What women want What about Women’s Ordination?

Oct 4, 2005

A few months ago, during the election of Pope Benedict XVI, I came across a disturbing political cartoon in a local newspaper.  The sketch depicted the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica with a tall smoke stack standing atop.  Smoke emerged from the stack and spelled out “No Women Need Apply.” 

This cartoonist wasn’t the first to question the Church about the all-male priesthood, and he probably won’t be the last because the media, along with many Catholics, don’t understand the nature of priesthood, itself.  The priesthood is an office entrusted by Christ to His Apostles for teaching, sanctifying, governing, and fathering the faithful.  Fatherhood is essential to the priestly vocation. 

Unfortunately, there is a tendency to view the Church as a large corporation operated by men seeking to oppress women.  In fact, I recently attended a catechesis seminar where a young man addressed a European Cardinal with the question, “Your Eminence, don’t you think the Church is limiting women from climbing the hierarchal ladder by not allowing their ordination to the priesthood?”  The allusion to this Catholic corporate ladder is dangerous and misleading.  Moreover, this secular train of thought is exactly where society struggles to understand the role of women in the Church without female priesthood. 

The Church is not a corporation, but rather a divinely inspired family.  In understanding this concept, it is helpful to look at basic family dynamics.  Within my own family, my father doesn’t feel discriminated against because he isn’t my mother.  Actually, he is quite aware and relieved that he cannot biologically act as my mother!  Similarly, my mother doesn’t feel robbed of some right to be my father.  They share mutual understanding that each has their own role in service to one another and in raising their family.  Also engrained within their understanding is the knowledge that they share equal dignity as persons. 

This analogy directly relates to the life of the Church.  Just as men cannot be biological mothers and vice versa, men cannot be spiritual mothers and women cannot be spiritual fathers.  This reality is stamped within our nature.  We are made differently, yet created with equal dignity. 

Through Apostolic Tradition, the Magisterium is safeguarding this tenet of faith that was instituted by Christ.  Once ordained, a priest acts In Personae Christi (in the person of Christ) and assumes the role of father and bridegroom to his bride, the Church.  Therefore, he must be a man. 

In Inter Insigniores, the declaration addressing women’s admission to ministerial priesthood, the Church “intends to remain faithful to the type of ordained ministry willed by the Lord Jesus Christ and carefully maintained by the Apostles.” Christ, while choosing His twelve apostles, was deliberate in His choice of men. Some remark that he was merely acting in accordance to the customs of His time.  However, through examination of the Gospels, it is obvious that Jesus broke away from the prejudices of His time regarding women.  For example, Jesus converses publicly with the Samaritan woman (Jn 4:27), assists the hemorrhaging woman who was deemed legally impure (Mt 9:20), pardons the woman taken in adultery (Jn 8:11), and affirms the equality of the rights and duties of men and women with regard to the marriage bond (Mk 10:2, 19:3).  These accounts testify to Christ’s counter-cultural attitude towards women.

Moreover, no where in His charity, acceptance, and ministry to women does Christ call them to become one of the Twelve, not even his Mother nor the numerous women who faithfully accompanied Him during His public ministry.

Priesthood is a prominent vocation and notably the most visible vocation associated with the Church.  However, it is not the most important.  Our call as Catholics is to aspire to sainthood: the holiest of all vocations for men and women.  We must confront the societal misnomer that equates women’s rights with women’s sameness to men…and then, after realizing that equality is not sameness, we must apply it to our understanding of priestly ordination.