Last time, we talked about the truth behind the myth of Pope
Joan. We ended with a question, though. Why does it matter that only men can be
priests?
Well, in 1976, it was formally and officially put into words
by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in their letter to the world,
Inter insignores. In that letter, and
in Pope John Paul II’s document Ordinatio
Sacerdotalis, it was stated that the priesthood was reserved for men, and
men alone, and there was nothing the Church could do about it. Now, these two
letters were not authoritative in themselves. However, they were authoritative
in that they were the teaching of the entirety of the Magisterium, meaning that
reserving the priesthood for men alone is an official and formal teaching of
the Catholic Church, and none can, in good conscience, reject this teaching and
remain Catholic.
Why is this, though? Why do we stick with the “archaic” idea
that only men have the “right” to be priests, even after Paul says in Galatians
that “there is no male and female” (Galatians 3:28). Well, there are a number
of reasons.
The first, and most obvious, reason we don’t allow for women
to become priests is the very simple reason that Jesus didn’t choose any women
to be among his twelve apostles. Instead, Jesus chose twelve men to lead his Church
after he left.
The objection to that is usually that choosing women to be
priests would have been incredibly unusual and would have thrown everyone off
of his message and driven most of his people away. Except for one minor point.
In that time, the Jews were the weird ones for not having priestesses. The
Romans had the Vestal Virgins, the Greeks had Oracle at Delphi, among others,
the Egyptians had Cleopatra and God’s Wife of Amun. The list goes on and on
with the different priestesses in the region around Israel. Priestesses actually
would have been normal.
Beyond just the normality of priestesses in the world at the
time, though, Jesus wasn’t exactly known for following social customs. He spoke
to a Samaritan woman, a known adulteress, while in Samaria, breaking at least
three different social taboos simply acknowledging her existence. He dealt with
the ritually unclean on a nearly daily basis. One of the twelve was a tax
collector, the absolute lowest of the low in the world of Jewish social
customs. A woman would probably actually have been closer to normal than some
of the other things he did.
There’s also the fact that Jesus did actually greatly
respect women in his ministry. The first people he appeared to after the
Resurrection were women. Jewish tradition would have thrown out their
testimony, but they were the ones who were to bring testimony to the Apostles,
yet they were never to be counted among the number of the 12. Mary, the very
mother of God, the absolute pinnacle of womanhood, without whom Jesus isn’t
born, wasn’t even numbered among the twelve. The one with the strongest claim
to any authority outside Christ held none.
Beyond just what Jesus did, though, the Apostles continued
the trend of not choosing women. After Judas died, in the upper room, Mary had
been present, but instead of choosing God’s mother, the obvious choice, they
chose Matthias. Mary wasn’t even the other top choice, it was Barsabbas. Even
when the Apostles move out to the rest of the world and start spreading the
Gospel in a culture that welcomed and accepted priestesses, there was never a
woman ordained, only those who aided in the mission of the Church as lay
ministers.
Next time, we’ll take a more in-depth look at some of the
history after the apostles of this teaching, as well as some theology about it.
