Should females be permitted to be priests?

Answer 1

yes

Answer 2

Should females be permitted to be priests in the Catholic Church? The answer is no.

Jesus and the Apostles founded the Catholic Church and the Church is formed after them. They were all males as God intended and should continue to be that way. Women can choose to be nuns or hold other positions in the Church, such as youth director, if they believe they are called to serve the Lord.

I'm a female and a Catholic and I see nothing wrong with this. I don't think the Church is "living in the dark ages". The Catholic Church is just continuing the faith as God intended. God does not look down on women (he held Mary in high esteem). The Gospel holds much proof of this.

Answer 3

When I studied religion in college, one of the students said 'often, a person needs to be a priest more than people need a priest,' meaning the desire to be a spiritual leader is often stronger than the need a for a leader a particular community feels. Look at the OT, where guys like Elijah and Isaiah show up telling people that they have a mesage from God, and the people are like, 'did somebody ask for a message from God? I don't think so.' So, if a woman feels like she needs to be a priest, and the community doesn't accept her, she's joining a long historical line of both men and women rejected by society. In my opinion, 'permission' has nothing to do with it. If she wants to be a priest, she should go for it.

Answer 4

If we are looking at a general view, yes for everyone is a priest. We need not to have a priest to brings our pray to God. Peter's epistle mentioned that we are all royal priesthood.

However, if we talk about the church leadership (Catholic and Anglican), priest as a leader of a church, I still believe that it is the role of man.

I am not bias against women, but the Lord had created us human differently, and each are to function differently too. Paul in his teaching clearly spell out the role of women in the Church, as well as the various requirement of the Church office bearer, namely the Bishop, Elder etc. It is the duty of men.

So, should women be a priest? Yes and no.

Yes in the situation of general view, where she is also a priest to the non-believer, a priest at home in the absent of the male, to bring the children to fear the Lord.

No in the congregation, when there are more senior male around. When the people of God come together as one body.

Beg your pardon, if I sounded backward, sexist. But believe me, I am taking Bible as a whole, and looking it from Old and New Testament point of view. I do not take part of Bible that suits me and believe.

So, if you do not accept the bible as a whole word of God, we have nothing in common, and you may hold your view different from my.

Regards

Answer 5

I'm assuming you're talking about Catholic priests.

If so, then no -- we should not.

Christ held women in very high esteem -- much higher esteem than His earthly society held women. The Gospels offer us much evidence of that.

Jesus befriended women, He ate and drank with them, He treated them with an equality and respect that was totally unheard of in His earthly time and place.

And yet despite all this, He did not commission any of them with a sacramental apostolic ministry. Only to His disciples did He confer such a ministry.

Also, the fact that the Catholic priesthood only contains men does NOT mean that women have no important leadership roles to play in the Church.

Remember that the Catholic Church runs a great many facilities and agencies. It runs schools, hospitals, homeless shelters, outreach centers, crisis-pregnancy centers, diocesan offices .... a whole laundry list.

Many of these facilities and agencies are headed up by ... women.

Even the chancellor of every Catholic diocese -- a position roughly equivalent to the chief operating officer of a major corporation -- can be a woman. And often is, in fact.

In fact, I am a lay employee of my local Catholic archdiocese. If you ever came to our office, you'd see that most of the people who work here -- the people who essentially keep the archdiocese running -- are women.

Answer 6

My feelings are that the priests need to do away with their celibacy and live in the real world. And yes, I do think that females should be permitted to be priests.

Answer 7

No, but the reason has nothing to do with equality, intelligence or capacity.

Cathoicism and Orthodoxy are driven by what is called "apostolic tradition." In this sense, tradition is all things handed down by the apostles. This includes scripture, songs, practices, stories and beliefs. The earliest ordination ceremonies, where women are ordained deaconess, clearly treat the ordination of a woman deaconess as different in substance to a man to the diaconate. The problem of course is that the words deacon and presbyter have an ordinary non-technical meaning in Greek. In addition, while there is scripture that uses the word apostle with women, a simple grab of the Greek calendar will find the use of the word apostle for a large number of people who died centuries after the death of the Twelve.

There isn't any evidence of women being ordained into presbyteral roles in the early Church. No one knows why that is. It may be an accident of history. It may be purposeful. The problem is no one knows. It is absent from what was handed on in the early communities. It is true women have held leadership roles, but women still hold leadership roles in Catholicism. Mother Theresa is a prime example. Clare of Assissi attended the ecumenical council of her day and wrote her own rule of life for her sisters. Leadership in Catholicism is by service not by title.

Additionally, there is one other reason. We used to have a Russian priest. He lived under Communist rule. He pointed out the advantage the church had in surviving without women priests that would not have existed had women been ordained. It may very well have been a survival reason. The Soviets rounded up the priests, deacons and bishops and as well the monks and nuns. They were imprisoned or executed. This promptly triggered a bunch of men to seek ordination. They were executed as well. By the time the fourth group of men came through, they had learned the lesson and the Church was stripped of most of its heroic men. Of course, when you ordain someone it is easy to figure out who is leading the Church. The women took over leadership and propogation of the faith. If you cannot figure out who to arrest, you don't. The women preserved the faith, not the men. The men may have held the nominal leadership roles, but the women guaranteed its survival.

The same issue occured with celebacy. Orthodox priests who were married found their families arrested and released upon delivering an appropriate sermon. Celebate priests had no one to lose. You could only kill them. Interestingly, Hitler found the celebate male priesthood a problem. He felt he could circumvent Protestantism pretty easily, but the priesthood was a problem to be dealt with differently. He put quite a bit of work into eliminating the Catholic Church as a source of opposition. He did it quite skillfully and succeeded to the Church's shame. Only the Jehovah's Witnessess remained a true source of opposition because they refuse to pledge allegiance to any flag. They were the only religious group separated out for automatic execution. The Jews were considered an ethnic not a religious group. Converted Jews were executed for their parentage not their beliefs.

I suspect both the preference for celebacy in the Catholic Church (not all parts of the Catholic Church require their priests to be unmarried) and the ordination of only men comes out of this early experience of persecution.

Answer 8

NO. Jesus instituted the priesthood to men.
Priests, by nature, of their ordination become one with Christ and marry the Church, who is portrayed as a bride(woman.) If priests were women this would promote homosexual relationships.
Also during the Consecration of the Mass the priest is "Persona Christi," in the person of Christ. In that very moment he is no longer himself, rather he is Christ. Since Christ was a man, a woman cannot be "Persona Christi."

Answer 9

Women who love Jesus and want to lead others to him should do so. Rather they are Priests, Pastors, or whatever. If they can resist getting led into a personal relationship with the men they are reaching for the Gospel then they will be used by God and Blessed. If you are for God you are never against him.

Answer 10

Yes, they should. We are far past the Biblical times of women being lesser people. I would even like to see the Catholic Church get rid of the celibacy garbage.
To clear things up, there are women clergy in Protestant religions, but they are not called Priests. Priests are Catholic.

Answer 11

According to the Bible, they can't. Paul says women are not to have authority over men, and being a priest, pastor, minister, etc. means they would be in authority over men. If Christians believe that Paul was inspired by God, then disobeying Paul's command is the same as disobeying God. If women have a problem with this, then they need to talk to God about it and see if he will change his mind and rewrite the Bible.