Christ the Bridegroom and His Priesthood: A Catholic Response to Canterbury

By the Archbishop of Selsey

“Non est potestas Ecclesiae mutare quae a Christo sunt instituta.”
The Church has no power to change what has been instituted by Christ.

Following the announcement of Dame Sarah Mullally’s appointment as Archbishop of Canterbury —the first woman ever to hold the office—this reflection considers that event through the lens of Catholic Tradition. It seeks not controversy but clarity: to recall that the priesthood is not a human construct open to revision, but a divine mystery entrusted to the Church to guard faithfully.

The Church That Conforms Cannot Transform
The world rejoiced when the announcement came from Lambeth Palace. Commentators hailed a new era of inclusion and progress. Yet beneath the applause lay a centuries-old story of departure—an arc that began in 1534 when King Henry VIII tore England from communion with Rome. The Archbishop of Canterbury ceased to speak for the Catholic Church and became instead the head of a national religion increasingly shaped by the moral moods of the realm.

Through successive centuries the Church of England moved from confession to conversation, from dogma to dialogue, from creed to consensus. Each step claimed to modernise faith for a new age; each step moved further from the apostolic deposit handed down from the beginning. The ordination of women, the redefinition of marriage, the reduction of creed to opinion—all are fruits of that re-orientation from revelation to relevance.

The Catholic Church cannot follow. Her task is not to mirror the world but to sanctify it. “The Church does not exist to be tolerated,” wrote Cardinal Newman, “but to convert.” If she conforms to the age, she will have nothing left to offer the age. If she loses her distinctive signs, she ceases to be a sign of contradiction.

The Priesthood Is Not a Profession but a Sacrament
The Church does not ordain women because the priesthood is not a profession. It is a sacrament of Christ Himself. Through the laying-on of hands and the prayer of consecration, a man is configured to Christ the Eternal High Priest and becomes alter Christus—another Christ. He acts not in his own name but in persona Christi Capitis, in the person of Christ the Head of the Church.

Pope Paul VI, in Inter Insigniores, affirmed that “the Church does not consider herself authorized to admit women to priestly ordination.”¹ These are not words of policy but of obedience. The Church has received this sacrament from Christ; she may not remake it. The priest is not a delegate of the people but a living instrument of the Redeemer. To change the sign is to change the meaning—and the meaning of the priesthood is Christ Himself.

In an age that treats roles as rights and vocations as careers, this truth offends the spirit of democracy. But grace is not democracy. It is gift. The Eucharistic Sacrifice is not a performance but a Passion made present. A priest does not stand at the altar because he has earned it, but because Christ has called him to bear the burden of His Cross.

Order in Creation, Order in Grace
The priesthood is rooted in the very grammar of creation. “Adam was formed first, then Eve,” says St Paul to Timothy.² This is not superiority but sequence. God writes truth into the order of being: male and female He created them, each bearing the divine image in complementary ways. Their difference is not a flaw to be corrected but a mystery to be revered.

From this order flows the order of grace. The Incarnate Word came as Son and Bridegroom to espouse to Himself the Church, His Bride. The male priesthood is not a social arrangement but a sacramental necessity: it images that nuptial union on which salvation itself depends. To erase that icon is to erase the story it tells.

St John Chrysostom explained: “When we speak of order, we do not speak of domination, but of divine harmony.”³ The authority of the priest is not tyranny but service, not power but paternity. Just as Christ washed the feet of His disciples, so the priest is ordained to humility—to be broken bread for the life of the world.

The Priest as Icon of the Bridegroom
When the priest utters the words of consecration—Hoc est enim Corpus meum—he does not say “This is Christ’s Body,” but “This is My Body.” At that moment he is not speaking for himself; he is possessed by the voice of the Bridegroom. Christ acts through him, and through him offers Himself anew to the Father.

For this reason John Paul II taught in Ordinatio Sacerdotalis: “The Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women, and this judgment is to be definitively held by all the faithful.”⁴ These words were not new; they simply sealed what had been believed everywhere, always, and by all.

The priest is a visible icon of the invisible Christ. As the Church is the Bride, so the priest must be the Bridegroom’s sign. If Christ had willed otherwise, He could have chosen women among the Twelve. He did not, because He willed that the sacramental sign of His nuptial love remain what He made it. To alter that sign is not progress but profanation.

Here is the secret the modern world has forgotten: the priesthood is nuptial. It is the mystery of the Bridegroom offering Himself to His Bride, the Church. It is a mystery of masculine self-gift, mirrored and perfected by the feminine receptivity of Mary, in whom the whole Church responds, “Be it done unto me according to thy word.” In the sanctuary as in Bethlehem, Christ is born through obedience to this divine order.

Equality of Dignity, Distinction of Vocation
Men and women are equal in dignity before God, for both are created ad imaginem Dei—in the image and likeness of God. Yet equality is not sameness. The mystery of humanity is relational: “Male and female He created them.”⁵ This is not mere biology but theology—an expression of divine complementarity.

In the family, father and mother reveal distinct aspects of love. The father communicates strength and providence; the mother, tenderness and nurture. Each completes the other; neither suffices alone. In the Church, too, vocations differ while dignity remains the same. The priest’s authority does not diminish the woman’s sanctity, nor the woman’s sanctity the priest’s vocation. Each illumines the other, as light and reflection.

The Blessed Virgin Mary proves this beyond dispute. She, who bore God in her womb, exercises an authority that no priest on earth can rival. Her holiness surpasses every ministerial office, for she became the living tabernacle of the Word. St Ambrose declared, “In Mary, the Church has already reached perfection.”⁶ If the priest images Christ the Bridegroom, Mary images the Church, the spotless Bride. Together they reveal the entire mystery of redemption: love received, and love poured out.

The Theology of Symbol and Sacrament
To the modern mind, symbols are seen as disposable—arbitrary cultural relics. But to the Catholic mind, a symbol participates in the very reality it reveals. The sacraments are not metaphors; they are efficacious signs that make present what they signify. The male priesthood is therefore not a social custom but a theological necessity, bound to the mystery of the Incarnation.

Christ became man not as a concession to first-century patriarchy, but as a revelation of divine intention. The Son reveals the Father; He comes as Bridegroom to His Bride, the Church. The masculine sign in the priesthood is thus Christological, not cultural. To obscure that sign is to distort the icon of God’s self-gift in Christ.

C. S. Lewis saw the danger of tampering with sacred signs: “Priesthood is not simply what a person does, but what a person is.”⁷ The ministerial priesthood is ontological; it re-creates the man within the economy of grace. At the altar he no longer belongs to himself, but to Christ who speaks through him.

In the liturgy the priest becomes the visible voice of the Invisible. His masculinity is not a claim to privilege but an instrument of revelation. It says something eternal: that God gives Himself. In receiving that gift, the Church—symbolised in Mary—teaches humanity how to respond. The whole drama of salvation turns on this dialogue of gift and reception.

The Witness of the Fathers and the Magisterium
From the earliest centuries the Church never ordained women to the priesthood or episcopate. The evidence is universal, unbroken, and unanimous. While there existed an ancient order of deaconesses, their role was charitable and catechetical, never sacerdotal. St Epiphanius of Salamis wrote in the fourth century: “There is indeed an order of deaconesses in the Church, but they are not appointed to the priesthood or to any such ministry.”⁸

The Fathers saw in this restraint not exclusion but faithfulness. To preserve the male priesthood was to preserve the icon of Christ’s mediatorship. St John Chrysostom, St Irenaeus, and St Clement of Alexandria all testify that priestly office is not a human right but a divine configuration. The Church’s constancy here is not stubbornness but obedience to revelation.

The same doctrine has been reaffirmed throughout the centuries. The Council of Trent defined Holy Orders as a sacrament instituted by Christ. Pope Paul VI reiterated it in Inter Insigniores. Pope John Paul II sealed it in Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, declaring that “this judgment is to be definitively held by all the faithful.”⁹ The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under Cardinal Ratzinger confirmed in 1995 that this teaching “has been set forth infallibly by the ordinary and universal Magisterium.”¹⁰ Thus the question is not open for debate; it is settled within the faith of the Church.

Beyond Culture—Toward Fidelity
The Church of England’s decision to enthrone a woman in Canterbury is celebrated as progress. Yet progress toward what? When revelation bends to the temper of the times, it ceases to reveal anything divine. The impulse to conform the Church to the world is ancient—it began in Eden. The serpent promised enlightenment; the result was exile.

The Catholic Church, by contrast, measures fidelity not by fashion but by faith. She believes, with St Vincent of Lérins, that true doctrine is that “which has been believed everywhere, always, and by all.”¹¹ Her task is not to innovate but to hand down, not to edit revelation but to echo it. For the truth is not ours to revise but to receive.

The temptation of the modern Church—Protestant and post-conciliar alike—is to confuse compassion with compromise. Yet charity without truth becomes sentimentality, and truth without charity becomes cruelty. The Catholic balance is caritas in veritate—love in truth. To tell the world what it wishes to hear is not mercy; it is betrayal. To speak the truth, even when unpopular, is the deepest form of love.

The Final Word: Holiness, Not Office
The question of ordaining women is not about capability but about call. The Church does not deny women’s sanctity; she proclaims it from every altar. The saints—Agnes, Cecilia, Catherine, Thérèse, and countless others—shine with a splendour no mitre could augment. The Mother of God reigns above all creation, crowned with twelve stars, yet she never stood at the altar nor preached from the pulpit. Her greatness is her fiat: “Be it done unto me.”

The priesthood is not a privilege but a Passion. The man who bears it dies daily; he is configured to Christ crucified. His authority is the authority of the Cross. The woman, by contrast, embodies the fruitfulness of the Church—its purity, its fidelity, its maternity. In her we see the soul’s vocation: to receive the Word, to bring forth Christ into the world. Together, priest and woman reveal the total mystery of salvation—giving and receiving, head and heart, Bridegroom and Bride.

As Metropolitan Kallistos Ware observed, “The Church is not a democracy but a divine organism. Its structure is sacramental, not sociological.”¹² To reorder that structure in pursuit of equality is to trade mystery for mechanism. The Church’s power lies not in her conformity to the world, but in her conformity to the Cross.

The appointment at Canterbury thus stands as a mirror to our age: progress applauded, but faith eclipsed. For when the Church imitates the world, she loses the world’s respect and forfeits heaven’s favour. The Catholic Church, steadfast amid the storm, must hold aloft the lamp of unchanging truth. For the Bride must reflect her Bridegroom; she may not reinvent Him.

The world cries out for novelty; God calls us to fidelity. One builds monuments to itself that crumble; the other builds souls for eternity. In the end, holiness—not office—will matter. And the measure of every vocation, male or female, will be the same: Were you faithful?

¹ Inter Insigniores (Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, 1976), §5.
² 1 Timothy 2:13.
³ St John Chrysostom, Homiliae in Epistolam ad Corinthios, 34.
⁴ St John Paul II, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis (1994), §4.
⁵ Genesis 1:27.
⁶ St Ambrose, De Virginibus, II, 2.
⁷ C. S. Lewis, Priestesses in the Church?, Time and Tide, 1948.
⁸ St Epiphanius of Salamis, Panarion, 79.
⁹ St John Paul II, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis (1994), §4.
¹⁰ Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Responsum ad Dubium (1995).
¹¹ St Vincent of Lérins, Commonitorium, II.
¹² Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Church (Penguin, 1993), p. 256.