Letters: Why won’t Catholic Church ordain women?
Would someone please explain to me why the Catholic Church refuses to ordain women as priests?
The reason given by the Vatican is that the Apostles chosen by Jesus were all men. On that basis ordination should be refused for Inuit, Chinese, Gauls, Egyptians, Samaritans and Canaanites, and to anyone of noble birth; to correct this and cast the net wider Saul of Tarsus, an experienced traveler, a Turk and a citizen of Rome, had to be recruited. At the time the Middle East was a strongly male orientated society and it might have been difficult to get the necessary attention needed with any female apostles.
On the other hand the female disciples were key to their day to day organization. One should note that after the Resurrection, Jesus Christ first revealed himself not to the apostles but to Mary Magdalene and told her what to do. I suspect he knew that was the best way to ensure his instructions were followed.
In 2002 the Vatican’s International Theological Commission that had been mulling the question for some 25 years decided it could not make a decision either way as to whether the women deacons in the church’s first thousand years had been formally ordained or were simply commissioned with a blessing for particular ministries and duties. Obviously both events had occurred, possibly as they had with male deacons. Now male deacons have to be ordained. It should be extended to women, too. Fifty percent of the world’s population are women. They are not just mothers, nurses and school teachers but lawyers, judges, engineers, doctors and surgeons, Nobel Prize-winning scientists, generals and admirals, professors, CEOs, governors of provinces & states, and presidents of countries, the majority of university undergraduates & graduates are now women, and women have been recognized as saints from the earliest years of the church. The world recognizes their vital contribution to society but the church refuses to open the door to their priestly ordination.
In Mathew 15: 21-28 a Canaanite mother repeatedly asked Jesus to cure her daughter. He refused saying, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the House of Israel.” She persisted and he cured her daughter. If he could change his mind, I have difficulty in understanding why the church cannot. And again, Mathew 18: 18-20: “I promise you, all that you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and all that you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” Change is licensed.
Martin Hugh-Jones
professor emeritus
Baton Rouge
This letter to the editor was changed online on 5/14/2012 to insert the proper text under the headline.