Why can't women be priests?

+43 votes
asked Jun 3, 2018 in Culture & Society by Tura (1,000 points)
edited Jul 18, 2019
I have always wondered why there is a kind of sex discrimination when it comes to ordaining women as catholic priests. Are we not supposed to be equal before God?

4 Answers

+13 votes
answered Oct 24, 2018 by Doce (830 points)
edited May 29, 2019

The church has no authority to ordain women priests. Pope John Paul 11 in his apostolic letter called Ordinatio Sacerdotalis said that there is no authority bestowed on the church to ordain women priests. Below are some reasons he cited:

  1. In the scriptures, when Jesus Christ chose his disciples, he chose only men and no woman.
  2. It is an age long practice to imitate Christ in choosing only men and no woman.
  3. The living teaching authority of the church has always upheld that not ordaining women as priests is in line with the plan of God for the church.
+10 votes
answered Sep 21, 2018 by josanne (1,330 points)
edited Jul 12, 2019
There have been lots of argument about women becoming priests since the last lap of the 20th century, with the England church clamoring for women priests as a way of showing justice and equity, but this has not altered what the Church teaches on this matter. Why can't Catholic women become priests? The answer is tradition, meaning that you can't disobey this convention.
+7 votes
answered Oct 3, 2018 by Jessie (710 points)
edited Dec 29, 2018
The priesthood according to the New Testament is all about Christ and of Christ. Becoming a priest is a participation in His Priesthood.

Of course, Christ was made a man by God and not a woman; but pro-female priest ordination activists insist it does not matter at all. In their opinion, a woman can occupy the office of Christ just as a man can. Here, such people miss up what the church teaches about the complementary but different roles of both sexes in the church.

Even if the Church decides to overlook the sex differences, like the advocates of this cause do, we can't deny the fact that the tradition of ordaining only men as priests dates as far back as the choosing of the Apostles by Christ Himself.

What people who clamor for women priests fail to understand is, it goes beyond breaking a tradition. It is not just about giving a man the authority to administer the sacraments of a priest; it deposits an indelible spiritual character on him, and that is what really makes him a priest. And since Christ never chose a woman, only men can be ordained priests.

It goes beyond the Church refusing to ordain women as priests. Even when a Catholic Bishop chooses to do so, at the end of the whole ordination rite, the woman would still not be recognized as a priest because it would be against Church laws and regulations.
0 votes
answered Mar 7, 2019 by richelle (860 points)
edited Jun 25, 2019
Why can't women be priests? I was hearing something about this.

When I was a catholic my local priest gave us an unofficial reason why the church does not permit the ordination of women priests. According to him, Catholic priests don't get married, and the Church teaches that women should get married and have children.
Welcome to Instant Answer, where you can ask questions and receive answers from other members of the community.
...