Soline Humbert: Obstat sexus: Her sex prevents it ….for 400 years!
Today is the feast day of St Teresa of Avila the Great Spanish mystic.
It was Pope Paul VI who in 1970 finally granted the Title of Doctor of the Church to St Teresa, answering at long last a request that was first made in 1597 by all the cathedral chapters of Spain to Pope Clement VIII. The petition had been repeatedly denied by Rome dryly arguing Obstat sexus (her sex prevents it).
Kicking the can down the road with regards to women has a long church history.
I wonder how many more centuries it will take for the Obstat sexus on women’s ordination to be lifted ?
In the words of the then nuncio, Teresa was “A restless gadabout and contumacious woman who invented wicked doctrines and devotions, and … leaving her cloister against the mandate of the Council of Trent has gone about to teach others as though she were a ‘maestra’ in contradiction to the teaching of St. Paul who had forbidden women to teach.”
People like Teresa are what we need at this time when the synod of synodality is taking place as a concretization of the “reform” of the Church that Francis proposed at the beginning of his pontificate. Unfortunately, Teresa’s courage and audacity do not seem to be present in the synod fathers and mothers who, trapped in the heavy and almost immobile structure of the Church, are developing what is stipulated in the process, but leaving aside many of the aspects that emerged in the listening stage.
Many reasons are invoked: it is not the time, it is not sufficiently mature, one must be patient, it is better to achieve little than to achieve nothing, etc. Hopefully Teresa would inspire another way of acting in the Church: that of prophecy and the courage to push forward paths that break moulds and open up different and unprecedented horizons, those that truly come from the Spirit, the one of whom we affirm that “he makes all things new” (Rev 21:5).”
See also:
https://www.liturgicalartsjournal.com/2020/10/saint-teresa-of-avilas-biretta-brief.html?m=1