On Women Priests (the impossibility thereof)

The other day on Twitter (that source of wisdom and truth: vox populi and all that...) someone (Stephen Martin, ‏@stevemukuk ) tweeted:

A female ordained in exactly the same way as a male has a valid and equal ordained ministry. Only threat I see is to a male priests manhood.

I responded, somewhat unkindly, 

Yes, and if you unscrew your belly-button your bottom falls off. #wellknonwnfacts

We tweeted backwards and forwards and my interlocutor said:

 to be honest I don't understand anyone who denies a woman ministry theologically.

and 

ok bit never heard an arguement against that tallies. Gods will be done. Prayer required for all.

He seems a decent and honest chap, so I can only assume he is telling the truth.

Which seemed odd to me, as I am in precisely the opposite place: I don’t understand anyone who does claim ministry for a woman theologically, and have never heard an argument for it which adds up to much.

So I thought I would think out loud about all this here...

The case for Women Priests

As far as I can understand it, the case for Women Priests in Christianity rests on the following:

1 Men and women are equal in God’s creation.

2 An exclusively male priesthood clearly excludes women

3 Such exclusion relegates them to second-class, in denial of #1 above

4 Such exclusion also denies the faithful access to their gifts as pastors

5 Further to #4, many ordained women do the job at least as well as, and in many cases better than, some of their male counterparts

6 The reasons for the exclusion of women in the past are largely an accident of history the result of unjust patriarchal structures and attitudes.

7 There is no theological reason for the exclusion of women

8 The time is right for this historic injustice to be corrected.

The case against

The case against the ordination of Women, as I see it, is as follows:

A As Christians we are bound to follow Christ: he ordained only men

B As Christians, we believe Christ to be God Incarnate, and therefore to have known what He was doing and to have done wisely and justly

C The likelihood of Christ being constrained by the customs of his time is less than the likelihood of our being misled by the sensibilities of our time

D Further to #C, the customs of his time were no accident, but the result of the formation of the Jewish People over the whole period of the Old Testament

E The Church is led by the Holy Spirit, and is (to say the least) unlikely to have been guilty of so grave an error for 20 centuries

F The witness of Christendom endures: the vast majority of Christendom (Roman Catholic and Orthodox) still adhere to the tradition received from the Apostles

G There are strong arguments from authority (both the teaching magisterium of the Church, for those who believe in that) and the teaching authority of Scripture (which I would hope we all believe in) in favour of the traditional understanding

H The job of theology is to seek ever-greater understanding: it is secondary, not primary

I The decision to ordain women has clearly further fragmented Christian denominations and rendered final reconciliation far harder to envisage.

I may well have missed or misunderstood things on either (or both) sides of the debate, and welcome correction.

However, it is interesting to me that the types of argument, the grounds of the discussion as it were, seem different for each side.

As I have had occasion to remark before, I do not know why ordination is reserved to men: there are various theories advanced by different theologians, some of which seem to me to be more plausible than others.  But that does not weaken my belief in the proposition: as I say, theology is secondary.

I can also see many flaws in the arguments for Women’s ordination.  I would refute many of the assumptions behind the propositions listed above, such as 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8...

Finally, for me it comes down to a matter of trust: in whom am I to place my trust?  The example of Our Lord, the Apostles, the Fathers of the Church, the centuries of tradition (including many notable female saints who never claimed a vocation to the priesthood), on the one hand?  Or a fairly small band of people who, genuinely inspired by a zeal for justice, live in a small window of time that happens to coincide with my own life?


UPDATE

I realised that I had not made it clear that this difference in understanding has a very profound implication. From a traditional point of view, the example of Christ and subsequent witness of the Church means not that we should not ordain women, but that we cannot do so.

Any source