c. 1998 Religion News Service

UNDATED _ With increasing strictness, Pope John Paul II and the Vatican agency charged with safeguarding doctrinal purity have insisted the Roman Catholic Church has no authority to ordain women priests.

Indeed, the Vatican has even insisted the issue is no longer even open to debate.

But like a tongue to a toothache, U.S. Catholic theologians continue to probe the sore point, questioning in particular the “infallibility” status attached by Vatican officials in 1995 to the Catholic teaching barring women from the priesthood.

Last summer, for example, the Catholic Theological Society of America, after a yearlong study of Scripture and tradition, concluded it had serious doubts about the Vatican’s infallibility claim.

In November, the College Theology Society, which represents about 900 U.S. professors of religious studies and theology, voted to endorse those reservations.

“A majority of the board thought it well to show solidarity with the CTSA and to support the continued prayerful discussion of the issues,” said Terrence Tilley, president of the College Theology Society and chairman of the religious studies department at the University of Dayton in Ohio.

But other prominent Catholics consider the theologians impertinent to keep up a drumbeat of questions about women’s ordination after the Vatican declared the matter closed. The CTSA study aroused particular ire.

“This report is permeated with the implication that it is the role of theologians to sit in judgment on the teachings of the pope and the magisterium,” complained Bishop John J. Myers of Peoria, Ill. The bishop urged the theologians to take up the scriptural prayer, “Lord, I do believe, help my unbelief.”

But Joan M. Nuth, a theology professor at John Carroll University in University Heights, Ohio, said she believes Myers’ view is in the minority, even among U.S. Catholic bishops.

“This is not done in a spirit of disloyalty to the church,” said Nuth, a member of both the academic societies. “The role of theologians in the church is not just to be yes-people, but to examine what the hierarchy says to the entire church from many angles.”

Tilley said the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith _ which insists the teaching against the ordination of women carries the weight of infallibility _ has made mistakes.

He cited, as an example, a 1906 ruling _ when it was still called the Holy Office of the Inquisition _ it crafted and the Vatican released that ending ectopic pregnancies was immoral, even though no live birth can result from an ovum that starts developing in the fallopian tubes. That misstep never officially was retracted, Tilley said, but has been allowed to become dead-letter law.

But Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Denver accused the two theological groups of handing the news media a juicy opportunity to create confusion and division in the church.

“It raises questions about the CTSA’s continuing usefulness for the life of the church,” Chaput wrote on his Web site. “As a bishop, it is certainly my counsel and hope that the CTSA will retire this document as briskly as possible.”

Instead, the document, titled “Tradition and the Ordination of Women: A Question of Criteria,” is moving into wider circulation, reprinted in magazines and available on the Internet.

The study recaps the church’s position that Jesus chose only men among the 12 Apostles, and it was only to them that he said at the Last Supper, “Do this in remembrance of me.”

According to Bishop James T. McHugh of Camden, N.J., in Catholic tradition,”men only can be ordained to the priesthood. This is not a rejection of the dignity and equality of women, it is not a last vestige of a male-oriented institution. It is a teaching and tradition unchanging back to Jesus Christ, who is the priest of the New Testament and the source of Catholic priesthood.”

Theologian Rita Nakashima Brock of Hamline University in St. Paul, Minn., however, has asked that if the Catholic Church can ordain people unlike Jesus and the 12 Apostles in race, religion and age, why not gender?

The CTSA document asserts, “Since Jesus left the church under the guidance of the Holy Spirit to make many decisions on its own regarding the organization of its ministry, scholars judge it very doubtful that he intended to lay down such a particular prescription regarding the sex of future candidates for ordination.” Such arguments are unwelcome in Rome. One year ago, a Sri Lankan theologian was excommunicated for challenging the pope’s authority and several core teachings. One of his arguments was that women should be ordained.

“A lot of bishops are in a very delicate position right now,” Nuth said. “They don’t want to publicly disagree with the Roman hierarchy. But it is my hope that the Spirit of God, which we believe guides the church, will one day let down the prohibition of the ordination of women.”

DEA END LONG