Female Ordination

[Guest huh?]

I am a female Episcopalian priest.

Why would Christ deprive women from serving him at the altar? From being a priest? Why would he decide he doesn’t want women to love him by serving his people?

This aspect of your faith confuses me.

[BLAZEr]

Hi and welcome to Phatmass! amesome question! I hope you'll stick around and see the wonderful things we have to offer. There are many forums I hope you will enjoy!

I'm going to offer some thoughts on your question, but I don't know if it will be possible to answer you to your satisfaction. I would just recommend a prayerful reading of the responses to your question. Ask God to open your heart and our hearts to His truth!

The first thing I am struck by is your word "deprive." This word is powerful because it expresses the natural sense of something being unfair. I too am moved to abhor injustice. And I can see how you would perceive an all male clergy as something unjust or, at the very least, as something not perfectly equitable. I think that even our Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, shares your sense of "inequality" in this regard. However I think we would benefit from thinking about some aspects of this question more.

Is serving at the altar a "right?" If serving at the altar is not a "right" or a "norm" you can't really be deprived of it. Deprivation, by its very definition implies that you are not receiving something you would ordinarily have. Service at the altar is not the "ordinary" Christian life, so no one is deprived of it if they did not do it. In the Catholic understanding, service as a priest is something you are called to by Christ and this calling is confirmed by the Church.

The question we would seek to understand is "Why did Christ only call men to serve as his apostles?" and "Why did the Apostles only call other men to be their successors?" With the amount of affection that the Christian community had for Mary and with their understanding of her as the model of the Christian life, you would think that Mary would have been a perfect choice for an Apostle or a successor to the 12, yet not even she was chosen. For the Catholic, since the Scriptures and the Tradition make up our understanding of ourselves, we cannot seek to do something outside of the tradition or the scriptures that is not contained within it. Calling women to service as priests would be a clear break with the Apostolic Tradition and the teachings contained in the Scriptures.

I would also say that it would important to think if Christ's main concern for us was "equality" or "unity"? I would suggest that within unity equality is not the goal, but rather complimentarity. We don't have to be the same to be unified, but we do have to see how we all fit together. This is an important idea to keep in mind when asking ourselves about our Role in the Body of Christ.

Your second question "Why would he decide he doesn’t want women to love him by serving his people?" is just not true. Of course Christ wants women to serve him by serving his people. All women are called to serve Christ's people, to minister to them, to love them, to teach them the faith, to pray with them. All of these things women are invited, I would even say required to do. First and foremost this would occur within a family and then a neighborhood and a church.

Within the Catholic church there is a long and noble tradition of women dedicating themselves to service of God's people in many ways. Some have dedicated themselves to prayer for the Church, some have dedicated themselves to teaching or service to the poor or hospital work. Our religious women, who are consecrated in vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, have led exemplary lives of dedication to the service of the Church. To think that one would need to be a priest in order to love Christ by serving his people is an impoverished understanding of the Christian life.

What's more, 'serving Christ's people' is only the function of the priest, but not his identity. The identiy of a priest is to be in persona Christi, that is "in the person of Christ." In the sacramental duties of the priest (which for us are the priest's most important duties) the priest stands as Christ, representing Him to the Church. This representation has to be according to Christ's nature, which is human AND expressed in the masculine. (bear with me, I know you're probably teeming with questions here).

For Catholics, it is a fact that God was incarnated in the person of Christ and that Christ was male. This is not an arbitrary decision. God didn't just say "Oh, what the heck, I'll be made man." This is an important part of his self-revelation to us. The fact that Christ chose only men to be his apostles is also an important fact to us. We both know that Christ smashed all sorts of paradigms about women and their role, and we also know that Christ loved women very dearly. Mary his Mother, Martha and Mary of Bethany, Mary Magdalene, all of these women play a very important role in Christ's life and he loves them very much. However he never calls them his Apostles. They are never named among the twelve.

Even though Mary Magdalene is the first to see Christ after the resurrection, and she is told to "Go and tell" what she had seen, she is never again seen in the scriptures. It is clear that the Apostles have the task to teaching and growing the Church. And it is clear that they are responsible for the baptising, and decision making, and celebrations of the eucharist.

Does this mean that Christ excludes women? No, of course not. It means that the role of women is something different from the role of men. Even the role of some men is different from the role fo those men who are called to serve at the altar.

Rather than imposing our own understanding onto God's freedom, saying "Well, we think it should be done this way God, even though you never did it that way." The Church is very careful to respect God's freedom in the way he has created the world and chosen to reveal himself. Rather than saying "Did Christ intend to exclude women from service at the altar" we say "Why did Christ choose only men?"

Do you see the difference in the two questions? The First imposes our own understanding "that women should be included and Christ may have excluded" and the second assumes that Christ did as he wanted to do, and we just seek to understand what he wanted to do.

The following are links that might help you to understand the Catholic Church's teachings on the matter better. If you have more questions, please send me a private message and I will be happy to answer your questions as best I can here in the public forum.

Women and the Priesthood

The Male Priesthood by John Pacheco at the Catholic Legate

Ordinatio Sacerdotalis by Pope John Paul II on Reserving the Priesthood to Men Alone

The Following is really a MUST READ. It's absolutely mind blowing!

Mulieris Dignitatem by Pope John Paul II on the Dignity and Vocation of Women

[Pontifex]

There are many reasons that the Church only has men as priests, some of them are quite practical, others spiritual, and some ontological.

Let me first say that women play a significant role in the Church, although it is not the role of shepherd. Asking why women can't be priests is as vexing a question as asking why men can't give birth. Priesthood is part of a man's ontology. The role of Shepherd is reserved for a man, in the same way that the role of Mother is reserved for a woman.

If we believe that Jesus instituted the Church, and the Sacraments, including Holy Orders, then we must also ask, "Why did Jesus only call men as his disciples?" It certainly wasn't because he wanted to follow the rules and regulations of the time. Jesus did everything he could to break down the barriers of injustice. Therefore, it must be a matter of ontology and a male calling.

Women have always played a major role in the Church. It is to a woman that we give the highest honor off all God's created beings. (Mary) Many women have been canonized saints, many women are doctors of the Church, and many women have helped steer the wheel of the Ship called the Church to keep it on course. They just didn't do it as priests.

I know that this response will fall short of a complete explanation, but I hope it helps.

Peace to You,

Fr. Pontifex