By Sir Fosuaba Banahene
The faith that the Catholic Church espouses is founded on Christ who urged His Disciples to spread His message onto the “ends of the earth”. In carrying out this divine injunction, the Church allows herself to be guided by Scripture, as well as the ways, practices and modes of conduct adopted by the Apostles and the early Christian leaders.
It is on the basis of this that the belief of the Catholic Church is advisedly sourced from the twin pillars of Sacred Scripture and Tradition. The Church teaches that this is from Revelation. Dogmatically, Sacred Scripture and Tradition constitute an inseparable dyad. Most Protestant Churches, however, claim that Scripture alone is the source of Christian faith (sola scriptura).
The rivalry of these two positions is, arguably, the most contentious of the issues that stand in the way of Christian Unity of our time. Consequently, for the Catholic Church, if there was no woman among the Apostles who directly received the succession baton from Christ, then the hierarchical leadership of Christ’s Church ought not depart from the nature and character of the inherited leadership. This explains the existence of male-only Priesthood in the Catholic Church of our time. To depart from the status quo would mean a gross aberration of the true nature of the Church.
The Catholic Church is always alert to the emergence of any aberration to this primordial character and she does not hesitate to disabuse the minds of people who may conclude that the continued practice of male-only Priesthood in the Church is because the leaders believe women are inferior. This is not the case. The Catholic Church never hold women to be inferior. The existence of male-only Priesthood in the Catholic Church is purely founded on the Church’s unwillingness to depart from strict adherence to Tradition which is part of faith.
But with the growing declining numbers of those in the clerical state, one would expect that, the Tradition would be relaxed to allow female participation in the ministerial leadership so that the Church could replenish and halt the declining numbers. Church history is replete with women with very strong religious and leadership capabilities that they can bring to the Vineyard as efficient, worthy Priests if they were not barred.
The proponents of ordination of women claim that the place of Mary, Mother of God and Queen of the Apostles, in the salvific mission of the Church is so imperious that if the Tradition were relaxed to allow women to become Priests, the Church would be able to overcome the downward trend of priestly presence and avail the Church of fresh and unique skills and styles.
Currently, the number of the clergy in the global Church, including Bishops and Cardinals, is less than 450,000 while the total number of women religious is over 700,000. This shows that there can be many more women who could receive the call to the priesthood. Indeed, there are more female Catholics than male Catholics in the global Catholic population of 1.22 billion. Some of the proponents of female priesthood lament that it is regrettable the Catholic Church which is the single largest Organisation, permanently excludes more than fifty percent of its members from having a deliberative voice in the Church.
This deprives the Church of benefitting from the unique gifts women, who, like men, are created in the image and likeness of God Our Father. As Fr. Ray Donovan of the Association of Catholic Priests in Ireland has noted, strict adherence to Tradition is “starving people of the richness and nourishment women can bring”. This is a concern shared by many women and men in the world of Catholics.
Over the years, the Church has not given a hearing whatsoever to any proposition for women ordination. For instance, in 1977, the Vatican issued Inter Insigniores to declare the Church’s “inability” to ordain women simply because women lack “natural resemblance” to the male Jesus. Also, in Ordinatio Sacerdotalis (1994) St. John Paul II states categorically that “the Church has no authority whatsoever to ordain a woman” as a Priest, citing Jesus’ choosing of men only as Apostles as the reason.
