Let’s Talk About Women Priests

People argue “It’s no longer taboo to have women as authority figures. In this day and age, we should promote the upward movement of the female gender.” This is not a bad argument. After all, its guiding idea is equality, but it’s also not an argument in favor of women priests. It’s just an argument for women to have equal opportunity for positions of service to the church. So, let’s begin.

I’d like to point out that when Jesus ordained His first priest(s), it wouldn’t have been taboo for him to have picked females. Many religions of that day used “priestesses” or some sort of female representatives. He also had plenty of female role models and great candidates for the priesthood - Mary Magdalene for one, Martha and Mary of Bethany (sisters of Lazarus), and His own mother, the Virgin Mary. He had more than enough reason to use women, but the fact is, He didn’t. And He didn’t do this to say “women are lesser beings” or “women aren’t capable of understanding the sacraments.” He did it for two reasons.

The first reason some of you probably recognize already – because every move that the early church made was in direct conflict with its environment. Its messages were relevant (and still are) to the culture and connected to the people of the time, but its actions directly opposed (and thus should still oppose) its surroundings. Its actions conflicted with the most influential ideas of the culture. This is the way the church is and should remain: Relevant to its people, but always encouraging them to look for exactly how they are different from the rest of the world.

I think it’s important to remember this when you discuss “modernization” of the church - Modernizing doesn’t mean “making the Gospel relevant.” The Gospel is already relevant. Modernizing means revealing that relevance; revealing what in the Gospel is culturally relevant at the time, and from that, instructing your people how to act. Modernizing doesn’t mean, making the church “fit in” with the culture. It often means the exact opposite.

The second reason Jesus didn’t choose women priests? This is one that I don’t know, and that’s not a cop-out. It’s a reason that no one knows but the Lord Himself - the only one with the authority to actually bestow that power (the power of the priesthood) upon mankind. And if He didn’t choose women, He didn’t choose women.

When JPII declared that there would be no women priests, the document (Ordinatio Sacerdotalis) said that the Church “has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women.” It didn’t have anything to do with women being lesser or men being somehow specially designed or that there’s something in the soul of men that is magical. It was a simple admission that the Sacrament, though it obviously changes throughout history, is not ours to change at some point: we need to keep the sacrament in some important ways the same because it was Christ that established it, and we’ve just been entrusted with it.

There is also a lot of evidence that the early Church (which in some ways has more authority than we do, since they were closer to Jesus) did ordain women as deacons, and Pope Benny allowed that discussion to stay open. I for one think that would be a good thing for the Church to adopt. The Albanian Church still ordains women to the diaconate.





with a similar tone to mine. Haley (the author) also quoted John Paul II, But for all that, neither Jesus nor the early Church ordained women. Why, of all things that it did, it chose not to do that, is interesting. Gender issues, perhaps; but women held many of the prominent roles in the early church. Here’s a blog post with a similar tone to mine. Haley (the author) also quoted John Paul II,

“[T]he fact that the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God and Mother of the Church, received neither the mission proper to the Apostles nor the ministerial priesthood clearly shows that the non-admission of women to priestly ordination cannot mean that women are of lesser dignity, nor can it be construed as discrimination against them. Rather, it is to be seen as the faithful observance of a plan to be ascribed to the wisdom of the Lord of the universe.”

The End.

P.S. I’m a woman.

May World War III commence.