During a recent Q&A Open Forum episode of Catholic Answers Live, a caller asked about why women couldn’t be priests. The guest, Jimmy Akin, gave a fine answer but it got me thinking about a seemingly unrelated issue.
How many things wrong do you see? Cropped pic from alexis.lassus
One of the standard responses to the question of why women cannot be priests is the historical fact that Jesus Himself chose only men to be His apostles. The pro-priestess side will usually counter that the reason Jesus did not choose any women is because the culture at the time was strongly patriarchal (just like now!) and so Jesus was not sociologically able to raise women to such a high status.
The unrelated issue is the recent love-fest being heaped upon Reza Aslan, whose book I still haven’t read (and likely won’t until they invent a 40-hour day) but apparently makes the claim that “Jesus was deeply a part of this zealot movement, that he himself had these intense zealot tendencies, and that can be revealed in the words and in the actions that we see in the Gospels.” So, in the mind of people like Aslan, Jesus’ claim to fame was as a political revolutionary, standing up to the civil (Rome) and religious (Jewish) leaders of His time.
It also seems likely that, if you polled people who supported the idea of women priests, they would probably be sympathetic to the Aslanian idea of “Jesus as (only a) revolutionary;” or, vice versa, if you polled people who saw Jesus this way they would probably be sympathetic to the idea of female priests.
Which, of course, leads one to ask why Jesus was such a strong revolutionary force in one area but not another. He would risk certain death in standing up to the Sanhedrin and Caesar, but didn’t want to offend cultural patriarchal morays by having women be ordained? It would seem to take a lot more guts to be willing to cross Rome (pun intended) than to let women serve in prominent positions in your little (at the time) Jewish offshoot sect.
My take? Jesus was a revolutionary, but He wants us to revolt against a much bigger force than Rome. He wants us to revolt against ourselves: our pride, greed, envy, wrath, lust, gluttony, and sloth:
Was Jesus a pushover on the issue of women priests? Hardly. Priestesses were common in other religions in Jesus’ day, and many Jews likely knew this. If Jesus was going to set up His own rules (“You’ve heard it said…but I say to you…”) it certainly would not have been extraordinarily controversial to have female priests. Jesus didn’t shy away from women, either, as He likely would if the patriarchy meme is true. The scenes with Mary and Martha, Mary Magdalene, the woman at the well, etc. all paint Jesus in less than chauvinistic tones. And, of course, if you were going to pick the best people, regardless of sex, to be priests in your new religion why wouldn’t you pick the only other sinless person around? Besides, do we think we, now, have the authority to undo what Jesus did?
In reserving the priesthood to men, Jesus is allowing us to see ourselves (lay men and women) in the feminine role of receptivity and openness to God. There is power in humility and submission, if for no other reason than it removes obstacles for grace to break through. If Jesus is going to lead a revolution in our hearts so that He, the rightful One, is king then the surest way to let Him lead is to get ourselves out of the way.
P.S. Please pray for two special intentions of your T&C staff.