Why Ordain Women - The Australian Ordination of Catholic Women

Why Ordain Women?

Why we believe women must be ordained
To ordain women in the catholic church is to uphold women as images of God and images of Christ. The present all-male priesthood affirms the distorting 'all-male' image of God, which grossly limits the church's capacity to worship the profound mystery of the godhead. Ordained women would affirm that women as well as men are made in the image of God; see The Hour Has Come women are images of Christ. The priest, at ordination, is commissioned to act in the name of the church which is a body of women and men, and therefore both women and men should be present in all positions of leadership and ministry, including the ordained priesthood. a significant number of women feel a strong call to priesthood; these vocations should be tested, as those for men are tested, unless we want to risk attempting to block the work of the Spirit. Jesus called both women and men to be his disciples, surely the life of Jesus should be the model for ministry in the church. There is ample evidence in Scripture for women's leadership in the early church. Such leadership became increasingly prohibited as the church became a public institution, as it was not considered proper for women to hold leadership positions in public places. As the world has come to see the rightness of women holding leadership positions in the civil public world; so it would be right for them to be church leaders today. Limiting the priesthood to celibate males is depriving a large part of the church, which is primarily a eucharistic community, of eucharist. Women are acting in many pastoral ministries; their lack of ordination puts an unnecessary barrier on their pastoral work. Women often need to talk with other women: it is the experience of other churches in which women are ordained, that women are often more able to talk of domestic violence, or rape, of sexual abuse etc and men are more often able to weep when the priest is a woman; See A Gospel Pastoral needs of the late twentieth century. It would signal the church's real belief in the equality of women and men.	Cartoons the work of Graham English Reprinted with permission of Women-Church. Women-Church is an Australian journal devoted to feminism and religion. For further information contact Women-Church GPO Box 2134 Sydney 1043
What Rome says... In 1976, the Declaration Inter Insigniores, from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), declared that the church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women, and that this teaching, based firmly on Scripture, has been held faithfully for two thousand years. Pope John Paul II restated this position in 1994 in his apostolic letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, and added that the teaching was to be held 'definitively' by all the faithful. In late 1995, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith declared in a Responsum that this teaching was not only part of the deposit of faith but it was taught infallibly. Rome gives as theological underpinning for this position the claim that the Eucharistic leader, as icon of Christ, must be male, because a natural resemblance must exist between Christ and the priest. They also insist that Jesus chose only men to be his apostles and in doing this set up an all-male priesthood for all time.
The problem with Rome's position Jesus did not ordain anyone, male or female, to the priesthood as it is understood today. Nor was he ordained himself. It is impossible to trace the priesthood back to the time of Christ. When Christian communities met in homes during the first and second centuries, women were prominent as leaders. See A Gospel Women's Ministry in the early church communities. Even if hostility towards ordained women grew in the following centuries (the so-called patristic period), considerable evidence has come to light to indicate that women continued to have leadership roles in Christian communities; moreover, while Inter Insigniores claims to quote evidence from this period hostile to women's ordination, a detailed analysis of the material to which they refer by the American Catholic Biblical Association and the Catholic Biblical Association of Australia has shown that none of it refers to women's ordination. Also see A Gospel Tradition and historical perspectives. Traditional arguments against women's ordination by people such as Thomas Aquinas were based on the belief in women's inferiority; as the Vatican now claims to accept the equality of women and men (even while proclaiming complementarity) it has shifted the argument from the superiority of maleness to the necessity for the minister to represent Christ. But it is the humanity of Christ and not his maleness which is fundamental for his redeeming actions. Scripture scholars do not accept the Twelve (or the Apostles) as the first priests. Their role is unclear. Certainly in some texts they appear to be representative of the Twelve tribes of Israel, selected as prophetic sign of the new Israel. Hence they would have to be male to represent the twelve sons of Jacob. Only Luke equates the Twelve with the Apostles. Paul uses 'apostolos' for a much wider group. See A Gospel The Twelve. Priests are said to act 'in persona Christi' and 'in persona ecclesiae'. The Vatican emphasises the former. But in ordination priests are commissioned to act in the name of the church, and they act 'in persona Christi' because they are ordained to act for the church representing before God the whole community. See A Gospel The priest representing Christ and the Church. The CDF does not have the power or authority to declare a teaching infallible. Basic teaching on infallibility from Augustine onwards insists that the agreement of the faithful around the world is required for infallible teachings. In its concern for the priest to represent Christ, the Vatican is only concerned with the sex of the priest; it does not require the priest have any of the other characteristics of Christ eg nationality, language, size, occupation, nor of followers such as Peter who was married, a fisherman, hot-tempered, etc.