Eternal Significance of Sexuality

(Response to Questions about Women Priests)

You said that women can never be priests because Jesus was a male and the church is His bride, so only a male can represent Jesus when saying Mass. I don't understand the concentration on what gender Jesus happened to be. It seems to me that being human is more basic or central to the Incarnation than gender. You also said that women being priests and having positions of authority violates the order of creation. Are not your arguments based on old notions about women being inferior to men and weaker and more gullible than men, therefore, they cannot be trusted to be leaders. The Christian myth has sin entering through a woman and it takes a man, Jesus, to straighten that out. Everything that priests and bishops do women can do at least as well as men. To me that is enough reason to ordain women. The church says women cannot be priests because St Paul said he would not suffer a woman to teach, but he also said women should be silent and ask questions of their husbands at home. I don't hear church leaders requiring women to be silent in church and ask questions at home to their husbands. Isn't the church being selective in it's application of scripture on this question? These verses sound very ant-women. They were written at a time when women were just the property of men. Today women are people just as much as men are. It seems ridiculous to say some people who may feel a calling to priesthood cannot be even considered for priesthood just because they happen to be women without even looking at anything else about the person. Do you have any recommendations about what I should read about this subject?

Thanks,
Ken Crooms

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Dear Ken,

Thanks for the email. I cannot answer all the questions you bring up. Recently I've been thinking about how our society presents two different views of sex: on one hand gender does not matter. We should be like a bee hive, only concerned about production. On the other hand sex seems to be practically the only thing that matters. Consider the Fall TV programming. The Christian view of course rejects both those propositions. I can see what you you say that in certain circumstances we should maintain a legal concept that we are the same in order that rights do not get trampled by the more powerful. But surely in the Church we should be able to take off our masks, acknowledge what a glorious and eternally significant thing our sexuality is.

In my article on Women Priests I have a number of references you might check out & let me know what you think.

God bless,

Fr. Phil Bloom

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Papal Quotes re Women

Women and the Priesthood What Early Christian Writers Say

Vocations to Priesthood and Religious Life

From Karen: An argument for women priests and an American Catholic Church

Letter from Jennie

Letter from Donald

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