which one might best express his message of redemption. He is
not like a human artist,69 choosing among the various objects of
this world to find one that might more or less adequately
66

Super Eph., c. 5, lect. 10.
See STh II-II, q. 2, a. 7.
68
Schumacher, “Revelation and Human Sexuality,” 572.
69
On the contrary, the human artist is like the divine, whence the classic analogy of
antiquity invoked at the beginning of this essay: art imitates nature. “The ideal, in the
arts, is to achieve the natural,” Servais Pinckaers explains. “We do not appreciate a work
that seems contrived and artificial and is not inspired by a natural sense of beauty.
Condillac wrote, ‘The natural . . . is art become habitual. The poet and dancer are each
natural when they achieve that degree of perfection where their conformity to the rules
of art appears effortless.’ And again, ‘Natural means everything that is not inhibited,
strained, artificial, pretentious’” (The Sources of Christian Ethics, trans. Sr. Mary
Thomas Noble [Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1995],
403). If, in short, art imitates nature, this is because creation is permeated with divinely
invested meaning: meaning reflecting God’s own intentions for each of his works, such
that they are naturally inclined to their naturally perfecting ends.
67

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express the meaning of his heart or of his poetic intuitions.
Unlike human causality, which must first discover nature’s own
forms, powers, and inclinations, before manipulating them according to human freedom’s own purpose,70 divine causality—
as was explicated above—actually invests nature with those
same forms, powers, and inclinations. Indeed, it is the divine
will and knowledge that make them exist in the first place and
make them to exist as such (with their respective natures and
ends).71 Because moreover God “needs absolutely nothing external to himself,” his will “in no way has a cause but is the first
cause of everything else.”72 That is to say, unlike a human agent
who “does not act except for some end,”73 or “good,”74 that he
seeks to obtain, God acts for some good that he seeks to
diffuse.75
70
One cannot help but think of the Hobbesian principle that to know something is
“to know what we can do with it when we have it” (Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan 3.9 [ed.
Richard Tuck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 21]), or of Descartes’s
famous axiom that the primary aim of science is to render us “masters and possessors of
nature” (René Descartes, Discourse on Method [1637], trans. Elizabeth S. Haldane, in
Discourse on the Method and Meditations on First Philosophy, ed. David Weissman
[New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996], 3-48, at 38).
71
Hence, to be known by God or not to be known by him means, as Pieper
summarizes, “to be or not to be” (Pieper, The Truth of All Things, 55). Cf. ScG II, c. 28;
IV, c. 13; and STh I, q. 14, a. 8. See also Josef Pieper, The Silence of St. Thomas: Three
Essays, trans. John Murray and Daniel O’Connor (South Bend, Ind.: St. Augustine’s
Press, 1999), 53-67. Similarly, unlike the human will which is moved by the good
preexisting in things, the divine will creates the good in things and persons. See STh I,
q. 20, a. 2; I-II, q. 110, a. 1; Super Ioan., c. 5, lect. 3 (Commentary on the Gospel of
John, chapters 1-8, trans. Fabian R. Larcher, Biblical Commentaries, vol. 35 of the
Latin/English Edition of the Works of St. Thomas Aquinas, ed. The Aquinas Institute
[Lander, Wyo.: The Aquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred Doctrine, 2013]).
72
Super Eph., c. 1, lect. 1. For God, “to be and to be good are simply the same
thing” (ScG III, c. 20).
73
STh I, q. 5, a. 2, ad 1. That is why the end is considered “first among causes” or
“the cause of causes [causa causarum],” St. Thomas explains. See also ScG I, c. 37; III,
cc. 3, 16, and 17; STh I, q. 105, a. 5.
74
See STh I, q. 5, a. 4.
75
The Platonic notion of the diffusion of the Good is interpreted by St. Thomas as
“the principle of finality itself,” Fran O’Rourke explains; that is to say, “the first and
final reason why beings are created.” Hence “it is as final cause, i.e. as the supreme

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In this particular sense, it is possible to speak of “a certain
motive” of God’s action, St. Thomas states, namely, “his own
goodness which is the object of the divine will, moving it to
act.”76 After all, “the reason for everything that has been made
is derived from the end which its maker intended. But the end
of all things made by God is divine goodness. Therefore, the
reason for the things that have been made is so that the divine
goodness might be diffused among things.”77 The diffusion of
divine goodness is, of course, the reason for the divine Incarnation, whereby God effects the “wonderful exchange”
(admirabile commercium) of our salvation: by assuming our humanity he communicates his divinity.78 For “it belongs to the
essence of the highest good to communicate itself in the highest
manner to the creature,” St. Thomas states;79 and this occurs
when we are made “partakers in the divine nature” (2 Pet 1:4).
Hence, the salvific exchange effected by the Incarnation is not
limited to the two natures of Christ in the Virgin’s womb. If, in
fact, Christ’s humanity becomes the instrument (organon) of his
divinity, as the patristic tradition attests,80 so as to be simultaneously sanctified and sanctifying,81 this is in view of communicating his grace to all of his members. Indeed, “the
personal grace, whereby the soul of Christ is sanctified, is
instance of Goodness (because identical with the fullness of Being) that God creates and
loves all things” (Fran O’Rourke, Pseudo-Dionysius and the Metaphysics of Aquinas
[Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005], 245).
76
Super Eph., c. 1, lect. 1.
77
ScG III, c. 59.
78
See, for example, STh III, q. 1, a. 2. See also CCC 460 for references to the
formula among the Church Fathers.
79
See STh III, q. 1, a. 1.
80
See Theophil Tschipke, Die Menschheit Christi als Heilsorgan der Gottheit: Unter
besonderer Berücksichtigung der Lehre des Heiligen Thomas von Aquin (Freiburg im
Breisgau: Herder, 1940), wherein are traced the patristic roots of this doctrine leading
up to St. Thomas (translated into French by Philibert Secrétan as L’humanité du Christ
comme instrument de salut de la divinité [Fribourg: St. Paul, 2003]). In the works of St.
Thomas, see for example, STh I-II, q. 112, a. 1, ad 1; III, q. 7, a. 1, ad 3; q. 8, a. 1, ad 1;
q. 19, a. 1; q. 34, a. 1, ad 3; q. 48, a. 6; and Comp. Theol. I, c. 212.
81
See, for example, STh III, q. 34, a. 1, ad 3; q. 34, a. 3; q. 48, a. 1; and I-II, q. 114,
a. 6.

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essentially the same as his [capital] grace [whereby he] sanctifies
others.”82 Because his soul was “more closely united to God
than all other rational creatures,” it received “the greatest
outpouring of His grace.” But it is also fitting that he should
“have the greatest grace,” because, St. Thomas explains, he is
the cause of grace in others, just as “fire which is the cause of
heat in other hot things, is of all things the hottest.”83 It thus
seems obvious that if the eternal Word assumes the particular
flesh of his sacred humanity, he does so in view of assuming all
human flesh—of becoming, as St. Paul foretold, “all in all” (Eph
1:23). That is why the Church is not simply a tabernacle of the
divine presence. Far more, she is “a continued incarnation” of
the Word, to borrow from Charles Journet.84
Of course, the flesh of Christ is not neutered, which might
call into question his true humanity and consequently our
salvation.85 On the contrary, his flesh is sexed (masculine, to be
exact), precisely because it is human. To insist upon the point is
not, however, to call into question the full humanity of women,
as is objected by certain feminists in light of the soteriological
significance that is accorded to Christ’s masculinity.86 If, however, we really do take seriously the classic formula of St.
Gregory of Nazianzus, “what is not assumed is not healed,”87

82

STh III, q. 8, a. 5.
STh III, q. 7, a. 9.
84
See Charles Journet, L’Eglise du Verbe incarné, 5 vols. in Œuvres complètes I-V
(Saint-Maurice, Switzerland: Editions Saint-Augustin, 1998-2005). Of these, the first
volume has been translated into English by A. H. C. Downes: The Church of the
Incarnate Word, vol. 1, The Apostolic Hierarchy (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1955). See
also Charles Journet, The Theology of the Church, trans. Victor Szczurek (San Francisco:
Ignatius Press, 2015).
85
See Paul Gondreau, “Aquinas on Christ’s Male Sexuality as Integral to His Full
Humanity: Anti-Docetism in the Common Doctor,” in Thomas Aquinas and the Crisis of
Christology, ed. Michael Dauphinais, Andrew Hofer, and Roger Nutt (Ave Maria, Fla.:
Sapientia Press, 2021), 195-232.
86
See Michele M. Schumacher, “Feminist Christologies,” in Francesca Murphy, ed.,
Oxford Handbook on Christology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 408-24.
87
Gregory of Nazianzus, Epistola 101: Ad Cledonium presbyterum (PG 37:182-83):
“Nam quod assumptum non est curationis est: quod autem Deo unitum est, hoc quoque
83

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then it also seems necessary to take seriously Rosemary Radford
Ruether’s question: “Can a male saviour save women?”88
In light of this dilemma, there is a great temptation to
dismiss as arbitrary or theologically insignificant the masculinity
of Christ. It “says nothing of importance about Jesus,” Pamela
Dickey Young maintains, for example, “but speaks volumes
about the Church’s investment in the category of maleness as a
way to control ‘Appropriate’ [sic] gender roles and licit
sexuality.”89 In light of the argument presented above, however,
it is evident that if God might be said to freely bind himself to
the order of his own creation by incarnating himself in a single
sex, he does so with reason, that is, for the purpose of communicating his grace to us and of simultaneously disposing us to
freely receive it.
If, in turn, we must be disposed to receive grace (by way of
revelation), this is because it is not passively (in the absence of
our willed cooperation) that the Church and each of her
members is assimilated to the Lord. Christ not only justifies us
by his personal actions on our behalf—that is, his meritorious
atonement—but also by our actions in his regard: we are
justified by faith in him.90 Hence, St. Augustine’s famous
statement, “He who created you without you will not justify
you without you,”91 is interpreted by St. Thomas to mean “not
salutem consequitur” (“What is not assumed is not healed; what is united to God,
however, is saved thereby”). For the original Greek, see PG 37:181.
88
Rosemary Radford Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology,
2d ed. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993), 116. See also Anne E. Carr, Transforming Grace:
Christian Tradition and Women’s Experience, 2d ed., with a new introduction by the
author (New York: Continuum, 1998), 161.
89
Pamela Dickey Young, “Neither Male nor Female: Christology beyond
Dimorphism” in Ellen Leonard and Kate Merriman, eds., From Logos to Christos:
Essays on Christology in Honour of Joanne McWilliam (Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier
University Press, 2010), 181-96, at 194.
90
See De Verit., q. 28, a. 8, ad 6; and Super Rom., c. 3, lect. 3 (Commentary on the
Letter of Saint Paul to the Romans, trans. Fabien R. Larcher, ed. John Mortensen and
Enrique Alarcón, vol. 38 of the Latin/English Edition of the Works of St. Thomas
Aquinas [Lander, Wyo.: The Aquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred Doctrine, 2012]).
91
Augustine, Sermo 169, “De verbis apostoli. Ephes, cap. VI, 23,” c. 11 (PL 38:923).

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without you disposing yourself to receive grace,”92 namely, by
faith and the sacraments of faith. Or, to quote the Second
Vatican Council, in response to God, who reveals himself, and
not excepting his grace “and the interior help of the Holy
Spirit,” who precedes and assists by “moving the heart and
turning it to God,” there is required of each of Christ’s members “‘the obedience of faith’ (Rom 16:26; see 1:5; 2 Cor
10:5-6).” Such, more specifically, is the act whereby one
“commits his whole self freely to God, offering the full
submission of intellect and will to God who reveals.’”93
In this way the Pauline image of the Body of Christ (the flesh
of all humanity whom Christ assumes in virtue of his initial
assumption of his sacred humanity, not excepting his redemptive passion) is necessarily complemented by that of the
Bride, created from his pierced side in view of forming a
covenant of love with her (see Eph 5:22-33; 2 Cor 11:2-4; Rom
7:1-6). For the salvific exchange between Head and members
does not occur without each one’s personal consent. As a bride
is given to her bridegroom, who also gives himself to her, so is
the Church given to Christ, who is always the first to give
himself—even unto death, wherein lies just one of the
differences in the analogy. To be sure, the Church is born of the
Lord’s sacrifice on the Cross, before anything that she might say
or do. From this comes the patristic depiction of the sacraments
of baptism and the Eucharist in the water and blood flowing
from his side.94 “This event was also prefigured,” St. Thomas
acknowledges, “for just as from the side of Christ, sleeping on
the cross, there flowed blood and water, which makes the
Church holy, so from the side of the sleeping Adam there was
formed the woman, who prefigured that Church.”95
Likewise prefiguring the Church at the foot of the Cross is
his mother (John 19:25), in whom many of the Fathers rightly
92

De Verit., q. 28, a. 8, ad 6.
Dei Verbum 5 (DZ 4205).
94
See Sebastian Tromp, “De nativitate ecclesiae ex Corde Jesu in Cruce,”
Gregorianum 13 (1932): 489-527; and the examples cited in CCC 766.
95
Super Ioan., c. 19, lect. 5.
93

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recognize the figure of the New Eve:96 her Immaculate Conception is a first fruit of her Son’s passion,97 as if to prefigure
the Church’s birth from the same source. On the other hand—
and this is of no little significance for our purpose of discerning
the theological or revealed meaning of human sexuality—it is
not unwillingly, nor unknowingly, that she is present at her
Son’s side during his horrific crucifixion. On the contrary, the
council presents her as “lovingly consenting to the immolation
of this Victim which she herself had brought forth.”98 That is
why she is said by Pope St. John Paul II to be “perfectly united
with Christ in his self-emptying” in virtue of her heroic—even
“kenotic”—faith.99
Similarly—to continue the analogy between the Church and
Mary—already at the Annunciation Mary’s fiat is an expression
of her “obedience of faith”:100 her gift of self to the Lord who, it
bears insisting, is always the first to give himself in accord with
the prophecies of the Old Testament.101 Without denying the
exceptional grace that is granted to Mary to be the very mother

96

In the famous insight of St. Irenaeus of Lyon, “Just as Eve, by disobeying, became
the cause of death for herself and the whole human race, so Mary . . . by obeying,
became the cause of salvation for herself and the whole human race.” For “what was
bound could not be untied without a reversal of the process of entanglement. The first
bonds had to be untied by the second, so that the second might set free the first” (trans.
John Saward in Irenaeus of Lyon, The Scandal of the Incarnation: Irenaeus against the
Heresies, selected and introduced by Hans Urs von Balthasar [San Francisco: Ignatius
Press, 1990], 61). (Sources Chrétiennes [SC] 211: Contre les hérésies, book 3, ed. A.
Rourreau and L. Doutreleau [Paris: Cerf, 1974]), 440, 442). See also the references
cited by Pope St. John Paul II in his encyclical letter on the Blessed Virgin Mary in the
Life of the Pilgrim Church, Redemptoris Mater (March 25, 1987), 37 n. 91.
97
In the words of Pope Pius IX, she was “preserved immune from all stain of
original sin . . . in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race”
(Ineffabilis Deus [DZ 2803]). See also CCC 491-92.
98
Lumen Gentium 58. This passage is not cited by Denzinger.
99
John Paul II, Redemptoris Mater 18.
100
Again, see Dei Verbum 5 (DZ 4205).
101
Particularly powerful is what Isaiah foretold, “Your Maker is your husband, the
LORD of hosts is his name; and the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer, the God of the
whole earth he is called” (Isa 54:5).

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of God,102 she is already in communion with the Word of God
before he becomes incarnate in her womb. That is why the Virgin is often artistically portrayed as meditating upon Scripture
at the moment of Gabriel’s sacred visit. There is thus, as I have
put it elsewhere, “a perfect concordance, or unity, between
faith’s object—the Word spoken by the Father, to whom
[Mary’s] confidence is accorded [cf. 2 Cor 1:20]—and faith’s
act: the subjective disposition that obediently surrenders.”103
Such—in accord with the analogy of bridal, or covenantal,
love—is also a concordance of wills: God’s will to save us in
Christ and Mary’s will to be in service of God’s saving plan as
his perfect “handmaid” (Luke 1:38) and “helpmate” (Gen
2:18), as announced in the third chapter of Genesis (3:15). It is
thus not surprising that Pope St. John Paul II recognizes “a
complete harmony” between Mary’s fiat and “the words of the
Son, who, according to the Letter to the Hebrews, says to the
Father as he comes into the world: ‘Sacrifices and offering you
have not desired, but a body you have prepared for me. . . . Lo,
I have come to do your will, O God’ (Heb 10:5-7).”104 In virtue
of this mutual self-giving union, the fruit of salvation is
procured for all humanity, fulfilling God’s original command to
“be fruitful and multiply” (Gen 1:28) far beyond all worldly
expectations.
From this perspective it seems obvious that the eternal Son
of God assumes a masculine body for the same reason that he
created man as male and female: so that he might—in accord
with his own promise in Scripture and as attested by the constant tradition of the Church—present himself as the divine

102

In the words of the Second Vatican Council, “she is endowed with the high office
and dignity of being the Mother of the Son of God, by which account she is also the
beloved daughter of the Father and the temple of the Holy Spirit. Because of this gift of
sublime grace she far surpasses all creatures, both in heaven and on earth” (Lumen
Gentium 53 [DZ 4173]).
103
Michele M. Schumacher, “Marian Faith in a Time of Crisis,” Nova et vetera (Eng.
ed.) 17 (2019): 323-38, at 330.
104
John Paul II, Redemptoris Mater 13.

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bridegroom to the Church and in the Church to all mankind.105
As Pope St. John Paul II points out:
This image of spousal love, together with the figure of the divine
Bridegroom—a very clear image in the texts of the Prophets—finds crowning
confirmation in the Letter to the Ephesians (5:23-32). Christ is greeted as the
bridegroom by John the Baptist (cf. Jn 3:27-29). Indeed Christ applies to
himself this comparison drawn from the Prophets (cf. Mk 2:19-20). The
Apostle Paul, who is a bearer of the Old Testament heritage, writes to the
Corinthians: “I feel a divine jealousy for you, for I betrothed you to Christ to
present you as a pure bride to her one husband” (2 Cor 11:2). But the fullest
expression of the truth about Christ the Redeemer’s love, according to the
analogy of spousal love in marriage, is found in the Letter to the Ephesians:
“Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her” (5:25), thereby fully
confirming the fact that the Church is the bride of Christ: “The Holy One of
Israel is your Redeemer” (Is 54:5).106

Christ’s masculinity is thus relative to the femininity of the
Church, prefigured in Mary (see Gen 3:15; Rev 12:1-6), as a
Bridegroom to his bride (see Eph 5:25-27; John 3:29; 2:9; Matt
9:14-15; 2 Cor 11:2; Rev 22:17; 19:7; 21:2).107 He “came into
this world for a wedding,” St. Augustine explains in his
commentary of the wedding at Cana, namely, his own.108 There
are thus “two marriages,” as St. Thomas recognizes: “the
marriage of the divinity to flesh, which was celebrated in the
womb of a virgin,” and “the marriage of Christ and the
105
To be sure, the analogy between God’s love for us and the marital covenant with
its fecundity “is not without precedent,” as John Paul II acknowledges; “it transfers to
the New Testament what was already contained in the Old Testament, especially in the
prophets Hosea, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Isaiah [cf. Hos 1:2; 2:16-18; Jer 2:2; Ezek 16:8;
Is 50:1; 54:5-8]” (Mulieris Dignitatem 23).
106
Ibid.
107
See my extensive argument to this effect in “Revelation and Human Sexuality.”
See also Monica Migliorino Miller, Sexuality and Authority in the Catholic Church
(Scranton, Pa.: University of Scranton Press, 1995).
108
Saint Augustine of Hippo, Tractus in Iohannis Evangelium 8.4 (vol. 71 of
Bibliothèque Augustinienne, Homélies sur l’évangile de Saint Jean 1-16, trans. M.-F.
Berrouard [Paris: Institut des études augustiniennes, 1993], 474; English translation by
E. Hill in Homilies on the Gospel of John 1-40, part 3, vol. 12 of The Works of Saint
Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, ed. A. D. Fitzgerald [New York: New City
Press, 2009], 171).

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Church.” Although Mary’s role in the first “wedding” is
apparently limited to providing a “bridal chamber” for the
incarnate Word,109 elsewhere St. Thomas presents her fiat as
offered “in lieu of . . . all human nature.”110 That is why it is
fitting that she is present at the wedding of Cana: “because it is
through her intercession that one is joined to Christ”—the “true
bridegroom of the soul”—“through grace.”111
In this way, Mary is, as the Second Vatican Council teaches,
“a type of the Church in the order of faith, charity and perfect
union with Christ.”112 As such, she is also a model of every
human person, who is called “through the Church, to be the
‘Bride’ of Christ, the Redeemer of the world,” by accepting “the
gift of the love of Christ the Redeemer,” and by “respond[ing]
to it with the gift of his or her own person.”113 It is thus evident
that the marital analogy “speaks of the love with which every
human being—man and woman—is loved by God in Christ. But
109

“Who is the bridegroom, and who is the bride?”, St. Thomas asks. “It is explained
in two ways, in accordance with two marriages. One, the marriage of the divinity to
flesh, which was celebrated in the womb of a virgin; he, as a bridegroom coming out of
his bride chamber (Ps 18: 6). The bridegroom is the Son himself, the bride human
nature. . . . Likewise, there is the marriage of Christ and the Church; he who has the
bride, is the bridegroom (John 3:29)” (Super Matt., c. 25, lect. 1) (Commentary on the
Gospel of Matthew, trans. Jeremy Holmes, ed. Aquinas Institute, Biblical Commentaries,
vols. 33-34 of the Latin/English Edition of the Works of St. Thomas Aquinas [Lander,
Wyo.: The Aquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred Doctrine, 2013]). The insight is
likely from St. Augustine: “The Word, you see, is the bridegroom, and the bride is
human flesh. . . . When he became the head of the Church, that womb of the Virgin
Mary was his bridal chamber, from which he came forth like a bridegroom from his
chamber, as scripture had foretold [cf. Ps. 18:6]” (Tractus in Iohannis Evangelium 8.4
[Homilies on the Gospel of John 1-40, 172; Bibliothèque augustinienne 71:474, 476).
110
STh III, q. 30, a. 1: “loco totius humanae naturae.”
111
Super Ioan., c. 2, lect. 1. Moreover, as the Catechism points out, “The sign of
water turned to wine at Cana already announces the Hour of Jesus’ glorification. It
makes manifest the fulfillment of the wedding feast in the Father’s Kingdom where the
faithful will drink new wine that has become the Blood of Christ” (CCC 1335).
112
Lumen Gentium 63 (DZ 4177).
113
John Paul II, Mulieris Dignitatem 25. “In this way ‘being the bride’, and thus the
‘feminine’ element, becomes a symbol of all that is ‘human,’ according to the words of
Paul: ‘There is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus’ (Gal 3:28)”
(ibid.).

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in the context of the biblical analogy and the text’s interior
logic, it is precisely the woman—the bride—who manifests this
truth to everyone. “This ‘prophetic’ character of women in their
femininity finds its highest expression in the Virgin Mother of
God,” Pope St. John Paul II teaches.114 Or, as Isaac of Stella
expresses the mystery of the “bride” of Christ,
In the divinely inspired Scripture, what is said universally of the Church,
Virgin and mother, is also said individually of Mary; and what is said in a
special way of Mary, virgin and mother, is understood by right, but in a
general way, of the Church, virgin and mother: so that, when the Scripture is
understood to be speaking of either, it can be applied to one or the other. . . .
The same thing is therefore said universally for the Church, in a special way
for Mary, individually for the faithful soul. . . . Christ dwelt for nine months
in the tabernacle of Mary’s womb. He dwells till the end of the world in the
tabernacle of the church’s faith. He will dwell for ever and ever in the
knowledge and love of the faithful soul.115

It is thus that Christ’s grace is fruitful in Mary, in the Church
and in each one of us: in a manner analogical to the way in
which a man might be said to bear fruit in the womb of his wife,
not excepting her free self-gift to him. Although God creates us
without our consent, he wills to redeem us only by means of
our willing cooperation, which is biblically likened to the covenant of marriage. “In the context of the ‘great mystery’ of
Christ and of the Church [Eph 5:32], all are called to respond—
as a bride—with the gift of their lives to the inexpressible gift of
the love of Christ, who alone, as the Redeemer of the world, is
the Church’s Bridegroom.”116 In this way, the Son of God
assumes our humanity by way of our free assent, so that each of
us might become “one body, one spirit with Christ.”117

114

Ibid. 29.
Isaac of Stella, Sermon 51, “In Assumptione Beatae Mariae” (PL 194:1863, 1865;
English translation by Lancelot C. Sheppard in Henri de Lubac, Catholicism: Christ and
the Common Destiny of Man [London: Burns & Oates, 1962], 275-76).
116
John Paul II, Mulieris Dignatatem 27.
117
Epiclesis of the Third Eucharistic Prayer.
115

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IV. SEXUAL DIFFERENCE AND THE SACRAMENTS
This revealed meaning of human sexuality—its analogical
significance for illuminating the mystery of the fruitful love of
Christ and the Church and even of Christ and each Christian—
is assuredly perpetuated in the sacraments, whereby the sacred
humanity of Christ continues to exercise its lifegiving powers in
and through the Church, which he brings into being as his body
and bride. Continuing the analogy in words borrowed from the
Second Vatican Council, as the human nature of Christ which is
“inseparably united to Him serves the divine Word as a living
organ of salvation, so, in a similar way, does the visible social
structure of the Church serve the Spirit of Christ, who vivifies
her, in the building up of the body”;118 and it is this Church
whom the Catechism designates “the faithful steward of God’s
mysteries.”119 The sacraments “extend the humanity of Christ in
time,”120 by dispensing the graces he won for us on the Cross.121
They are “powers that come forth from the Body of Christ,
which is ever-living and life-giving.”122
If, in fact, it is on the Cross that “came forth ‘the wondrous
sacrament of the whole Church,”123 this is because it is there
that the sacraments of our salvation are born. As St. Augustine
sees it, for example,
Adam’s sleep was a mystical foreadowing of Christ’s death, and when His
dead body hanging from the Cross was pierced by the lance, it was from His
side that there issued forth that blood and water which, as we know, signify

118
Lumen Gentium 8 (DZ 4118). Similarly, “It is through the sacraments and the
exercise of the virtues that the sacred nature and organic structure of the priestly
community is brought into operation” (Lumen Gentium 11 [DZ 4127]).
119
CCC 1117.
120
Paul Gondreau, “The Redemption and Divinization of Human Sexuality through
the Sacrament of Marriage: A Thomistic Approach,” Nova et vetera (Eng. ed.) 10
(2012): 383-413, at 387. “They [the sacraments] mark the historical continuation of the
Incarnation, the prolongation of God’s embodied presence among us” (ibid.).
121
See STh III, q. 61, a. 1. See also CCC 1128.
122
CCC 1116.
123
Sacrosanctum Concilium 5 (DZ 4005).

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the sacraments by which the Church is built up. “Built” is the very word the
Scripture uses in connection with Eve: “He built the rib into a woman,”
aedificavit, not formavit or finxit. So, too, St. Paul speaks of “building up the
body of Christ” which is His Church. Therefore, woman is as much the
creation of God as man is. If she was made from the man, this is to show her
oneness with him; and if she was made in the way she was, this was to
prefigure the oneness of Christ and the Church.124

Hence, to complete the analogy, just as Christ’s words and
actions throughout his hidden life and public ministry were
already salvific in anticipation of the paschal mysteries,125 so
also do these same mysteries continue throughout time in the
Church, who is “one mystical person” with Christ,126 as
foreshadowed by the “one flesh” union of man and woman
from the beginning of time (Gen 2:24).
It is thus not surprising that the Second Vatican Council
presents the Church as “a sacrament in Christ,”127 who is
himself the very “mystery” (mysterion)—the origin of the Latin
term sacramentum—“of God” (Col 2:2; 4:3; Eph 3:3).128 For
God “chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that
we should be holy and blameless before him” according to “the
mystery of his will,” that is to say, “according to his purpose
which he set forth in Christ” and “made known to us . . . as a
plan for the fulness of time, to unite all things in him, things in
heaven and things on earth” (Eph 1:2, 9-10). If, moreover, it
pleased God to make known these mysteries to us, assuredly

124

St. Augustine of Hippo, The City of God 22.17 (Walsh and Honan, trans., 464;
BA 37: 622, 624).
125
See CCC 1115.
126
CCC 1119.
127
Lumen Gentium 1 (DZ 4101).
128
The basic religious sense of the Greek mysterion, from which is derived the Latin
sacramentum, is that of God’s salvific plan for creation, while its more specifically
Christian meaning is the content of the gospel (Eph 6:19). See Peter Smulders, “L’Église
sacrement du salut,” in L’Église de Vatican II: Études autour la constitution conciliaire
sur l’Église, vol. 2, ed. Guilherme Baráuna, Unam Sanctum 51b (Paris: Cerf, l967),
317-28; and Liam G. Walsh, The Sacraments of Initiation: Baptism, Confirmation,
Eucharist (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1988), 21-44.

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this is so that we might be properly disposed to receive him and
his saving graces. As Charles Journet puts it so well:
It is the whole of humanity that is in principle espoused by Christ. It is the
whole of humanity that is invited to come to the wedding. But it is only to the
extent that it responds to the invitation and that the wedding with Christ is
consummated, that humanity truly becomes the bride and that she becomes
the Church.129

That is why the sacraments, which are said to dispense the
divine life of Christ to his members,130 do so in a way that is
tangible to us: they “confer the grace that they signify.”131 As
signs, or “visible rites,”132 “they also instruct,”133 signifying and
making present to the faithful the graces that they dispense in
view of our response.134 In the words of St. Leo the Great,
“what was visible in our Redeemer was changed into the
sacraments, so that the faith was more excellent and stronger
than before; sight gave way to doctrine, whose higher authority
was lit by the rays of believing hearts.”135 Therefore, although
“Christ himself is at work” within them,136 the sacraments are
also said to be “of the Church”: “they are ‘by her’ and ‘for
her’,” who is herself fittingly presented as “the sacrament of

129
Charles Journet, Théologie de l’Eglise (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1958), 42-43:
“C’est l’humanité tout entière qui est en principe épousée par le Christ. C’est elle tout
entière qui est conviée à venir aux noces. Mais c’est dans la mesure seulement où elle
répond à l’invitation et où les noces avec le Christ se consomment, que l’humanité
devient véritablement l’épouse et qu’elle devient l’Eglise.”
130
See CCC 1131.
131
CCC 1127.
132
CCC 1131.
133
Sacrosanctum Concilium 59 (the passage is not cited by DZ). See also CCC 1133.
134
See CCC 1131.
135
Leo the Great, Sermon 74.2 (PL 54:398): “Quod itaque Redemptoris nostri
conspicuum fuit, in sacramenta transivit; et ut fides excellentior esset ac firmior, visioni
doctrina successit, cujus auctoritatem supernis illuminata radiis credentium corda
sequerentur.”
136
CCC 1127.

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Christ’s action at work in her through the mission of the Holy
Spirit.”137
Assuredly, there is no contradiction in the above affirmations, because Christ is at work both in his sacred minister
and in his Body-Bride, albeit in different and complementary
manners. The minister is “appointed to feed the Church in
Christ’s name with the word and the grace of God.”138 The
sacraments draw their “origin and nourishment” from the living
Word of God,139 who constantly invites, provokes, encourages,
and sustains the response of the people of God, who are the
body and bride of Christ. That is why the sacraments are appropriately called “sacraments of faith”: they “not only presuppose
faith,” they also “nourish, strengthen, and express it.”140 Hence,
every sacramental celebration is an encounter of the divine
Bridegroom and his bride, a celebration which bears fruit in
those who receive the sacramental graces “with the required
dispositions,” namely or preeminently, those of faith and
charity.141
This means of course, as the Catechism instructs us, that
every sacramental celebration assumes “the form of a dialogue,
through actions and words,” which express the “free initiative”
of the Word of God and “his people’s response of faith.”142 As
such, it joins the dialogue of salvation that began at the
Annunciation when Mary’s “response of faith included both
perfect cooperation with ‘the grace of God that precedes and
assists’ and perfect openness to the action of the Holy Spirit,
who ‘constantly brings faith to completion by his gifts.’”143 In
fact, as the New Eve, who offered her assent for the entire
137

CCC 1118.
Lumen Gentium 11 (DZ 4128).
139
Presbyterorum Ordinis 4 (cited in CCC 1122). Similarly, St. Thomas argues that
they are “instituted by God alone” (STh III, q. 64, a. 2), who remains their principal
agent (STh III, q. 64, a. 1).
140
Sacrosanctum Concilium 59. See also CCC 1133.
141
CCC 1131.
142
CCC 1153. See also CCC 142-44.
143
John Paul II, Redemptoris Mater 13; cf. Dei Verbum 5 (DZ 4205).
138

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MICHELE M. SCHUMACHER

human race, Mary is recognized as grounding the faith of the
Church, “which precedes the faith of the believer who is invited
to adhere to it.”144 Each of us is thus called to ratify, as it were,
the response that the Church, as the bride of Christ, offered in
and through the person of Mary: already at the Annunciation,
ultimately at the foot of the Cross and at each moment
throughout her earthly pilgrimage.145 In so doing—in personally
adhering to the Church’s faith in Mary—there is realized for
each one of us the “great mystery” described in the Letter to the
Ephesians, namely, that of “the bride united to her Bridegroom;
united,” Pope St. John Paul II specifies, “because she lives his
life; united, because she shares in his threefold mission (tria
munera Christi); united in such a manner as to respond with a
‘sincere gift’ of self to the inexpressible gift of the love of the
Bridegroom, the Redeemer of the world.”146 It is “this communion of men with God, in the ‘love [that] never ends’”—the
covenant of love foretold in the creation of Eve from the side of
Adam in view of forming one flesh with her—that “is the
purpose which governs everything” in the Church “that is a
sacramental means, tied to this passing world.”147
V. AN ARGUMENT OF FITTINGNESS FOR AN ALL-MALE
ORDAINED DIACONATE
It is this attitude of bridal faith, so perfectly exemplified in
the life of the Blessed Virgin, that ought to govern our quest to
understand God’s purpose in creating us male and female and in
employing this symbolism to express his covenantal love for us
and ours for him. Such, after all, I am suggesting, is the appropriate context within which to pose the question of admitting
women to the ordained diaconate. We are invited to attune our
minds and hearts to God’s intentions, so as to possess a certain
144

CCC 1124.
For a development of these ideas, see Schumacher, “Marian Faith in a Time of
Crisis.”
146
John Paul II, Mulieris Dignitatem 27.
147
CCC 773.
145

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615

sense of faith (sensus fidei),148 which I have elsewhere described
in terms of the very covenant that has been described in these
pages, namely, that of a “mutual immanence between the Word
[of God] and the Christian.” Thanks, more specifically, to “the
simultaneous growth of the Word in the believer and of the
believer in the Word” the Christian is given to “intuit” God’s
meaning for his creatures in what might be compared to the
experiential knowledge of lovers—a certain knowledge “by
affinity”—for “the more intense the spiritual life of the believer,
the sharper and the more penetrating is his sense of faith.”149 In
discerning the truth of faith by way of communion with the
Word of God, who is Truth itself (Jn 14:6)—the believer
participates in “the instinct of faith of the Church herself,”150
which is first of all the bridal faith of Mary in which we all
share in virtue of our own personal assent to Christ.
Of course, this attitude of faith seeking understanding does
not in any way call into question the natural meaning of human
sexuality. On the contrary, it recognizes the natural as the
foundation of the supernatural, for it is the Creator who is at
work therein, “bring[ing] all things together for the good of
those who are called according to his purpose,” namely, those
“who love him” in response to his own, always-initiating love
(Rom 8:28). Indeed, Scripture testifies to the fact that we were
created in Christ “before the foundation of the world” (Eph
1:4) and destined to share in his own life and holiness. It is
therefore to “his own” (John 1:11) that he came when he
148

Such is the context wherein the International Theological Commission maintains
that this question should be studied: “While it is true that facts must be rigorously
established by the historical method, their consideration does not become locus
theologicus except in so far that this is carried out in the light of the sensus fidei”
(“From the Diakonia of Christ to the Diakonia of the Apostles,” introduction in the
online version [not included in the printed version]).
149
Michele M. Schumacher, “Feminist Experience and Faith Experience” in idem,
ed., Women in Christ: Toward a New Feminism (Cambridge and Grand Rapids, Mich.:
Eerdmans, 2004), 169-200, at 191-92.
150
International Theological Commission, “Sensus fidei in the Life of the Church”
(2014), no. 3: https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/
rc_cti_20140610_sensus-fidei_en.html.

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assumed human flesh in view of espousing humanity to himself:
not some abstract or neutral humanity, but the concrete
humanity of each one of us by way of a personal assent or selfgiving surrender. That is why, already in the third chapter of
Genesis, God announces his plan to restore all things in Christ,
not excepting the willing collaboration of his partner in
humanity: the New Eve destined to crush the serpent by the
weight of her child (see Gen 3:15).
If, moreover, human sexuality and human sexual difference
are endowed with natural (created) significance, as I have
argued that they are, then we have good reason to believe that
this meaning carries over into the economy of “signs,” that is,
the sacramental order. Indeed, as the Catechism points out,
The entire Christian life bears the mark of the spousal love of Christ and the
Church. Already Baptism, the entry into the People of God, is a nuptial
mystery; it is so to speak the nuptial bath, which precedes the wedding feast,
the Eucharist. Christian marriage in its turn becomes an efficacious sign, the
sacrament of the covenant of Christ and the Church. Since it signifies and
communicates grace, marriage between baptized persons is a true sacrament of
the New Covenant.151

So too, we might add, does the sacrament of orders configure
its recipient to Christ, the divine Bridegroom and servant of the
Church, making of him a living sacrament, as it were; an
ontological (in virtue of grace)—and not merely a functional—
presence of the redeeming Lord.152
151

CCC 1617.
The “indelible character” conferred in the sacrament of ordination “confers upon
the diaconate a theological solidity which cannot be dissolved into something purely
functional” (International Theological Commission, “From the Diakonia of Christ to
the Diakonia of the Apostles,” 293). That is why it is “not possible to characterize the
totality of the diaconal ministry by delineating tasks which belong exclusively to deacons
because of ecclesial tradition—which is far from clear—or through a rigid distribution
of tasks among the different ministers.” Instead, it is “necessary to look . . . at the being
of the deacon.” It is “what they are” that gives meaning “to what they do” (ibid., 288).
Hence, even if a deacon seems to perform the same function as a nonordained member
of the faithful, “the deciding factor would be what the deacon was rather than what he
did: the action of the deacon would bring about a special presence of Christ the Head
152

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Because, moreover, the sacraments are meant not only for
our healing and elevation but also for our instruction, they may
be thought to communicate God’s reasons to human reason. “In
keeping with the divine pedagogy of salvation,” the meaning of
the sacramental order “is rooted,” as the Catechism explains,
“in the work of creation and in human culture,”153 including
“the signs and symbols of the cosmos and of social life.”154 Far
from abolishing or even ignoring the natural order and its
intrinsic or even cultural symbolism, the Church’s liturgy
confers upon it “the dignity of signs of grace, of the new
creation in Jesus Christ.”155 It does so, moreover, for the
purpose of fostering the dialogue of salvation; for the “liturgical
actions signify what the Word of God expresses: both his free
initiative and his people’s response of faith.”156
Testimony is therefore rendered not only to the unity of the
natural and supernatural orders (and thus of nature and grace,
creation and salvation), but also to the vital significance of
“bridal” (Marian and thus ecclesial) faith, without which the
sacraments are administered in vain and the sacramental
dimension of Christian service is utterly devoid of significance
and purpose. It follows—in virtue of what St. Thomas calls an
argument of fittingness157—that it is not wantonly, far less
capriciously, that the Church reserves the threefold grades of
sacred orders (episcopacy, priesthood, and diaconate) to men.
Rather, she does so with a particular regard for God’s own
purpose in creating the human being male and female and with
a recognition of the particular “suitability” of men “for the

and Servant that was proper to sacramental grace, configuration with Him, and the
community and public dimension of the tasks which are carried out in the name of the
Church” (ibid., 315).
153
CCC 1145. See also CCC 1146-48.
154
CCC 1152.
155
CCC 1149.
156
CCC 1153.
157
See Gilbert Narcisse, Les raisons de Dieu: Argument de convenance et esthétique
théologique selon saint Thomas d’Aquin et Hans Urs von Balthasar (Fribourg,
Switzerland: Editions Universitaires Fribourg, 1997).

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exercise of the ministry” entrusted to them in virtue of their
ordination,158 a suitability that is assuredly ontological and not
merely functional. Ontological also is the transformation attributable to ordination: not one that destroys nature, however,
but one that preserves and elevates it, rendering it the seat of
powers that infinitely surpass nature’s own capacities. Indeed, in
virtue of the sacrament of ordination, whereby Christ’s minister
is ontologically conformed to him, Christ the servant and
Bridegroom of the Church continues to act within her,
according to his promise: “Lo, I am with you always, to the
close of the age” (Matt 28:20).
From this perspective it is not surprising that the Church
understands herself “bound” by the Lord’s own decision.159 God
certainly has reasons for what his eternal will determines in
time, as I have sought to demonstrate in these pages, and among
them might well be his intention of safeguarding the symbolic
significance enshrined within the sacramental order in view of
our sanctification and instruction. The deacon “bring[s] about a
special presence of Christ the Head and Servant” that is “proper
to sacramental grace.” That is why, the “particular distinctiveness” of the diaconate is “to be discovered and affirmed, not in
relation to its functions but in relation to its theological nature
and its representative symbolism.”160
Assuredly this symbolic significance points to the bridal
imagery expressed in the scriptural passages to which we have
referred in these pages: imagery that does not so much accent
158

CCC 1598.
See CCC 1577. It goes without saying that to speak of a divine “decision” does
not imply that a choice is being made among certain limited possibilities, as is
characteristic of a human decision. Because, in fact, the liturgy is “a constitutive element
of the holy and living Tradition” (CCC 1124), “no sacramental rite may be modified or
manipulated at the will of the minister or the community” (CCC 1125). As for the
diaconate, because as a sacrament it is “ultimately rooted in Christ,” the Church herself
has no capacity to create it nor to confer upon it its “salvific effectiveness”
(International Theological Commission, “From the Diakonia of Christ to the Diakonia
of the Apostles,” 291).
160
International Theological Commission, “From the Diakonia of Christ to the
Diakonia of the Apostles,” 315.
159

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the “diversity of members” of the one body of Christ as it does
their common, complementary service to “the whole body in a
wonderful pattern of unity,” as is beautifully said in the prayer
for the consecration of deacons.161 Indeed, “the very differences
which the Lord has willed to put between the members of his
body [not unlike those between man and woman] serve its unity
and mission. For ‘in the Church there is diversity of ministry
but unity of mission’”;162 whence also the essential difference
and likewise the real complementarity not only between the
baptismal (or common) priesthood and the hierarchical (or
ministerial) priesthood, of course, but also between the service
rendered to the body by Christ’s ordained ministers and that of
each of Christ’s members, called also to be his bride. Indeed, far
from being arbitrary, the differences between these two states
(the ordained and the nonordained)163—again, not unlike the
real, complementary differences between the sexes—point to

161
Roman Pontifical, Ordination of Deacons 21, Prayer of Consecration; cited in
CCC 1543. This beautiful prayer merits being quoted at greater length:

Almighty God . . .,
You make the Church, Christ’s body,
grow to its full stature as a new and greater temple.
You enrich it with every kind of grace
and perfect it with a diversity of members
to serve the whole body in a wonderful pattern of unity.
You established a threefold ministry of worship and service,
for the glory of your name.
As ministers of your tabernacle you chose the sons of Levi
and gave them your blessing as their everlasting inheritance.
162

CCC 873.
As the Catechism instructs us, “the word ‘ordination’ is reserved for the
sacramental act which integrates a man into the order of bishops, presbyters, or
deacons, and goes beyond a simple election, designation, delegation, or institution by the
community, for it confers a gift of the Holy Spirit that permits the exercise of a ‘sacred
power’ (sacra potestas) which can come only from Christ himself through his Church”
(CCC 1538). On ordination being reserved for men, see CCC 1577. On the rite of
ordination, see CCC 1572-74.
163

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the fact that they are actually “ordered one to another”164 in
view of a common (that is to say, shared) mission, namely, that
of the incorporation and sanctification of all human persons
into the one body of Christ.
Because, in fact, grace cannot be given and bestowed upon
oneself, but must be received from the Lord, it is Christ himself
who authorizes and empowers the ministers of his sacramental
grace, namely, his bishops and priests, who “receive the mission
and faculty (‘the sacred power’) to act in persona Christi
Capitis,” and his deacons, who “receive the strength to serve the
people of God in the diaconia of liturgy, word and charity, in
communion with the bishop and his presbyterate.”165 To this
end, a deacon is conformed to Christ by an indelible mark in
view of serving as his “instrument for his Church” and of acting
as his “representative,”166 and this in turn means that “he is no
longer a layman nor can he return to the lay state in the strict
sense.”167 That is why we might regard him as designating the
divine Bridegroom—having been sacramentally conformed to
him—within every liturgy at which he presides or in which

164
CCC 1547 (the reference is to the sacramental and common priesthoods, but it
might be extrapolated to the service rendered by the ordained diaconate and that of the
lay faithful). Similarly—in keeping with the analogy that we have been employing
throughout these pages—Pope St. John Paul II notes, “In the sphere of what is
‘human’—of what is humanly personal—‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’ are distinct, yet
at the same time they complete and explain each other. This is also present in the great
analogy of the ‘Bride’ in the Letter to the Ephesians. In the Church every human
being—male and female—is the ‘Bride’, in that he or she accepts the gift of the love of
Christ the Redeemer, and seeks to respond to it with the gift of his or her own person”
(Mulieris Dignitatem 25).
165
CCC 875. Although the sacraments depend upon the instrumental action of the
Church’s ordained ministers, they “derive their efficacy from the Incarnate Word
himself” (STh III, q. 62, a. 5). Not surprisingly, St. Thomas teaches that they are
“instituted by God alone” (STh III, q. 64, a. 2), who remains their principal agent
(STh III, q. 64, a. 1).
166
CCC 1581.
167
Pope St. John Paul II, “Deacons Are Configured to Christ the Servant,”
L’osservatore romano (Weekly Edition in English) (December 20-27, 1995), 5. Cf. CCC
1538; 1570. On the indelible mark conferred by ordination, see also 1581-84.

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participates in his specific ministerial role,168 as well as every
service and work of charity that he renders as Christ’s minister.
For “it is not just any service which is attributed to the deacon
in the church: his service belongs to the sacrament of Holy
Orders, as a close collaboration with the bishop and the priests,
in the unity of the same ministerial actualization of the mission
of Christ,” as the International Theological Commission
reminds us.169
To be sure, the corrections introduced by Pope St. John Paul
II into the Catechism170 and the amendments introduced by
Pope Benedict into canon law171 seem to imply, as W. Shawn
McKnight points out, that “deacons are never said to act in
persona Christi capitis,” as do bishops and their presbyterate.172
For they “receive the imposition of hands ‘not unto the
priesthood, but unto ministry’,” as the Second Vatican Council
168
“Among other tasks, it is the task of deacons to assist the bishop and priests in the
celebration of the divine mysteries, above all the Eucharist, in the distribution of Holy
Communion, in assisting at and blessing marriages, in the proclamation of the Gospel
and preaching, in presiding over funerals, and in dedicating themselves to the various
ministries of charity” (CCC 1570). “Ordination confers on them important functions in
the ministry of the word, divine worship, pastoral governance, and the service of
charity, tasks which they must carry out under the pastoral authority of their bishop”
(CCC 1596).
169
International Theological Commission, “From the Diakonia of Christ to the
Diakonia of the Apostles,” 316.
170
See CCC 875, which in the new edition clarifies that “bishops and priests receive
the mission and faculty (‘the sacred power’) to act in persona Christi Capitis; deacons
receive the strength to serve the people of God in the diaconia of liturgy, words, and
charity, in communion with the bishop and his presbyterate.”
171
See Pope Benedict XVI, Apostolic Letter “Motu Proprio” Omnium in Mentem
(“In the Mind of All”), On Several Amendments to the Code of Canon Law (October
26, 2009): https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/apost_letters/documents/
hf_ben-xvi_apl_20091026_codex-iuris-canonici.html. Changes are introduced in canons
1008 and 1009 §3.
172
W. Shawn McKnight, Understanding the Diaconate: Historical, Theological, and
Sociological Foundations (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press,
2018), 49. Nonetheless, the International Theological Commission, writing before the
changes were introduced into canon law, argues, “Theological opinions are not
unanimous on the question of whether this signifies a definitive exclusion or not”
(“From the Diakonia of Christ to the Diakonia of the Apostles,” 296).

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put it.173 Therefore, they are neither charged nor sacramentally
endowed with the power to offer the holy sacrifice of the Mass,
whereby the Church is constantly created anew from the
always-open side of Christ. Nevertheless, “only the deacon is an
enduring, sacramentally configured icon of Christ the servant,”
McKnight claims;174 that is to say, “a sign or sacrament of
Christ the Lord himself, who came not to be served, but to
serve” (Matt 20:28; Mark 10:45; John 13:1-17).175 On the
other hand, service is something that ought to characterize
every ordained minister as well as every Christian. That is why
the International Theological Commission admits that the
attempt “to distinguish the diaconate through its exclusive
representation of Christ as Servant” is “problematic.” Instead,
the commission suggests that we be attentive to “the unity of
the person of Christ, the unity of the sacrament of order, and
the symbolic character of the terms used to represent Christ
(‘head’, ‘servant’, ‘shepherd’, ‘spouse’).”176 Indeed, the apostolic
ministry might be “understood as the continuation of the
‘diakonia’ of Christ, which cannot be dissociated from his
‘priesthood’: the priestly offering which he makes of his life
actually constitutes his diaconal service for the salvation of the
173
CCC 1569; cf. Lumen Gentium 29 (DZ 4155). This point is further evident in the
rite of ordination of deacons, as McKnight points out (Understanding the Diaconate,
265).
174
McKnight, Understanding the Diaconate, 262. Rather than viewing deacons as
“mini-priests” (ibid., 253 and 256) or “fill-in[s] for the priest,” McKnight suggests that
they be recognized as “exercising charisms proper” to their “own order” (ibid., 55).
They are “intermediary figure[s] between the bishop and the people, and between the
people of God and individual in need” (ibid., 257-58). Their specific mission is that of
“build[ing] up the community of faith by reminding them of their obligation to serve”
(ibid., 258).
175
Pope St. Paul VI, apostolic letter Ad Pascendum, in AAS 64 (1972): 534-40, at
536: “signum vel sacramentum ipsius Christi Domini qui non venit ministrari, sed
ministrare” (cited in McKnight, Understanding the Diaconate, 58). That is why “Christ
the servant is made visible to the people of God and to the world in the icon that is the
deacon.” (ibid., 61).
176
International Theological Commission, “From the Diakonia of Christ to the
Diakonia of the Apostles,” 298. See also the extended development of the meaning of
the imposition of hands “non ad sacerdotium” in ibid., 303-7.

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world.”177 At any rate, in virtue of the sacrament of orders, the
deacon is—it bears insisting—ontologically configured to Christ
so as to be a living sacrament of his self-giving presence in the
world. That is why he is particularly well suited to witness to
the always-initiating love of the divine Bridegroom, who “loved
us first” (1 John 4:19) and who loved us “to the end” (John
13:1).178
Moreover—and in keeping with the nuptial analogy that we
have drawn upon throughout these pages—the service
(diakonia) rendered by Christ’s ministers in view of the sanctification of all Christ’s members179 is necessarily complemented
by the active reception of his members in view of their own
sanctification. This is accomplished by each one’s free adherence to Christ and his saving message by a “bridal” gift of
self, whereby one also participates in the universal mission of
the Church. Such is the fruitfulness of the bride and the Bridegroom: of Christ, present in his sacred minister, and of Christ,
present in a different, albeit complementary manner in each of
his disciples, or members, who are called to be one body, “one
flesh” (see Gen 2:24) with him. Hence, the specific ecclesial
practice of ordaining only men to all three grades of apostolic
ministry fittingly draws upon the natural unitive and fruitful
complementarity of the sexes, which is also embodied throughout Scripture—from the first pages (Gen 1-2) to the last (Rev
22:17) and constantly in between (see Jer 2:1-3; Mal 2:14-15;
Ps 45; Isa 54:5-8; Song; Eph 5:25-33; etc.)—for the purpose of
pointing to a truth that has been entrusted to the Church’s
safekeeping. This, I have argued, is the truth concerning God’s
always-initiating love, which nonetheless requires—in accord
with his divine will—our response in order to bear fruit in our
own souls and in our service to others. Such is the mysterious
177

Ibid., 308-9.
Similarly, they remind us “of our dependence on Christ the servant” (McKnight,
Understanding the Diaconate, 262-63). McKnight continues: “Only by allowing Christ
to serve us can we respond to his command to be self-emptying servants of one
another.” (263).
179
Cf. Lumen Gentium 24; and CCC 1551.
178

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covenant of love that God prepared on the day that he created
woman from the side of man in view of his own Incarnation
and passion, because the sacramental realm—like Scripture—is
endowed with God-given meaning, as are sexual differences
themselves.
Of course, “modern rationalism does not tolerate mystery,”
as Pope St. John Paul II does well to remind us.
It does not accept the mystery of man as male and female, nor is it willing to
admit that the full truth about man has been revealed in Jesus Christ. In
particular, it does not accept the “great mystery” proclaimed in the Letter to
the Ephesians but radically opposes it. It may well acknowledge, in the context
of a vague deism, the possibility and even the need for a supreme or divine
Being, but it firmly rejects the idea of a God who became man in order to save
man. For rationalism it is unthinkable that God should be the Redeemer,
much less that he should be “the Bridegroom.”180

Preserving this mystery is probably not the first concern that
comes to mind in most discussions concerning the admission of
women to the ordained diaconate. We are far more likely to
hear arguments based upon the present needs of the Church or
upon the obligation to render justice to women. Before justice
can be rendered to women or to the Church, however, it must
be rendered to God; and we do so, when we sincerely seek to
understand his reasons, with the obedience of faith that
characterizes bridal love.

180
Pope St. John Paul II, Letter to Families on the occasion of the Year of the
Family, Gratissimam Sane (February 2, 1994), no. 19. See also Monica Migliorino
Miller, “Transgenderism and the End of the Sacramental Order,” Crisis (May 27, 2021):
https://www.crisismagazine.com/2021/transgenderism-and-the-end-of-the-sacramentalorder.

The Thomist 85 (2021): 625-48

ECCLESIAL ROLES UNIQUE TO WOMEN:
SOME REFLECTIONS
SARA BUTLER, M.S.B.T., and JENNA COOPER
University of St. Mary of the Lake / Diocese of Winona-Rochester
Mundelein, Illinois / Winona, Minnesota

I

N HIS POSTSYNODAL apostolic exhortation Querida
Amazonia, Pope Francis comments somewhat obliquely on
the Amazon Synod’s consideration of women’s access to the
permanent diaconate.1 In his opinion, it is “reductionism” to
suppose that women would have a higher status and greater
participation in the Church than they do now if they were
admitted to holy orders.2 Francis credits the women of the
Amazon, in fact, with keeping the faith alive and handing it on
even when the communities were not visited by priests for
decades. “Women make their contribution to the Church,” he
maintains, “in a way that is properly theirs, by making present
the tender strength of Mary, the Mother.”3
The pope does not want to “clericalize” women. He grants
the importance, however, of giving them access to “positions,
1
Pope Francis, Querida Amazonia (February 2, 2019), 99-103. According to the
synod’s “Final Report” (no. 103), many presynodal consultations requested that women
be admitted to the permanent diaconate. The report recommends that the experience of
women in the Amazon be made available to the Study Commission on the Diaconate of
Women that Pope Francis established in 2016.
2
It is often assumed that the ministries of men, or more accurately of the clergy, are
the only ones that actually matter, and that in order to acknowledge women’s equality
the Church must admit them to holy orders. Pope Francis refers to this as “chauvinism
with skirts.” See Jorge Mario Bergolio and Abraham Skorka, On Heaven and Earth:
Pope Francis on Faith, Family, and the Church in the Twenty-First Century, trans.
Alejandro Bermudez and Howard Goodman (New York: Image, 2013), 104.
3
Querida Amazonia, 101.

625

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including ecclesial services, that do not entail holy orders and
that can better signify the role that is theirs.”4 And he would
like to see them in positions that have “stability, public recognition, and a commission from the bishop.”5 In two recent
apostolic letters, Francis has provided for women’s admission to
three lay ministries that fulfill these criteria. In Spiritus Domini
(January 10, 2021), he opened the ministries of lector and
acolyte to women, and in Antiquum Ministerium (May 10,
2021), he established the ministry of catechist, also open to
both men and women.6 The candidates are “instituted” in these
ministries by the bishop in a liturgical rite.7 These lay ministries,
however, are rooted in the baptismal priesthood women and
men have in common.8 They are not unique to women and
these roles are not “theirs.”
4
Ibid., 103. See Sara Butler, “Some Thoughts on the Theology of Woman in the
Church,” in Promise and Challenge: Catholic Women Reflect on Complementarity,
Feminism, and the Church, ed. Mary Rice Hasson (Huntington, Ind.: Our Sunday
Visitor, 2015), 39-51, for more on Pope Francis’s interest in developing a “theology of
woman.”
5
Querida Amazonia, 103. The pope goes on to say, “This would also allow women
to have a real and effective impact on the organization, the most important decisions
and the direction of communities, while continuing to do so in a way that reflects their
womanhood.”
6
See http://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/motu_proprio/documents/papafrancesco-motu-proprio-20210110_spiritus-domini.html and https://www.vatican.va/
content/francesco/en/motu_proprio/documents/papa-francesco-motu-proprio-20210510
_antiquum-ministerium.html.
7
“Institution” is distinct from “ordination.” In the United States, the rites De
institutione lectoris and De institutione acolythi have been celebrated, for the most part,
only for men preparing for ordination to the diaconate, even though they were in
principle also open to other lay men (Pope St. Paul VI, Ministeria Quaedam, 1972).
Many laypersons, both men and women, have assumed these functions on a temporary
basis (in line with canon 230 §2), however, at the invitation of their pastors.
8
There are, today, many other ecclesial roles open to women that are not unique to
them, e.g., chancellor, vice-chancellor, diocesan finance officer, tribunal official
(including judge), seminary professor, delegate for religious, and director of Catholic
Charities. See Anne Munley, et al., Women and Jurisdiction: An Unfolding Reality (Silver
Spring, Md.: Leadership Conference for Women Religious, 2001), 1-20. At the Vatican,
for example, Pope Francis has appointed a woman as rector of a pontifical university
(the Antonianum), another as a member of the Congregation for Institutes of
Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, and another as undersecretary to the
Synod of Bishops; two women as undersecretaries of curial dicasteries; three women as

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627

Francis is not content to insure that women have access to
the same ecclesial roles and functions as lay men. He wants to
promote ecclesial roles and services that express their specific
gifts as women, what Pope St. John Paul II called their “feminine genius.”9 In Francis’s opinion, the question of women’s
ecclesial services needs to be reframed and deepened in light of
the constitution of the Church and the story of salvation in
which we find the “two human faces” of Jesus and Mary.10
Clearly, Francis assumes that the gifts women bring to the
Church’s service differ from those that men bring to it.11 He
values the presence and contributions of women precisely
because of this difference. In other words, he embraces the
Church’s teaching on the physical, psychological, and ontological complementarity of the sexes.12 But is there an ecclesial
office or role reserved to women as women? Benedict Ashley,
O.P., poses the question that comes to mind: “If only men are
qualified for the office of such dignity as the priesthood, is there
any office of equal dignity for which only women are
qualified?”13 Put another way, is there is an ecclesial role for
women from which men are excluded based on their male sex
that would be a kind of counterpart to the ministerial
consultants to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith; and six women to the
Vatican’s Council for the Economy. There are other ecclesial roles and offices occupied
by men, of course, which are reserved to them not because of their sex but because they
are clerics.
9
On this topic, see Pope John Paul II’s Letter to Women (1995), his apostolic letter
Mulieris Dignitatem (1988), and additional texts in the collection Pope John Paul II on
the Genius of Women (Washington, D.C.: NCCB/USCC, 1997).
10
Querida Amazonia, 101: “The Lord chose to reveal his power and his love
through two human faces: the face of his divine Son made man and the face of a
creature, a woman, Mary.”
11
See Pope Francis, apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (2013), 103.
12
For a recent assertion of this doctrine, see the Congregation for the Doctrine of
the Faith, The Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Collaboration of Men
and Women in the Church and in the World (2004), 8. See also Pope Francis,
postsynodal apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia (2016), 52, 56.
13
Benedict M. Ashley, O.P., Justice in the Church: Gender and Participation
(Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1996), 131.

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priesthood, from which women are excluded on the grounds of
their female sex? In her contribution to a 1996 study of Church
leadership roles for women, Mary Aquin O’Neill, R.S.M., also
raises this question.14 She asks why, given the Magisterium’s insistence on the complementarity of the sexes, there is no office
unique to women as women that symbolizes their ecclesial
role.15 “Where is the sacramental sign of Mary’s presence in and
to the church that complements the sacramental sign of the
ministerial priesthood, symbolizing Jesus’ presence in and to the
church?”16
The present essay responds to this question. It asserts that
women have their own ecclesial roles, and that their equal status
in the Church does not depend on having access to holy orders.
There are, in the Church, two ecclesial vocations or services
that are unique to women as women and that parallel those of
the clergy in that they are offices conferred by the bishop in a
liturgical rite.17 In the first place, there is the vocation of the
consecrated virgin, that is, the woman who receives the “Rite of
Consecration to a Life of Virginity.” Second, there is the office
of the abbess, the consecrated woman who receives the
14
See “The Marian Principle: Women in the Roman Catholic Church,” in Creating a
Home: Benchmarks for Church Leadership Roles for Women, ed. Jeanean D. Merkel
(Silver Spring, Md.: Leadership Conference of Women Religious, 1996), 33-45. O’Neill
also explores this question in “The Mystery of Being Human Together,” in Freeing
Theology: The Essentials of Theology in Feminist Perspective, ed. Catherine Mowry
LaCugna (San Francisco: Harper, 1993), 139-60.
15
O’Neill does not find an answer to her question in the documents of the
postconciliar Magisterium (see O’Neill, “The Marian Principle,” 36). In “The Nature of
Women and the Method of Theology,” Theological Studies 56 (1995): 730-42, at 736,
O’Neill again asserts that “there is no specifically ecclesial role for women, so the
complementarity seen in the sexually differentiated bodies has no effect on the shape of
church life.” She grasps the irony of the fact that the “dominant discourse” (i.e., of
feminist theology) is handicapped in exploring this since it is reluctant to acknowledge
“the distinctness and irreplaceability of women’s way of being embodied in the world”
(ibid., 737).
16
O’Neill, “The Marian Principle,” 37.
17
Among the blessings by which persons are consecrated to God, the Catechism of
the Catholic Church, 1672 mentions those that this essay will consider, namely, “the
blessing of the abbot or abbess of a monastery, the consecration of virgins and widows,
[and] the rite of religious profession.”

ECCLESIAL ROLES UNIQUE TO WOMEN

629

“Blessing of an Abbess.” One may also ask, in fact, whether a
woman with a vocation to the apostolic religious life also has a
distinctively feminine ecclesial role.
I. TWO ECCLESIAL ROLES UNIQUE TO WOMEN
A) The Order of Virgins
Consecrated virginity is a stable and publicly-recognized
ecclesial vocation exclusive to women. The Order of Virgins
(Ordo virginum) is comprised of women “who, committed to
the holy plan of following Christ more closely, are consecrated
to God by the diocesan bishop according to the approved liturgical rite, are betrothed mystically to Christ, the Son of God,
and are dedicated to the service of the Church.”18 By receiving
the solemn “Rite of Consecration to a Life of Virginity,” the
woman is “constituted . . . a sacred person, a transcendent sign
of the Church’s love for Christ, and an eschatological image of
this heavenly Bride of Christ and of the life to come.”19 The
consecrated virgin, then, is an icon of the Church as “Bride of
Christ”; she is the counterpart of the priest, icon of Christ the
Bridegroom.20 Christian men may and do consecrate their
virginity to Christ, in the broad sense of the term, by making
public vows of chastity or promises of celibacy. On account of
their sex, however, they are not eligible to receive the “Rite of
Consecration to a Life of Virginity”;21 they cannot image the
Church as “Bride of Christ” in the same way as the woman who
18

Codex Iuris Canonici (CIC), can. 604, cited in CCC 923.
Sacred Congregation for Divine Worship, Ordo consecrationis virginum, editio
typica (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1978), “Praenotanda,” no. 1
(www.archive.org/details/OCV1978/).
20
See Ashley, Justice in the Church, 140-42, 148-49, 154. As Ashley points out, the
symbolic meaning of these “model persons” was not given in specific acts of institution,
but “has been explicated, unified, and institutionalized from elements that were implicit
or dispersed” (149).
21
Ordo consecrationis virginum, “Praenotanda,” no. 3.
19

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SARA BUTLER, M.S.B.T., and JENNA COOPER

is a consecrated virgin.22 It is, then, a vocation unique to
women.
It is only in recent times that the vocation of the consecrated
virgin, so defined, as a public state of life for Catholic women,
has been restored and come to general attention. The Second
Vatican Council’s constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium (1964)
called for the revision of the rites of the seven sacraments and
of the sacramentals, and the pontifical “Rite of Consecration of
Virgins”23 was one of those sacramentals. In response to requests from certain bishops and initiatives among some laywomen, the Council for the Implementation of the Constitution
of the Sacred Liturgy (the Consilium) not only revised the rite
as it had been in use among some orders of nuns but also
prepared a version for the consecration of virgins “living in the
world” (in saeculo).24
This, in effect, restored the tradition of the early Church,
where women who publicly assumed lifelong virginity for the
22
According to Ashley (Justice, 140), “Just as a woman cannot appropriately
symbolize Christ, the New Adam, Father of all the redeemed, Bridegroom of the
Church, as priest, the male virgin cannot appropriately symbolize Mary, the New Eve,
Mother of God and of the church, or the church as Bride.”
23
See Sacrosanctum Concilium, 62-78, 79, and 80. For the rite in the Roman
Pontifical used from 1595 till 1970, see De benedictione et consecratione virginum
(www.liturgialatina.org/pontificale/000.htm; accessed 09/14/20). For an English
translation, see Ludwig Münster, Christ in His Consecrated Virgins, trans. Basil
Stegmann, O.S.B., and M. Margretta, O.S.B. (Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press,
1957), 125-40.
24
For an overview of this vocation, the development of the rite, and the theology of
this consecration, see A. Nocent, “The Consecration of Virgins,” in The Church at
Prayer, ed. A. G. Martimort and others, vol. 3, Sacraments; trans. Matthew O’Connell
(Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press, 1988), 209-20. The council itself did not call
for the revival or reestablishment of this vocation for women living in the world. That
decision emerged from the deliberations of those charged with revising the rite as they
considered who was eligible to receive it. See Annibale Bugnini, “Commentary on the
Consecration of Virgins,” L’osservatore romano (Eng. ed.), September 24, 1970. For a
fuller account, see Judith M. Stegman, “‘Mystically Espoused to Christ, the Son of God
(c. 604 §1)’: The Basis for Proposing Juridic Principles to Guide the Development of
Norms for the Ordo virginum” (J.C.D. diss., Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University
of America, 2019), 120-21. Stegman examines the notes from the Consilium
commission that revised the rite; these are housed in the archives of the International
Committee for English in the Liturgy.

ECCLESIAL ROLES UNIQUE TO WOMEN

631

sake of the kingdom of heaven, and who lived in their own
homes, were recognized as belonging to the Order of Virgins.
No later than the mid-fourth century, many virgins received
consecration at the hands of the bishop in a liturgical rite.25
With the rapid growth of women’s monastic life, this consecration eventually came to be bestowed chiefly on cloistered
nuns who made solemn vows. The “Rite of Consecration” fell
out of use, with some exceptions, during the Middle Ages. In
1868 the Benedictine liturgist Dom Prosper Gueranger revived
it for women in solemn vows at the monastery of Solemnes.26
Pope Pius XII subsequently encouraged other monastic
institutes to adopt it.27 The “Rite of Consecration of Virgins,”
which was distinct from the profession of perpetual vows, was
still a matter of interest, but mostly to nuns in the monastic
orders that had the privilege of receiving it. Many women
religious in apostolic institutes were unaware that such a rite or
status for women existed.28
The revised “Rite of the Consecration to a Life of Virginity,”
published in 1970, has two parts, one for the consecration of
women living in the world, and another (which may be
integrated with perpetual profession of vows) for nuns.29 An

25
See René Metz, La consécration des vierges dans l’Église romaine: Étude d’histoire
de la liturgie (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1954) for a detailed account of the history of
the rite.
26
See Stegman, “Mystically Espoused,” 90-95.
27
See Pius XII, apostolic constitution Sponsa Christi (1950), 16. By a special indult,
Benedictine Sisters in the U.S. were permitted to receive this rite in the 1950s, and some
two thousand of them chose to do so. See Mary Anthony Wagner, O.S.B., “Report of
the Consecration of Virgins in Benedictine Communities in the United States,” in The
Church Year: 19th North American Liturgical Week 1958 (Elsberry, Mo.: Liturgical
Conference, 1959), 61-67.
28
Two studies, however, introduced it to English-speaking readers. See Mary Jane
Klimisch, O.S.B., The One Bride: The Church and Consecrated Virginity (New York:
Sheed and Ward, 1965); and Mary Lawrence McKenna, M.M.S., Women of the Church:
Role and Renewal (New York: P.J. Kenedy, 1967), chap. 3.
29
See the Ordo consecrationis virginum, “De consecratio virginum” (nos. 10-33) and
“De consecratio virginum professioni monialium coniuncta” (nos. 34-49).

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estimated five thousand nonmonastic women worldwide have
received this consecration since this vocation was reestablished.30 The celebration of the rite in various cathedral
churches has brought some attention to it, and the Catholic
faithful are gradually coming to recognize it as a public state of
consecrated life for women. In 2018, the Congregation for
Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life
published an Instruction on the Order of Virgins, Ecclesiae
sponsae imago31 that reviews the nature and history of this
vocation as lived by women “in the world,”32 clarifies many
questions, and offers direction for its insertion into the
Church’s life.33
The central charismatic element of this ecclesial vocation is
its “nuptial” character. A woman who requests the “Rite of
Consecration” does so because she experiences the call to a
spousal union with Christ. This grace prompts her to make a
personal gift of herself to the Lord. She brings her propositum,
or holy resolution, to the bishop with the intention of making a
public commitment to lifelong virginity for the sake of the
kingdom of heaven. If she is admitted to the solemn “Rite of
Consecration,” the bishop of the diocese34 confirms and seals
30
See Bernadette Mary Reis, F.S.P., “Church Reproposes Order of Virgins 50 Years
after Its Restoration,” Vatican News (https://www.vaticannews.va/en/vatican-city/news/
2018-07/order-virgins-ecclesiae-sponsae-imago.html). As the three international
assemblies of the order at the Vatican attest (1995, 2008, 2016), women from every
continent have embraced this vocation.
31
For the text, see https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/bollettino/pubblico/
2018/07/04/180704d.html. For an orientation to the instruction itself, see Jenna M.
Cooper, “A First Look at Ecclesiae sponsae imago,” Sponsa-Christi (September 22,
2018)
(http://sponsa-christi.blogspot.com/2018/09/a-first-look-at-ecclesiae-sponsaeimago.html).
32
Nuns in certain religious orders have traditionally received the consecration of
virgins, either at the time of their perpetual profession in their religious institute, or
some years later. The 2018 instruction does not speak to their situation but deals only
with virgins living in saeculo.
33
With the publication of this instruction, some of the interpretations and proposals
in Sharon Holland, I.H.M., “Consecrated Virgins for Today’s Church,” Consecrated
Life 24, no. 2 (2002): 1-13, have become obsolete.
34
The diocesan bishop must admit the candidate to consecration (see CIC, can. 604;
also Ecclesiae sponsae imago, no. 7). In exceptional circumstances, however, the

ECCLESIAL ROLES UNIQUE TO WOMEN

633

her desire to become a “Bride of Christ.”35 During the ritual, he
asks: “Are you resolved to accept solemn consecration as a bride
of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God?” and she replies “I
am.”36 After the litany of the saints, the bishop gives an
exhortation in which he expresses her association with the
Church (Virgin, Spouse, and Mother)37 and with Mary, the
Mother of God.38 The candidate publicly renews her resolution
to follow Christ in a life of perfect chastity at the hands of the
bishop. The bishop then extends his hands over her and sings or
says the ancient prayer of consecration, and presents her with
the veil and the ring, the insignia of her consecration, as well as
the Liturgy of the Hours. The presentation of the Liturgy of the
Hours is especially significant, as it represents a commission to
pray in the name of the Church. The consecrated virgin makes a
commitment not only to pray for but also to serve the local
Church, and she lives out her vocation under the bishop’s
authority.
The consecrated virgin’s personal relationship with the
bishop and commitment to apostolic service in the diocese links
her to the deaconesses39 of the early Church. There seems to
diocesan bishop may delegate the consecration to another bishop (Ceremonial of
Bishops, no. 720). According to Metz (La consécration des vierges, 189, 280, 351), the
bishop in this rite acts “in the person of Christ the Bridegroom.” Nocent (“The
Consecration of Virgins,” 211, 216) makes the same point.
35
At first, this title belonged simply to the Church herself (inspired by Eph 5:25-32;
Rev 19:7-9; 21:2-3, 9), but by the mid-third century it was also given to consecrated
virgins. See Ecclesiae sponsae imago, nos. 1-2.
36
Rite of Consecration to a Life of Virginity, no. 17.
37
According to Joseph Ratzinger, these titles were first used to characterize the
Church, and only later applied to the Virgin Mary. See Joseph Ratzinger and Hans Urs
von Balthasar, Mary: The Church at the Source (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1997), 28.
For a recent review of this imagery as applied to the Church, see Sara Butler, “Church
as Spouse and Mother: Implications for Women,” in Ruolo delle Donne nella Chiesa
(Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2017), 161-75.
38
In the suggested homily in the “Rite of Consecration to a Life of Virginity,” no.
16, the bishop directs the consecrated virgin to “imitate the Mother of God.”
39
Phyllis Zagano points this out in “Remembering Tradition: Women’s Monastic
Rituals and the Diaconate,” Theological Studies 72 (2011): 787-811, at 800-802. See

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have been a similar overlap between the role of deaconesses and
that of consecrated widows in the patristic era.40 In recent years,
there has been popular interest not only in securing the
admission of women to the permanent diaconate41 but also in
reviving an Order of Widows patterned after the restored Order
of Virgins.42 Bishops have made attempts to revive an Order of
Widows in the dioceses of Paris (1984),43 Palermo (1996),44
Milan (2000),45 and Rome (2013).46 In September 2018 Pope
also Jenna M. Cooper, “In Lieu of Female Deacons: A Proposal,” Crisis (November 11,
2015). Zagano (802) notes the difference between a woman’s status (or state in life) and
her possible mandate for ministry. Consecration as a virgin is first of all about a state in
life.
40
According to McKenna, Women of the Church, 35, the Order of Widows was, in
fact, the “mother form” of the Order of Deaconesses and the Order of Virgins in the
early Church. As already noted in 1 Timothy 5:3-16, the apostolic Church assumed
responsibility for the care of widows who were destitute. Some of the widows who were
“enrolled” themselves took responsibility for ecclesial services such as praying for the
Church night and day, instructing younger women in virtue, and caring for the poor
and sick. The enrolled widow was “the wife of one husband” (1 Tim 5:9); she
maintained fidelity to him by pledging perpetual continence and giving herself over to
Christ and to the Church. Although there is some evidence of a primitive liturgical rite
for establishing women in an Order of Widows, the exact nature of their ecclesial role
and function is not fully understood.
41
Note that this movement is not concerned with restoring an ecclesial role for
women, the Order of Deaconesses, but with the admission of women to holy orders as
deacons, that is, to the same order as men. The revised canon 1379 in book VI of the
Code of Canon Law, however, suggests that the Church does not envision this. See Ed
Condon, “Has the Pope Just Closed the Door on Women Deacons in Germany?”, The
Deacon’s Bench with Deacon Greg Candra
(blog),
June 2, 2021
(https://thedeaconsbench.com/has-the-pope-just-closed-the-door-on-women-deacons-ingermany/).
42
See Cristina M. Hip-Flores, “Consecrated Widows: Altars of God,” Logos 22, no.
1 (2019): 108-30.
43
The Congregation of Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments
approved the Rituel des bénédiction des veuves used by the Fraternité Notre Dame de la
résurrection of Paris in 1984. The text of this ritual and further questions about the
vocation can be found at http://www.mondieuetmontout.com.Vatican.va-Veufs-VeuvesConsacres-Droit-Canon-Droit-605.html
44
See Arcidiocesi di Palermo, “Rito per l’ammissione delle vedove”
(https://www.diocesipa.it/home-page/arcidiocesi/vicariato-per-la-vita-consacrata/ordoviduarum/rito-per-lC292ammissione-delle-vedove/).
45
Carlo Maria Montini, “Decreto di istitutionze dell’ ‘Ordo viduarum
Ambrosianus,’” Vita consecrata 39 (2003): 308-12.

ECCLESIAL ROLES UNIQUE TO WOMEN

635

Francis met with and addressed an international conference of
consecrated widows.47 At the time of this writing, however,
canonically “consecrated widows” are not yet a practical reality,
at least not in the Latin Church.48 Because of this, any commitment made by women aspiring to be “consecrated widows”
today would have, at most, the status of a private vow according to the Code of Canon Law.
B) The Office of Abbess
A second ecclesial role exclusive to women that is conferred
by the bishop of the diocese in a liturgical rite is the office of
abbess. An abbess is the superior of a monastic community of
nuns that has the status of an abbey.49 She is elected by the nuns
in her monastery and has the authority to govern the
community according to its rule and constitutions. She is
admitted to her office by the solemn blessing of the bishop,50
and the monastery itself is entrusted to his “special vigilance.”51
The abbess is already a vowed member of the monastic
institute, so the blessing she receives introduces her not to a

46

“Statuto dell'Ordo viduarum” (https://www.diocesidiroma.it/vitaconsacrata/
images/ordoviduarum/Statuto_Ordo_viduarum_approvato.pdf).
47
See http://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2018/ september.index.2
.html.
48
According to Hip-Flores (“Consecrated Widows,” 110), Pope St. John Paul II reestablished this vocation when he inserted canon 570 into the Code of Canons of the
Eastern Churches.
49
This requires the presence of at least twelve finally professed nuns.
50
In some monasteries, however, an abbot from an associated institute of men
imparts the blessing. There is a certain fittingness to an abbot taking on this function, in
fact, since historically abbots had at times fulfilled an ecclesial role similar to that of a
bishop.
51
CIC, can. 615. In 2018 the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and
Societies of Apostolic Life issued the instruction Cor orans which applies Pope Francis’s
apostolic constitution Vultum Dei Quaerere (2016) to institutes of contemplative life.
The relationship of the female monastery to the diocesan bishop is treated in chapter 1,
articles 6 and 7.

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new state of life52 but to a new ecclesial service, namely, the
governance of the monastic community. In this office she
assumes the role of “mother” in the monastery. The newly
revised prayer for the “Blessing of an Abbess” even supplies the
word “mother,” in its English translation, as the interpretation
of “Abbess.”53 The bishop asks God to “bless + and sustain N.,
your servant, chosen to be Abbess of this community. May her
manner of life show clearly that she is what she is called, a
mother.”54 According to the Benedictine tradition, she is an icon
of the Church as mother.55 In the monastic context, being
“mother” implies being “fruitful,” that is, giving life, nurturing,
and fostering her nuns by her example, teaching, and loving
attention to each of the nuns in her care.56
The bishop’s blessing confirms the abbess’s call to assume a
new ecclesial service and supports her with the prayer of the
Church. Her office, then, is stable (often for life), publicly
recognized, and episcopally commissioned. But is the role of
abbess exclusive to women? The abbess has a “motherly”
relationship with the nuns in the monastery, but is this not
merely a feminine expression of the same role that an abbot has
with respect to his monks? Admittedly, the office of abbess is a
less dramatic example of a unique feminine ecclesial role than
52

She may also have received episcopal consecration as a virgin.
See “The Blessing of Abbots and Abbesses,” in The Roman Pontifical, issued by the
Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments (Vatican City:
Vox Clara Committee, 2012), 257-75, at 273.
54
Emphasis added. By tradition, the abbess is the “Reverend Mother,” and she is
addressed as “Mother.” The word “abbess,” however, is actually a feminine form of
“abbas,” that is, “father.” For the blessing rite used until 1978, see Pontificale
Romanum, De benedictione abbatisse at www.liturgialatina.org/pontificale/036.html.
55
For this information, we rely on Katie Ann-Marie Bugyis, The Care of Nuns: The
Ministries of Benedictine Women in England during the Central Middle Ages (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2019), 95-99.
56
According to Katie Ann-Marie Bugyis (“The Development of the Consecration
Rite for Abbesses and Abbots,” Traditio 71 [2016]: 91-141, at 95), “Many of a monastic
leader’s roles and responsibilities closely resembled those of a parent: receiving and
raising children, providing for their needs (shelter, food, clothing, and bedding),
protecting them from physical dangers and spiritual temptations, educating them in the
faith, equipping them with various skills, disciplining them, tending to their illnesses,
mourning their deaths, and praying for their salvation.”
53

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637

the Order of Virgins because the abbess has, at least to some
degree, a masculine counterpart who exercises a similar role.
Nevertheless, by providing two distinct rites of blessing, the
Church acknowledges that the office of abbess differs from that
of an abbot or other male religious superior.57 Two considerations support the view that the role of abbess is exclusive
to women: its lay, as opposed to clerical, character; and the
distinctively feminine imagery that is historically associated with
it.
Paradoxically, the identification of abbess as a womanly role
is evident first of all from a “negative” aspect of her vocation.
The abbess, being female, is necessarily a layperson in the sense
of not being sacramentally ordained, as the abbot is.58 The
abbess, then, by definition cannot share the priestly role of the
abbot insofar as he “stands in the place of Christ,” has the duty
to teach “sound doctrine,” and has the full care of souls.59
Nevertheless, it is striking that a high degree of authority can be
bestowed canonically and liturgically upon the abbess, a
nonordained person. As the major superior of an autonomous
monastic community, she carries out a threefold service of the
other nuns—teaching, sanctifying, and governing them.60 This

57
The two versions of the rite for “The Blessing of Abbots and Abbesses” in the
Roman Pontifical are similar, but they are set out separately. Of the four versions of the
bishop’s “prayer of blessing” for an abbess (“Blessing of an Abbess,” no. 18), three
differ, but one is identical, except for the pronouns, with the prayer for an abbot
(“Blessing of an Abbot,” no. 23).
58
Prior to the ninth-century legislation that required abbots to be ordained as priests,
the abbot-monk, like the abbess, also pledged obedience to the bishop.
59
See the “Blessing of an Abbot,” nos. 20 and 23. The abbot is responsible for the
salvation of the monks under his care.
60
The abbess has jurisdiction over the nuns in her monastery, but historically, some
abbesses in the West, especially in monasteries established by royalty, also had
jurisdiction over the clergy and people who resided in the territory owned by the
monastery. For more on their quasi-episcopal role, see Joan Morris, The Lady Was a
Bishop: The Hidden History of Women with Clerical Ordination and the Jurisdiction of
Bishops (New York: Macmillan, 1973); and John Hilary Martin, “The Ordination of
Women in a Medieval Context,” in A History of Women and Ordination, vol. 1, ed.

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strongly implies a specific genus of authority that is distinctly
nonpriestly, yet which is conceded only to certain consecrated
women, not to the laity in general.
Second, insofar as the abbess is a woman, installed to serve as
the superior of a community of women, she is, historically, the
heir of the deaconess.61 The deaconess was originally recruited
by the bishop from among the consecrated virgins or widows
and “ordained”62 to assist with the baptism of female catechumens and provide pastoral care to women, especially those
who were homebound.63 With the growth of women’s monastic
life, the superiors, or hēgumenēs, of communities of nuns were
often made deaconesses. Eventually, the role of abbess eclipsed
that of the virgin-deaconess and widow-deaconess who had
pastoral care of the nuns in the monastery or of the canonesses
who served in the cathedral.64 One point, among several, at
which the historical rites for “ordaining” the deaconess or
blessing the abbess differed from the rites for their male
counterparts was in their gendered typology.65 The prayers for a
deaconess in the Eastern Church refer to feminine types or
models, for example, Miriam, Deborah, Hulda, Anna, the

Bernard Cooke and Gary Macy (Lanham, Md., and London: The Scarecrow Press,
2002), 48-51. Several important double monasteries were headed by women.
61
Scholars agree that the deaconess—either a consecrated virgin or a widow—was
blessed or “ordained” by the bishop for a pastoral ministry to other women.
62
During the first Christian millennium, “ordination” was broadly defined.
According to Gary Macy, The Hidden History of Women’s Ordination: Female Clergy in
the Medieval West (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 20, it named “any
ceremony by which a person moved to a new role or ministry (ordo) in the church” and
was not restricted to the conferral of holy orders.
63
This included instructing women in the Christian life, supervising women and
children in the church, visiting and caring for the sick, bringing the Eucharist to women
who were confined, anointing dying women, and preparing the bodies of dead women
for burial.
64
See Mary M. Schaefer, Women in Pastoral Service: The Story of Santa Prassede,
Rome, ed. Joyce Louise Rilett Wood (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 239-312.
65
For the rites for ordaining deaconesses, see John Wijngaards, Women Deacons in
the Early Church: Historical Texts and Contemporary Debates (New York: Crossroad,
2002). For the rites for consecrating or blessing abbesses in the early Middle Ages, see
Macy, Hidden History, 143-56.

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639

Virgin Mary, and Phoebe.66 The Latin rites for the blessing of
abbesses from the early medieval West continue this tradition:
whereas the abbot is compared to Moses, the abbess is
compared to his sister Miriam, or Mariam.67 The richly complex Mozarabic prayer traditionally inserted into the Latin rite
when it was celebrated for abbesses clearly evokes the image of
a woman ministering to women. The bishop prays that just as
God caused Mariam, leading the other women between the
standing waves with tambourines and dancing, to reach the
seashore rejoicing, so may he, on behalf of his faithful servant
who is today established as Abbess, protect those entrusted to
the monastic rule so that she, rejoicing, may with his help enter
into eternal glory with them all, and there, exulting with the
angels and singing a new song, follow the Lamb, Jesus Christ
our Lord, wherever he goes.68 The use of these feminine types
strongly suggests that the office of both the deaconess and her
successor, the abbess,69 has traditionally been understood as
exclusive to women.
66
See Sara Butler, M.S.B.T., “Women Deacons and Sacramental Symbolism,” New
Diaconal Review 6 (2011): 38-49. The masculine types for deacons are the Levites,
Christ, and St. Stephen.
67
These abbatial prayers bring forward elements from rites for a deaconess. The
prayer from a Mozarabic rite that likens the abbess to “Mariam, the sister of Moses,”
was used to adapt the rite for abbots to a rite for an abbess (Macy, Hidden History, 81).
See the texts of this prayer in ibid., 145, 147, 149, 152, and 155.
68
This is the text in the rite used until the revision of 1970: “Domine Deus
omnipotens, qui sororem Moysi Mariam, praeeuntem cum ceteris mulieribus, inter
aequoreas undas cum tympanis et choris, laetam ad littus maris venire fecisti, te
supplices deprecamur, pro hac fideli famula tua, quae hodie super universas sibi subditas
Abbatissa constituitur; ut ita monastica [vel canonica] norma tueatur cunctas famulas
tuas sibi commissas, quatenus ad aeternam gloriam, te auxiliante, cum omnibus illis
introeat laeta, ibique exsultans cum Angelis, canens cantica nova sequatur Agnum
quocumque ierit, Jesum Christum Dominum nostrum.” See De benedictione abbatissae,
accessed on 09/14/20. We are indebted to Lauren Pristas for help with the translation of
this prayer.
69
Some of the same themes are found in the contemporary “Blessing of an Abbess”
(at no. 18), the first option, but the reference to Mariam, used for some 1200 years, has
been abandoned.

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II. ELEMENTS COMMON TO THESE ECCLESIAL ROLES FOR
WOMEN
What, then, are some elements common to the ecclesial roles
of consecrated virgin and abbess? In the first place, both of
them, according to the liturgical rites by which they are
conferred, are exclusive to women. Women alone are
candidates, and the rites by which they are admitted to the
Ordo or ecclesial office refer to their sex in some way.70 The
consecrated virgin is an icon of the Church as Virgin, Bride, and
Mother,71 and the abbess is an icon of the Church as Mother
inasmuch as she is entrusted with the nurture and care of the
nuns in her monastery.
Second, both consecrated virgins and abbesses are responding to a call. Candidates for the Order of Virgins freely ask for
consecration in response to a gift of the Holy Spirit, a charism.
They are not recruited by the bishop, but take the initiative
themselves, requesting admission to the order as a stable way of
life leading to the perfection of charity. In the “Rite of
Consecration,” the bishop accepts and confirms the woman’s
personal propositum or resolution to embrace virginity for the
sake of the kingdom of heaven. Although the abbess is blessed
for a ministry, not a state of life, and although she is, in some
sense, “recruited,” that is, chosen by the nuns in her monastery,

70

The reference is precisely to their sex, but that does not imply, as is sometimes
said, that this represents a “naive physicalism.” Some advocates for the admission of
women to holy orders use this expression to suggest that sex is relevant only as it
pertains to reproduction. See Elizabeth A. Johnson, C.S.J. (“Disputed Questions,
Authority, Priesthood, Women,” Commonweal 123 [January 26, 1996]:11-12), and
Gary Macy, William Ditewig, and Phyllis Zagano, “Women Deacons and Sacramental
Symbolism: A Response to Sara Butler,” New Diaconal Review 8 (2012): 12-22, at 19.
The Church teaches that the sexes differ not only physically but psychologically and
ontologically. See note 12 above.
71
The title of the 2018 Instruction on the Order of Virgins, Ecclesiae sponsae imago,
literally translates as “the Image of the Church as Bride.” The meaning of these three
roles for the Church and for the consecrated virgin is explained in nos. 23-25 of the
instruction; the integration of virginity, marriage, and maternity that was realized in the
Virgin Mary is explained in no. 26.

ECCLESIAL ROLES UNIQUE TO WOMEN

641

she is eligible for this ministry only because prior to this she
took the initiative to seek admission to the monastic life.
Third, candidates for these public ecclesial roles have to meet
certain objective criteria.72 Candidates for the Order of Virgins,
for example, must never have been married or have lived in
public or open violation of chastity.73 Candidates for election as
abbess are nuns who are at least forty years old and professed
for at least eight years.74
Fourth, the liturgical rite in which women with these roles
are blessed or consecrated is celebrated by the bishop of their
diocese. Because the bishop receives their commitment, they
have a special relationship with him and with the diocesan
Church.75 The bishop is involved in their admission, he
celebrates the “Rite of Consecration,” and he continues to have
oversight of their spiritual progress and their ministry. Although
the abbess is personally responsible for the pastoral care of her
nuns and has the power of jurisdiction over her monastery, she
is admitted to her office by the blessing of the bishop and agrees
to be obedient to the bishop in governing her monastery.
Fifth, consecrated virgins and abbesses are committed to the
service of the Church. Both these roles are fundamentally and
objectively ordered to this service and they freely assume an
obligation to pray (especially the Liturgy of the Hours), do
penance, and perform works of charity. They do this not simply
as individual Christians but in the name of the Church. Abbesses
additionally serve the Church by presiding over the vowed
women in their monasteries, directing their education and
72

These criteria have changed over the years. We intend only to point out that these
roles have been institutionalized.
73
See Ordo consecrationis virginum, “Praenotanda,” 5a and 5b; and Ecclesiae
sponsae imago, nos. 82 and 84.
74
This, at least, was the provision of the Council of Trent, session 25, De regularibus
et monialibus, c. vii, Norman P. Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils
(Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1990), 2:777-78.
75
If the abbess is blessed by an abbot from the same religious institute, her
monastery is inserted into the Church’s life by means of his authority.

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SARA BUTLER, M.S.B.T., and JENNA COOPER

spiritual formation by word and example, and insuring their
fidelity to the hidden apostolate of the contemplative life.76
III. WHAT ABOUT WOMEN RELIGIOUS?
The reestablishment of the vocation of consecrated virginity
for women living in the world has called attention to women’s
other ecclesial roles and services. It invites comparison with
other forms of consecrated life for women, in particular, the
vocation of nuns who receive the “Rite of Consecration” and of
women religious in apostolic institutes.77
A) Consecrated Virgins in the Monastic Life
As mentioned above, there are nuns who receive the “Rite of
Consecration to a Life of Virginity” and live this vocation in an
abbey or monastery.78 They too have a stable, publicly recognized, episcopally commissioned ecclesial vocation, conferred
by a liturgical rite, that is unique to women. Part II of the revised rite, the “Rite of Consecration of Virgins United to the
Profession of Nuns,” is designed for them. In advance of the
“Rite of Consecration,” each candidate meets with the bishop of
the diocese,79 but he does not assume the role of her ecclesiastical superior, as he does in the case of a consecrated virgin
living in the world, and the candidate makes no commitment to
him or to the diocese. In the rite itself, the nun first makes her
perpetual profession of vows into the hands of the abbess or
major superior,80 and then affirms before the bishop that she is
resolved to accept solemn consecration as a bride of our Lord
76

See the questions put to the abbess-elect in the examination during the “Blessing of
an Abbess” (no. 15).
77
We leave to one side the complex and sometimes disputed question of the
candidacy of women in secular institutes for the “Rite of Consecration.” See Holland,
“Consecrated Virgins,” 4.
78
For centuries, this consecration was regarded as a “privilege” reserved to certain
orders of nuns, in particular the Benedictines. The rite is now available to all nuns with
solemn vows.
79
Ordo consecrationis virginum, “Praenotanda,” no. 40.
80
See De consecratione virginum professioni coniuncta, no. 61.

ECCLESIAL ROLES UNIQUE TO WOMEN

643

Jesus Christ. The bishop subsequently confers this identity on
her in his prayer of consecration.
Some may point out that if this ecclesial vocation is
committed only to consecrated virgins living either in the world
or in a monastic community, relatively few women actually
possess it. It is important, then, to ask about the ecclesial role of
women religious in apostolic institutes who make perpetual
vows but do not receive the “Rite of Consecration to a Life of
Virginity” at the hands of the bishop. Are they also “consecrated” in some sense, and if so, are they also “icons” of the
Church and “brides of Christ”? 81 Are they too called to make
the mediation of Mary, Virgin, Spouse, and Mother present in
the Church? Those charged with revising the rite initially
considered extending it to women religious with simple vows;
in the end, however, the Congregation for Divine Worship
decided to extend eligibility only to nuns with solemn vows and
to reestablish the vocation of consecrated virginity for women
living in the world.82
B) Women in Religious Institutes Dedicated to the Works of the
Apostolate
The majority of women religious belong to religious
institutes dedicated to the works of the apostolate. The woman
religious with this vocation has a stable, publicly recognized
ecclesial role. She has freely sought admission to a religious
institute in response to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and
has met the objective requirements. She has an episcopal
commission, at least indirectly, by virtue of her membership in
an institute whose charism and constitutions have been
approved either by the diocesan bishop or by the Congregation

81
For more on this, see Jenna Cooper, “Consecrated Virginity and Religious Life,”
Sponsa-Christi (February 26, 2017) (http://sponsa-christi.blogspot.com/2017/02/
consecrated-virginity-and-religious-life.html).
82
See Stegman, Mystically Espoused, 121.

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SARA BUTLER, M.S.B.T., and JENNA COOPER

for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic
Life, and she carries out her ecclesial service in the name of the
Church.83 In this way, her vocation embraces these elements
identified as common to the institutionalized ecclesial roles of
the consecrated virgin and the abbess. But is the role of the
woman religious unique to women?
On the one hand, it would seem that it is not. According to
the Catechism of the Catholic Church, religious life “is distinguished from other forms [of consecrated life] by its liturgical
character, public profession of the evangelical counsels,
fraternal life lived in common, and witness given to the union
of Christ with his Church.”84 It is “lived within institutes
canonically erected by the Church.”85 Religious institutes are
single-sex establishments, even though some are paired with a
brother or sister institute and belong to a religious “family” that
has a common founder and charism. Men and women religious
have the same vocation and the same status in the Church.86
Their religious institutes are governed by the same canons in the
Code of Canon Law, and the norms for the consecrated life
apply equally to them “unless the context or nature of the case
suggests otherwise.”87 Many papal documents and instructions
addressed to religious are intended for both sexes.
On the other hand, the new “Rite of Religious Profession”88
has two parts, one for men and the other for women,89 and this
83
See Sacred Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes, Essential Elements in
the Church’s Teaching on Religious Life as Applied to Institutes Dedicated to Works of
the Apostolate (May 31, 1983), nos. 11-12 and 41.
84
CCC 925.
85
Ibid.
86
The Pontifical Commission charged with preparing the 1983 Code of Canon Law
was careful to uphold the fundamental equality of the sexes regardless of the different
functions and offices of the Christian faithful. See Rose McDermott, New Catholic
Encyclopedia, 2d ed., s.v. WOMAN, CANON LAW ON (14:819-21, at 820).
87
CIC, can. 606. Many male religious, however, are ordained, in which case the laws
pertaining to both consecrated religious and clerics apply to them.
88
In a postconciliar development related to the revision of the “Rite of Consecration
to a Life of Virginity,” the Congregation for Divine Worship composed and published,
for the first time, a “Rite of Religious Profession” that includes a prayer of consecration
in order to solemnize the consecration of all religious, not only nuns, and not only
women. See the Ordo professionis religiosae (1970) (www.archive.org/

ECCLESIAL ROLES UNIQUE TO WOMEN

645

suggests that the woman religious has an ecclesial role unique to
women. The two rituals for final profession have the same
structure; both take place during the Mass, after the gospel, and
both include the litany of the saints, the profession of perpetual
vows, and a prayer of blessing.90 The prayers of blessing,
however, along with several other elements, differ for men and
women.91 Since the religious making final profession are “lay
persons,” in the canonical sense of being nonordained, these
differences have a basis in the complementarity of the sexes.
The “Rite of Religious Profession” is a model or template,
provided to insure the “unity, sobriety, and dignity”92 of the
rituals used in religious institutes to admit candidates and
celebrate their first and final profession. The rite offers several
options, and it is expected that each institute will adapt these to
its own worthy traditions. The text of the rite itself, however,
distinguishes the commitment of men and women religious. For
example, in responding to the celebrant’s initial question,
“What do you ask of God and of his holy Church?” male
religious reply, “We ask for lifelong perseverance in the Lord’s
service and in the proclamation of his Gospel in this religious
family.” Female religious reply, “We ask for perseverance in
following Christ our Bridegroom in this religious community all
the days of our life.”93 In particular, it seems significant that the

details/OPR1970); English translation, Rite of Religious Profession (Washington, D.C.:
The United States Catholic Conference, 1989). For an explanation, see Stegman,
“Mystically Espoused,”126.
89
In this, it is like “The Blessing of Abbots and Abbesses,” but the parts are
distinguished only as the pars prior and the pars altera.
90
This blessing is bestowed by the celebrant of the Eucharist, who need not be a
bishop.
91
In making this case, we extend the consideration given this question in Cooper,
“Consecrated Virginity and Religious Life” by consulting the text of the “Rite of
Profession.”
92
Sacrosanctum Concilium 80.
93
These differences are noted by Edward Foley, O.F.M., Rites of Religious
Profession: Pastoral Introduction and Complete Text (Chicago: Liturgy Training

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SARA BUTLER, M.S.B.T., and JENNA COOPER

solemn blessing for women religious picks up some of the
nuptial themes from the “Rite of Consecration to a Life of
Virginity.”94 It begins as a prayer of thanksgiving to the Father
for the history of salvation; the marital covenants he made with
humanity and Israel; his choice of Mary as mother of our
Redeemer; Christ’s pattern of holiness and his love for his
Bride, the Church; and God’s choice of his daughters “to be
disciples, espoused to him as brides.” It then begs God to send
on them the fire of the Holy Spirit to keep them faithful to
“Christ, their only Bridegroom” and to guard them on their
pilgrimage so that when they reach their goal they might hear
“the voice of their Bridegroom lovingly inviting them to the
wedding feast of heaven.”95 The rite again refers to Christ as the
candidates’ Bridegroom at the presentation of the ring.96 These
nuptial references are found only in the women’s version of the
rite for perpetual profession.97
One may suppose that if women religious who do not have
the privilege of receiving the “Rite of Consecration to a Life of
Virginity” nevertheless choose to adopt the nuptial language
and customs associated with marriage from that tradition, it is
because these confirm their desire to make a total and permanent gift of themselves to Christ in an exclusive and fruitful
spousal relationship. Even if this nuptial theme is not prominent
in the spiritual tradition of their religious institute, women
Publications, 1989). The rites themselves are found in the Appendix of this book as well
as online. See note 88 above.
94
It differs, however, in that the candidate need not be a virgin but may be a widow
or a woman who was divorced or whose marriage was declared null.
95
For an alternative prayer of blessing, see Foley, Rites, 199. This prayer, intended
for women religious, omits the words “bride” and “Bridegroom.” This option seems to
rely on a distinction between virginity (as an end) and celibacy (as the means). See
Sandra M. Schneiders, I.H.M., “Non-Marriage for the Sake of the Kingdom,” in
Widening the Dialogue: Reflection on “Evangelica testificatio” (Washington, D.C.:
Leadership Conference of Women Religious, 1974), 125-97.
96
At the presentation of the ring, the celebrant says: “Receive this ring, for you are
betrothed to the eternal King; keep faith with your Bridegroom so that you may come
to the wedding feast of eternal joy.”
97
According to Foley (Rites, 46), the rite for men emphasizes the active ministerial
dimension of religious life, while the one for women underlines its exemplary, receptive,
nonhierarchical character.

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647

religious are nonetheless publicly identified with gendered titles,
that is, “sisters” or “mothers,” and their ministry—in the diverse forms of women’s religious life—is experienced as
“womanly” and “motherly.”
On these grounds, we can propose that women’s religious
life—which is stable, public, and episcopally commissioned—is
also exclusive to women. Like consecrated virginity, it is a
distinctly feminine state of life. Like the ecclesial service of the
abbess, the ministry of the woman religious manifests her
capacity to be fruitful and “motherly.”
CONCLUSION
When Pope Francis says that women’s status in the Church
would not be advanced by their admission to the ordained
ministry, he means that women contribute not so much by the
functions they perform98 as by their distinctive capacity to
embody the Church’s own identity as Bride, Spouse, and
Mother, and even Mary’s identity.99 In his first address to the
International Union of Major Superiors [of Women], May 8,
2013, he underlined this:
The consecrated are mothers: they must be mothers and not “spinsters”! . . .
This maternity of consecrated life, this fruitfulness is important! May this joy
of spiritual fruitfulness animate your existence. Be mothers, like the images of
the Mother Mary and the Mother Church. You cannot understand Mary

98
Returning from World Youth Day in Rio (July 28, 2013), Pope Francis, in a press
conference, complained that women’s advancement is measured in terms of functions:
“All we say is: they can do this, they can do that, now they are altar servers, now they
do the readings, they are in charge of Caritas. But there is more! . . . profoundly more,
even mystically more” (https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2013/july/
documents/papa-francesco_20130728_gmg-conferenza-stampa.html).
99
This perspective depends, of course, on the conviction that sexual
complementarity is not only physical but also psychological and ontological. Those who
believe it has to do only with reproduction will not recognize or appreciate spiritual
motherhood.

648

SARA BUTLER, M.S.B.T., and JENNA COOPER

without her motherhood; you cannot understand the Church without her
motherhood, and you are icons of Mary and of the Church.100

In his apostolic constitution Vultum Dei Quaerere (2016), Pope
Francis refers to the uniquely feminine character of this ecclesial
role when he urges nuns to make devotion to Christ their Bridegroom central to their lives and to make the mediation of Mary,
Virgin, Spouse, and Mother, present in the Church.101
In response, then, to the question posed by Mary Aquin
O’Neill, we would maintain that there are ecclesial roles and
services exclusive to women, that is, those of consecrated virgins and abbesses. Women religious in apostolic institutes share
these roles in a certain way by reason of their affinity with
consecrated virgins. All of these women are icons of the Church
as Virgin, Spouse, and Mother, and of Mary’s presence in and
to the Church, that complement the ministerial priesthood as
the icon of Jesus’ presence in and to the Church.

100
See http://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2013/may/documents/
papa-francesco_20130508_uisg.html.
101
See Vultum Dei Quaerere, no. 3, as well as nos. 22-26 of Ecclesiae sponsae imago.

GENERAL INDEX TO THE THOMIST
VOLUMES 81-85 (2017-2021)
AUTHORS OF ARTICLES
Bauerschmidt, Frederick Christian, “Liturgy, Word, and Charity in Thomas
Aquinas” ..................................................................... 85 (2021) 555
Brock, Stephen L., “The Specification of Act in St. Thomas: Nonmotivating
Conditions in the Object of Intention” ........................ 83 (2019) 321
Brotherton, Joshua R., “Hope and Hell: The Balthasarian Suspension of
Judgment” ....................................................................81 (2017) 75
, “Trinitarian Suffering and Divine Receptivity after Balthasar”82 (2018)
189
Butler, Sara, M.S.B.T., “Feminist Christology: A New Iconoclasm?”
................................................................................... 83 (2019) 493
Butler, Sara, M.S.B.T., and Jenna Cooper, “Ecclesial Roles Unique to Women:
Some Reflections” ....................................................... 85 (2021) 625
Carl, Brian T., “The Formal Constituent of the Divine Nature in Peter
Ledesma, John of St. Thomas, and Vincent Contenson”
..................................................................................... 82 (2018) 59
Carreño, Juan Eduardo, “‘My Name Is Legion’: The Biblical Episode of
Gerasene in the Light of Thomas Aquinas’s Theory of Angelic
Location”.................................................................... 84 (2020) 233
Casanova, Carlos A., “A Restatement of the Fourth Thomistic-Aristotelian
Way to Prove the Existence of God” ........................... 81 (2017) 361
Casanova, Carlos A., and Ignacio Serrano del Pozo, “An Assessment of the
Being and Operation of Mary’s Marriage” .................... 83 (2019) 37
Cessario, Romanus, O.P., “Sanctified Thought and Affection in Aquinas’s
Teaching on Nature and Grace” .................................. 84 (2020) 467
Cole, Lee M., “Between Actuality and Nonbeing: Prime Matter Revisited”
................................................................................... 84 (2020) 547
Cooper, Jenna, and Sara Butler, M.S.B.T., “Ecclesial Roles Unique to Women:
Some Reflections” ....................................................... 85 (2021) 625
Coughlin, Glen, “The Role of Natural Philosophy in the Beginning of
Metaphysics” .............................................................. 84 (2020) 395
D’Ettore, Domenic, “One Is in the Definition of All: The Renaissance Thomist
Controversy over a “Rule” for Names Said by Analogy”
..................................................................................... 82 (2018) 89
Dahm, Brandon, and Daniel D. De Haan, “Thomas Aquinas on Separated
Souls as Incomplete Human Persons” .......................... 83 (2019) 589
De Haan, Daniel D., “Aquinas on actus essendi and the Second Mode of
Participation” ............................................................. 82 (2018) 573
649

650

AUTHORS OF ARTICLES

De Haan, Daniel D., and Brandon Dahm, “Thomas Aquinas on Separated
Souls as Incomplete Human Persons” .......................... 83 (2019) 589
De Salvo, Michael R., and Roger W. Nutt, “The Debate over Dignitatis
Humanae at Vatican II: The Contribution of Charles Cardinal
Journet”...................................................................... 85 (2021) 175
Di Noia, J. A., O.P., “Not ‘Born Bad’: The Catholic Truth about Original Sin
in a Thomistic Perspective” ......................................... 81 (2017) 345
, “The Teaching of the Second Vatican Council in Current Catholic
Theology”................................................................... 85 (2021) 127
Doolan, Gregory T., “Aquinas on esse subsistens and the Third Mode of
Participation” ............................................................. 82 (2018) 611
Eitel, Adam, “The Protreptic of Summa theologiae I-II, qq. 1-5”
................................................................................... 81 (2017) 183
Enríquez, Teresa, and Francisco J. Romero Carrasquillo, “Interpersonal
Commands and the imperium-praeceptum Debate” ..... 84 (2020) 207
Fisher, Kendall A., “Operation and Actuality in St. Thomas Aquinas’s
Argument for the Subsistence of the Rational Soul”..... 83 (2019) 185
Flannery, Kevin L., S.J., “The Legal and Theological Background of Summa
theologiae II-II, q. 64, a. 7” ......................................... 84 (2020) 509
Gorman, Michael, “Using Models for the Hypostatic Union: Lessons from
Aquinas and Scotus” ................................................... 84 (2020) 103
Haggarty, Joseph, “The Intention and Unity of St. Thomas Aquinas’s
Exposition of Boethius, On the Trinity” ...................... 85 (2021) 227
Hahn, Michael S., “Thomas Aquinas’s Presentation of Christ as Teacher”
..................................................................................... 83 (2019) 59
Hochschild, Joshua P., “Aquinas’s Two Concepts of Analogy and a Complex
Semantics for Naming the Simple God” ...................... 83 (2019) 155
Hofer, Andrew, O.P., “Humbert of Romans on the Papacy before Lyons II
(1274): A Study in Comparison with Thomas Aquinas and Pope
Gregory X’s Extractiones” ............................................ 84 (2020) 51
Hughes, Margaret I., “Does Taste Matter for Thomists?” .......... 81 (2017) 107
Hunter, Justus H., “Rereading Robert Grossteste on the ratio incarnationis:
Deductive Strategies in De cessatione legalium III” ...... 81 (2017) 213
Jensen, Steven J., “Libertarian Free Decision: A Thomistic Account”
................................................................................... 81 (2017) 315
Johnson, Junius, “Unlocking Bonaventure: The Collationes in Hexaëmeron as
Interpretive Key” ........................................................ 83 (2019) 277
Kerr, Gaven, “Design Arguments and the Fifth Way” ................ 82 (2018) 447
Knobel, Angela McKay, “Aquinas and Rights as Constraints” ...... 82 (2018) 37

AUTHORS OF ARTICLES

651

Koritansky, Peter Karl, “Retributive Justice and Natural Law”... 83 (2019) 407
Kristanto, Heribertus Dwi, S.J., “Aquinas on Shame, Virtue, and the Virtuous
Person” ....................................................................... 84 (2020) 263
Ku, John Baptist, O.P., “Divine Innascibility in the Theology of Ss. Gregory
Nazianzen and Thomas Aquinas” .................................. 85 (2021) 57
LaNave, Gregory F., “How Theology Judges the Principles of Other Sciences”
................................................................................... 81 (2017) 567
, “On the Speculative, Practical, or Affective Nature of Theology”
..................................................................................... 85 (2021) 87
Legge, Dominic, O.P., “Incarnate de Spiritu Sancto: Aquinas on the Holy
Spirit and Christ’s Conception” .................................. 84 (2020) 173
Lévy, Antoine, O.P., “Can Palamism Be Accommodated to the Western
Theological Tradition? A Few Considerations on ‘The Real
Problem’” ................................................................... 84 (2020) 625
Lusvardi, Anthony R., S.J., “A Presumptuous Age? The Sin of Presumption in
the Summa theologiae as a Key to Understanding the ‘Age of
Entitlement’” .............................................................. 81 (2017) 247
Macdonald, Paul A., Jr., “Grounding Human Dignity and Rights: A Thomistic
Reply to Wolterstorff” .................................................... 82 (2018) 1
Mansini, Guy, O.S.B., “The Sacramentality of the Diaconate: Council of
Trent, Second Vatican Council, and Postconciliar Magisterium”
................................................................................... 85 (2021) 511
Marshall, Bruce D., “‘Tolle me et redime te’: Anselm on the Justice and Mercy
of God” ...................................................................... 81 (2017) 161
McCormick, William, S.J.“‘The Two Heads of the Eagle’: Aquinas and
Rousseau on Civil Religion” ........................................ 81 (2017) 539
Meinert, John M., “Divine Exemplarity, Virtue, and Theodicy in Aquinas”
................................................................................... 82 (2018) 235
Michalson, Gordon E., Jr., “The ‘Coincidence of the Christian and the
Reasonable’: Barth’s Reading of Kant’s Religious Thought”
................................................................................... 83 (2019) 213
Mitchell, Jason, “Aquinas on esse commune and the First Mode of
Participation” ............................................................. 82 (2018) 543
Napier, Stephen, “The Neuroscience of Moral Judgment and Aquinas on
Moral Expertise” .......................................................... 81 (2017) 31
Nevitt, Turner C., “How to Be an Analytic Existential Thomist”
................................................................................... 82 (2018) 321
Nguyen, Doyen, “Why the Thomistic Defense of ‘Brain Death’ Is Not
Thomistic: An Analysis from the Perspectives of Classical Philosophy
and Contemporary Biophilosophy” ............................. 82 (2018) 407

652

AUTHORS OF ARTICLES

Nutt, Roger W., and Michael R. De Salvo, “The Debate over Dignitatis
Humanae at Vatican II: The Contribution of Charles Cardinal
Journet”...................................................................... 85 (2021) 175
O’Callaghan, Paul, “That All May Be Saved” ............................. 84 (2020) 293
Osborne, Thomas M., Jr., “Which Essence Is Brought into Being by the
Existential Act?” ......................................................... 81 (2017) 471
Peters, Catherine, “Common by Causality and Common by Predication:
Avicenna and Aquinas on a Twofold Division of Principles”
................................................................................... 85 (2021) 295
Pine, Gregory, O.P., “Magnanimity and Humility according to St. Thomas
Aquinas” ..................................................................... 82 (2018) 247
Porter, Nicholas, “Aquinas and the Theory of the Empyrean Heaven”
................................................................................... 85 (2021) 443
Reichberg, Gregory M., “Scholastic Arguments for and against Religious
Freedom” ....................................................................... 84 (2020) 1
Robertson, Charles, “Lawrence Dewan, Legal Obligation, and the New
Natural Law” .............................................................. 83 (2019) 437
Rogers, Paul M., “René Girard and Thomas Aquinas in Dialogue on the
Natural-Law Precept to Sacrifice” ............................... 82 (2018) 497
Romero Carrasquillo, Francisco J., and Teresa Enríquez, “Interpersonal
Commands and the imperium-praeceptum Debate” ..... 84 (2020) 207
Roniger, Scott, “Natural Law and Friendship with God” ........... 83 (2019) 237
Rooney, James Dominic, O.P., “Survivalism, Suitably Modified”
................................................................................... 85 (2021) 349
Root, Michael, “The Christological Character of the Beatific Vision: Hans
Boersma’s Seeing God”................................................ 84 (2020) 127
Roszak, Piotr, “Between Wisdom and Sluggishness: Thomas Aquinas on the
Elderly” ........................................................................ 83 (2019) 89
, “How Should Christians Respond to Scandal? Replies from St. Thomas
Aquinas” ..................................................................... 85 (2021) 411
Rubin, Michael J., “The Places of ‘Thing’ and ‘Something’ in Aquinas’s Order
of the Transcendentals” .............................................. 81 (2017) 395
Scherz, Paul, “Prudence, Precaution, and Uncertainty: Assessing the Health
Benefits and Ecological Risks of Gene Drive Technology Using the
Quasi-Integral Parts of Prudence” ............................... 81 (2017) 507
Schumacher, Michele M., “The Reunification of Naturalism and Personalism
in the Conjugal Act: A Contribution of Servais Pinckaers”
................................................................................... 84 (2020) 435

AUTHORS OF ARTICLES

653

, “The Natural and Sacramental Significance of Human Sexuality and
the Question of Admitting Women to the Ordained Diaconate”
................................................................................... 85 (2021) 581
Serrano del Pozo, Ignacio, and Carlos A. Casanova, “An Assessment of the
Being and Operation of Mary’s Marriage” .................... 83 (2019) 37
Sirilla, Michael G., “Saint Thomas’s Theology of the Diaconate”
................................................................................... 85 (2021) 539
Spencer, Mark K., “Beauty, First and Last of All the Transcendentals:
Givenness and Aesthetic, Spiritual Perception in Thomism and JeanLuc Marion” .............................................................. 82 (2018) 157
Spiering, Jamie Anne, “‘The Divine Goodness Could Be Manifest through
Other Creatures and Another Order’: The Source of Aquinas’s
Convictions about Divine Freedom” ............................... 83 (2019) 1
Turner, Barrett H., “The Law of Nations as Developing Moral Law: Two
Interpretations of ius gentium in the Thomistic Tradition”
................................................................................... 84 (2020) 339
Van Nieuwenhove, Rik, “‘Recipientes per contemplationem, tradentes per
actionem’: The Relation between the Contemplative and Active Lives
according to Thomas Aquinas” ....................................... 81 (2017) 1
, “Saint Thomas Aquinas on Salvation, Making Satisfaction, and the
Restoration of Friendship with God” .......................... 83 (2019) 521
Vater, Carl A., “The Role of virtus formativa in St. Thomas Aquinas’s Account
of Embryogenesis” ...................................................... 82 (2018) 113
Wahl, Michael A., “‘To Give Us an Example of Making Progress’: Aquinas on
the Perfection and Growth of Christ’s Virtue” ............ 84 (2020) 585
Waldorf, Steven, “The Historical Development of Cajetan’s Philosophy of
Pure Nature and Its Origins in the Thought of John Capreolus”
....................................................................................... 85 (2021) 1
Washburn, Christian D., “Capital Punishment and the Infallibility of the
Ordinary and Universal Magisterium” ......................... 82 (2018) 353
, “Three Sixteenth-Century Thomist Solutions to the Problem of a
Heretical Pope: Cajetan, Cano, and Bellarmine” ......... 83 (2019) 547
Wilkins, Jeremy D., “The Spiration of Love in God according to Aquinas and
His Interpreters” ......................................................... 83 (2019) 357
, “Thomism as a Tradition of Understanding” .................. 85 (2021) 247
Wu, Tianyue, “Aquinas on Human Personhood and Dignity” .... 85 (2021) 377

TERMS IN TITLES
ACT/ACTUS
Brock, Stephen L., “The Specification of Act in St. Thomas:
Nonmotivating Conditions in the Object of Intention”
..................................................................... 83 (2019) 321
De Haan, Daniel D., “Aquinas on actus essendi and the Second
Mode of Participation” ................................. 82 (2018) 573
Osborne, Thomas M., Jr., “Which Essence Is Brought into Being by
the Existential Act?” ..................................... 81 (2017) 471
Schumacher, Michele M., “The Reunification of Naturalism and
Personalism in the Conjugal Act: A Contribution of Servais
Pinckaers” .................................................... 84 (2020) 435

ACTIVE
Van Nieuwenhove, Rik, “‘Recipientes per contemplationem,
tradentes per actionem’: The Relation between the
Contemplative and Active Lives according to Thomas
Aquinas”........................................................... 81 (2017) 1

ACTUALITY
Cole, Lee M., “Between Actuality and Nonbeing: Prime Matter
Revisited” ..................................................... 84 (2020) 547
Fisher, Kendall A., “Operation and Actuality in St. Thomas Aquinas’s
Argument for the Subsistence of the Rational Soul”
..................................................................... 83 (2019) 185

AESTHETIC
Spencer, Mark K., “Beauty, First and Last of All the Transcendentals:
Givenness and Aesthetic, Spiritual Perception in Thomism
and Jean-Luc Marion” ................................. 82 (2018) 157

AFFFECTION/AFFECTIVE
Cessario, Romanus, O.P., “Sanctified Thought and Affection in
Aquinas’s Teaching on Nature and Grace” .... 84 (2020) 467
LaNave, Gregory F., “On the Speculative, Practical, or Affective
Nature of Theology” ...................................... 85 (2021) 87

ANALOGY
D’Ettore, Domenic, “One Is in the Definition of All: The
Renaissance Thomist Controversy over a “Rule” for Names
Said by Analogy” ............................................ 82 (2018) 89
Hochschild, Joshua P., “Aquinas’s Two Concepts of Analogy and a
Complex Semantics for Naming the Simple God”
..................................................................... 83 (2019) 155

654

TERMS IN TITLES

655

ANALYTIC
Nevitt, Turner C., “How to Be an Analytic Existential Thomist”
..................................................................... 82 (2018) 321

ANGELIC
Carreño, Juan Eduardo, “‘My Name Is Legion’: The Biblical Episode
of Gerasene in the Light of Thomas Aquinas’s Theory of
Angelic Location” ......................................... 84 (2020) 233

ARISTOTELIAN
Casanova, Carlos A., “A Restatement of the Fourth ThomisticAristotelian Way to Prove the Existence of God”
..................................................................... 81 (2017) 361

BEATIFIC VISION
Root, Michael, “The Christological Character of the Beatific Vision:
Hans Boersma’s Seeing God” ........................ 84 (2020) 127

BEAUTY
Spencer, Mark K., “Beauty, First and Last of All the Transcendentals:
Givenness and Aesthetic, Spiritual Perception in Thomism
and Jean-Luc Marion” .................................. 82 (2018) 157

BEING
Casanova, Carlos A., and Ignacio Serrano del Pozo, “An Assessment
of the Being and Operation of Mary’s Marriage”
....................................................................... 83 (2019) 37
Osborne, Thomas M., Jr., “Which Essence Is Brought into Being by
the Existential Act?” ..................................... 81 (2017) 471

BIBLE/BIBLICAL
Carreño, Juan Eduardo, “‘My Name Is Legion’: The Biblical Episode
of Gerasene in the Light of Thomas Aquinas’s Theory of
Angelic Location” ......................................... 84 (2020) 233

BIOPHILOSOPHY
Nguyen, Doyen, “Why the Thomistic Defense of ‘Brain Death’ Is
Not Thomistic: An Analysis from the Perspectives of
Classical Philosophy and Contemporary Biophilosophy”
..................................................................... 82 (2018) 407

BRAIN DEATH
Nguyen, Doyen, “Why the Thomistic Defense of ‘Brain Death’ Is
Not Thomistic: An Analysis from the Perspectives of
Classical Philosophy and Contemporary Biophilosophy”
..................................................................... 82 (2018) 407

656

TERMS IN TITLES

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT
Washburn, Christian D., “Capital Punishment and the Infallibility of
the Ordinary and Universal Magisterium” ..... 82 (2018) 353

CAUSALITY
Peters, Catherine, “Common by Causality and Common by
Predication: Avicenna and Aquinas on a Twofold Division
of Principles” ................................................ 85 (2021) 295

CHARITY
Bauerschmidt, Frederick Christian, “Liturgy, Word, and Charity in
Thomas Aquinas” ......................................... 85 (2021) 555

CHRIST/CHRISTOLOGY/CHRISTOLOGICAL
Butler, Sara, M.S.B.T., “Feminist Christology: A New Iconoclasm?”
..................................................................... 83 (2019) 493
Hahn, Michael S., “Thomas Aquinas’s Presentation of Christ as
Teacher” ........................................................ 83 (2019) 59
Legge, Dominic, O.P., “Incarnate de Spiritu Sancto: Aquinas on the
Holy Spirit and Christ’s Conception” ........... 84 (2020) 173
Root, Michael, “The Christological Character of the Beatific Vision:
Hans Boersma’s Seeing God” ........................ 84 (2020) 127
Wahl, Michael A., “‘To Give Us an Example of Making Progress’:
Aquinas on the Perfection and Growth of Christ’s Virtue”
..................................................................... 84 (2020) 585

CHRISTIAN
Michalson, Gordon E., Jr., “The ‘Coincidence of the Christian and
the Reasonable’: Barth’s Reading of Kant’s Religious
Thought”...................................................... 83 (2019) 213
Roszak, Piotr, “How Should Christians Respond to Scandal? Replies
from St. Thomas Aquinas” ............................ 85 (2021) 411

CLASSICAL
Nguyen, Doyen, “Why the Thomistic Defense of ‘Brain Death’ Is
Not Thomistic: An Analysis from the Perspectives of
Classical Philosophy and Contemporary Biophilosophy”
..................................................................... 82 (2018) 407

COMMANDS
Enríquez, Teresa, and Francisco J. Romero Carrasquillo,
“Interpersonal Commands and the imperium-praeceptum
Debate” ........................................................ 84 (2020) 207

CONCEPTION
Legge, Dominic, O.P., “Incarnate de Spiritu Sancto: Aquinas on the
Holy Spirit and Christ’s Conception” ........... 84 (2020) 173

TERMS IN TITLES

657

CONJUGAL
Schumacher, Michele M., “The Reunification of Naturalism and
Personalism in the Conjugal Act: A Contribution of Servais
Pinckaers” .................................................... 84 (2020) 435

CONTEMPLATIVE
Van Nieuwenhove, Rik, “‘Recipientes per contemplationem,
tradentes per actionem’: The Relation between the
Contemplative and Active Lives according to Thomas
Aquinas”........................................................... 81 (2017) 1

COUNCIL
Di Noia, J. Augustine, O.P., “The Teaching of the Second Vatican
Council in Current Catholic Theology” ........ 85 (2021) 127
Mansini, Guy, O.S.B., “The Sacramentality of the Diaconate:
Council of Trent, Second Vatican Council, and
Postconciliar Magisterium” ........................... 85 (2021) 511

CREATURE
Spiering, Jamie Anne, “‘The Divine Goodness Could Be Manifest
through Other Creatures and Another Order’: The Source
of Aquinas’s Convictions about Divine Freedom”
......................................................................... 83 (2019) 1

DESIGN
Kerr, Gaven, “Design Arguments and the Fifth Way” .. 82 (2018) 447

DEVELOPMENT
Waldorf, Steven, “The Historical Development of Cajetan’s
Philosophy of Pure Nature and Its Origins in the Thought
of John Capreolus” ........................................... 85 (2021) 1

DIACONATE
Mansini, Guy, O.S.B., “The Sacramentality of the Diaconate:
Council of Trent, Second Vatican Council, and
Postconciliar Magisterium” ........................... 85 (2021) 511
Schumacher, Michele M., “The Natural and Sacramental Significance
of Human Sexuality and the Question of Admitting Women
to the Ordained Diaconate” .......................... 85 (2021) 581
Sirilla, Michael G., “Saint Thomas’s Theology of the Diaconate”
..................................................................... 85 (2021) 539

DIGNITATIS HUMANAE
De Salvo, Michael R., and Roger W. Nutt, “The Debate over
Dignitatis Humanae at Vatican II: The Contribution of
Charles Cardinal Journet” ............................ 85 (2021) 175

658

TERMS IN TITLES

DIGNITY
Macdonald, Paul A., Jr., “Grounding Human Dignity and Rights: A
Thomistic Reply to Wolterstorff” ..................... 82 (2018) 1
Wu, Tianyue, “Aquinas on Human Personhood and Dignity”
..................................................................... 85 (2021) 377

DIVINE
Brotherton, Joshua R., “Trinitarian Suffering and Divine Receptivity
after Balthasar” ............................................. 82 (2018) 189
Carl, Brian T., “The Formal Constituent of the Divine Nature in
Peter Ledesma, John of St. Thomas, and Vincent
Contenson” .................................................... 82 (2018) 59
Meinert, John M., “Divine Exemplarity, Virtue, and Theodicy in
Aquinas”....................................................... 82 (2018) 235
Spiering, Jamie Anne, “‘The Divine Goodness Could Be Manifest
through Other Creatures and Another Order’: The Source
of Aquinas’s Convictions about Divine Freedom”
......................................................................... 83 (2019) 1

ECCLESIAL
Butler, Sara, M.S.B.T., and Jenna Cooper, “Ecclesial Roles Unique to
Women: Some Reflections” .......................... 85 (2021) 625

ECOLOGICAL
Scherz, Paul, “Prudence, Precaution, and Uncertainty: Assessing the
Health Benefits and Ecological Risks of Gene Drive
Technology Using the Quasi-Integral Parts of Prudence”
..................................................................... 81 (2017) 507

ELDERLY
Roszak, Piotr, “Between Wisdom and Sluggishness: Thomas Aquinas
on the Elderly” ............................................... 83 (2019) 89

EMBRYOGENESIS
Vater, Carl A., “The Role of virtus formativa in St. Thomas
Aquinas’s Account of Embryogenesis”........... 82 (2018) 113

EMPYREAN
Porter, Nicholas, “Aquinas and the Theory of the Empyrean
Heaven” ....................................................... 85 (2021) 443

ENTITLEMENT
Lusvardi, Anthony R., S.J., “A Presumptuous Age? The Sin of
Presumption in the Summa theologiae as a Key to
Understanding the ‘Age of Entitlement’” ....... 81 (2017) 247

TERMS IN TITLES

659

ESSE
Doolan, Gregory T., “Aquinas on esse subsistens and the Third Mode
of Participation” ........................................... 82 (2018) 611
Mitchell, Jason, “Aquinas on esse commune and the First Mode of
Participation” ............................................... 82 (2018) 543

ESSENCE
Osborne, Thomas M., Jr., “Which Essence Is Brought into Being by
the Existential Act?” ..................................... 81 (2017) 471

EXEMPLARITY
Meinert, John M., “Divine Exemplarity, Virtue, and Theodicy in
Aquinas”....................................................... 82 (2018) 235

EXISTENCE/EXISTENTIAL
Casanova, Carlos A., “A Restatement of the Fourth ThomisticAristotelian Way to Prove the Existence of God”
..................................................................... 81 (2017) 361
Nevitt, Turner C., “How to Be an Analytic Existential Thomist”
..................................................................... 82 (2018) 321
Osborne, Thomas M., Jr., “Which Essence Is Brought into Being by
the Existential Act?” ..................................... 81 (2017) 471

FEMINIST
Butler, Sara, M.S.B.T., “Feminist Christology: A New Iconoclasm?”
..................................................................... 83 (2019) 493

FREE/FREEDOM
Jensen, Steven J., “Libertarian Free Decision: A Thomistic Account”
..................................................................... 81 (2017) 315
Reichberg, Gregory M., “Scholastic Arguments for and against
Religious Freedom” .......................................... 84 (2020) 1
Spiering, Jamie Anne, “‘The Divine Goodness Could Be Manifest
through Other Creatures and Another Order’: The Source
of Aquinas’s Convictions about Divine Freedom”
......................................................................... 83 (2019) 1

FRIENDSHIP
Roniger, Scott, “Natural Law and Friendship with God”
..................................................................... 83 (2019) 237
Van Nieuwenhove, Rik, “Saint Thomas Aquinas on Salvation,
Making Satisfaction, and the Restoration of Friendship with
God” ............................................................ 83 (2019) 521

GOD
Casanova, Carlos A., “A Restatement of the Fourth ThomisticAristotelian Way to Prove the Existence of God”
..................................................................... 81 (2017) 361

660

TERMS IN TITLES

Hochschild, Joshua P., “Aquinas’s Two Concepts of Analogy and a
Complex Semantics for Naming the Simple God”
..................................................................... 83 (2019) 155
Marshall, Bruce D., “‘Tolle me et redime te’: Anselm on the Justice
and Mercy of God” ...................................... 81 (2017) 161
Roniger, Scott, “Natural Law and Friendship with God”
..................................................................... 83 (2019) 237
Root, Michael, “The Christological Character of the Beatific Vision:
Hans Boersma’s Seeing God” ........................ 84 (2020) 127
Van Nieuwenhove, Rik, “Saint Thomas Aquinas on Salvation,
Making Satisfaction, and the Restoration of Friendship with
God” ............................................................ 83 (2019) 521
Wilkins, Jeremy D., “The Spiration of Love in God according to
Aquinas and His Interpreters” ....................... 83 (2019) 357

GOODNESS
Spiering, Jamie Anne, “‘The Divine Goodness Could Be Manifest
through Other Creatures and Another Order’: The Source
of Aquinas’s Convictions about Divine Freedom”
......................................................................... 83 (2019) 1

GRACE
Cessario, Romanus, O.P., “Sanctified Thought and Affection in
Aquinas’s Teaching on Nature and Grace” .... 84 (2020) 467

HEALTH
Scherz, Paul, “Prudence, Precaution, and Uncertainty: Assessing the
Health Benefits and Ecological Risks of Gene Drive
Technology Using the Quasi-Integral Parts of Prudence”
..................................................................... 81 (2017) 507

HEAVEN
Porter, Nicholas, “Aquinas and the Theory of the Empyrean
Heaven” ....................................................... 85 (2021) 443

HELL
Brotherton, Joshua R., “Hope and Hell: The Balthasarian Suspension
of Judgment” .................................................. 81 (2017) 75

HERETICAL
Washburn, Christian D., “Three Sixteenth-Century Thomist
Solutions to the Problem of a Heretical Pope: Cajetan,
Cano, and Bellarmine” ................................. 83 (2019) 547

HOLY SPIRIT
Legge, Dominic, O.P., “Incarnate de Spiritu Sancto: Aquinas on the
Holy Spirit and Christ’s Conception” ........... 84 (2020) 173

TERMS IN TITLES

661

HOPE
Brotherton, Joshua R., “Hope and Hell: The Balthasarian Suspension
of Judgment” .................................................. 81 (2017) 75

HUMAN
Dahm, Brandon, and Daniel D. De Haan, “Thomas Aquinas on
Separated Souls as Incomplete Human Persons”
..................................................................... 83 (2019) 589
Macdonald, Paul A., Jr., “Grounding Human Dignity and Rights: A
Thomistic Reply to Wolterstorff” ..................... 82 (2018) 1
Schumacher, Michele M., “The Natural and Sacramental Significance
of Human Sexuality and the Question of Admitting Women
to the Ordained Diaconate” .......................... 85 (2021) 581
Wu, Tianyue, “Aquinas on Human Personhood and Dignity”
..................................................................... 85 (2021) 377

HUMILITY
Pine, Gregory, O.P., “Magnanimity and Humility according to St.
Thomas Aquinas” ......................................... 82 (2018) 247

HYPOSTATIC UNION
Gorman, Michael, “Using Models for the Hypostatic Union: Lessons
from Aquinas and Scotus”............................. 84 (2020) 103

ICONOCLASM
Butler, Sara, M.S.B.T., “Feminist Christology: A New Iconoclasm?”
..................................................................... 83 (2019) 493

INCARNATION
Hunter, Justus H., “Rereading Robert Grossteste on the ratio
incarnationis: Deductive Strategies in De cessatione
legalium III” ................................................. 81 (2017) 213

INFALLIBILITY
Washburn, Christian D., “Capital Punishment and the Infallibility of
the Ordinary and Universal Magisterium” ..... 82 (2018) 353

INNASCIBILITY
Ku, John Baptist, O.P., “Divine Innascibility in the Theology of Ss.
Gregory Nazianzen and Thomas Aquinas” ...... 85 (2021) 57

INTENTION
Brock, Stephen L., “The Specification of Act in St. Thomas:
Nonmotivating Conditions in the Object of Intention”
..................................................................... 83 (2019) 321
Haggarty, Joseph, “The Intention and Unity of St. Thomas Aquinas’s
Exposition of Boethius, On the Trinity” ........ 85 (2021) 227

662

TERMS IN TITLES

JUSTICE
Koritansky, Peter Karl, “Retributive Justice and Natural Law”
..................................................................... 83 (2019) 407
Marshall, Bruce D., “‘Tolle me et redime te’: Anselm on the Justice
and Mercy of God” ...................................... 81 (2017) 161

LAW
Koritansky, Peter Karl, “Retributive Justice and Natural Law”
..................................................................... 83 (2019) 407
Robertson, Charles, “Lawrence Dewan, Legal Obligation, and the
New Natural Law” ....................................... 83 (2019) 437
Rogers, Paul M., “René Girard and Thomas Aquinas in Dialogue on
the Natural-Law Precept to Sacrifice” ........... 82 (2018) 497
Roniger, Scott, “Natural Law and Friendship with God”
..................................................................... 83 (2019) 237
Turner, Barrett H., “The Law of Nations as Developing Moral Law:
Two Interpretations of ius gentium in the Thomistic
Tradition” .................................................... 84 (2020) 339

LEGAL
Flannery, Kevin L., S.J., “The Legal and Theological Background of
Summa theologiae II-II, q. 64, a. 7” .............. 84 (2020) 509
Robertson, Charles, “Lawrence Dewan, Legal Obligation, and the
New Natural Law” ....................................... 83 (2019) 437

LIBERTARIAN
Jensen, Steven J., “Libertarian Free Decision: A Thomistic Account”
..................................................................... 81 (2017) 315

LITURGY
Bauerschmidt, Frederick Christian, “Liturgy, Word, and Charity in
Thomas Aquinas” ......................................... 85 (2021) 555

LOVE
Wilkins, Jeremy D., “The Spiration of Love in God according to
Aquinas and His Interpreters” ....................... 83 (2019) 357

MAGISTERIUM
Mansini, Guy, O.S.B., “The Sacramentality of the Diaconate:
Council of Trent, Second Vatican Council, and
Postconciliar Magisterium” ........................... 85 (2021) 511
Washburn, Christian D., “Capital Punishment and the Infallibility of
the Ordinary and Universal Magisterium” ..... 82 (2018) 353

MAGNANIMITY
Pine, Gregory, O.P., “Magnanimity and Humility according to St.
Thomas Aquinas” ......................................... 82 (2018) 247

TERMS IN TITLES

663

MARRIAGE
Casanova, Carlos A., and Ignacio Serrano del Pozo, “An Assessment
of the Being and Operation of Mary’s Marriage”
....................................................................... 83 (2019) 37

MARY
Casanova, Carlos A., and Ignacio Serrano del Pozo, “An Assessment
of the Being and Operation of Mary’s Marriage”
....................................................................... 83 (2019) 37

MATTER
Cole, Lee M., “Between Actuality and Nonbeing: Prime Matter
Revisited” ..................................................... 84 (2020) 547

MERCY
Marshall, Bruce D., “‘Tolle me et redime te’: Anselm on the Justice
and Mercy of God” ...................................... 81 (2017) 161

METAPHYSICS
Coughlin, Glen, “The Role of Natural Philosophy in the Beginning
of Metaphysics” ............................................ 84 (2020) 395

MODELS
Gorman, Michael, “Using Models for the Hypostatic Union: Lessons
from Aquinas and Scotus”............................. 84 (2020) 103

MORAL
Napier, Stephen, “The Neuroscience of Moral Judgment and
Aquinas on Moral Expertise” .......................... 81 (2017) 31
Turner, Barrett H., “The Law of Nations as Developing Moral Law:
Two Interpretations of ius gentium in the Thomistic
Tradition” .................................................... 84 (2020) 339

NATURAL/NATURALISM
Coughlin, Glen, “The Role of Natural Philosophy in the Beginning
of Metaphysics” ............................................ 84 (2020) 395
Schumacher, Michele M., “The Reunification of Naturalism and
Personalism in the Conjugal Act: A Contribution of Servais
Pinckaers” .................................................... 84 (2020) 435
, “The Natural and Sacramental Significance of Human
Sexuality and the Question of Admitting Women to the
Ordained Diaconate” .................................... 85 (2021) 581

NATURE
Carl, Brian T., “The Formal Constituent of the Divine Nature in
Peter Ledesma, John of St. Thomas, and Vincent
Contenson” .................................................... 82 (2018) 59

664

TERMS IN TITLES

Cessario, Romanus, O.P., “Sanctified Thought and Affection in
Aquinas’s Teaching on Nature and Grace” .... 84 (2020) 467
Waldorf, Steven, “The Historical Development of Cajetan’s
Philosophy of Pure Nature and Its Origins in the Thought
of John Capreolus” ........................................... 85 (2021) 1

NEUROSCIENCE
Napier, Stephen, “The Neuroscience of Moral Judgment and
Aquinas on Moral Expertise” .......................... 81 (2017) 31

NONBEING
Cole, Lee M., “Between Actuality and Nonbeing: Prime Matter
Revisited” ..................................................... 84 (2020) 547

OPERATION
Casanova, Carlos A., and Ignacio Serrano del Pozo, “An Assessment
of the Being and Operation of Mary’s Marriage”
....................................................................... 83 (2019) 37
Fisher, Kendall A., “Operation and Actuality in St. Thomas Aquinas’s
Argument for the Subsistence of the Rational Soul”
..................................................................... 83 (2019) 185

ORIGINAL SIN
Di Noia, J. A., O.P., “Not ‘Born Bad’: The Catholic Truth about
Original Sin in a Thomistic Perspective” ....... 81 (2017) 345

PALAMISM
Lévy, Antoine, O.P., “Can Palamism Be Accommodated to the
Western Theological Tradition? A Few Considerations on
‘The Real Problem’” ..................................... 84 (2020) 625

PAPACY
Hofer, Andrew, O.P., “Humbert of Romans on the Papacy before
Lyons II (1274): A Study in Comparison with Thomas
Aquinas and Pope Gregory X’s Extractiones” .. 84 (2020) 51

PARTICIPATION
De Haan, Daniel D., “Aquinas on actus essendi and the Second
Mode of Participation” ................................. 82 (2018) 573
Doolan, Gregory T., “Aquinas on esse subsistens and the Third Mode
of Participation” ........................................... 82 (2018) 611
Mitchell, Jason, “Aquinas on esse commune and the First Mode of
Participation” ............................................... 82 (2018) 543

PERCEPTION
Spencer, Mark K., “Beauty, First and Last of All the Transcendentals:
Givenness and Aesthetic, Spiritual Perception in Thomism
and Jean-Luc Marion” ................................. 82 (2018) 157

TERMS IN TITLES

665

PERFECTION
Wahl, Michael A., “‘To Give Us an Example of Making Progress’:
Aquinas on the Perfection and Growth of Christ’s Virtue”
..................................................................... 84 (2020) 585

PERSON/PERSONHOOD/PERSONALISM
Dahm, Brandon, and Daniel D. De Haan, “Thomas Aquinas on
Separated Souls as Incomplete Human Persons”
..................................................................... 83 (2019) 589
Kristanto, Heribertus Dwi, S.J., “Aquinas on Shame, Virtue, and the
Virtuous Person” .......................................... 84 (2020) 263
Schumacher, Michele M., “The Reunification of Naturalism and
Personalism in the Conjugal Act: A Contribution of Servais
Pinckaers” .................................................... 84 (2020) 435
Wu, Tianyue, “Aquinas on Human Personhood and Dignity”
..................................................................... 85 (2021) 377

PHILOSOPHY
Coughlin, Glen, “The Role of Natural Philosophy in the Beginning
of Metaphysics” ............................................ 84 (2020) 395
Waldorf, Steven, “The Historical Development of Cajetan’s
Philosophy of Pure Nature and Its Origins in the Thought
of John Capreolus” ........................................... 85 (2021) 1

POPE
Washburn, Christian D., “Three Sixteenth-Century Thomist
Solutions to the Problem of a Heretical Pope: Cajetan,
Cano, and Bellarmine” ................................. 83 (2019) 547

PRECAUTION
Scherz, Paul, “Prudence, Precaution, and Uncertainty: Assessing the
Health Benefits and Ecological Risks of Gene Drive
Technology Using the Quasi-Integral Parts of Prudence”
..................................................................... 81 (2017) 507

PRECEPT
Rogers, Paul M., “René Girard and Thomas Aquinas in Dialogue on
the Natural-Law Precept to Sacrifice” ........... 82 (2018) 497

PREDICATION
Peters, Catherine, “Common by Causality and Common by
Predication: Avicenna and Aquinas on a Twofold Division
of Principles” ................................................ 85 (2021) 295

PRESUMPTION
Lusvardi, Anthony R., S.J., “A Presumptuous Age? The Sin of
Presumption in the Summa theologiae as a Key to
Understanding the ‘Age of Entitlement’” ....... 81 (2017) 247

666

TERMS IN TITLES

PRINCIPLES
LaNave, Gregory F., “How Theology Judges the Principles of Other
Sciences” ..................................................... 81 (2017) 567
Peters, Catherine, “Common by Causality and Common by
Predication: Avicenna and Aquinas on a Twofold Division
of Principles” ................................................ 85 (2021) 295

PROTREPTIC
Eitel, Adam, “The Protreptic of Summa theologiae I-II, qq. 1-5”
..................................................................... 81 (2017) 183

PRUDENCE
Scherz, Paul, “Prudence, Precaution, and Uncertainty: Assessing the
Health Benefits and Ecological Risks of Gene Drive
Technology Using the Quasi-Integral Parts of Prudence”
..................................................................... 81 (2017) 507

RECEPTIVITY
Brotherton, Joshua R., “Trinitarian Suffering and Divine Receptivity
after Balthasar” ............................................. 82 (2018) 189

RELIGION/RELIGIOUS
McCormick, William, S.J.“‘The Two Heads of the Eagle’: Aquinas
and Rousseau on Civil Religion” ................... 81 (2017) 539
Michalson, Gordon E., Jr., “The ‘Coincidence of the Christian and
the Reasonable’: Barth’s Reading of Kant’s Religious
Thought”...................................................... 83 (2019) 213
Reichberg, Gregory M., “Scholastic Arguments for and against
Religious Freedom” .......................................... 84 (2020) 1

RENAISSANCE
D’Ettore, Domenic, “One Is in the Definition of All: The
Renaissance Thomist Controversy over a “Rule” for Names
Said by Analogy” ............................................ 82 (2018) 89

RETRIBUTION/RETRIBUTIVE
Koritansky, Peter Karl, “Retributive Justice and Natural Law”
..................................................................... 83 (2019) 407

RIGHTS
Knobel, Angela McKay, “Aquinas and Rights as Constraints”
....................................................................... 82 (2018) 37
Macdonald, Paul A., Jr., “Grounding Human Dignity and Rights: A
Thomistic Reply to Wolterstorff” ..................... 82 (2018) 1

TERMS IN TITLES

667

SACRAMENTAL/SACRAMENTALITY
Mansini, Guy, O.S.B., “The Sacramentality of the Diaconate:
Council of Trent, Second Vatican Council, and
Postconciliar Magisterium” ........................... 85 (2021) 511
Schumacher, Michele M., “The Natural and Sacramental Significance
of Human Sexuality and the Question of Admitting Women
to the Ordained Diaconate” .......................... 85 (2021) 581

SACRIFICE
Rogers, Paul M., “René Girard and Thomas Aquinas in Dialogue on
the Natural-Law Precept to Sacrifice” ........... 82 (2018) 497

SALVATION
Van Nieuwenhove, Rik, “Saint Thomas Aquinas on Salvation,
Making Satisfaction, and the Restoration of Friendship with
God” ............................................................ 83 (2019) 521

SATISFACTION
Van Nieuwenhove, Rik, “Saint Thomas Aquinas on Salvation,
Making Satisfaction, and the Restoration of Friendship with
God” ............................................................ 83 (2019) 521

SCANDAL
Roszak, Piotr, “How Should Christians Respond to Scandal? Replies
from St. Thomas Aquinas” ............................ 85 (2021) 411

SCHOLASTIC
Reichberg, Gregory M., “Scholastic Arguments for and against
Religious Freedom” .......................................... 84 (2020) 1

SEMANTICS
Hochschild, Joshua P., “Aquinas’s Two Concepts of Analogy and a
Complex Semantics for Naming the Simple God”
..................................................................... 83 (2019) 155

SEXUALITY
Schumacher, Michele M., “The Natural and Sacramental Significance
of Human Sexuality and the Question of Admitting Women
to the Ordained Diaconate” .......................... 85 (2021) 581

SHAME
Kristanto, Heribertus Dwi, S.J., “Aquinas on Shame, Virtue, and the
Virtuous Person” .......................................... 84 (2020) 263

SLUGGISHNESS
Roszak, Piotr, “Between Wisdom and Sluggishness: Thomas Aquinas
on the Elderly” ............................................... 83 (2019) 89

668

TERMS IN TITLES

SOMETHING
Rubin, Michael J., “The Places of ‘Thing’ and ‘Something’ in
Aquinas’s Order of the Transcendentals” ...... 81 (2017) 395

SOUL
Dahm, Brandon, and Daniel D. De Haan, “Thomas Aquinas on
Separated Souls as Incomplete Human Persons”
..................................................................... 83 (2019) 589
Fisher, Kendall A., “Operation and Actuality in St. Thomas Aquinas’s
Argument for the Subsistence of the Rational Soul”
..................................................................... 83 (2019) 185

SPIRATION
Wilkins, Jeremy D., “The Spiration of Love in God according to
Aquinas and His Interpreters” ....................... 83 (2019) 357

SUBSISTENCE
Fisher, Kendall A., “Operation and Actuality in St. Thomas Aquinas’s
Argument for the Subsistence of the Rational Soul”
..................................................................... 83 (2019) 185

SUFFERING
Brotherton, Joshua R., “Trinitarian Suffering and Divine Receptivity
after Balthasar” ............................................. 82 (2018) 189

SURVIVALISM
Rooney, James Dominic, O.P., “Survivalism, Suitably Modified”
..................................................................... 85 (2021) 349

TASTE
Hughes, Margaret I., “Does Taste Matter for Thomists?”
..................................................................... 81 (2017) 107

TECHNOLOGY
Scherz, Paul, “Prudence, Precaution, and Uncertainty: Assessing the
Health Benefits and Ecological Risks of Gene Drive
Technology Using the Quasi-Integral Parts of Prudence”
..................................................................... 81 (2017) 507

THEODICY
Meinert, John M., “Divine Exemplarity, Virtue, and Theodicy in
Aquinas”....................................................... 82 (2018) 235

THEOLOGY/THEOLOGICAL
Di Noia, J. Augustine, O.P., “The Teaching of the Second Vatican
Council in Current Catholic Theology” ........ 85 (2021) 127
Flannery, Kevin L., S.J., “The Legal and Theological Background of
Summa theologiae II-II, q. 64, a. 7” .............. 84 (2020) 509

TERMS IN TITLES

669

Ku, John Baptist, O.P., “Divine Innascibility in the Theology of Ss.
Gregory Nazianzen and Thomas Aquinas” ...... 85 (2021) 57
LaNave, Gregory F., “How Theology Judges the Principles of Other
Sciences” ..................................................... 81 (2017) 567
, “On the Speculative, Practical, or Affective Nature of
Theology” ...................................................... 85 (2021) 87
Lévy, Antoine, O.P., “Can Palamism Be Accommodated to the
Western Theological Tradition? A Few Considerations on
‘The Real Problem’” ..................................... 84 (2020) 625
Sirilla, Michael G., “Saint Thomas’s Theology of the Diaconate”
..................................................................... 85 (2021) 539

THING
Rubin, Michael J., “The Places of ‘Thing’ and ‘Something’ in
Aquinas’s Order of the Transcendentals” ...... 81 (2017) 395

THOMIST/THOMISTIC
D’Ettore, Domenic, “One Is in the Definition of All: The
Renaissance Thomist Controversy over a “Rule” for Names
Said by Analogy” ............................................ 82 (2018) 89
Di Noia, J. A., O.P., “Not ‘Born Bad’: The Catholic Truth about
Original Sin in a Thomistic Perspective” ....... 81 (2017) 345
Macdonald, Paul A., Jr., “Grounding Human Dignity and Rights: A
Thomistic Reply to Wolterstorff” ..................... 82 (2018) 1
Nevitt, Turner C., “How to Be an Analytic Existential Thomist”
..................................................................... 82 (2018) 321
Nguyen, Doyen, “Why the Thomistic Defense of ‘Brain Death’ Is
Not Thomistic: An Analysis from the Perspectives of
Classical Philosophy and Contemporary Biophilosophy”
..................................................................... 82 (2018) 407
Turner, Barrett H., “The Law of Nations as Developing Moral Law:
Two Interpretations of ius gentium in the Thomistic
Tradition” .................................................... 84 (2020) 339
Washburn, Christian D., “Three Sixteenth-Century Thomist
Solutions to the Problem of a Heretical Pope: Cajetan,
Cano, and Bellarmine” ................................. 83 (2019) 547
Wilkins, Jeremy D., “Thomism as a Tradition of Understanding”
..................................................................... 85 (2021) 247

TRADITION
Turner, Barrett H., “The Law of Nations as Developing Moral Law:
Two Interpretations of ius gentium in the Thomistic
Tradition” .................................................... 84 (2020) 339
Wilkins, Jeremy D., “Thomism as a Tradition of Understanding”
..................................................................... 85 (2021) 247

670

TERMS IN TITLES

TRANSCENDENTALS
Rubin, Michael J., “The Places of ‘Thing’ and ‘Something’ in
Aquinas’s Order of the Transcendentals” ...... 81 (2017) 395
Spencer, Mark K., “Beauty, First and Last of All the Transcendentals:
Givenness and Aesthetic, Spiritual Perception in Thomism
and Jean-Luc Marion” ................................. 82 (2018) 157

TRINITY/TRINITARIAN
Brotherton, Joshua R., “Trinitarian Suffering and Divine Receptivity
after Balthasar” ............................................. 82 (2018) 189
Haggarty, Joseph, “The Intention and Unity of St. Thomas Aquinas’s
Exposition of Boethius, On the Trinity” ........ 85 (2021) 227

UNCERTAINTY
Scherz, Paul, “Prudence, Precaution, and Uncertainty: Assessing the
Health Benefits and Ecological Risks of Gene Drive
Technology Using the Quasi-Integral Parts of Prudence”
..................................................................... 81 (2017) 507

VIRTUE
Kristanto, Heribertus Dwi, S.J., “Aquinas on Shame, Virtue, and the
Virtuous Person” .......................................... 84 (2020) 263
Meinert, John M., “Divine Exemplarity, Virtue, and Theodicy in
Aquinas”....................................................... 82 (2018) 235
Wahl, Michael A., “‘To Give Us an Example of Making Progress’:
Aquinas on the Perfection and Growth of Christ’s Virtue”
..................................................................... 84 (2020) 585

VIRTUS FORMATIVA
Vater, Carl A., “The Role of virtus formativa in St. Thomas
Aquinas’s Account of Embryogenesis”........... 82 (2018) 113

WISDOM
Roszak, Piotr, “Between Wisdom and Sluggishness: Thomas Aquinas
on the Elderly” ............................................... 83 (2019) 89

WOMEN
Butler, Sara, M.S.B.T., and Jenna Cooper, “Ecclesial Roles Unique to
Women: Some Reflections” .......................... 85 (2021) 625
Schumacher, Michele M., “The Natural and Sacramental Significance
of Human Sexuality and the Question of Admitting Women
to the Ordained Diaconate” .......................... 85 (2021) 581

WORD
Bauerschmidt, Frederick Christian, “Liturgy, Word, and Charity in
Thomas Aquinas” ......................................... 85 (2021) 555

PROPER NAMES IN TITLES
ANSELM
Marshall, Bruce D., “‘Tolle me et redime te’: Anselm on the Justice
and Mercy of God” ...................................... 81 (2017) 161

AVICENNA
Peters, Catherine, “Common by Causality and Common by
Predication: Avicenna and Aquinas on a Twofold Division
of Principles” ............................................... 85 (2021) 295

BALTHASAR
Brotherton, Joshua R., “Trinitarian Suffering and Divine Receptivity
after Balthasar” ............................................. 82 (2018) 189

BARTH
Michalson, Gordon E., Jr., “The ‘Coincidence of the Christian and
the Reasonable’: Barth’s Reading of Kant’s Religious
Thought” ..................................................... 83 (2019) 213

BELLARMINE
Washburn, Christian D., “Three Sixteenth-Century Thomist
Solutions to the Problem of a Heretical Pope: Cajetan,
Cano, and Bellarmine” ................................ 83 (2019) 547

BOERSMA
Root, Michael, “The Christological Character of the Beatific Vision:
Hans Boersma’s Seeing God” ........................ 84 (2020) 127

BOETHIUS
Haggarty, Joseph, “The Intention and Unity of St. Thomas Aquinas’s
Exposition of Boethius, On the Trinity” ........ 85 (2021) 227

BONAVENTURE
Johnson, Junius, “Unlocking Bonaventure: The Collationes in
Hexaëmeron as Interpretive Key”.................. 83 (2019) 277

CAJETAN
Washburn, Christian D., “Three Sixteenth-Century Thomist
Solutions to the Problem of a Heretical Pope: Cajetan,
Cano, and Bellarmine” ................................ 83 (2019) 547

CANO
Washburn, Christian D., “Three Sixteenth-Century Thomist
Solutions to the Problem of a Heretical Pope: Cajetan,
Cano, and Bellarmine” ................................ 83 (2019) 547

671

672

PROPER NAMES IN TITLES

CAPREOLUS
Waldorf, Steven, “The Historical Development of Cajetan’s
Philosophy of Pure Nature and Its Origins in the Thought
of John Capreolus” .......................................... 85 (2021) 1

CONTENSON
Carl, Brian T., “The Formal Constituent of the Divine Nature in
Peter Ledesma, John of St. Thomas, and Vincent
Contenson” ................................................... 82 (2018) 59

DEWAN
Robertson, Charles, “Lawrence Dewan, Legal Obligation, and the
New Natural Law” ....................................... 83 (2019) 437

GIRARD
Robertson, Charles, “Lawrence Dewan, Legal Obligation, and the
New Natural Law” ....................................... 83 (2019) 437

GREGORY X
Hofer, Andrew, O.P., “Humbert of Romans on the Papacy before
Lyons II (1274): A Study in Comparison with Thomas
Aquinas and Pope Gregory X’s Extractiones” .. 84 (2020) 51

GREGORY NAZIANZEN
Ku, John Baptist, O.P., “Divine Innascibility in the Theology of Ss.
Gregory Nazianzen and Thomas Aquinas” ...... 85 (2021) 57

GROSSETESTE
Hunter, Justus H., “Rereading Robert Grossteste on the ratio
incarnationis: Deductive Strategies in De cessatione
legalium III” ................................................. 81 (2017) 213

HUMBERT
Hofer, Andrew, O.P., “Humbert of Romans on the Papacy before
Lyons II (1274): A Study in Comparison with Thomas
Aquinas and Pope Gregory X’s Extractiones” .. 84 (2020) 51

JOHN OF ST. THOMAS
Carl, Brian T., “The Formal Constituent of the Divine Nature in
Peter Ledesma, John of St. Thomas, and Vincent
Contenson” ................................................... 82 (2018) 59

JOURNET
De Salvo, Michael R., and Roger W. Nutt, “The Debate over
Dignitatis Humanae at Vatican II: The Contribution of
Charles Cardinal Journet” ............................ 85 (2021) 175

PROPER NAMES IN TITLES

673

KANT
Michalson, Gordon E., Jr., “The ‘Coincidence of the Christian and
the Reasonable’: Barth’s Reading of Kant’s Religious
Thought” ..................................................... 83 (2019) 213

LEDESMA
Carl, Brian T., “The Formal Constituent of the Divine Nature in
Peter Ledesma, John of St. Thomas, and Vincent
Contenson” ................................................... 82 (2018) 59

MARION
Spencer, Mark K., “Beauty, First and Last of All the Transcendentals:
Givenness and Aesthetic, Spiritual Perception in Thomism
and Jean-Luc Marion” ................................. 82 (2018) 157

PINCKAERS
Schumacher, Michele M., “The Reunification of Naturalism and
Personalism in the Conjugal Act: A Contribution of Servais
Pinckaers” ................................................... 84 (2020) 435

ROUSSEAU
McCormick, William, S.J.“‘The Two Heads of the Eagle’: Aquinas
and Rousseau on Civil Religion” ................... 81 (2017) 539

SCOTUS
Gorman, Michael, “Using Models for the Hypostatic Union: Lessons
from Aquinas and Scotus”............................. 84 (2020) 103

THOMAS AQUINAS
Bauerschmidt, Frederick Christian, “Liturgy, Word, and Charity in
Thomas Aquinas” ......................................... 85 (2021) 555
Brock, Stephen L., “The Specification of Act in St. Thomas:
Nonmotivating Conditions in the Object of Intention”
..................................................................... 83 (2019) 321
Carreño, Juan Eduardo, “‘My Name Is Legion’: The Biblical Episode
of Gerasene in the Light of Thomas Aquinas’s Theory of
Angelic Location” ......................................... 84 (2020) 233
Cessario, Romanus, O.P., “Sanctified Thought and Affection in
Aquinas’s Teaching on Nature and Grace” .... 84 (2020) 467
Dahm, Brandon, and Daniel D. De Haan, “Thomas Aquinas on
Separated Souls as Incomplete Human Persons”
..................................................................... 83 (2019) 589
De Haan, Daniel D., “Aquinas on actus essendi and the Second
Mode of Participation” ................................. 82 (2018) 573
Doolan, Gregory T., “Aquinas on esse subsistens and the Third Mode
of Participation” ........................................... 82 (2018) 611

674

PROPER NAMES IN TITLES

Fisher, Kendall A., “Operation and Actuality in St. Thomas Aquinas’s
Argument for the Subsistence of the Rational Soul”
..................................................................... 83 (2019) 185
Gorman, Michael, “Using Models for the Hypostatic Union: Lessons
from Aquinas and Scotus”............................. 84 (2020) 103
Haggarty, Joseph, “The Intention and Unity of St. Thomas Aquinas’s
Exposition of Boethius, On the Trinity” ........ 85 (2021) 227
Hahn, Michael S., “Thomas Aquinas’s Presentation of Christ as
Teacher” ....................................................... 83 (2019) 59
Hochschild, Joshua P., “Aquinas’s Two Concepts of Analogy and a
Complex Semantics for Naming the Simple God”
..................................................................... 83 (2019) 155
Hofer, Andrew, O.P., “Humbert of Romans on the Papacy before
Lyons II (1274): A Study in Comparison with Thomas
Aquinas and Pope Gregory X’s Extractiones” .. 84 (2020) 51
Knobel, Angela McKay, “Aquinas and Rights as Constraints”
....................................................................... 82 (2018) 37
Kristanto, Heribertus Dwi, S.J., “Aquinas on Shame, Virtue, and the
Virtuous Person” .......................................... 84 (2020) 263
Ku, John Baptist, O.P., “Divine Innascibility in the Theology of Ss.
Gregory Nazianzen and Thomas Aquinas” ...... 85 (2021) 57
McCormick, William, S.J.“‘The Two Heads of the Eagle’: Aquinas
and Rousseau on Civil Religion” ................... 81 (2017) 539
Meinert, John M., “Divine Exemplarity, Virtue, and Theodicy in
Aquinas” ...................................................... 82 (2018) 235
Mitchell, Jason, “Aquinas on esse commune and the First Mode of
Participation” ............................................... 82 (2018) 543
Napier, Stephen, “The Neuroscience of Moral Judgment and
Aquinas on Moral Expertise” .......................... 81 (2017) 31
Peters, Catherine, “Common by Causality and Common by
Predication: Avicenna and Aquinas on a Twofold Division
of Principles” ............................................... 85 (2021) 295
Pine, Gregory, O.P., “Magnanimity and Humility according to St.
Thomas Aquinas” ......................................... 82 (2018) 247
Porter, Nicholas, “Aquinas and the Theory of the Empyrean
Heaven” ...................................................... 85 (2021) 443
Roszak, Piotr, “Between Wisdom and Sluggishness: Thomas Aquinas
on the Elderly” ............................................... 83 (2019) 89
, “How Should Christians Respond to Scandal? Replies from
St. Thomas Aquinas” .................................... 85 (2021) 411
Rubin, Michael J., “The Places of ‘Thing’ and ‘Something’ in
Aquinas’s Order of the Transcendentals” ...... 81 (2017) 395

PROPER NAMES IN TITLES

675

Sirilla, Michael G., “Saint Thomas’s Theology of the Diaconate”
..................................................................... 85 (2021) 539
Spiering, Jamie Anne, “‘The Divine Goodness Could Be Manifest
through Other Creatures and Another Order’: The Source
of Aquinas’s Convictions about Divine Freedom”
......................................................................... 83 (2019) 1
Van Nieuwenhove, Rik, “‘Recipientes per contemplationem,
tradentes per actionem’: The Relation between the
Contemplative and Active Lives according to Thomas
Aquinas”........................................................... 81 (2017) 1
, “Saint Thomas Aquinas on Salvation, Making Satisfaction,
and the Restoration of Friendship with God”
..................................................................... 83 (2019) 521
Vater, Carl A., “The Role of virtus formativa in St. Thomas
Aquinas’s Account of Embryogenesis”........... 82 (2018) 113
Wahl, Michael A., “‘To Give Us an Example of Making Progress’:
Aquinas on the Perfection and Growth of Christ’s Virtue”
..................................................................... 84 (2020) 585
Wilkins, Jeremy D., “The Spiration of Love in God according to
Aquinas and His Interpreters” ....................... 83 (2019) 357
Wu, Tianyue, “Aquinas on Human Personhood and Dignity”
..................................................................... 85 (2021) 377

WOLTERSTORFF
Macdonald, Paul A., Jr., “Grounding Human Dignity and Rights: A
Thomistic Reply to Wolterstorff” ..................... 82 (2018) 1

BOOKS REVIEWED
Austin, Nicholas, S.J., Aquinas on Virtue: A Causal Reading (Jeffrey P. Hause)
................................................................................... 82 (2018) 488
Ayres, Lewis, and Medi Ann Volpe, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Catholic
Theology (Peter J. Casarella) ....................................... 85 (2021) 146
Barclay, John M. G., Paul and the Gift (Anthony Giambrone, O.P.)
................................................................................... 82 (2018) 287
Bauerschmidt, Frederick Christian, Thomas Aquinas: Faith, Reason, and
Following Christ (Olivier-Thomas Venard, O.P.) ......... 81 (2017) 297
Benedict XVI, Anthropology and Culture: Joseph Ratzinger in “Communio,”
vol. 2 (Jeffrey L. Morrow) .......................................... 81 (2017) 147
Berwick, Robert C., and Noam Chomsky, Why Only Us: Language and
Evolution (Nicanor Pier Giorgio Austriaco, O.P.) ........ 81 (2017) 618
Blankenhorn, Bernhard, O.P., The Mystery of Union with God: Dionysian
Mysticism in Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas (Henk J. M.
Schoot) ....................................................................... 81 (2017) 290
Boersma, Hans, Scripture as Real Presence: Sacramental Exegesis in the Early
Church (Daniel A. Keating) ......................................... 82 (2018) 299
Bonino, Serge-Thomas, O.P., Dieu, “Celui qui est” (Thomas Joseph White,
O.P.) ........................................................................... 84 (2020) 647
Bowlin, John R., Tolerance among the Virtues (Angela McKay Knobel)
................................................................................... 82 (2018) 480
Boyle, John F., Master Thomas Aquinas and the Fullness of Life (Paul
Gondreau) .................................................................. 82 (2018) 140
Brower, Jeffrey E., Aquinas’s Ontology of the Material World: Change,
Hylomorphism, and Material Objects (Andrew Jaeger)
................................................................................... 81 (2017) 277
Brugger, E. Christian, The Indissolubility of Marriage and the Council of Trent
(Peter F. Ryan, S.J.) .................................................... 83 (2019) 136
Budziszewski, J., Commentary on Thomas Aquinas’s “Treatise on Happiness
and Ultimate Purpose” (William C. Mattison III) ......... 85 (2021) 499
, Commentary on Thomas Aquinas’s “Treatise on Law” (V. Bradley
Lewis) ......................................................................... 83 (2019) 305
Bushlack, Thomas J., Politics for a Pilgrim Church: A Thomistic Theory of
Civic Virtue (Thomas W. Smith) .................................. 81 (2017) 282
Chaberek, Michael, O.P., Catholicism and Evolution: A History from Darwin
to Pope Francis (John Baptist Ku, O.P.) ....................... 81 (2017) 453
Chomsky, Noam, and Robert C. Berwick, Why Only Us: Language and
Evolution (Nicanor Pier Giorgio Austriaco, O.P.) ........ 81 (2017) 618

676

BOOKS REVIEWED

677

Colberg, Shawn M., The Wayfarer’s End: Bonaventure and Aquinas on Divine
Rewards in Scripture and Sacred Doctrine (Rik Van Nieuwenhove
and William Crozier) .................................................. 85 (2021) 489
Connell, Sophia M., Aristotle on Female Animals: A Study of the “Generation
of Animals” (Brian Chrzastek, O.P.) ............................ 83 (2019) 652
Cory, Therese Scarpelli, Aquinas on Human Self-Knowledge (Christopher A.
Decaen) ...................................................................... 82 (2018) 651
Cross, Richard, Communicatio idiomatum: Reformation Christological
Debates (Corey L. Barnes) ........................................... 84 (2020) 322
Curran, Charles E., Diverse Voices in Modern U.S. Moral Theology (Dennis J.
Billy, C.Ss.R.).............................................................. 83 (2019) 145
D’Ettore, Domenic, Analogy after Aquinas: Logical Problems, Thomistic
Answers (Richard Cross) ............................................. 84 (2020) 664
Dauphinais, Michael, Andrew Hofer, O.P., and Roger Nutt, eds., Thomas
Aquinas and the Greek Fathers (Alexis Torrance) ......... 85 (2021) 154
Davies, Brian, O.P., Thomas Aquinas’s “Summa contra Gentiles”: A Guide and
Commentary (Thomas S. Hibbs) ................................. 82 (2018) 643
Davies, Brian, and Turner Nevitt, trans., Thomas Aquinas’s Quodlibetal
Questions (Mary Catherine Sommers) ......................... 85 (2021) 170
Davison, Andrew, Participation in God: A Study in Christian Doctrine and
Metaphysics (Rudi te Velde) ........................................ 84 (2020) 326
Deák, Viktória Hedvig, Consilia sapientis amici: Saint Thomas Aquinas on the
Foundation of the Evangelical Counsels in Theological Anthropology
(Basil Cole, O.P.) ........................................................ 81 (2017) 151
DeLorenzo, Leonard D., Work of Love: A Theological Reconstruction of the
Communion of Saints (Paul O’Callaghan) ................... 82 (2018) 473
Desmond, William, The Voiding of Being: The Doing and Undoing of
Metaphysics in Modernity (Gaven Kerr) ...................... 85 (2021) 167
Duby, Steven J., God in Himself: Scripture, Metaphysics, and the Task of
Christian Theology (Kenneth Oakes) ........................... 85 (2021) 344
Edwards, Mark, Aristotle and Early Christian Thought (David T. Runia)
................................................................................... 84 (2020) 661
Elders, Leo J., Thomas Aquinas and His Predecessors: The Philosophers and the
Church Fathers in His Works (Andrew Hofer, O.P.) .... 83 (2019) 132
Elliot, David, Hope and Christian Ethics (Steven J. Jensen) ........ 83 (2019) 316
Emery, Gilles, O.P., and Matthew Levering, eds., Aristotle in Aquinas’s
Theology (Kevin L. Flannery, S.J.) ............................... 83 (2019) 295
Farkasfalvy, Denis, O.Cist., A Theology of the Christian Bible: Revelation,
Inspiration, Canon (Anthony Giambrone, O.P.) .......... 84 (2020) 157

678

BOOKS REVIEWED

Fédou, Michel, S.J., The Fathers of the Church in Christian Theology (John C.
Cavadini) .................................................................... 85 (2021) 150
Feingold, Lawrence, Faith Comes from What Is Heard: An Introduction to
Fundamental Theology (James F. Keating)................... 83 (2019) 115
Fields, Stephen M., S.J., Analogies of Transcendence: An Essay on Nature,
Grace, and Modernity (John R. Betz) .......................... 82 (2018) 656
Fitzpatrick, Antonia, Thomas Aquinas on Bodily Identity (Therese Scarpelli
Cory) .......................................................................... 84 (2020) 653
Fitzpatrick, Antonia, and John Sabapathy, eds., Individuals and Institutions in
Medieval Scholasticism (Marcia L. Colish) ................... 85 (2021) 482
Flannery, Kevin L., S.J., Action and Character according to Aristotle (Jennifer
A. Frey) ...................................................................... 82 (2018) 647
, Cooperation with Evil: Thomistic Tools of Analysis (Gregory M.
Reichberg) .................................................................. 85 (2021) 329
Flood, Anthony T., The Root of Friendship: Self-Love and Self-Governance in
Aquinas (Colleen McCluskey) ..................................... 81 (2017) 293
Führer, Markus, Echoes of Aquinas in Cusanus’s Vision of Man (Donald F.
Duclow) ...................................................................... 81 (2017) 143
Furton, Edward J., ed., Catholic Health Care Ethics: A Manual for
Practitioners (3rd ed.) (Basil Cole, O.P.) ....................... 85 (2021) 493
Gaine, Simon Francis, O.P., Did the Saviour See the Father? Christ, Salvation,
and the Vision of God (Rik Van Nieuwenhove) ........... 81 (2017) 443
Gorman, Michael, Aquinas on the Metaphysics of the Hypostatic Union
(Victor M. Salas) ......................................................... 82 (2018) 309
Griffiths, Paul J., The Practice of Catholic Theology (James J. Buckley)
................................................................................... 81 (2017) 600
Hain, Raymond, ed., Beyond the Self: Virtue Ethics and the Problem of Culture
(Diana Fritz Cates) ...................................................... 84 (2020) 658
Hibbs, Thomas S., Wagering on an Ironic God: Pascal on Faith and Philosophy
(Randall G. Colton) .................................................... 83 (2019) 647
Hofer, Andrew, O.P., Michael Dauphinais, and Roger Nutt, eds., Thomas
Aquinas and the Greek Fathers (Alexis Torrance) ......... 85 (2021) 154
Hoffmann, Tobias, Jörn Müller, and Matthias Perkams, eds., Aquinas and the
Nicomachaean Ethics (Christopher Kaczor) ............... 81 (2017) 306
Houck, Daniel W., Aquinas, Original Sin, and the Challenge of Evolution
(Celia Deane-Drummond) ........................................... 84 (2020) 165
Hütter, Reinhard, Aquinas on Transubstantiation: The Real Presence of Christ
in the Eucharist (Jörgen Vijgen)................................... 84 (2020) 651
, Bound for Beatitude: A Thomistic Study in Eschatology and Ethics
(Simon Francis Gaine, O.P.) ........................................ 85 (2021) 163
Jensen, Steven J., Knowing the Natural Law: From Precepts and Inclinations to
Deriving Oughts (Stephen L. Brock) ........................... 81 (2017) 130
, Sin: A Thomistic Psychology (Romanus Cessario, O.P.) ... 84 (2020) 318

BOOKS REVIEWED

679

Kappes, Christiaan, The Epiclesis Debate at the Council of Florence
(Hyacinthe Destivelle, O.P.) ........................................ 85 (2021) 503
Kereszty, Roch A., O.Cist., The Church of God in Jesus Christ: A Catholic
Ecclesiology (Gregory F. LaNave) ............................... 85 (2021) 485
Kerr, Gaven, Aquinas’s Way to God: The Proof in “De ente et essentia”
(Edward Feser) ........................................................... 83 (2019) 300
, Aquinas and the Metaphysics of Creation (Joseph W. Koterski, S.J.)
................................................................................... 84 (2020) 334
Kirwan, Jon, An Avant-Garde Theological Generation: The “nouvelle
théologie” and the French Crisis of Modernity (Guy Mansini, O.S.B.)
................................................................................... 83 (2019) 479
Knasas, John F. X., Thomistic Existentialism and Cosmological Reasoning
(Joshua P. Hochschild) ................................................ 84 (2020) 168
Kupczak, Jarosław, O.P., Gift & Communion: John Paul II’s Theology of the
Body (Perry J. Cahall) ................................................. 81 (2017) 620
Labourdette, Michel, O.P., La foi (Romanus Cessario, O.P.) .... 81 (2017) 449
Legge, Dominic, O.P., The Trinitarian Christology of St. Thomas Aquinas
(Joseph Wawrykow) ................................................... 82 (2018) 295
Levering, Matthew, Engaging the Doctrine of Revelation: The Mediation of the
Gospel through Church and Scripture (Roger W. Nutt) 81 (2017) 138
, The Achievement of Hans Urs von Balthasar: An Introduction to His
Trilogy (James J. Buckley) ........................................... 83 (2019) 639
, Dying and the Virtues (Craig Steven Titus) ...................... 85 (2021) 339
Levering, Matthew, and Gilles Emery, O.P., eds., Aristotle in Aquinas’s
Theology (Kevin L. Flannery, S.J.) ............................... 83 (2019) 295
Levering, Matthew, Bruce L. McCormack, and Thomas Joseph White, O.P.,
eds., Dogma and Ecumenism: Vatican II and Karl Barth’s “Ad Limina
Apostolorum” (Guy Mansini, O.S.B.) .......................... 84 (2020) 309
Lisska, Anthony J., Aquinas’s Theory of Perception: An Analytic Reconstruction
(David L. Whidden III) ............................................... 81 (2017) 625
Long, Steven A., Roger W. Nutt, and Thomas Joseph White, O.P., eds.,
Thomism and Predestination: Principles and Disputations (Simon
Francis Gaine, O.P.) .................................................... 84 (2020) 485
Loyer, Kenneth M., God’s Love through the Spirit: The Holy Spirit in Thomas
Aquinas and John Wesley (Daria Spezzano) .................. 81 (2017) 155
Lynch, Reginald M., O.P., The Cleansing of the Heart: The Sacraments as
Instrumental Causes in the Thomistic Tradition (Roger W. Nutt)
................................................................................... 84 (2020) 489
Maciejewski, Jeffrey, Thomas Aquinas on Persuasion: Action, Ends, and
Natural Rhetoric (Giuseppe Butera)............................. 82 (2018) 154

680

BOOKS REVIEWED

Madden, James D., Mind, Matter, and Nature: A Thomistic Proposal for the
Philosophy of Mind (James Brent, O.P.) ...................... 83 (2019) 150
Mansini, Guy, O.S.B., Fundamental Theology (James F. Keating)
................................................................................... 83 (2019) 115
Matava, R. J., Divine Causality and Human Free Choice: Domingo Báñez,
Physical Premotion and the Controversy “de auxiliis” Revisited (Trent
Pomplun) .................................................................... 84 (2020) 493
Mattison, William C., III, The Sermon on the Mount and Moral Theology: A
Virtue Perspective (Charles R. Pinches) ........................ 82 (2018) 313
Matz, Brian, Patristics and Catholic Social Thought: Hermeneutical Models for
a Dialogue (Kenneth R. Himes, O.F.M.) ..................... 81 (2017) 446
McCluskey, Colleen, Thomas Aquinas on Moral Wrongdoing (Andrew Kim)
................................................................................... 82 (2018) 491
McCormack, Bruce L., Matthew Levering, and Thomas Joseph White, O.P.,
eds., Dogma and Ecumenism: Vatican II and Karl Barth’s “Ad Limina
Apostolorum” (Guy Mansini, O.S.B.) .......................... 84 (2020) 309
McKnight, W. Shawn, Understanding the Diaconate: Historical, Theological,
and Sociological Foundations (Frederick C. Bauerschmidt)
................................................................................... 84 (2020) 153
Meszaros, Andrew, The Prophetic Church: History and Doctrinal Development
in John Henry Newman and Yves Congar (Thomas G. Guarino)
................................................................................... 82 (2018) 483
Midgeley, Mary, Are You an Illusion? (Christopher A. Decaen) . 81 (2017) 302
Mitchell, Louise A., and John M. Traveline, eds., Catholic Witness in Health
Care: Practicing Medicine in Truth and Love (Basil B. Cole, O.P.)
................................................................................... 82 (2018) 151
Mongeau, Gilles, S.J., Embracing Wisdom: The “Summa theologiae” as
Spiritual Pedagogy (Michael A. Dauphinais) ................ 82 (2018) 303
Moreland, Anna Bonta, Muhammad Reconsidered: A Christian Perspective on
Islamic Prophecy (Anthony Giambrone, O.P.) ............. 85 (2021) 139
Müller, Jörn, Tobias Hoffmann, and Matthias Perkams, eds., Aquinas and the
Nicomachaean Ethics (Christopher Kaczor) ................ 81 (2017) 306
Murphy, Mark C., God’s Own Ethics: Norms of Divine Agency and the
Argument from Evil (Brian Davies, O.P.) ..................... 83 (2019) 111
Nevitt, Turner, and Brian Davies, trans., Thomas Aquinas’s Quodlibetal
Questions (Mary Catherine Sommers) ......................... 85 (2021) 170
Nutt, Roger W., Steven A. Long, and Thomas Joseph White, O.P., eds.,
Thomism and Predestination: Principles and Disputations (Simon
Francis Gaine, O.P.) .................................................... 84 (2020) 485
Nutt, Roger, Michael Dauphinais, and Andrew Hofer, O.P., eds., Thomas
Aquinas and the Greek Fathers (Alexis Torrance) ......... 85 (2021) 154
O’Callaghan, Paul, Children of God in the World: An Introduction to
Theological Anthropology (Jacob W. Wood) ................ 84 (2020) 481

BOOKS REVIEWED

681

O’Connor, Michael, Cajetan’s Biblical Commentaries: Motive and Method
(Anthony Giambrone, O.P.) ........................................ 83 (2019) 643
O’Regan, Cyril, The Anatomy of Misremembering: Von Balthasar’s Response to
Philosophical Modernity, vol. 1, Hegel (William Desmond)
................................................................................... 83 (2019) 123
Oakes, Edward T., S.J., A Theology of Grace in Six Controversies (Christopher
J. Malloy) ................................................................... 81 (2017) 609
Ortiz, Jared, ed. Deification in the Latin Patristic Tradition (Daria Spezzano)
................................................................................... 84 (2020) 496
Osborne, Thomas M., Jr., Human Action in Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, &
William of Ockham (Jamie Spiering) ........................... 82 (2018) 292
Perkams, Matthias, Jörn Müller, and Tobias Hoffmann, eds., Aquinas and the
Nicomachaean Ethics (Christopher Kaczor) ................ 81 (2017) 306
Pfau, Thomas, Minding the Modern: Human Agency, Intellectual Traditions,
and Responsible Knowledge (Kevin Hart) .................... 81 (2017) 125
Porro, Pasquale, Thomas Aquinas: A Historical and Philosophical Profile
(Bernhard Blankenhorn, O.P.)..................................... 81 (2017) 459
Porter, Jean, Justice as a Virtue: A Thomistic Perspective (J. Brian Benestad)
................................................................................... 82 (2018) 317
Ramage, Matthew J., Dark Passages of the Bible: Engaging Scripture with
Benedict XVI and Thomas Aquinas (Anthony Giambrone, O.P.)
................................................................................... 81 (2017) 273
Rea, Michael C., The Hiddenness of God (Michael J. Dodds, O.P.)
................................................................................... 83 (2019) 475
Reichberg, Gregory M., Thomas Aquinas on War and Peace (E. Christian
Brugger)...................................................................... 82 (2018) 142
Reimers, Adrian J., Hell and the Mercy of God (Bryan Kromholtz, O.P.)
................................................................................... 83 (2019) 308
Riches, Aaron, Ecce Homo: On the Divine Unity of Christ (Corey L. Barnes)
................................................................................... 83 (2019) 311
Rogers, Katherin A., Freedom and Self-Creation: Anselmian Libertarianism
(Eileen Sweeney) ......................................................... 81 (2017) 614
Rosemann, Philipp, The Charred Root of Meaning: Continuity, Transgression,
and the Other in the Christian Tradition (Cyril O’Regan)
................................................................................... 83 (2019) 466
Sabapathy, John, and Antonia Fitzpatrick, eds., Individuals and Institutions in
Medieval Scholasticism (Marcia L. Colish) ................... 85 (2021) 482
Saccenti, Riccardo, Debating Medieval Natural Law: A Survey (Kenneth
Pennington) ................................................................ 83 (2019) 142
Sanford, Jonathan J., Before Virtue: Assessing Contemporary Virtue Ethics
(William C. Mattison III) ............................................ 81 (2017) 286

682

BOOKS REVIEWED

Schumacher, Michele M., A Trinitarian Anthropology: Adrienne von Speyr and
Hans Urs von Balthasar in Dialogue with Thomas Aquinas (Roch
Kereszty, O.Cist.) ........................................................ 81 (2017) 134
Selin, Gary, Priestly Celibacy: Theological Foundations (Sara Butler, M.S.B.T.)
................................................................................... 81 (2017) 605
Silva, José Filipe, Robert Kilwardby (R. James Long).................. 85 (2021) 507
Sirilla, Michael G., The Ideal Bishop: Aquinas’s Commentaries on the Pastoral
Epistles (Basil Cole, O.P.)............................................ 81 (2017) 467
Smith, Randall B., Reading the Sermons of Thomas Aquinas: A Beginner’s
Guide (M. Michèle Mulchahey) .................................. 83 (2019) 482
Spezzano, Daria, The Glory of God’s Grace: Deification according to St.
Thomas Aquinas (Daniel Keating)................................ 81 (2017) 310
Stump, Eleonore, Atonement (David L. Whidden III) ................ 83 (2019) 471
Svensson, Manfred, and David VanDrunen, eds., Aquinas among the
Protestants (Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt) ........... 84 (2020) 501
Swafford, Andrew Dean, Nature and Grace: A New Approach to Thomistic
Ressourcement (Bernard Mulcahy, O.P.) ..................... 81 (2017) 437
Tabaczek, Mariusz, Emergence: Toward a New Metaphysics and Philosophy of
Science (William M. R. Simpson) ................................ 85 (2021) 159
Ten Klooster, Anton, Thomas Aquinas on the Beatitudes: Reading Matthew,
Disputing Grace and Virtue, Preaching Happiness (Daniel A. Keating)
................................................................................... 83 (2019) 128
Torchia, Joseph, O.P., Creation and Contingency in Early Patristic Thought:
The Beginning of All Things (M. J. Edwards)................ 84 (2020) 330
Torre, Michael D., ed., Do Not Resist the Spirit’s Call: Francisco Marín-Sola
on Sufficient Grace (Bernard Mulcahy, O.P.) ............... 81 (2017) 437
Traveline, John M., and Louise A. Mitchell, eds., Catholic Witness in Health
Care: Practicing Medicine in Truth and Love (Basil B. Cole, O.P.)
................................................................................... 82 (2018) 151
Tück, Jan-Heiner, A Gift of Presence: The Theology and Poetry of the
Eucharist in Thomas Aquinas (Matthew Levering) ....... 83 (2019) 488
Umphrey, Stewart, The Aristotelian Tradition of Natural Kinds and Its Demise
(Christopher A. Decaen) ............................................. 84 (2020) 503
VanDrunen, David, and Manfred Svensson, eds., Aquinas among the
Protestants (Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt) ........... 84 (2020) 501
Venard, Olivier-Thomas, A Poetic Christ: Thomist Reflections on Scripture,
Language, and Reality (Timothy F. Bellamah, O.P.)..... 84 (2020) 313
Vijgen, Jörgen, The Status of Eucharistic Accidents “sine subiecto”: An
Historical Survey up to Thomas Aquinas and Selected Reactions
(Dominic M. Langevin, O.P.) ...................................... 82 (2018) 146

BOOKS REVIEWED

683

Volpe, Medi Ann, and Lewis Ayres, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Catholic
Theology (Peter J. Casarella) ....................................... 85 (2021) 146
Watson, Francis, Gospel Writing: A Canonical Perspective (Anthony
Giambrone, O.P.) ....................................................... 82 (2018) 133
Wei, Ian P., Thinking about Animals in Thirteenth-Century Paris: Theologians
on the Boundary between Humans and Animals (Irven M. Resnick)
................................................................................... 85 (2021) 479
Whidden, David L., III, Christ the Light: The Theology of Light and
Illumination in Thomas Aquinas (Aaron Canty) ........... 81 (2017) 463
White, Thomas Joseph, O.P., The Incarnate Lord: A Study in Christology
(Corey L. Barnes) ........................................................ 81 (2017) 595
, Exodus (Jon D. Levenson) .............................................. 82 (2018) 476
White, Thomas Joseph, O.P., Matthew Levering, and Bruce L. McCormack,
eds., Dogma and Ecumenism: Vatican II and Karl Barth’s “Ad Limina
Apostolorum” (Guy Mansini, O.S.B.) .......................... 84 (2020) 309
White, Thomas Joseph, O.P., Steven A. Long, and Roger W. Nutt, eds.,
Thomism and Predestination: Principles and Disputations (Simon
Francis Gaine, O.P.) .................................................... 84 (2020) 485
Wilkins, Jeremy D., Before Truth: Lonergan, Aquinas, and the Problem of
Wisdom (Reinhard Hütter) .......................................... 83 (2019) 461
Williams, Rowan, Christ the Heart of Creation (Joseph Wawrykow)
................................................................................... 85 (2021) 333
Wittman, Tyler R., God and Creation in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas and
Karl Barth (Matthew Levering).................................... 84 (2020) 161

REVIEWERS
Austriaco, Nicanor Pier Giorgio, O.P. ....................................... 81 (2017) 618
Barnes, Corey L. ...................... 81 (2017) 595; 83 (2019) 311; 84 (2020) 322
Bauerschmidt, Frederick Christian.................... 84 (2020) 153; 84 (2020) 501
Bellamah, Timothy F., O.P. ....................................................... 84 (2020) 313
Benestad, J. Brian ...................................................................... 82 (2018) 317
Betz, John R. ............................................................................. 82 (2018) 656
Billy, Dennis J., C.Ss.R. ............................................................. 83 (2019) 145
Blankenhorn, Bernhard, O.P. .................................................... 81 (2017) 459
Brent, James, O.P. ..................................................................... 83 (2019) 150
Brock, Stephen L. ...................................................................... 81 (2017) 130
Brugger, E. Christian ................................................................. 82 (2018) 142
Buckley, James J. .............................................. 81 (2017) 600; 83 (2019) 639
Butera, Giuseppe ....................................................................... 82 (2018) 154
Butler, Sara, M.S.B.T. ............................................................... 81 (2017) 605
Cahall, Perry J. .......................................................................... 81 (2017) 620
Canty, Aaron............................................................................. 81 (2017) 463
Casarella, Peter J. ...................................................................... 85 (2021) 146
Cates, Diana Fritz ..................................................................... 84 (2020) 658
Cavadini, John C....................................................................... 85 (2021) 150
Cessario, Romanus, O.P. .................................. 81 (2017) 449; 84 (2020) 318
Chrzastek, Brian, O.P. ............................................................... 83 (2019) 652
Cole, Basil, O.P. ............................................... 81 (2017) 151; 81 (2017) 467
.......................................................... 82 (2018) 151; 85 (2021) 493
Colish, Marcia L. ...................................................................... 85 (2021) 482
Colton, Randall G. .................................................................... 83 (2019) 647
Cory, Therese Scarpelli ............................................................. 84 (2020) 653
Cross, Richard .......................................................................... 84 (2020) 664
Crozier, William ....................................................................... 85 (2021) 489
Dauphinais, Michael A. ............................................................. 82 (2018) 303
Davies, Brian, O.P. .................................................................... 83 (2019) 111
Deane-Drummond, Celia .......................................................... 84 (2020) 165
Decaen, Christopher A. ............ 81 (2017) 302; 82 (2018) 651; 84 (2020) 503
Desmond, William .................................................................... 83 (2019) 123
Destivelle, Hyacinthe, O.P. ....................................................... 85 (2021) 503
Dodds, Michael J., O.P. ............................................................ 83 (2019) 475
Duclow, Donald F. .................................................................... 81 (2017) 143
Edwards, M. J. .......................................................................... 84 (2020) 330
Feser, Edward ........................................................................... 83 (2019) 300
Flannery, Kevin L., S.J. ............................................................. 83 (2019) 295
Frey, Jennifer A. ........................................................................ 82 (2018) 647
684

REVIEWERS

685

Gaine, Simon Francis, O.P. .............................. 84 (2020) 485; 85 (2021) 163
Giambrone, Anthony, O.P. ...... 81 (2017) 273; 82 (2018) 133; 82 (2018) 287;
.................................. 83 (2019) 643; 84 (2020) 157; 85 (2021) 139
Gondreau, Paul ......................................................................... 82 (2018) 140
Guarino, Thomas G. ................................................................. 82 (2018) 483
Hart, Kevin ............................................................................... 81 (2017) 125
Hause, Jeffrey P. ....................................................................... 82 (2018) 488
Hibbs, Thomas S. ...................................................................... 82 (2018) 643
Himes, Kenneth R., O.F.M. ...................................................... 81 (2017) 446
Hochschild, Joshua P. ............................................................... 84 (2020) 168
Hofer, Andrew, O.P. ................................................................. 83 (2019) 132
Hütter, Reinhard....................................................................... 83 (2019) 461
Jaeger, Andrew ......................................................................... 81 (2017) 277
Jensen, Steven J. ........................................................................ 83 (2019) 316
Kaczor, Christopher .................................................................. 81 (2017) 306
Keating, Daniel A. .................... 81 (2017) 310; 82 (2018) 299; 83 (2019) 128
Keating, James F. ...................................................................... 83 (2019) 115
Kereszty, Roch, O.Cist. ............................................................. 81 (2017) 134
Kerr, Gaven .............................................................................. 85 (2021) 167
Kim, Andrew............................................................................. 82 (2018) 491
Knobel, Angela McKay.............................................................. 82 (2018) 480
Koterski, Joseph W., S.J. ........................................................... 84 (2020) 334
Kromholtz, Bryan, O.P. ............................................................. 83 (2019) 308
Ku, John Baptist, O.P. ............................................................... 81 (2017) 453
LaNave, Gregory F.................................................................... 85 (2021) 485
Langevin, Dominic M., O.P....................................................... 82 (2018) 146
Levenson, Jon D........................................................................ 82 (2018) 476
Levering, Matthew ............................................ 83 (2019) 488; 84 (2020) 161
Lewis, V. Bradley ...................................................................... 83 (2019) 305
Long, R. James .......................................................................... 85 (2021) 507
Malloy, Christopher J. .............................................................. 81 (2017) 609
Mansini, Guy, O.S.B. ........................................ 83 (2019) 479; 84 (2020) 309
Mattison, William C., III .................................. 81 (2017) 286; 85 (2021) 499
McCluskey, Colleen .................................................................. 81 (2017) 293
Morrow, Jeffrey L. .................................................................... 81 (2017) 147
Mulcahy, Bernard, O.P.............................................................. 81 (2017) 437
Mulchahey, M. Michèle ............................................................ 83 (2019) 482
Nutt, Roger W. ................................................ 81 (2017) 138; 84 (2020) 489
O’Callaghan, Paul ..................................................................... 82 (2018) 473

686

REVIEWERS

O’Regan, Cyril .......................................................................... 83 (2019) 466
Oakes, Kenneth ......................................................................... 85 (2021) 344
Pennington, Kenneth ................................................................. 83 (2019) 142
Pinches, Charles R..................................................................... 82 (2018) 313
Pomplun, Trent ......................................................................... 84 (2020) 493
Reichberg, Gregory M............................................................... 85 (2021) 329
Resnick, Irven M. ...................................................................... 85 (2021) 479
Runia, David T. ........................................................................ 84 (2020) 661
Ryan, Peter F., S.J. .................................................................... 83 (2019) 136
Salas, Victor M.......................................................................... 82 (2018) 309
Schoot, Henk J. M. ................................................................... 81 (2017) 290
Simpson, William M. R. ............................................................ 85 (2021) 159
Smith, Thomas W. .................................................................... 81 (2017) 282
Sommers, Mary Catherine ......................................................... 85 (2021) 170
Spezzano, Daria ............................................... 81 (2017) 155; 84 (2020) 496
Spiering, Jamie .......................................................................... 82 (2018) 292
Sweeney, Eileen ........................................................................ 81 (2017) 614
te Velde, Rudi ........................................................................... 84 (2020) 326
Thomas Joseph White, O.P. ...................................................... 84 (2020) 647
Titus, Craig Steven .................................................................... 85 (2021) 339
Torrance, Alexis ........................................................................ 85 (2021) 154
Van Nieuwenhove, Rik .................................... 81 (2017) 443; 85 (2021) 489
Venard, Olivier-Thomas, O.P. ................................................... 81 (2017) 297
Vijgen, Jörgen ........................................................................... 84 (2020) 651
Wawrykow, Joseph .......................................... 82 (2018) 295; 85 (2021) 333
Whidden, David L., III ..................................... 81 (2017) 625; 83 (2019) 471
Wood, Jacob W. ....................................................................... 84 (2020) 481