← The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)
The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)
Day 216: Who Receives Holy Orders (2025)
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We continue our examination of the sacrament of Holy Orders. Specifically, we explore exactly who can receive the sacrament of Holy Orders. Fr. Mike emphasizes that only a baptized man can receive the “sacred ordination”. He then unpacks exactly why the ordination of women is not possible. Today’s readings are Catechism paragraphs 1577-1580.
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Father Mike Schmitz
Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz, and you're listening to the Catechism in a Year podcast, where we encounter God's plan of sheer goodness for us revealed in Scripture and passed down through the tradition of the Catholic faith. The Catechism in a Year is brought to you by ascension. In 365 days, we'll read through the Catechism of the Catholic Church, discovering our identity in God's family as we journey together toward our heavenly home. This is day 216. We are reading paragraphs 1577 to 1580. As always, I'm using the Ascension edition of the Catechism, which includes the Foundations of Faith approach, but you can follow along with any recent version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. You can also download your own Catechism in a Year Reading plan by visiting ascensionpress.com ciy that is what I'm following, in case you're wondering. You can also click Follow or subscribe in your podcast app for daily updates and daily notifications. Today is day 216, paragraphs 1577 to 1580. Yesterday we talked about the celebration of this sacrament. We talked about deacons also who could confer the Sacrament of Holy Orders. And today, just very briefly, I think it's essentially four paragraphs, we're asking and answering the question, who can receive this sacrament? And so one of the things we're going to hear is that very right away in paragraph 1577 says only a baptized man, vir, meaning vir is the Latin term for male man. Like not just human beings, like, you know, Homo, but vir, being a male human being, only a baptized man, Vir validly receives sacred ordination. And we're going to talk about that a little bit, because in our world that can be kind of a challenge for a lot of people. And so we're going to dive into that as best that I can, and we're going to hear what the Catechism has to say on that front. So as we enter into this topic today, let's take a moment and before we dive into these four paragraphs, let us dive into the Father's heart and ask for the Father's wisdom. Ask for the wisdom of Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit. Father in Heaven, we ask you to please, in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ, send us your Holy Spirit, a spirit of wisdom, a spirit of knowledge, a spirit of understanding. Give us a spirit of docility, a spirit of being able to be taught. Give us a teachability, Lord God, that guides us when we don't understand, that guides us when we have questions, that guides us when we struggle. We ask you, Lord God, to give us minds that are quick, minds that are sharp. We ask you to give us minds that are willing to be led but also willing to ask questions. Lord God, give us minds that are willing to seek the truth and to hold on to the truth when we find it, wherever we find it. You are the source of all truth. You're the source of all goodness. You are the source of all grace. We ask you to give us your grace, lead us to your truth. Help us to live goodness in Jesus. Name we pray in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. It is day 216. We are reading paragraphs 1577 to 1580. Who can receive this sacrament? Only a baptized man validly receives sacred ordination. The Lord chose men to form the College of the Twelve Apostles, and the apostles did the same when they chose collaborators to succeed them in their ministry. The college of bishops, with whom the priests are united in the priesthood, makes the College of the 12 an ever present and ever active reality. Until Christ's return, the Church recognizes herself to be bound by this choice made by the Lord Himself. For this reason, the ordination of women is not possible. No one has a right to receive the Sacrament of Holy Orders. Indeed, no one claims this office for himself. He is called to it by God. Anyone who thinks he recognizes the signs of God's call to the ordained ministry must humbly submit his desire to the authority of the Church. Who has the responsibility and right to call someone to receive orders. Like every grace, this sacrament can be received only as an unmerited gift. All the ordained ministers of the Latin Church, with the exception of permanent deacons, are normally chosen from among men of faith who live a celibate life and who intend to remain celibate for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Called to consecrate themselves with undivided heart to the Lord and to the affairs of the Lord, they give themselves entirely to God and to men. Celibacy is a sign of this new life to the service of which the Church's minister is consecrated. Accepted with a joyous heart, celibacy radiantly proclaims the reign of God. In the Eastern churches, a different discipline has been enforced for many centuries. While bishops are chosen solely from among celibates, married men can be ordained as deacons and priests. This practice has long been considered legitimate. These priests exercise a fruitful ministry within their communities. Moreover, priestly Celibacy is held in great honor in the Eastern Churches, and many priests have freely chosen it for the sake of the Kingdom of God. In the east, as in the West, a man who has already received the Sacrament of Holy Orders can no longer marry. Right. As I said, four paragraphs, paragraphs 1577 to 1580, and it brings up as the opening prayer. Was very conscious of the fact that this is the topic of who can receive Sacrament of Holy Orders. It can be a challenge to a lot of people, and some people even find, would maybe possibly claim that the Sacrament of Holy Orders being restricted exclusively to men is unjust. And we're going to look at that or do my best to try to address the that claim. So let's do our best. I know, in fact, I just have to say, for my part, you know, even talking about the Sacrament of Holy Orders as we have been for the last number of days, one of the things that I've been hesitant to say has been I kind of grew up with, not because of my family, not because of any one person, but because I grew up in this culture here in the United States of America in the late 20th century that was kind of embarrassed about this idea. Like, even the idea that I could be called, that I could be personally called to be a priest was one of those things that was like, yeah, I kind of have to apologize for that. Like, even when we've been reading the last couple days here about here's the dignity of the priesthood, here's, you know, the power that God bestows on the priests, and I just kind of, it makes. I'm a little sheepish, actually. I don't know if you caught that at all. Maybe it didn't give that impression. I really tried to, I guess, not hide it, but kind of hide it in some ways because again, my background comes from this place of kind of being somewhat apologetic about the fact that I know that not everyone receives the Sacrament of Holy Orders. In fact, there's in some ways only a few people in light of the large group of Christians who actually receive the Sacrament of Holy Orders, and only men can receive or are able to receive the Sacrament of Holy Orders. And so, you know, you talk about this, oh, this is a great thing. This is an incredible thing. What a gift God has given to other church, which is true, 100% true. But. But I'm always keeping in mind the fact that there could be one of my sisters in Christ listening to this and saying, yeah, but that not for me, I could never do that. And Feeling badly about that. I get that. I 100% understand that. And so, again, I grew up in a place. I remember when I was first, when I went to seminary, and there were some young women on the campus that I went to seminary at, and it was the first time I did a retreat with a bunch of college students. And some of these college students who were helping with this retreat, they were just, yeah, they loved the Lord, they loved the Church. I remember asking them, okay, I'm in the seminary, you know, do you ever have. Is that never an issue for you, that here, as a woman who loves Jesus and wants to serve his church, that you can't be ordained to the priesthood? You know, and it was the first time that I met people, women who loved the Lord and wanted to serve the church their whole lives and had no desire and had no. I mean, they're like, yeah, it would be great. It'd be incredible. But weren't mad about it, right? Weren't upset about. Weren't sad about the fact that. No, that's just how Jesus set it up. And now, I guess this is the briefest of reasons. The question is, well, the statement is, only a baptized man validly receives sacred ordination. The question is, why? How come? And at the very last sentence in paragraph 1577, for this reason, the ordination of women is not possible. And the question is, well, why is that? In fact, there are. Sometimes you have stories, sometimes you even have some bishops who say, well, maybe women's ordination is possible. And yet the firm teaching of the Church is that the ordination of women is not possible. Not that the Church won't do it, but it's not possible. The question, again, is why? Why is ordination reserved exclusively for men? The answer, and the only theological answer, is because that's how Jesus established this. I mean, that's. I mean, again, you could be mad about that, and we can all be mad about that if you are, but that's the answer. There are other theological reasons. There's other things I want to kind of dive into a little bit here. But the first thing we have to say is, yeah, we didn't choose this. This was given to us in a similar way that we didn't choose, oh, we're going to have bread and wine that becomes Christ's body and blood. Like that was given to us, that when you pour water or immerse someone in water and baptize them in the name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, that that's what brings a person into the kingdom. Like, we didn't choose that that was given to us. Keep this in mind that all of the sacraments have been given to us. We've received them. And when Jesus gave us the sacrament of Holy Orders, when he gave us this new covenant priesthood, he exclusively chose men. Now, some people will say, well, Jesus was a product of his culture. And so of course, he didn't choose women because of this, because he's part of the Jewish people and Judaism didn't have female priests. And so he never would even think of this. Now, a couple things keep in mind. Yes, Jesus is situated in time and he is. Yes, he's fully Jewish. Yet there are many times when Jesus didn't mind, you know, flipping over the tables in more ways than one, literally and figuratively. There are many times when Jesus raised up the dignity of women. And that's probably what I should have. Where I should have started in this place of just saying, when the church says only a baptized man can validly receive ordination, it is not saying that women, men are better than women or women are worse than men. That's not saying that at all. Saying men and women are equal in dignity, equal in heirs to grace. We've talked about this so many times that you know this, that the Scriptures establish us very, very clearly from Genesis chapter one and Genesis chapter two, where here is the man and the woman and they are equal, equal in the eyes of God. They're both made in God's image and likeness. But equality isn't the same thing as sameness, right? Equality isn't sameness. The man and woman are equal in dignity and different. And this is the distinction that has been lost in our culture in so many ways, Right? At the same time, we're saying, this is fascinating. We live in this day and age that wants to, in some ways eradicate the differences between men and women. And at the same time, you don't know how to do that because you can't. So Jesus treated women with absolute respect and dignity and that men and women are joint heirs to the life of grace. This is in the church's prayer, that man and woman, male and female, husband and wife, are joint heirs to the life of grace. And that God calls everyone to the heights of holiness. And yes, there have been people in the past, you know, Aristotle or even someone like Thomas Aquinas, who might be operating out of a different kind of worldview that's not always consistent with the Bible, which would say something along the lines of Aristotle would say that women are not fully formed men. That kind of idea or at least that idea behind this whole thing. And Christians don't adopt that, we do not adopt that. Catholics do not adopt that men and women are equal in dignity, joint heirs to the life of grace. In fact, there's only been one perfect human person. Jesus is a divine person. He is perfection, yes, in his humanity. But the only perfect human person is a woman, is our Lady Mary. Just to establish this is so important, that male and female in the Catholic worldview are equal in dignity and joint heirs to the life of grace. The holiest person who ever lived, who ever lived is a woman. And the Church readily acknowledges that, accepts that, embraces that, proclaims that, even in spite of the fact that many non Christian, Christian, non Catholic Christians would be critical of our claim for this, we will not back down, just like it's flat out right there. But Jesus, for this role of priests, only chose men. Is that because he was culturally conditioned? Again, we said this before. Jesus literally and figuratively upturned tables. Jesus treated women very, very clearly, as equals. People say, yeah, but he was still culturally conditioned. The idea of women priests just was beyond the pale. Well, no, we know that in the Greeks and the Romans and the pagans, essentially the non Jews who surrounded Israel, who surrounded the Jewish people who surrounded Jesus, they have abundance of priestesses, they had an abundance of female priests. It wasn't as if the concept was foreign to Jesus and in his humanity. And if this is something that he wanted, he could have chosen this. I mean, again, he elevated women in such an incredible way that he brought them as disciples and that he was the rabbi. This is a remarkable thing. You know, it's. Even Jesus was so not culturally bound that an even bigger flipping of a table is the fact that he elevated the status of children. I mean, children had zero status in the ancient world. Just keep, keep this in mind. Men and women, they had status. The children had zero status. And Jesus is saying, let the little ones come to me. And not only that, but if you give one of these little ones a drink of water, you're giving it to me. He identifies himself with the lowest. In doing that, he lifts them up, elevates us. So Jesus wasn't so culturally bound that he couldn't possibly have imagined female priests. And that's why he chose them. But he did choose only men to receive the sacrament of holy orders to be this new covenant priesthood. Now why, I don't know. Why does Jesus choose bread and wine to become his body and blood? I don't know. Why does Jesus choose water to Be the sign of baptism or the matter in baptism, I don't know. There's ideas. And part of the idea is we've said this many, many times that priesthood is particularly connected to fatherhood. All the way back in the old Covenant, you have the role of the father and mother in the family. But originally in the Jewish worldview, in the Jewish way of living, is the father is the priest of the family. And of course, that gets lost with the issue of the golden calf. And it becomes, note, the priesthood is restricted to the tribe of Levi. But originally, priesthood and fatherhood are linked. And so Jesus here, in the fulfillment of priesthood and the fulfillment of the kingdom, they are also linked. And we recognize this, that only men can be dads in. And only women can be moms. And let's look at this for a second, because we asked the question, if things were balanced, if things were just, you'd ask, in any given family, who has more power, who's more important, mom or dad? And you say, well, they both have the roles. Exactly. And this is what would. If we're the family of God, if the church is the family of God, say, well, who has more power, the fathers or the mothers? Well, is that a question you ask about your family? You say, mom and dad are both important. Mom and dad are both essential. Like, we actually. We can't be a family without mom and dad in some ways. Right. And I would say this. I would say that I would love to see more parishes. I think. I think this question rises not only when we try to eliminate differences between male and female, but I think this question rises when we don't have our religious sisters as present as they used to be in our parishes. Think about this. If you had a parish and you have the priest or have a couple different priests in your parish, but you also have religious sisters. You have the sisters, you have the mother Superior or whoever you have, you realize, oh, wow, yeah, so we have a mom here, we have a dad here. We do have spiritual fathers and spiritual mothers all around us. And when you see that, you realize, oh, yeah, that's what the men who are called to this role do. And this is the women who are called that other role. That's how they live. And we would recognize, you know, there's actually even parishes in my diocese where we have a religious community of religious sisters that are kind of more oriented towards diocesan work in the sense that they work in a parish, they serve in a parish, and they live in that parish, just like the priests would live if they Lived in community, will live in this parish. And so in those parishes, it's amazing because you have the pastor, right? You have the priest who is the father of the parish, but you also have these religious sisters who are in some ways, spiritually speaking, the mothers of the parish as well. And it just. It's so incredible. Now you might say, what's a matter of power? There's all the power still resides with the. You know, the buck stops in with the priest who makes the decisions, like the pastor or something like this. And I would say, well, maybe. Maybe that's how things are set up in your parish or in many, many parishes. But I look at the history of even the town I live in right now, and I think, okay, what are the two industries in the town I live in? Well, there's. There's shipping and like, mining, kind of a situation that's. That built the town, and that's one. But the other two industries are education and medicine. And I think, okay, of those three areas of industry, mining and shipping, that whole thing, that's fine, that's kind of secular. But the medical industry and the education industry were established in this city. The city I live in. They were established by religious sisters. Yeah. Mining iron ore that kind of, in some ways, brought money to this area. But it was the religious sisters who brought Jesus to this area. It was the religious sisters who brought a civilization to this area. It was the religious sisters who brought education and they brought medicine to this area. They're the ones who started the first clinics and hospitals. They're the ones who started the first schools in this area. You recognize, like, who's more influential then? Was it the iron ore and the men who went into the mines and did all the shipping? Yep, that was very influential. Very, very important because they brought people here. But who made those people into a community? Who helped those people become formed, shaped, educated, and healed? It was religious sisters. That seems like a lot of power to me, and it seems like a really good way. Not power. Right, Service. Remember, Sacrament of Holy Orders is always meant to be oriented towards service. It's not about power. It's all about service. And every one of us can exercise whatever power God has given to us at the service of others at every moment. The last thing is this. You might say, okay, but it's unjust. And I'm sorry about going on and on about this. I'd say it's unjust. It's a sign of injustice that women can't be ordained. Okay, let's go back to the beginning. Why does the church say that only men, baptized men can be ordained? Because Jesus established it that way. Now if it's unjust, that means it's a sin. If it's unjust, that means it's a sin. And if it's Jesus who established this, you know, he's God. He knows and knew that what he established would be carried out for the rest of history on this planet. And if he established this thing that was unjust, that means that Jesus sinned. He sinned in establishing an all male priesthood. He sinned in excluding women from being able to be priests, which would mean that Jesus isn't actually God. See, this is, in some ways we recognize that we have only received this. We didn't invent it. It was given to us. And there's something about this that just again, we just pray for the spirit of docility. We pray for the spirit of teachability. Because as I said earlier, this is one of those teachings that I'm like, I'm so embarrassed about in some ways until I realized that no, actually it makes sense. Jesus Christ gave us the priesthood as an image of the fatherhood of God. Jesus Christ gave us the priesthood as an image of his self offering and his self gift. That doesn't mean that women can't image Jesus in the world, of course, as men and women as male and female. We are all made in God's image and likeness. But there's this way in which God did not want to leave us without fathers. It's just something to think about to ask. Am I teachable here? God? Can you teach me? You know, paragraph 1578 says no one has a right to receive the Sacrament of Holy Orders. Neither male nor female, nobody, no individual has a right to receive the Sacrament of Holy Orders. Like every grace, the sacrament can only be received as an unmerited gift. And those people who are called in the west, called the Holy Orders, they're called to be celibate. And that's not always the case. There are some men in the east, there's some men in other churches who were ordained. And then when they became Catholic, maybe they were already married. When they became Catholic, maybe they were ordained Catholic priests. Then that has happened. What's interesting, I think is that last line, that in the east and the West, a man who has already received the Sacrament of Holy Orders can no longer marry. So while there are married men and single men who can be ordained to the diaconate or to the priesthood, once a person is ordained, they cannot be married. So Even a deacon. Say he is married and he gets ordained a deacon. And say he becomes a widower, he cannot remarry. Kind of a fascinating little piece of information. I don't know if today was a, a challenge for you, if today was a bunch of words and garbled mess. I don't know if today was like, oh, yeah, that makes sense or what it was. But I do know that, you know, we're going to be launching, we're going to continue with this and we're going to continue to trust in Jesus. Remember this, that Jesus established his church. He continues to guide his church by the power of the Holy Spirit. He promised to lead her into all truth. And so sometimes we see things in the news that say like, oh, there's going to be women priests or we're going to have married priests or something like this. And well, the first thing is impossible. Only men can be priests. And the second thing is possible, but probably not very wise to get rid of priestly celibacy. It's not going to be wise. So I didn't talk about that today at all. But just recognize that it's not an actual answer. It would be a band aid that actually wouldn't even cover up the wound, I think in so many ways. More on that maybe some other day. But really the invitation for all of us and for me included, I mentioned again, it can be a challenge. It was challenged for me back in the day and now I receive it with joy. The challenge though, for so many of us is does the Lord get to teach me? Does the Church get to teach me? You know, we're coming to an end of this section and the catechism on pillar two and we're launching into pillar three, the morality. How do we live as Christians, as Catholics? And I have to say there are going to be a lot of challenges. You know, it's one thing, here's what we believe. Okay, makes sense. Explain that. And then we get to pillar three, like here, here's how we live now. Like, okay, even more, because I now have to say, here's where the rubber hits the road. Do I really want to follow the Lord Jesus, not just in my mind with what I believe, but also in my actions and how I live. And so that's coming up. But tomorrow we're going to continue talking about what are the effects of the sacrament of Holy Orders, what's the indelible character, the grace of the Holy Spirit? And we're going to keep on trucking along, knowing that truly, truly God has given us the Sacrament of Holy Orders as a gift. And he's called certain people to not just receive that gift, but to exercise that gift to help you and me become holier. I am praying for you. Please pray for me. My name is Fr. Mike. Cannot wait to see you tomorrow. God bless.