13. Declaration on the Question of the Admission of Women to Ministerial Priesthood

An Argument Against Priestesses

I have always found the Declaration on the Question of the Admission of Women to Ministerial Priesthood to be particularly insightful. I will summarize it as follows:

1. In her Tradition, the Catholic Church has never felt that priestly or episcopal ordination can be validly conferred on women. "A few heretical sects in the first centuries, especially Gnostic ones, entrusted the exercise of the priestly ministry to women: this innovation was immediately noted and condemned by the Fathers, who considered it as unacceptable in the Church."

2. Jesus Christ himself did not call any women to membership in the Twelve. "If He acted in this way, it was not in order to conform to the customs of his time, for his attitude towards women was quite different from that of his milieu, and he deliberately and courageously broke with it."

3. Even Mary was not called to the Twelve as a member. Paul tells us in Acts, that the fulfillment of the prophesies in Jesus were made only by "Peter and the Eleven."

4. The attitude of Jesus and the Apostles on this matter is of permanent value. The Church itself is BOUND by Christ's manner of acting.

5. "The Christian priesthood is therefore of a sacramental nature: the priest is a sign, the supernatural effectiveness of which comes from the ordination received, but a sign that must be perceptible and which the faithful must be able to recognize with ease." The priest is a man because this natural resemblance in the minister makes it easier to see the image of Christ there. For Christ himself WAS and REMAINS a man. [Note that the priest acts "in persona Christi" (persona referring to the entire identity of Jesus not just a genderless Spirit, as you suggest), not merely "in persona Ecclesia."]

6. "But it 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." It is simply and purely a gift, not the goal of some merited action in social justice.