Can Women be Ordained Priests?

 

by Robert Nalewajek

 

Updated: June 1, 2024

The Issue with Women Ordination

Can women be ordained? This is a difficult topic for us ‘moderns’ because the reason for the answer “no” is, essentially, theological.

Secular arguments/justifications seem irrefutable, but the Church’s rule is derived from the “word of God” and, thereby, brooks no earthly argument.

Why can’t women be priests? Because, as the Church, in her magisterial teaching holds: The Church has no authority to ordain women. (Pope St. John Paul II, 4)

Why Women Can’t be Priests

It seems this issue began to gain prominence with Anglican consideration of ordinating women – which led Pope St. Paul VI to write in 1975:

“She [the Church] holds that it is not admissible to ordain women to the priesthood, for very fundamental reasons…the constant practice of the Church, which has imitated Christ in choosing only men; and her living teaching authority which has consistently held that the exclusion of women from the priesthood is in accordance with God’s plan for his Church.” (Letter to Dr. Frederick Donald Coggan, Archbishop of Canterbury)

This was followed by the most detailed explanation in 1976: “[I]t must not be forgotten that the priesthood does not form part of the rights of the individual, but stems from the economy of the mystery of Christ and the Church.”

This document concludes: the Church “does not consider herself authorized to admit women to priestly ordination.” (Inter Insigniores: On the Question of Admission of Women to the Ministerial Priesthood)

The Final Word on Women Priests (?)

Of course, the question of and arguments for women’s ordination, and pressure, did not go away, leading Pope St. John Paul II to prepare the 1994 Apostolic Letter: On Reserving Priestly Ordination to Men Alone where he states:

“Although the teaching that priestly ordination is to be reserved to men alone has been preserved by the constant and universal Tradition of the Church and firmly taught by the Magisterium in its more recent documents, at the present time in some places it is nonetheless considered still open to debate, or the Church’s judgment that women are not to be admitted to ordination is considered to have a merely disciplinary force.”

“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. 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.” (Ordinario Sacerdotalis, 4)

“Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed…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.” (Pope St. John Paul II, 4)

Pope Francis and Women Ordination

Pope Francis continues this teaching and has also ruled out a woman ever serving as a priest in the Roman Catholic Church in his November 1, 2016 interview:

Q: “Is it realistic to think of women priests in the Catholic Church in the next few decades?”

A: Pope Francis: “St. Pope John Paul II had the last clear word on this and it stands, this stands”. Here, of course, referring to the Apostolic letter identified above. (In-Flight Press Conference from Sweden to Rome)

In January 2021 Pope Francis reiterated: the Church “does not consider herself authorized to admit women to priestly ordination” (cf. Saint John Paul II, Apostolic Letter Ordinatio sacerdotalis, May 22, 1994)…[T]oday it seems opportune to surpass this reservation…however, always having as a criterion fidelity to the mandate of Christ and the will to live and proclaim the Gospel imparted by the Apostles and entrusted to the Church so that it [this reservation] may be religiously heeded, devoutly safeguarded, faithfully proclaimed.” (Letter, Regarding Access of Women to the Ministries of Lector and Acolyte)

Later, in May 2024, when asked if women will “ever have the opportunity to be a deacon and participate as a clergy member in the church?” Pope Franics replied, “No”. (Pope Francis interview with CBS News)

Elaborating: “If it is deacons with Holy Orders, no. But women have always had, I would say, the function of deaconesses without being deacons, right? Women are of great service as women, not as ministers, as ministers in this regard, within the Holy Orders.” (Pope Francis interview with CBS News)

The Catechism

And, of course, the simplest, most brief statement is in the Catechism (CCC, 1577): “Only a baptized man (vir) validly receives sacred ordination. The Lord Jesus chose men (viri) to form the college of the twelve apostles, and the apostles did the same when they chose collaborators to succeed them in their ministry. The college of bishops, with whom the priests are united in the priesthood, makes the college of the twelve an ever-present and ever-active reality until Christ’s return. The Church recognizes herself to be bound by this choice made by the Lord himself. For this reason the ordination of women is not possible.”

Clearly, secular arguments do not and can not apply to this question because the ‘rule’ exists as a matter of faith.

What is Needed?

“The revolution must be more profound.” – Cardinal Marc Ouellet

As reported in (CRUX), Cardinal Ouellet opined that we should not “completely equate at a ministerial level men and women, because there’s a symbolic importance in the sacramental roles.”

“It’s important to remember that God made an alliance with humanity, and that the nuptial symbol is the privileged symbol in the Church and in the Bible…to express God’s relationship with his people, of Christ with the Church. Christ is male, the Church is feminine. The priest who must represent Christ must have a semantic coherence, and this is the reason why the representation of Christ as a husband is reserved to men.”

What is needed, Cardinal Ouellet said, is a much deeper reform, one that is “more fundamental than imposing the same roles to women and men. The change the Church needs is much greater than giving [women] access to ordained ministry. The revolution must be more profound.” Women must be granted concrete recognition, without pretending that, simply by being ordained, they would be granted access to all the spaces of the Church. This is “a wrong path, one that doesn’t respect the peculiarity of the woman.”

A Theme Continued by Pope Francis

In his (22 November 2022 interview) Pope Francis said: “The church is a spouse. We have not developed a theology of women that reflects this…that is the Marian principle, which is the principle of femininity (femineidad) in the church, of the woman in the church, where the church sees a mirror of herself because she is a woman and a spouse. A church with only the Petrine principle would be a church that one would think is reduced to its ministerial dimension, nothing else. But the church is more than a ministry. It is the whole people of God. The church is woman. The church is a spouse. Therefore, the dignity of women is mirrored in this way.”

“There is a third way: the administrative way. The ministerial way, the ecclesial way, let us say, Marian, and the administrative way, which is not a theological thing, it is something of normal administration. And, in this aspect, I believe we have to give more space to women.”

“So there are three principles, two theological and one administrative. The Petrine principle, which is the ministerial dimension, but the church cannot function only with that one. The Marian principle, which is that of the spousal church, the church as spouse, the church as woman. And the administrative principle, which is not theological, but is rather that of administration, about what one does.”

“And why can a woman not enter ordained ministry? It is because the Petrine principle has no place for that…Woman is more, she looks more like the church, which is mother and spouse. I believe that we have too often failed in our catechesis when explaining these things. We have relied too much on the administrative principle to explain it, which in the long term does not work…that the woman does not enter into the ministerial life is not a deprivation. No. Your [women] place is that which is much more important and which we have yet to develop, the catechesis about women in the way of the Marian principle.”