We Must Ask

Why Can’t Women Be Priests?

Love Demands It

By John Houk

Catholics are being asked to accept that Jesus chose twelve men to be apostles with the specific intention that he would forever exclude women from ordained ministry. Did Jesus really do that?

Here are some reasons why Catholics continue to ask why, really, why can’t women be priests?

It is our duty to ask why

Canon 212.3 states: “According to the knowledge, competence, and prestige which they (the faithful) possess, they have the right and even the duty to manifest to the sacred pastors their opinion on matters which pertain to the good of the Church...” When a practice of the Church hinders instead of promotes the spreading of the Good News we have the duty to question it.

The credibility of the Church is at stake

One must be just to preach justice. By refusing to demonstrate by deeds that it is actually a champion of the full human dignity of women, the Church loses credibility on the subject of women’s treatment in the world and even becomes complicit in their mistreatment.

This is a new question

The question could not be asked until women were finally seen as full and complete human persons. That did not happen in the official language of the Church until the 1960’s. Prior to that the Church’s “constant teaching” was that there was something wrong with women. Women lacked the “perfection” of men and were by their nature subordinate to men. Imperfect and subordinate women could not be priests so why raise the question?

The exclusion of women is NOT “part of” the deposit of faith.

In 1995 the English translation of an official document stated that the exclusion of women from the priesthood was indeed “part of” the deposit of faith. In 1996 a clarification was issued that claimed a “translation problem” and said that the correct language is “pertains to” the deposit of faith. This teaching is NOT revealed truth but is somehow(?) related to revealed truth. The correction has not been made in U.S. Church documents.

The Church can change a teaching

Slavery was embedded in the culture of Christian Europe and the Middle East, and accepted as “God’s will” until the 19^th century. Christians owned slaves, popes owned slaves, even missionaries owned slaves. We now know that it was not God’s will that there should always be slaves.

Holy Scripture does not exclude women from the priesthood

A 1976 Pontifical Biblical Commission answered “no” when asked if anything in Scripture excluded women from the priesthood. The Commission’s statement became public only because it was “leaked” to the press.

Looking like Jesus is not enough

Catholics are asked to accept that the symbolic value of the priest requires that the priest look like Jesus, i.e. that the priest be male. Priests do have a call to provide the world with a Christ-like example of living and relating to others, and gender has nothing to do with being a Christ-like-person.

We have a prophetic calling

The Church has a prophetic purpose. “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” We hope for, and work for, an earth that has heaven as its model. Women will be fully human and full participants in heaven and we have a prophetic call to include them fully now.

They doth protest too loudly

The Vatican’s response to petitions for the ordination of women has been no, no! NO! Each “no” has been “louder” than the one before. Catholics have become suspicious of the Church’s motives.

Love demands it

Love demands the ability to view reality from the eyes of the other. The Church’s long acceptance of slavery changed when we began to look at slavery from the eyes of the slave. Now the Church must do the same for women.

Major Print Resources

The Papal “No”, by Deborah Halter.

Loyola University, New Orleans, Crossroads Publishing, 2004 (Includes Papal documents)

A History of Women and Ordination, Vol. 2 by Ida Raming, Ph.D., Scarerow Press, Oxford. 2005

Ordained Women in the Early Church by Kevin Madigan and Carol Osiek, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005. (Early source documents)

The Church that Can and Cannot Change, by John T. Noonan, Jr. University of Notre Dame Press, 2005. (New realities are incorporated into Church teaching)