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Why Can't Women Be Priests?

The Short Answer

The Church teaches that she has no authority to ordain women as priests, because Christ chose only men as His apostles, and the Church has always understood herself to be bound by His choice. St John Paul II declared in 1994 “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” (Ordinatio Sacerdotalis 4). This is not a judgement that women are less capable, less holy or less important. The greatest human person the Church honours, the Virgin Mary, was not a priest.

To many people today, this looks like plain discrimination: a male institution keeping power for itself, using arguments from a culture that treated women as inferior. That is a serious charge, and it deserves a serious answer.

What the Church Does and Does Not Claim

The Church does not claim:

The Church does claim that “only a baptized man (vir) validly receives sacred ordination,” because “the Lord Jesus chose men (viri) to form the college of the twelve apostles,” and the apostles did the same when they chose their successors. “For this reason the ordination of women is not possible” (CCC 1577).

Why Catholics Believe It

Christ chose twelve men

Jesus chose His apostles freely and deliberately: “he appointed twelve, to be with him, and to be sent out to preach” (Mark 3:14). At the Last Supper He gave them the command to “Do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19). The Church has always understood the priesthood as a sharing in that apostolic ministry.

Jesus was not bound by the customs of His time when it came to women. He spoke with the Samaritan woman, accepted women among His travelling disciples (Luke 8:1–3), and made Mary Magdalene the first witness of the Resurrection, sent to tell the apostles (John 20:17–18). St John Paul II, quoting the 1976 declaration Inter Insigniores, said that “Christ’s way of acting did not proceed from sociological or cultural motives peculiar to his time” (Ordinatio Sacerdotalis 2). If He had wished to choose women as apostles, nothing in His own conduct suggests He would have held back.

The priest acts in the person of Christ

The Church teaches that in the sacraments, above all the Eucharist, the priest acts in persona Christi, in the person of Christ, who is the Bridegroom of the Church. The Church has seen a fittingness in this sacramental sign being a man, as Christ was. This is not the main reason for the teaching, which rests on Christ’s choice, but it helps explain it.

The constant tradition

For two thousand years, in East and West, the Church has ordained only men. The Orthodox Churches, separated from Rome for nearly a thousand years, hold the same. In 1995 the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith stated that this teaching requires definitive assent, and has been set forth infallibly by the ordinary and universal Magisterium.

Mary was not a priest

The most telling sign is Mary herself. The Mother of God, whom the Church honours above every other creature, “received neither the mission proper to the Apostles nor the ministerial priesthood.” That shows, John Paul II wrote, that the non-admission of women to priestly ordination “cannot be construed as discrimination against them” (Ordinatio Sacerdotalis 3).

Common Objections

”This is just a leftover of an ancient patriarchal culture.”

If the reason were cultural, one might expect Jesus, who broke with His culture’s customs about women in other ways, to have broken with it here too. And the surrounding pagan world had priestesses; an all-male priesthood was not simply what everyone did. The Church holds that she is bound not by culture, but by what Christ did.

”St Paul said there is ‘neither male nor female’ in Christ.”

He did: “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). Paul is speaking of equal standing before God through Baptism. Men and women are equally children of God and equally called to holiness. The verse does not address who may be ordained, and Paul himself did not read it that way.

”There were women deacons in the early Church.”

Paul commends “Phoebe, a deaconess of the Church at Cenchreae” (Romans 16:1), and there were women deacons in some places in the early centuries. Their exact role is debated, and the Church has studied the question through papal commissions. But whatever their role, the question of women deacons is separate from the priesthood, which the Church has never conferred on women.

”The Church changes. Why can’t it change this?”

The Church can and does change her disciplines. But she cannot change what she has received from Christ. The question is whether this is a discipline or part of the deposit of faith, and the Church has said clearly that it is the latter. That is why John Paul II said that the Church “has no authority” to change it, not that she chooses not to.

In Summary

The Church ordains only men as priests because Christ chose only men as His apostles, and she holds that she has no authority to do otherwise. This is not a statement about the worth or ability of women, who are equal in dignity and have been among the Church’s greatest saints and leaders. The Mother of God herself was not a priest. The priesthood is a particular service, not a measure of holiness, and the Church holds herself bound by the shape Christ gave it.

See also Why Can’t Priests Marry? and Is the Papacy in the Bible?

This article follows the method St Robert Bellarmine used in his Controversies*: state the question fairly, clear away misunderstandings, make the case, then answer each objection. Bellarmine’s own Controversies include a treatise on the sacrament of Holy Orders. See How We Answer Objections.*

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