How do pro-women's ordination deal with the 12 male Apostles?

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You might review post 34 if I’m reading the numbering system correctly.

The peace of Christ,
Mark
 
catholic1seeks said:
If Christ were using today’s standards of equality, wouldn’t he have opted for 6 male Apostles and 6 female Apostles? The reasoning I often see for women’s ordination basically goes like this: Unless women are equal in every way to men, with the exact same opportunities, then they are subject to injustice.

So how to Christians (who want women’s ordination) deal with Christ appointing 12 men as Apostles?

I know this is a Catholic forum, and so many of y’all will be answering from second-hand knowledge. But still, any familiarity with this?
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Most make the ridiculous claim that Jesus only picked men because he was following social norms of His day.

And a few make the even more ridiculous claim that it was the Apostles that prevented women from becoming ordained.
 
catholic1seeks said:
If Christ were using today’s standards of equality, wouldn’t he have opted for 6 male Apostles and 6 female Apostles ? The reasoning I often see for women’s ordination basically goes like this: Unless women are equal in every way to men, with the exact same opportunities, then they are subject to injustice.
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Pentecostals in general support women’s ordination, but not because of some secular progressive notion of gender equality. Pentecostals have had prominent female clergy since the early 1900s.

Women’s ordination has to do with our understanding of what ordination is and what clergy are. They are not sacerdotal priests. They are ministers , preachers, and leaders of the congregation. We see in Scripture women serving as ministers, leaders, servants, prophetesses, etc. in the body of Christ.

It also is informed by our understanding of Pentecost. Joel’s prophecy, repeated by Peter, was that “sons and daughters” would prophesy or declare the word of God. That is the primary function of our clergy–they preach the Gospel. Men and women can do that. Men and women are given gifts of the Spirit. There is no ontological reason to deny women these positions of authority.
 
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Don’t you think that Christ knew there would be a today? After all, He is God. Liberal feminism created the idea of women’s ordination into the priesthood.
 
Mary Baker Eddy founded the Christian Science Church. Ann Hutchinson formed an entire colony when she disagreed with Puritan teachings. Sarah Mallet became a Methodist preacher in the late 1700s. And don’t forget Sojourner Truth. They may not have been Catholic, but the idea of women serving in clerical roles in Christianity came about long before “liberal feminism.”
 
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Getting on a plane, I told the ticket lady, “Send one of my bags to New York, send one to Los Angeles, and send one to Miami.” She said, “We can’t do that!” I told her, “You did it last week!”

The Doctor called Mrs. Cohen saying, “Mrs. Cohen, your check came back.” Mrs. Cohen answered, “So did my arthritis!”

The other day I broke 70. That’s a lot of clubs.

A doctor has a stethoscope up to a man’s chest. The man asks, “Doc, how do I stand?” The doctor says, “That’s what puzzles me!”

I played a great horse yesterday! It took seven horses to beat him.
 
No, that would be,
‘I joined a bridge club. I jump off next week.’

I asked my dad why he never took me to the zoo. He said, “When they want you they’ll come and get you.”

I was napping on the couch when the house caught on fire. My wife told the kids, “Keep quiet. Your dad needs his sleep.”
I don’t get no respect. No respect at all, I tell ya.
 
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Then who said the previous lines? They sound like Dangerfield’s.
 
At that moment his disciples returned, and were amazed that he was talking with a woman, but still no one said, “What are you looking for?” or “Why are you talking with her?”
The woman left her water jar and went into the town and said to the people, “Come see a man who told me everything I have done. Could he possibly be the Messiah?” They went out of the town and came to him.
John 4:27-30
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Even if you did not like my other quote, there is this one where John EXPECTS there to be objections to the woman, but none are made. So the woman goes out and brings her whole village to Jesus.

The point is that there are always objections when women minister. When they try to become a doctor, a king, a professor, etc. there are always objections. When they look at the gospel, they see some objecting, yet Jesus supports the women, not the objectors.

I am not saying that objections are always unjustified. I am just saying that hearing objections all the time, they tune them out. They hear the supportive voice of Jesus in the face of objections. If the Church develops a voice as supportive as that of Jesus, and it excludes women from priesthood, it will be accepted with joy.
 
What if God gives it the authority? He could, couldn’t he? He’s God.
 
Can We Ordain Women?

(FROM CATHOLIC ANSWERS)

The Church has in her tradition abbesses, theologians, doctors of the Church, and teachers aplenty in skirts and habits. The question revolves not around pastors and preachers but around the priestly office. Anybody can do pastoral, teaching, preaching, or administrative work. But that is not the essence of the priesthood. The essence of the priestly office is celebration of Christ’s sacrifice in the Mass.

And that is why all such arguments are not addressing the issue. The issue is the nature of the sacrament. What is a sacrament? It is a thing that not only does what it symbolizes but symbolizes what it does. In baptism the obvious symbol of cleansing, drowning, and new life is water, not wine. And so wine, for all its admirable qualities, is not the right “matter” for the sacrament of baptism.

Though its symbolism was determined by Jesus’ culture, the wine in the Holy Eucharist-the blood of the crushed fruit-is an obvious symbol to signify the blood of Christ, who was crushed for our iniquities. Like the blood of Christ, wine invigorates, inebriates, and reminds us of the tang of death and new life. Here again, water, despite being the right matter for baptism and not in the least inferior to wine, is the wrong matter for the sacrament of the Eucharist. In short, certain things are natural signifiers. It’s not a question of equality but of fittingness.

Now, Christ is, as he himself teaches, the Bridegroom to the Church’s Bride in the great eschatological marriage feast of the Kingdom (Matthew 25:1-13). Gender has, in Christ’s teaching, a real meaning and is not simply an accident of nature. And he ought to know, since he designed the human person and made it a participant in the mystery of male and femaleness. And so every Mass is a local marriage feast of the Lamb whereby we enter into the self-sacrificial love of that cosmic Bridegroom for his Bride.

And that brings us back to the question of symbols. For as with water in baptism and wine in Eucharist, it is not that a man is superior to a woman in being “matter” for the priesthood. It is that man is a fitting symbol of the Bridegroom and woman is not. The priest is an alter Christus -another Christ-to the Bride in the mystery of the Mass. He does not primarily “administrate” or preach or pastor. He signifies.

cont’d
 
Ordination, then, is not a right. It’s a gift. It’s a sacrament, like all sacraments, that does what it symbolizes and symbolizes what it does. Symbols therefore matter-particularly those that Christ himself has instituted-and the Church has no power to alter such symbols in their fundamentals. Christ and the apostles revealed what the “matter” of ordination should be just as they revealed what the matter of baptism and Eucharist should be. The Church merely obeys. That is why the Pope tells us “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.”

It’s out of the Church’s hands. The argument is with Christ, not the Pope.

https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/ordination-is-not-a-right

So you see, changing the priesthood has some theological conundrums that are not easy to resolve. To change the priesthood would be like changing the understanding of the Holy Mass. We cannot change what we never had the authority to change, and so that is why the male only priesthood is necessary
 
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