Talking of women priests...and Bishops. Quotes. The knowledge of God is very far from the love of him. Pascal. Orthodoxy is reticence. Anonymous. There has never been a kingdom given to so many civil wars as that of Christ. Montesquieu. We always keep God waiting while we admit more importunate suitors. Chazal. Perhaps it’s because I now have considerably more life to look back on than I have to look forward to... that I find some of my long-held views changing. I am and always have been a Roman Catholic and I have always believed that women should not be priests. Suddenly, while shaving this morning, although why then I have no idea, I found I had no objection whatsoever to women as priests or bishops. The only reason I could think of as to why I had always held such a rooted objection was that it was what I had been told as a child was right and that as I grew up it fitted in quite nicely with my very male-oriented view of what was right in society, that women should be mothers and their place was in the home. Not that I suddenly think this is wrong. Women should be mothers, those who want to, and a mother’s place is looking after her child or children preferably at home. But that is not all women should or could be. Men become fathers but that doesn’t obliterate all the others things they should or could be as well. There’s a balance to be reached in this business of family life… but that is not what I’m writing about at the moment. What I’m writing about is why the Roman Catholic Church should begin the process of looking at how to admit women to the priesthood and, through the priesthood, to the role of bishop and to all other roles to which priests may be called and yes, even to the Papacy. I can see no objection which stands in the way of this, not rational nor scriptural. Half of God’s human creation are women and why would God want half of his creation barred from the role of making him and his love of mankind known to all? Jesus was inclusive, dangerously so, it was part of what got him killed. He lived for justice and equality, not for exclusion. He lived in his own times but changed them. And I now find rather risible the idea that the social and religious norms of 1st century Palestine under Roman Occupation should be selectively carried on and on to justify the unjustifiable, that women are not able to be priests for no other reason than that they are women. Many women, it is true, should not be priests. But many men also, should not be priests, including many who are and many more who have been. Personal qualifications count, you have to be the right sort of person. But being the right sort of person is nothing to do with whether you are a man or a woman. But no one can say “It is my right to become a priest”, the priesthood is not anyone’s right, it is a calling from God and I know for a fact that God has and does call women to the priesthood. It is the men of his Church that rejects them, that rejects God’s will in this. And what about Scripture? I have listened over many years to the Roman Church twist and turn Scripture to keep women where the senior men of the Church want them, well away from the altars, their altars. All the Apostles were men, so one argument goes. Fine, then let’s make sure all applicants for priesthood fit the model established by Jesus in selecting his Apostles: some were married, at least one was a Quisling, one was a traitor and they were all Jewish. One laughs, of course, at the idea that the original model must be slavishly followed. But one cries at the way it has been so selectively developed and used with the sole purpose of denying women their rightful place in the Roman Church. And what about the theological arguments? Well, what about them? What is the foremost role of a Roman Catholic priest? Is it not to make Jesus present to people? Is that not the first and most essential work of any Catholic priest? And who first made Jesus known to people – a woman, Mary his mother. She gave Jesus to the world, fulfilling God’s will through the power of the Holy Spirit thirty-odd years before a group of frightened men did the same after Pentecost. And who did Jesus himself choose to make his resurrection known – a woman, Mary Magdalene in the Garden by the empty tomb. It was a woman who brought the Good News to that same group of unbelieving, frightened men. And we still have, as our leadership in the Catholic Church, frightened men who close the Church’s doors and their own minds to God’s will, that he wants his Son proclaimed by people worthy of the task. And that is the only qualification – that they be worthy of the task. Perhaps all Catholics should pray special prayers after Sunday Mass like we did when I was a child. Then it was for the conversion of Russia, now it should be for the conversion of those frightened men who huddle in the Vatican fearful that the other half of God’s creation want to steal their special and exclusive role – the priesthood.
Posted on: Mon, 16 Sep 2013 08:03:40 +0000