not a woman; the fact that God always reveals himself as Father and never as Mother. All these facts are neither isolated nor insignificant; they have their coherence. But the divine wisdom they express escapes us: neither God, nor Christ, nor the Apostles explain them. It therefore remains for the theologian to try to explain them with reasons of fittingness (argumentum ex convenientia). The Church is not bound by any of these theological reasons, which are always perfectible and never decisive. But she is bound by these facts, which she cannot change, and which impose themselves on her with an unsurpassable normative force.

Unless we accept that these are merely interchangeable social roles, it is not irrelevant that God reveals himself as Father rather than Mother. In the polytheistic context of Israel, revealing himself as Father was tantamount to affirming that he is the unique (without paredra) and transcendent God. Indeed, female deities often connoted a more fusional relationship, that of the paganism Israel rejected with the Law of Separation. At the time, temples dedicated to female deities had their priestesses, while male deities had their priests. Israel alone had an exclusively male clergy, not because women were excluded for no reason, but to affirm the unique and transcendent God. To call this into question would be to fall back into this paganism and found a religion that would no longer be that of biblical revelation. For the same reasons, Christ had to be male: for he is the one sent by the Father, the visible face of the Father (John 14:9) and his perfect high priest. Likewise the Apostles, who are the Son's envoys, are sacraments of Christ who is the Father's sacrament. And in their turn, the episcopes, presbyters, and deacons are envoys that the Apostles establish to take up sacramentally, in Christ the one high priest, the three degrees of Israel's priesthood (pontiffs, priests, Levites)-a male clergy, because the sacramental sign must bear a certain resemblance to the reality signified.46

The hierarchical priesthood, a sign of Christ the Head, must therefore be able to present this face of Christ insofar as he is the visible sign of the invisible Father as much as his humanity is his instrument (organon). The baptismal priesthood also makes the baptized a sacrament of Christ (Christianus alter Christus); however, he is not a sign of Christ as Head,

69 [1977]: 98-116); Guy Mansini, "On Affirming a Dominical Intention of a Male Priesthood," Thomist 61, no. 2 (1997): 301-16.46 Augustine, Letter 98, no. 9: "If the sacred rites [sacramenta] had no resemblance [similitudinem] to the things which they represent, they would not be sacred rites [sacramenta]" (Patrologia Latina [PL], 33:364; Fathers of the Church Patristic Series, vol. 18 [Letters, vol. 2] [Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2008], 83-130).

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Deaconesses and the Diaconate

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