WHY ARE THERE NO WOMEN PRIESTS?

The Pope says women can read at Mass, but still can't be priests.
Pope Francis has changed church law to explicitly allow women to do more things during Mass, granting them access to the altar, while reaffirming they cannot be priests.

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"You can see that this book is too heavy for women to carry. They also get distracted and might lose the place."  -  Pope Francis

With his Monday apostolic document, called a "Motu Proprio," Francis changed a 1972 canon law written by Pope Paul VI that decreed the ministries of Lectern and Acolyte could only be held by men, because they were considered preparatory to admission to the priesthood. He however underscored that the development in no way opens a door to allow women to be ordained as priests.

"The Church does not have the faculty in any way to confer priestly ordination on women," he said in a letter explaining the Motu Proprio. "For non-ordained ministries it is possible, and today appears opportune, to go beyond that reservation."

"This decision ensures that women have a real and effective impact on the organization, in the most important decisions, and in the leadership of communities but without ceasing to do so in the style of their feminine imprint," the Pope said.

Advocates for expanding the diaconate to include women say doing so would give women greater say in the ministry and governance of the church, while also helping address priest shortages in several parts of the world.

Opponents say allowing it would become a slippery slope toward ordaining women to the priesthood.

The Catholic Church though has its own slipperiness as can be seen in this mealy-mouthed explanation  given by Scott P. Richert a Catholic Apologist:

As the Catechism of the Catholic Church (Para. 1577) states: "Only a baptized man validly receives sacred ordination." The Lord Jesus chose men to form the college of the twelve apostles, and the apostles did the same when they chose collaborators to succeed them in their ministry. The college of bishops, with whom the priests are united in the priesthood, makes the college of the twelve an ever-present and ever-active reality until Christ's return. The Church recognizes herself to be bound by this choice made by the Lord Himself. For this reason the ordination of women is not possible. Still, the argument continues, some traditions are made to be broken. But again, that misunderstands the nature of the priesthood. Ordination does not simply give a man permission to perform the functions of a priest; it imparts to him an indelible (permanent) spiritual character that makes him a priest, and since Christ and His Apostles chose only men to be priests, only men can validly become priests.


In other words, it's not simply that the Catholic Church does not allow women to be ordained. If a validly-ordained bishop were to perform the rite of the Sacrament of Holy Orders exactly, but the person supposedly being ordained were a woman rather than a man, the woman would no more be a priest at the end of the rite than she was before it began. The bishop's action in attempting the ordination of a woman would be both illicit (against the laws and regulations of the Church) and invalid (ineffective, and hence null and void).


In his Apostolic Letter Ordinatio sacerdotalis (1994), St. Pope John Paul II declared 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.” This definitive statement leaves no “wiggle room” for those who would like to continue debating the question. As the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith made clear in 1995, the statement that, “the Church has no authority to ordain women as priests,” is not merely a matter of Church discipline (which can be changed), but belongs to the deposit of faith (which cannot be changed).


The movement for women's ordination in the Catholic Church, therefore, will never get anywhere. Other Christian denominations, to justify ordaining women, have had to change their understanding of the nature of the priesthood from one which conveys an indelible spiritual character on the man who is ordained to one in which the priesthood is treated as a mere function. But to abandon the 2,000-year-old understanding of the nature of the priesthood would be a doctrinal change. The Catholic Church cannot change doctrine and remain Christ’s true Church.

Well, what a crock of shit that is. It hides the reasonable and sensible question of why women can't be priests behind a lot of gobbledygook about doctrine.

Should we be surprised?

No as whenever some big and sticky questions arise about some of the silly things that the church preaches the church hierarchy, its priests, communication machines and apologists all say that if you have faith you will understand and believe. This applies to a whole lot of nonsense including:

• transubstantiation
• ascension
• assumption
• resurrection
• stigmata
• papal infallibility
• indulgences
• heaven
• hell
• purgatory
• limbo
• the trinity
• immortality of the soul
• virgin birth
• penance
• priests are not pedaphiles
• and a whole lot more.