The Ministerial Priesthood Reserved to Men

In the Catholic Church, only men receive the ministerial priesthood, that of the ordained priest. This reserve holds to the very form Christ gave his priesthood and to what the priest signifies before the assembly.

One same dignity

Before any distinction of function, man and woman share one same dignity. Both are created in the image of God: “God created man in his image; in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” Genesis 1:27 And baptism makes them equally children of God, with no precedence of one over the other: “there is no longer male and female: for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Galatians 3:28 The reserve of the priesthood leaves this equal dignity whole: it concerns the form of a sign, not the worth of a soul. Man and woman are called to the same holiness and the same love of God.

The priesthood, a call

The priesthood is a gift, received from on high. No one makes himself a priest: one is called to it, and one receives through ordination what one cannot give oneself: “No one takes this honor upon himself; he is called to it by God, just as Aaron was.” Hebrews 5:4 No one can claim it as a right, not even a man: he awaits it as a call. From there, everything is settled in the call of Christ: whom he calls, and the form he willed to give his priesthood.

The choice of the Twelve

Christ instituted the priesthood by choosing twelve men to be his apostles: “he called his disciples and chose twelve of them, whom he named apostles.” Luke 6:13 He established them to proclaim the Gospel, to baptise, to forgive sins, and to renew the act of the Last Supper; from them comes the priesthood of the Church, handed on by ordination from the apostles down to today.

This choice was free. Christ welcomed women in a way his age ignored: women followed and served him, and it was they who first found the empty tomb and saw the Risen One, sent to announce him to the apostles. “go to my brothers and tell them: I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” John 20:17 He who entrusted to women the first announcement of the resurrection nonetheless reserved the apostolic charge to the Twelve. His choice therefore carries a deliberate intention, and not the mere reflection of the habits of his time.

The apostolic Church did entrust real ministries to women: Paul commends Phoebe, “our sister, who is in the service of the Church at Cenchreae” Romans 16:1 whom the Greek names diakonos; and women prayed and prophesied in the assembly. But none received the apostolic and priestly charge, that of offering the Eucharist and forgiving in the name of Christ, which the Lord reserved to the Twelve. To confuse these services with the priesthood is to miss the distinction Christ himself laid down.

The priest, sign of Christ the Bridegroom

The deep reason lies in what the priest represents. In the Eucharist, the priest lends his voice and his hands to Christ: pronouncing the words of the Supper, it is in the name of Christ that he acts, in the very person of Christ, in persona Christi, and Christ makes himself present through him. The priest is the visible sign of Christ in the midst of the assembly.

Now Christ gave himself as the Bridegroom of the Church. He loves her, gives himself up for her, unites himself to her: “Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the Church: he gave himself up for her.” Ephesians 5:25 This nuptial bond states the depth of salvation, the union of God and his people. Paul calls it a mystery, a reality hidden in God and unveiled by him, surpassing all expectation: in Christ wedding the Church is disclosed the design God held hidden, to unite men to himself as a bride to her bridegroom: “This mystery is great: I say it with Christ and the Church in mind.” Ephesians 5:32

The priest therefore bears the sign of Christ the Bridegroom before the Church, his Bride. A sign speaks by resembling what it figures: the water of baptism evokes what washes, the bread what nourishes. In the same way, to figure Christ the Bridegroom, the sign calls for a man: it is in him that the nuptial likeness lets itself be seen. This is the language of the sign, not a superiority of man over woman.

One will object that the priest does not resemble Christ in everything: not in people, not in language, not in age, and no one makes any of these a condition. The reason is that the sign requires resemblance only in what touches the very mystery it bears. Now this mystery is nuptial: Christ the Bridegroom gives himself to the Church his Bride. The difference of man and woman states this covenant as no other trait does, whereas origin or age change nothing in it.

What the Church has received

This choice the Church received from Christ and keeps. She acknowledges herself without power to change it, for it touches the form Christ gave to his priesthood. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith recalled it in 1976 in the declaration Inter insigniores, and John Paul II established it definitively in 1994, in the letter Ordinatio sacerdotalis: the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women, and this judgment is to be held by all the faithful. In this, the reserve differs from a custom like the veil, which has varied with the times: this one belongs to what the priesthood is. The Church therefore holds it as stable.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith clarified in 1995 the weight of this judgment: it is not a new law the Church would give herself, but a truth belonging to the deposit of faith, taught infallibly by the ordinary and universal Magisterium, that is, by the constant agreement of the bishops of the whole world united with the pope. This is why the Church holds it as definitive and beyond her power to change.

This practice has never varied: in two thousand years the Church of the East as of the West has ordained only men. When ancient currents sought to entrust the priesthood to women, the Fathers held them to be foreign to what the Church had received from the Apostles. The reserve proceeds therefore neither from a contempt of woman nor from a prudence of its age, but from a constant fidelity to the form Christ gave his priesthood, handed on without break since the Twelve.

Service and holiness

The priesthood is a service, ordered to the salvation of others, and not a rank that would raise one above the rest. Christ said it to his apostles when they dreamed of precedence: “whoever wants to become great among you shall be your servant.” Matthew 20:26 Greatness, in the Gospel, is played out in holiness, and holiness passes by another road than ordination. The highest of creatures, she who bore God and whom all generations call blessed, was a woman, and none surpasses her: “all generations will call me blessed.” Luke 1:48 The Church has moreover proclaimed several women Doctors, among them Saint Catherine of Siena, Saint Teresa of Ávila and Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, recognizing in them teachers of the spiritual life for the whole Church.

The priesthood reserved to men thus states Christ the Bridegroom who gives himself for his Church.