Abstract
This chapter uses the lessons gleaned throughout the book from the intersections of religion and gender to confront the conundrum raised in the introduction: Mary Ward’s harsh treatment by the papacy considering the good work the English Ladies were doing to bolster Catholicism in the British Isles. By focusing upon the language contained in critiques of Ward, the prominence of Catholic concerns about women—and, indeed, any layperson—assuming apostolic and priestly activities come to light. The Church drew the line at compromising its core doctrine of apostolic succession, protecting the clergy’s sacramental powers. Such issues are then integrated into contemporary discussions not only about gender but about the nature and limits of divine authority itself and to whom it gets given, including women’s ordination to the Catholic priesthood and greater roles for laymen and women in liturgy and sacrament.
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Notes
- 1.
Session 25 of the Council of Trent reinforced the medieval mandate regarding female enclosure. Substantially more sessions, canons, and decrees of the council, however, mention and reinforce apostolic succession and call upon it to justify other mandates. For example, Session 22, ch. 1 and ch. 4, Canon 4 especially reinforce apostolic succession, but other decrees clearly rely on apostolic succession to reinforce Church authority, hierarchy, and jurisdiction. See especially Session 5, “Decree on Reformation,” ch. 2, on the authority to preach which helps establish the threat of Ward and her Ladies possibly preaching publicly; Session 6, Canon 29 and “Decree on Reformation,” ch. 1; Session 7, Canon 10 and “Decree on Reformation,” ch. 13; Session 13, ch. 3; Session 22, ch. 1 and Canon 2 (Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils 1990).
- 2.
From the Latin, “In necessariis unitas, in non-necessariis libertas, in utrisque caritas.” Ironically, Marco Antonio de Dominis, in De Republica Ecclesiastica (1617), 4: ch. 8, first articulated this idea in a text critical of the papacy. A Catholic bishop, he fled to England during a dispute with the Pope, and the Church of England welcomed him. He eventually returned to Italy and the Roman Church but died under imprisonment in the Castel Sant’Angelo in 1624.
- 3.
The Irish branch adopted the Constitutions but not the new name.
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McClain, L. (2018). Where the Catholic Church Draws the Line: Mary Ward vs. the Catholic Priesthood. In: Divided Loyalties? Pushing the Boundaries of Gender and Lay Roles in the Catholic Church, 1534-1829. Histories of the Sacred and Secular, 1700-2000. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73087-5_8
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