Brief Note on Canonist Weishaupt’s Essay

A short note from Dr Peters, agreeing with the views of Fr Weishaupt in the previous post.

From In the Light of the Law

By Edward Peters, JD, JCD, Ref. Sig. Ap.


I have just read Rev. Gero Weishaupt’s essay over at kathnews and a report on that essay at Lifesitenews. I find Weishaupt’s assertions quite soundly argued.

In particular, I agree with Weishaupt that the exclusion of women from priestly ordination was declared infallibly by Pope St. John Paul II in Ordinatio sacerdotalis (1994), that such a ruling must be definitively held by all the faithful as a “secondary object of infallibility” (1983 CIC 750 § 2), and that opposition to this ruling makes one liable to sanction under Canon 1371 n. 1. A canonical warning to the German bishops on this point is therefore canonically, and pastorally (bishops have souls, too), in order.

In my view, the ordination of women to the diaconate is also excluded by Sacred Tradition, but I grant that such exclusion was not expressly addressed in the pivotal passage of Ordinatio. Thus, discussion of female ordination, as if it were doctrinally feasible, strikes me as at best theologically temerious, though not canonically criminal, at this point. Meanwhile any actually attempted ordination of a woman is an excommunicable offense.

More, as circumstances warrant and permit.