Emotionalism often pollutes the debate about women’s ordination. As in so many liberal dissents, there seems to be the impression that shouting and acts with shock value can replace rational discussion and humble obedience to the Magisterium and the sacred deposit. Personal biases spouted in slogans will help no one. The sober question has to be asked, what does our Lord reveal to us about this question in the Scriptures and faith of the Church? It is crystal clear that he did not call any women into the number of the apostles (Mark 3:13-19).
First, this fact alone takes on heightened importance because certain women accompanied the group on their journeys and financed their needs (Luke 8:2-3). None of them were given priesthood.
Second, Jesus did not hesitate in dismissing then current religious and cultural attitudes in relating to females. He disregarded the hemorrhaging woman’s legal impurity (Matthew 9:20); he allowed the disreputable woman in Simon the Pharisee’s house to approach him (Luke 7:37); he sided with the adulteress (John 8:11); and he undermined the Mosaic Law in espousing the equal rights of men and women in marriage, protecting the woman from abandonment in divorce (Mark 10:2; Matthew 19:3). Obviously, Jesus could not be coerced by societal prejudices to prohibit women priests; it must have been his own choice.
Third, he illustrated in his stories an unheard of empathy with the lives of women as in the parable of the good housewife (Luke 15:8-10) and of the widow before a crooked judge (Luke 18:1-8). It can be assumed that Jesus did not feel that his exclusion of women from holy orders was any real slight to them.
Fourth, as his disciples, many of the women showed a courage greater than that of the apostles, even so far as to stand at the foot of his Cross (Mark 15:40-41). Individual qualifications apparently took a backseat to other concerns; perhaps the inability of female humanity to image Christ as the head of the Church? Does not the laity, as feminine, still look upon the Cross now transformed into an altar at which the priest renders Christ’s sacrifice? Yes.
Fifth, they were the first to proclaim the Good News on Easter morning, and to the apostles themselves (Matthew 28:7; Luke 24:9; Jn 20:11). Does this not tell us how much the Lord prizes the laity in the Mystical Body? Maybe the problem is not that we esteem the ordained priesthood too highly, but that we look upon the laity too disdainfully. The bulk of all evangelism is still done by the people in the pews. However, despite all this, the women were not mentioned at the Last Supper (Mark 14:17). Surrounded only by the apostles, this absence is made all the more striking since the Passover is a family meal at which women and children were customarily present (Exodus 12:1-14).
In light of this evidence, one can readily conclude that the exclusion of women from priesthood must have been freely and directly willed by Christ.
POPE JOHN PAUL II: “I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful” (Ordinatio Sacerdotalis).
Filed under: Bible, Catholic, Church, Jesus, Priestesses, Priests, Sacraments, Sexuality, Women Priests | Leave a comment »
Blogger Priest 