For 2,000 years, the Catholic Church has ordained only men to the ministerial priesthood, and many have accused this teaching of being an archaic, anti-feminine remnant of a patriarchal society. But are these claims true? Should women be allowed to be priests? In this essay we will look at the theological reasons why the Church not only does not but also cannot validly ordain women.
There are several reasons why the Church doesn�t allow women to be priests, but I think they can be summed up in four main points: Jesus didn�t choose female Apostles, the Apostles followed in Jesus� footsteps and didn�t ordain women, the Church�s Tradition as handed down through the centuries doesn�t allow for the ordination of women, and the mystery of Christ and the Church makes it fitting that only men be priests.
I. Jesus� didn�t choose female Apostles
This one is very straight forward. At the Last Supper, when Jesus commanded the Apostles to perpetuate the Eucharist �in memory of� him (Luke 22:19-20), He ordained them as priests (Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 611), and, as we all know, there were no female Apostles. Thus, we can conclude that Jesus intended for only men to be priests. However, some people argue against this and say that Jesus only ordained men because the culture back then looked down on women. Therefore, He couldn�t have ordained women, even though He didn�t disallow their ordination.
Is this charge valid? No. Jesus is God, and He never gave into culture. He was always fighting with the scribes and Pharisees (Matthew 12:22-42, 15:1-20), and He even exercised authority over the Law of Moses (Matthew 19:1-9), two things that a man who went along with the culture would have NEVER done. If He had wanted to ordain women, He would have. Period. In addition, we must also look at Jesus� attitude towards women. In Jewish culture at the time, they were considered second-class citizens, and their testimony was not valid in court, but Jesus treated them as equal to men. When He spoke to the Samaritan woman at the well, even His disciples were �astonished that he was speaking with a woman� (John 4:27), and He praised a Canaanite woman�s faith (Matthew 15:28). He traveled with them (Luke 8:1-3), and they were the first to see Him after the resurrection (Matthew 28:1-10). In fact, it was the women who were entrusted with carrying the message of the resurrection to the Apostles (Matthew 28:10, John 20:16-18)! Had Jesus wanted to take this one step further and ordain them as priests, He would have had no problem doing so. He never gave into culture.
II. The Apostles didn�t ordain women
Even if Jesus did give into the culture by not ordaining women, the Apostles surely wouldn�t have. Preaching to a Gentile world that had pagan priestesses, there was no cultural reason why they wouldn�t have allowed women to be priests. Nevertheless, they still ordained only men. Let�s go over a few examples.
In Acts 1:12-26, the Apostles and some others were gathered together, and they chose a successor to Judas. It�s interesting to note that the only person besides the Apostles mentioned by name was Mary, Jesus� mother, and if there were ever a time to ordain a woman priest, it would have been then. But they didn�t choose Mary, the perfect Christian, or any other woman; in fact, the two people they considered were men (Acts 1:23). They didn�t even think of ordaining a female Apostle.
Paul, in 1 Timothy 3:2, 12 and Titus 1:6, says that bishops and deacons must be husbands of only one wife, indicating that only men could be ordained. In fact, in 1 Timothy 2:12 he even says, �I permit no woman to teach or have authority over a man.� Since 1 Timothy is a pastoral letter dealing with how to run the Church in Ephesus, Paul is most likely referring to teaching in an official capacity, which only priests can do. In fact, he seems to be linking teaching with authority, so he must be referring to the priesthood, the only teaching office in the Church with ecclesiastical authority. Acts 18:26 says that when Aquila and his wife Priscilla saw Apollos talking about the Christian faith, �they took him aside and explained the Way of God to him more accurately� because �he knew only the baptism of John� (verse 25), so we know that Paul could not have been referring to just any teaching. Thus, the most plausible interpretation is that Paul is prohibiting women from being priests. The only people he or any of the other Apostles ordained, such as Timothy, Titus, and Matthias, were men.
Before we go on to the next section, we must deal with two objections. First, Romans 16:1 calls Phoebe a deacon, but she is a woman. Therefore, some argue, the early Church ordained women. However, the Greek word for �deacon,� �diakonos,� merely means �servant,� as can be seen by its uses in Matthew 20:26 and Mark 9:35, so Phoebe was not an ordained deacon. Actually, with the examples of Phoebe and Priscilla, we can see that women were prominent and respected members of the early Church, which goes against the argument that Jesus and the Apostles were just going along with the culture by not ordaining women. Secondly, in listing the qualifications for deacons, Paul says, �Women, likewise must be serious, not slanderous, but temperate, faithful in all things� (1 Timothy 3:11), seeming to imply that women can be deacons. There are two possible explanations for this: 1) Paul could be referring to unordained women deaconesses, which the early Church had for the sake of decency (for example, converts were baptized naked, so deaconesses baptized female converts), or 2) Paul could have been referring to the deacons� wives because the Greek word used for �women,� �gune� also means �wives.� Thus, the KJV translates the verse as �Even so must their wives be grave, not slanderers, sober, faithful in all things.�
III. The Church has never ordained women
In the previous two sections, we saw how neither Jesus nor the first generation of Christians ordained women. In this section, I will give quotes from some Church Fathers, demonstrating that the Church�s constant Tradition has been that only men can be priests.
"It is not permitted for a woman to speak in the church [1 Cor 14:34�35], but neither [is it permitted her] . . . to offer, nor to claim to herself a lot in any manly function, not to say sacerdotal office" (Tertullian, The Veiling of Virgins 9).
"It is true that in the Church there is an order of deaconesses, but not for being a priestess, nor for any kind of work of administration, but for the sake of the dignity of the female sex, either at the time of baptism or of examining the sick or suffering, so that the naked body of a female may not be seen by men administering sacred rites, but by the deaconess" (Epiphanius of Salamis, Against Heresies 78:13).
"If women were to be charged by God with entering the priesthood or with assuming ecclesiastical office, then in the New Covenant it would have devolved upon no one more than Mary to fulfill a priestly function. She was invested with so great an honor as to be allowed to provide a dwelling in her womb for the heavenly God and King of all things, the Son of God. . . . But he did not find this [the conferring of priesthood on her] good" (Epiphanius of Salamis, Against Heresies 79:3).
"[The Quintillians are heretics who] give women predominance so that these, too, can be honored with the priesthood among them. They say, namely, that Christ revealed himself . . . to Quintilla and Priscilla [two Montanist prophetesses] in the form of a woman" (Augustine, Heresies 1:17).
"[W]hen one is required to preside over the Church and to be entrusted with the care of so many souls, the whole female sex must retire before the magnitude of the task, and the majority of men also, and we must bring forward those who to a large extent surpass all others and soar as much above them in excellence of spirit as Saul overtopped the whole Hebrew nation in bodily stature" (John Chrysostom, The Priesthood 2:2).
"[T]he �man is the head of the woman� [1 Cor. 11:3], and he is originally ordained for the priesthood; it is not just to abrogate the order of the creation and leave the first to come to the last part of the body. For the woman is the body of the man, taken from his side and subject to him, from whom she was separated for the procreation of children. For he says, �He shall rule over you� [Gen. 3:16]. For the first part of the woman is the man, as being her head. But if in the foregoing constitutions we have not permitted them [women] to teach, how will any one allow them, contrary to nature, to perform the office of the priest? For this is one of the ignorant practices of Gentile atheism, to ordain women priests to the female deities, not one of the constitutions of Christ" (Apostolic Constitutions 3:9, [400 AD])
IV. The mystery of Christ and the Church
Up until now, we�ve seen that certain authorities, namely Jesus, the Apostles, and the Church�s Tradition, don�t allow for the ordination of women, but we haven�t gone over the reasons why they prohibit women from being priests. In this section we will go over the actual theological reasons why only men can be priests.
The most basic reason why the Church doesn�t ordain women is because priests act in the person of Christ (the priesthood is not merely a pastoral position), and Jesus is a man. Therefore, it�s fitting that the also priest be a man. Some may ask why the priest must share Jesus� gender and not, for example, His ethnicity or virtues. This question leads us to a deeper understanding of the priesthood and why it�s reserved for males. The priest acts in the person of Christ in relation to the Church, the bride of Christ (Ephesians 5:22-32; Revelation 19:7, 21:2, 9-10). For a woman to act as the groom of the Church (which is feminine) would be to represent the relationship between Jesus and the Church as a homosexual relationship. Therefore, it�s most fitting that the priest be a man. In fact, we can go one step further with this. As I said before, Jesus ordained the Apostles as priests at the Last Supper by commanding them to offer the sacrifice of the mass, so He intended for the priesthood to be intimately connected with the mass and His sacrifice on the cross (which are one in the same), which is seen most obviously in the fact that one of the priests� main jobs is to offer the sacrifice of the mass. But what does this have to do with the fact that only men can be priests? This is the reason why Jesus is the bridegroom of the Church rather than the bride (it�s the reason why He was incarnated as a man rather than as a woman). It was in His sacrifice on the cross that He gave Himself up for the Church and gave us His whole self. All we have to do now is receive His mercy and grace. Just as a man gives his seed to a woman and she gives herself to him by receiving that seed, we respond to Jesus� gift of Himself and give ourselves to Him by accepting His mercy and grace. The way in which Jesus gives Himself to us is masculine, so priests MUST be men. For a woman to act in the person of Christ and to offer the sacrifice of the mass would be to misrepresent the nuptial character of our relationship with Jesus; therefore, we need men to be priests.
Deacons
Before we wrap this up, I�d like to say something about deacons. Since they receive the sacrament of holy orders just as priests do, only men can be deacons. However, the reasons I gave before seem to apply only to priests, so why is the diaconate reserved for men alone? Deacons assist priests, so they participate in the priestly ministry, which is clearly seen in the fact that they receive the same sacrament that priests do. Since they share partially in the priestly ministry, which is reserved for men alone, it makes sense that women can�t be deacons.
Conclusion
We�ve gone over the theological reasons why women can�t be ordained, and we�ve seen how the Church, since the time of Jesus and the Apostles, has upheld this teaching. Thus, the pope said in his apostolic letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, �Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church's divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32) 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.�
This is not merely the remnant of an archaic, patriarchal society or an attempt to oppress women and hinder their liberation. Rather, just as mothers and fathers play different roles in giving life to and raising children, so men and women also play different roles in the life of the Church. We are all one in Christ (Galatians 3:28), but this unity is not sameness. On the contrary, as parts of one body, we receive different gifts and callings from God, just as our organs all have different jobs in our bodies (1 Corinthians 12:12-31), and both Scripture and Tradition make it clear that the calling to the priesthood is reserved for men alone.