Question:

Following our response on the ‘priesthood of women’ (published on this website), we have received the following critique (to which we respond below): Greetings in Christ. I observe with admiration that many of the moral responses you set forth are founded on tradition and little on the Bible, although they are sometimes deduced from it, somewhat forcedly. In the case of the priesthood of women, there is no biblical foundation, but rather one of tradition. The Gospel is used to demonstrate traditions and supposed desires of Jesus. I believe the logic is poor, because if we take the apostles, for example, as the foundation of the priesthood and Jesus as the one who chose ‘men’ and not women for this ministry, why not say the same thing about the fact that He chose some who were ‘married’? With the logic applied to the first case, we are opening the door to the possibility of married priests. Is this so?

Answer:

Dear objector,

Logic is always logic: from the scriptural texts of the New Testament, both things you point out are deduced:

a) Priesthood is exclusive to males, and therefore women are excluded from it. This is based on all the arguments that appear in the article and which are grounded in Tradition (as you rightly note), which is not necessarily in all cases posterior to Scripture, for, as you must know well, the tradition of the Church is prior to the ‘written’ texts of the New Testament. “I would not believe in the Gospels,” says Saint Augustine, “were it not for the authority of the Catholic Church.” One must not, therefore, set up a dialectic between Tradition and Scripture.

b) As for the possibility of priesthood for the married, the Church has never said that priestly celibacy is the sole will of Christ concerning the priesthood. In fact, the Eastern Catholic Church has married priests. The law of celibacy is an ecclesiastical law of the Latin Catholic Church, which dates back to the Council of Elvira.

Yours sincerely in Christ and the Most Holy Virgin Mary.

Fr. Miguel A. Fuentes, IVE

Original Post: Here