Why does the Catholic church not allow women to become priests?

Answer 1

The Catechism of the Catholic Church currently states:

The Lord Jesus chose men to form the college of the twelve apostles, and the apostles did the same when they chose collaborators to succeed them in their ministry.

The Church recognizes herself to be bound by this choice made by the Lord himself. For this reason the ordination of women is not possible.

With love in Christ.

Answer 2

Pastor Billy says: the same reason why men cannot be mothers it is an impossiblity. The Christian priest is persona Christi meaning in the place of Christ they stand in for him at the Mass.
Jesus was made flesh as a man. The incarnation of God was as a man. The priest is like a spiritual father, our Christian mothers fulfill the femine. The Church correctly states it does not have the authority to change what God created.

Unlike some Protestant communities which allow female pastors you must understand the authority of the Catholic priesthood is never interchangable with these groups it is of a higher standing. Within the Catholic woman can be everything except a priest, as Catholic men can be everything except a mother. I know of many women who teach in the Catholic Church are members and leaders in many different ministries and run different conferences.

addition: I would think this question is addressed to Catholics yet persons like House Speaker a known anti-catholic show up spreading lies. There was never a pope Joan that is a fictonal story created in the late 1800's by a non-catholic do the research. House Speaker if that's the extent of your education I have pity for your children. Did one of your acolytes ask you to follow me around yahoo answers? Hopefully you'll start to become educated.

Answer 3

I would only like to point out one aspect of the Phoebe quote above just to provide a framework. I belong to the Greek speaking part of the Catholic Church. The use of the word we now call deacon, or deaconess is problematic. Satan is also called a God as the language is smaller than ours and theos includes a wide range of people. Likewise, if you look on the Greek calendar you will see Cyril and Methodius listed as apostles. Clearly they lived hundreds of years later and were not Apostles in the more technical English sense, but in the Greek sense they were.

Deacon, presbyter and episcopos only evolved later as titles. If you are careful in your reading and ignore the writings around the scriptures, you can justify the ordination of women to the diaconate. In fact, women were deacons for about 1200 years if I remember correctly. However, the meaning and form were different. Due to poverty of language the word deaconess had the same functional meaning as a mother superior would hold today. They were closer in concept of ordination to that of an acolyte or a lector in that it was considered a minor ordination rather than a major ordination. Major ordinations are done by a bishop and are a lifelong ministry of unique character in a number of ways.

Further, deacon means servant and that is it. It isn't a title in the ecclesiastical sense, it is a statement of who to go to for help. I forget the website but there is an excellent website promoting the ordination of women to the priesthood, the presbyterate, even it acknowledges that there are no early writings supporting the idea.

According to one possible archaeological exception, where there may have been one west Syrian diocese that ordained the deacones inside the sanctuary, it does not appear to be a Church practice. Further, since the word Catholic means "according to the whole," the practice of one diocese though a primitive diocese of apostolic origin would not carry a lot of weight.

Women cannot be priests for two reasons, one is almost silly, the other is very serious. The word in English we call priest is a contraction of the older English word prester which is also a contraction of the Greek word presbyter which means "old man." If a woman was intended to be an "old man," then the writers could easily have chosen an alternate descriptor. The second reason, and this one is very important, is that the Catholic Church cannot authorize any belief or practice that did not occur in the earliest life of the Church nor any belief that did not occur universally. It must be both widespread, of apostolic origin and in continuous use since then.

Reason is acceptable in Protestantism to determine doctrine. It is not acceptable in Catholicism. Catholicism and Orthodoxy use reason to explain the beliefs and practices left to us by the apostles not the other way around. Reason is useful, but not sufficient. The reason there are 46,000 Protestant denominations is that you can reason yourself into any set of beliefs.

Answer 4

Yoav D gives an excellent answer...especially when he says (correctly) that the Church does not have the authority to ordain women as a matter of course.

Part of the tradition though, stems from the fact that the Church has always held women in very high esteem.

Priests are servants of the people...traditionally it was a very dirty, lonely, and very hard job. You would spend most of your time away from home, family and friends, your life was a risk in many instances, long hours, etc.

It is the people who, over time, have elevated Priests to a very high level of esteem. This is the work of man, not God. Part of the thinking of the early Church was that the Priesthood was a thankless and difficult profession and that God's plan would be better served by allowing women to fulfill their mission in life by serving God through the unique traits and abilities found only in women.

Women play an extremely important role in the Church...ranging from motherhood to the teaching of children. Although most of modern society regards administrative authority as a "more important ministry" than we do "motherhood." In God's manner of thinking, the opposite is true.

Who's more important to a child...his mother, or the Pope? Who has the greater authority that will affect the child for life?

Simply, God's plan for man is about service. Man's plan for man is about worldly power. Some can realize the difference.

Answer 5

I'm fascinated at how selective these answers are when quoting scripture. Yet, Paul was actually contradictory on the subject. After all, the entire purpose of Paul's letter to the Romans was to introduce Phoebe, who was a deaconess of the church (Paul uses the Greek word Diakonos--the female variant did not exist for centuries). Her role was to come to Rome, the most important city in the world at the time, and raise money for the church in Jerusalem. In the same passage, Paul also cites other women in positions of authority in the church.

Now, if we are to believe Paul's letter to Timothy, there were only two church offices at the time: Bishop and Deacon, which served the same role as priests do today. Yet, Paul announces Pheobe as a deacon of the church. If Paul were against women as church leaders, then why this wording? And further, why would he send a woman to conduct such an important mission? And why would he instruct the Romans to do as she tells them?

In short, Pheobe was a church leader both in title and in mission, based on Paul's own writings.

Answer 6

I'm not Catholic myself, but I believe it is like many other Christian denominations and they are following Biblical teaching. The Bible says that women should not be in a position of leadership or authority over men (ie, teaching or preaching) and many Christian denominations hold to that today and prohibit women from taking roles as pastors or priests. Men are believed to be the head of the household and the leaders in the church, so they should be in the positions of authority. This is not to say that women are second-class or unable to hold any other leadership positions in the church. There is still a need for Sunday School teachers, deaconesses (at least in my denomination) and many other leadership roles that they can fill, should they posess those gifts.

Answer 7

Yoav D did a good job, but here's a link to a simple treatise on that subject that is quite easy to understand and comes from a reputable Catholic website. Quote:

"In the Catholic Church, the priest acts "in persona Christi." Christ is the bridegroom; the Church is his bride."

Enjoy!

Answer 8

The official position of the Roman Catholic Church, as expressed in the current canon law and the Catechism of the Catholic Church, is that: “Only a baptized man (vir) validly receives sacred ordination.” Insofar as priestly and episcopal ordination are concerned, the Church teaches that this requirement is a matter of divine law, and thus doctrinal. The requirement that only males can receive ordination to the permanent diaconate has not yet been promulgated as doctrinal by the Church's magisterium, though it is clearly at least a requirement according to canon law. In asserting this position, the Church cites her own doctrinal tradition, and scriptural texts. In recent years, responding to questions about the matter, the Church has issued a number of documents repeating the same position. In 1994, Pope John Paul II definitively declared the question closed in his letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, stating: “Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance…I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful.”

In 1995, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a clarification explaining that Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, though "itself not infallible, witnesses to the infallibility of the teaching of a doctrine already possessed by the Church.... This doctrine belongs to the deposit of the faith of the Church. It should be emphasized that the definitive and infallible nature of this teaching of the Church did not arise with the publication of the Letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis." Instead, it was "founded on the written Word of God, and from the beginning constantly preserved and applied in the tradition of the Church, it has been set forth infallibly by the ordinary and universal magisterium," and for these reasons it "requires definitive assent."

The Church teaching on the ordination of only men holds that maleness was integral to the personhood of both Jesus and the men he called as apostles. The Roman Catholic Church sees maleness and femaleness as two different ways of expressing common humanity. Contrary to the common phrase "gender roles", which implies that the phenomenon of the sexes is a mere surface phenomenon, an accident, the Roman Catholic Church teaches that there is an ontological (essential) difference between humanity expressed as male humanity and humanity expressed as female humanity. While many functions are interchangeable between men and women, some are not, because maleness and femaleness are not interchangeable. Just as water is necessary for a valid baptism, and wheaten bread and grape wine are necessary for a valid Eucharist (not because of their superiority over other materials, but because they are what Jesus used or authorized), only men can be validly ordained, regardless of any issues of equality.

Answer 9

The Catholic Church at first seemed to accept the reality of Pope Joan.

For 1,200 years Pope Joan existence has been denied. The woman who disguised herself as a man and sat for two years on the papal throne.

The first known reference to her occurs in the thirteenth century, 350 years after her supposed reign. Around this time her image also began to appear as the High Priestess card in the Tarot deck.

According to legend, upon discovering the Pope's true gender, the people of Rome tied her feet together and dragged her behind a horse while stoning her, until she died.

No one knew she was a woman until, during a papal procession through the streets of Rome, she went into labor and gave birth to a child. She and the baby were killed on the spot by the mob, enraged at her imposture.


Catholic church not allow women to become priests?

The Bible not only prohibits women from being pastors but from serving as deacons as well.

The Bible teaches that only men should be pastors and elders.

That is, men should bear primary responsibility for Christlike leadership and teaching in the church.

It is unbiblical, I believe and therefore detrimental for women to assume this role.

Answer 10

Because Scripture did not allow women to become priests even in the Old Testament.....

Paul even writes in the New Testament that women ought not speak in Church......

Which gives reason to some that women should not lead in the ministry.......

Yet, there are many instances where women have lead many things in Scripture.... Men have not weighed the value of women in the Church...... Mary Magdalene was the first to see Christ risen.... Deborah lead an army of 10,000 Israelites to victory..... Ruth saved her people..... etc....

and God specifically created woman.... to help man.... out of not only need, but companionship...


Your sister,
Ginger