Women in the priesthood [Updated]

A little while ago, I took this silly Internet quiz to find out if I was a feminist. This was my result:

You Are 82% Feminist

You are a total feminist. This doesn't mean you're a man hater (in fact, you may be a man). You just think that men and women should be treated equally. It's a simple idea but somehow complicated for the world to put into action.

Are You a Feminist?

I was kind of surprised to find out I scored so high; since I'm rather traditional in some ways, I just assumed I must be a chauvinist. But there is the other side of the coin; I get truly outraged when I see the way women are treated in many other countries, such as Saudi Arabia or other Middle Eastern nations.

I have daughters myself, and wouldn't want anyone limiting their education nor the choices in their lives, with very few limited exceptions, such as serving in certain types of combat roles (which warrants another post in itself at a later date). The other would be women in the priesthood.

Since I am a Catholic, and from Saint Louis, this caught my notice:

Over 600 Cheer at Ordination of Two Roman Catholic Women Hosted by a Synagogue in St. Louis

(Found via Deansmay).

Problem is: 1) These women aren't priests, and 2) they aren't Roman Catholic.

This isn't rocket science - if you decide to break with an established Church you are perfectly free to leave or found your own Church. But don't go calling yourselves "Roman Catholics" when you are not. The ceremony was arranged by the Women's Ordination Conference (WOC), which supports ordaining women as priests. In the article, they claim that "64 percent of U.S. Catholics that support women’s ordination". I am very skeptical of that figure, but even if true, it's entirely irrelevant. You don't decide these things by polls. If they were, ten years ago Britney Spears would be Pope and today it would be Paris Hilton.

Church issues should be entirely based on the word of God, normally found in a book called the Bible. There are a few heroines in the Bible (Judith, Esther, Mary, etc), but none of them are prophets, and none are rabbis, disciples, or apostles. There is also 1 Cor. 14:33b-36 which says "it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church". Translated as liberally as possible, it may be simply saying that women cannot perform the service (my interpretation), not that they have to remain completely silent (the most conservative interpretation). Either way, the Biblical evidence is heavily stacked against the idea of a female priest.

I am all for equality with very, very few exceptions, and this is one of them. Sometimes, it can be a good thing; after all, it would be a pretty dull world indeed if we eliminated all the differences between the sexes, wouldn't it?

UPDATE 30/11/2007 08:13:00 PM:

To answer the commenter who brought up Deborah:

That's one of the great things about this blog. I can learn things too. I'll have to retract my statement about no women prophets in the Bible. Yes, after a bit of research I realized I missed Deborah and also another woman named "Huldah", from II Kings 22, and 2 Chronicles 34. Not much is said about either of these women except that men did come to them for wisdom and advice. So there are exceptions. One thing to note, however, is that neither of them were rabbis, and didn't lead religious services as far as we know (in fact, neither were any of the male prophets really. Elijah in particular was just an ordinary guy before he was called to serve God). There is a possible confounder here however; the Bible sometimes uses "phrophesy" to mean "praise", as it does in 1 Chronicles 25:2.

But these women are from the Old Testament. What about the New? There aren't any except for "Anna the prophetess" from Luke 2:36, of which little is said, and she passed away when Jesus was still a baby.

People who support woman priests clutch at a few straws here and there, such as "Junia the Apostle" from Romans 16:7, a woman's name. But the problem is the name could have easily been "Junias", a man's name (At the time, Greek was normally written without accents, and if written with an acute accent "Ἰουνίαν", the name is "Junia" if with a circumflex accent "Ἰουνιᾶν", it is "Junias"). Additionally, the passage doesn't make it clear that he/she was an apostle anyway.

Philip's daughters "did prophesy" in Act 21:8-9, but it's not clear if this was in a Church or simply women ministering to other women. A woman named Phoebe is called a "servant of the Church", and Priscilla and Aquila are called Paul's "helpers in Christ Jesus" in Romans 16:1-3. Priscilla and Aquila also explain about Jesus to Apollos in Acts 18:26. But all this is a far cry from becoming a priest or a Church leader. This was simply good Christian behavior; after all, Paul didn't have any admonitions against women discussing Christ outside the Church service.





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