Priests

I was reading comments from a Catholic Bishop about the impossibility of women ever becoming priests in the Catholic Church and I began to think back to the time of Christ.  In 30 A.D. women were in a subservient position in the Jewish community.  The New Testament makes comments throughout about the position of women in society.  For example, only a man could write a bill of divorce, women could not speak in the church, the man was the master of the household, and Christ only called men as apostles.  It seems that the custom was truly a male dominated society.  But let’s look at other examples.  Women ran businesses.  Remember the lady at Corinth or Athens, I forget which, who Paul encounter that operated a purple fabric business.  And Pricilla and Aquila ran a tent making business with equal authority.  And Roman women also held some power.  Nero’s mother gained her son the position of emperor and ran the show until her son put her to death.  But all in all I think society back then was male dominated and women were second class citizens.  Was this attitude toward women the reason why the church never allowed women to become Priests?  Although Christ had 12 male apostles, he had many female disciples.

Today many feminist would still say that society is male dominated.  I would beg to differ.  Women assume powerful positions at will today and do not climb the ladder or corporate rungs only because they chose not to do so. My point about this whole article is whether we should still exclude women as priests today just because “custom” in Christ’s day prevented women from taking a leadership position.  Did Christ give an absolute command that women could not become priests and bishops?  I don’t think he did.  I think the idea developed over time as a tradition rather than an absolute law.  Many church councils always assumed that priests could only be men but never made it an official rule (I could be wrong on this point).  I am not arguing for women priests.  Catholics follow tradition as well as the bible.  I am only suggesting that political and societal customs back in the day had a tremendous impact on our traditions of the Catholic Church.  If Christ's first coming would have been yesterday, instead of 2000 years ago, I would venture to say that he would have called at least a couple of female apostles.  And women would be priests and bishops.