Crisis Magazine: A Woman’s Case Against Women-Priests

**This piece was not intended to be a systematic argument against women’s ordination. I would have done that as a theologian and in line with Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition. This piece was meant to be a call to my sisters in Christ to abandon the radical feminism that pits us against our spiritual fathers in endless power struggles. This includes in calls to the priesthood, but also the endless battles of women in ministry or in parishes with their priests.

Instead, I’m calling on women to embrace their feminine gifts and to love and serve priests with the Immaculate Heart of Mary. For some this will be a more dedicated calling to spiritual motherhood, which is what I have been called to, for others it will be to serve in some other capacity. The point is that it should be charity and service that guide us as women in the Church in relation to the priesthood.**

***I don’t select titles or images on the sites that publish my work***

In order for women to embrace our proper role in sanctifying the priesthood, we must be willing to abandon the adversarial position we often place ourselves in with men. Great damage has been done in the dynamic between men and women, thanks to radical forms of feminism that seek to pit men and women against one another in an endless power struggle. This has served to drive a wedge in all male-female relationships, including between priests and women.

The priesthood needs the influence of holy women, but this influence is not meant to be from a position of power, which so many want to grasp at in the call for women’s ordination to the priesthood and permanent diaconate, as well as other lay leadership roles within the Church. (The latter is ironic, considering that women dominate most leadership  positions within both parishes and dioceses.)

If a woman’s primary objective is having a place of authority within the hierarchy when she argues for equality, then she is misunderstanding both the nature of the priesthood and her call to serve Christ as a woman in the Church. Any movement on the part of men or women in the Church that is predicated on power in relation to the priesthood becomes unmoored from the priesthood Christ instituted at the Last Supper.

When Our Lord instituted His priesthood, He did so by showing His apostles that to be one of His priests is to be a man of service and radical self-emptying. It is to abandon the desire for power, honor, and status in the world in order to take the lowest place on the cross. They are not to lord over the world, or even the Church. Instead, they’re to follow the path of the Suffering Servant who pours Himself out in kenotic love to the Father for the salvation of the world. This means any argument for equality between the sexes that focuses on women’s ordination and greater power for women within the Church is the antithesis of what and Whom the priesthood represents.

Read the rest at Crisis Magazine.