If sex is a barrier to acting In Persona Christi, why isn't race?

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ethereality

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I have heard multiple times from “Catholic Answers” that women cannot be priests because Jesus is male and priests act in persona Christi. The argument has always stopped there, as if we are supposed to go, “Oh, of course!” I accepted this argument for years.

I then realized a little while ago, when listening to this argument repeated on “Catholic Answers Live”, that it was incomplete. The argument, as I understand it, is that sex is an intrinsic characteristic, and this is why being female is incompatible with acting in a male person.

However, isn’t race also an intrinsic characteristic? That it is explains the innate abhorrence of Rachel Dolezal “pretending to be black”, self-identifying as “a member of a different race”, perhaps analogous to men self-identifying as women.

Why, then, is it okay for men who are not Middle Eastern to be priests?

I hope it is clear now why the previous argument is incomplete: If Africans, etc. can be priests, i.e. if race is an intrinsic characteristic like sex, then women are not barred from the priesthood due to an intrinsic difference in their being, but because of it plus something else, something that doesn’t apply in the case of racial difference.
 
Race results in relatively minor physical changes to the embodiment, whereas sex/gender affects every bit of whom we are.

I’m not sure that the issue of Rachel Dolezal resulted so much in “innate abhorrence” so much as annoyance that someone would grab onto such a socially–charged issue and obvious falsehood to gain 15 minutes of fame.

ICXC NIKA
 
Being black, white, or oriental is accidental to being a male of the species of Human, the differentiation accidentally coming about in the course of history. But from the beginning “God made them, male and female he created them”, not accidentally different, but formally different so that we would be in his image of persons in communion of themselves to the “other”.
 
Maybe it is because men are more vain and territorial than they care to admit. I don’t know. There is good evidence that some of the letters that were attributed to Peter were actually written by a women. Try presenting that to most men…LOL!😃
 
ethereality said:
I have heard multiple times from “Catholic Answers” that women cannot be priests because Jesus is male and priests act in persona Christi. The argument has always stopped there, as if we are supposed to go, “Oh, of course!” I accepted this argument for years.

I then realized a little while ago, when listening to this argument repeated on “Catholic Answers Live”, that it was incomplete. The argument, as I understand it, is that sex is an intrinsic characteristic, and this is why being female is incompatible with acting in a male person.

However, isn’t race also an intrinsic characteristic? That it is explains the innate abhorrence of Rachel Dolezal “pretending to be black”, self-identifying as “a member of a different race”, perhaps analogous to men self-identifying as women.

Why, then, is it okay for men who are not Middle Eastern to be priests?

I hope it is clear now why the previous argument is incomplete: If Africans, etc. can be priests, i.e. if race is an intrinsic characteristic like sex, then women are not barred from the priesthood due to an intrinsic difference in their being, but because of it plus something else, something that doesn’t apply in the case of racial difference.
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The answer IS complete, it’s your understanding of it that is incomplete! God Bless, Memaw
 
Mary_Estelle said:
Maybe it is because men are more vain and territorial than they care to admit. I don’t know. There is good evidence that some of the letters that were attributed to Peter were actually written by a women. Try presenting that to most men…LOL!😃
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Show us that “good evidence” God Bless, Memaw
 
ethereality said:
The argument, as I understand it, is that sex is an intrinsic characteristic, and this is why being female is incompatible with acting in a male person.
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While it’s true as far as it goes, I don’t think that would be a very complete argument. The priest is filling the role of Christ, but that role is with respect to another. The other is the Church, the bride of Christ. A bride is female. Christ is the bridegroom. A groom is male. A bride is only a bride because of the groom. A groom is only a groom because of the bride.

I’d really have to strain to come up with an argument like that with race - one might say that someone who is white is only white because someone else is black, but that argument wouldn’t make much sense in that Jesus was a middle easterner preaching to other middle easterners. One could also try to argue that a priest could only be a Jew, since Christ was a Jew, and that “salvation comes from the Jews”. But there would be several arguments against this. First, Christ preached mainly to Jews. Second, from tradition - even in the apostolic age, the bishops weren’t all Jews. Third, from the fact that Jesus wasn’t a Levite (the tribe of priests) but rather “of the order of Malchizedek.” (technically, Malchizedek wasn’t even a Jew) - so his priestliness doesn’t come from his Jewishness. And so on.
 
Men can be priests and women can give birth to children.

That’s the way God set things up. What are ya gonna do? 🤷

Some would argue that the honor of motherhood surpasses that of the priesthood.

-Tim-
 
TimothyH said:
Men can be priests and women can give birth to children.

That’s the way God set things up. What are ya gonna do? 🤷

Some would argue that the honor of motherhood surpasses that of the priesthood.

-Tim-
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Yep! If it wasn’t for Motherhood, there wouldn’t be any Priests!! Not even our Original Priest, thanks to Our Lady! God Bless, Memaw
 
I think you are right. Race is also intrinsic and the argument for the male priesthood you put forth doesn’t go very deep. The argument isn’t bad. It is just a summation of a much longer argument and deeper consideration. In radio, blog posts, forum threads etc. you can only delve so deep into topics and you must cater the language to the audience.

I’m sure there are deep treatments of the issue. But one thing that comes to mind is something Peter Kreeft mentions. That is that man and woman are all feminine in relation to God. We are receptive to a God. God is the initiator. We respond to Him. Maleness better represents God in relation to humanity in an important way. You could say this distinction is essential with regards to priest. But a distinction like race, height, eye color, hair color, hair length, beard length or any other distinction is not. So if the priest is White or Black that does not make a difference because Whiteness or Blackness does not represent how God relates to humanity.
 
exnihilo said:
I think you are right. Race is also intrinsic and the argument for the male priesthood you put forth doesn’t go very deep. The argument isn’t bad. It is just a summation of a much longer argument and deeper consideration. In radio, blog posts, forum threads etc. you can only delve so deep into topics and you must cater the language to the audience.

I’m sure there are deep treatments of the issue. But one thing that comes to mind is something Peter Kreeft mentions. That is that man and woman are all feminine in relation to God. We are receptive to a God. God is the initiator. We respond to Him. Maleness better represents God in relation to humanity in an important way. You could say this distinction is essential with regards to priest. But a distinction like race, height, eye color, hair color, hair length, beard length or any other distinction is not. So if the priest is White or Black that does not make a difference because Whiteness or Blackness does not represent how God relates to humanity.
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👍
 
 
ethereality said:
I have heard multiple times from “Catholic Answers” that women cannot be priests because Jesus is male and priests act in persona Christi. The argument has always stopped there, as if we are supposed to go, “Oh, of course!” I accepted this argument for years.

I then realized a little while ago, when listening to this argument repeated on “Catholic Answers Live”, that it was incomplete. The argument, as I understand it, is that sex is an intrinsic characteristic, and this is why being female is incompatible with acting in a male person.

However, isn’t race also an intrinsic characteristic?
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Well, no. It’s a purely cosmetic, socially constructed distinction. What we call race is due to an appearance stemming from things like different pigment levels, etc.

There’s nothing intrinsic about it any more than eye color, taste preferences, etc.
ethereality said:
That it is explains the innate abhorrence of Rachel Dolezal “pretending to be black”, self-identifying as “a member of a different race”, perhaps analogous to men self-identifying as women.
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People in contemporary western society essentialize everything arbitrarily. It’s getting to be ridiculous. We’re all hungry for an identity that can define us, and if people don’t know where else to find that, they’ll make one up.
ethereality said:
I hope it is clear now why the previous argument is incomplete: If Africans, etc. can be priests, i.e. if race is an intrinsic characteristic like sex, then women are not barred from the priesthood due to an intrinsic difference in their being, but because of it plus something else, something that doesn’t apply in the case of racial difference.
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In a way, I agree with you. The argument as typically presented does seem awfully incomplete: there are a lot of philosophical assumptions being made by defenders of the faith on this matter, and the truth is we may not know for sure exactly why sacerdotal ordination cannot be conferred on women.

But regardless of the status of that debate, sex and race aren’t in the same category. Sex is a bodily difference that marks our very experience of corporeality in often widely divergent ways due to the complex biology and chemistry distinguishing the experience of members of each sex.

Race may make just as big a difference for a person’s experience - especially in a country like the United States - but that’s because white, western society decided for many centuries that certain arbitrary features of our appearance mattered and made a grave difference.

It’s a cultural factor, imposed by our minds purely conceptually on each other. There’s no evidence of any kind that “race” as such even exists on a level beyond that.
 
I as a woman always had trouble understanding and accepting reasons that women could not be ordained priests. I finally realized that the explanation “God does not want women to be priests” made the most sense to me. Also, as previously stated, God did not give men the ability to bear children. Not being able to be a priest or not being able to give birth does not make anyone less of a person nor is it an insult to the person.

Church Millitant’s links are very useful, especially the one about St. John Paul II.
 
  1. Give me the scientific definition of race and how one determines what is “Middle-Eastern” race?
  2. Men of other backgrounds were made priests and bishops in the NT.
 
Why stop at race? We can probably infer age as well. Maybe even that the apostles all had some kind of facial hair. They definitely all spoke Aramaic. They were all contemporaries of Christ. There, now nobody can be a priest.

It’s important to get the question right, or else the answers are not going to be very satisfying.

Try:

“What is essential of those to be ordained priests and why?”

The answer has been touched on, but nobody has rooted it very much in Scripture. Take a tour of the Sacred Page and it will become clear that the two most critical differences between people are these: Jew/Gentile, Man/Woman

The breach of the Gospel into the Gentile world led by Paul eradicated the scrupulous notion that only Jews could become Christians. They need leaders, viz. priests and bishops, so it only makes sense to call them to that office. There was never really any longstanding question about whether or not this was possible… Paul knew well the Scriptures and the dance between men and women in salvation history: men guard and serve, women embody. The failures (and thus the need to make up for them) began in the Garden.

The new priesthood is a continuation of the Temple priesthood with the recapitulation of Melchizidek’s priesthood in Christ, the Great High Priest. While there is no longer “man or woman, slave or freedman,” etc., we do still remain men and women, slave and freed in the unqualified sense. Paul would also assign different roles to men and women, slave and freed, but his point is that it ultimately does not matter for your own salvation what state in life you find yourself… So what if you’re Greek, you can still go to Heaven! But the ministry of priest was never, ever thought to be restricted to Jews after the Council of Jerusalem at least, and it was never ever thought to be able to be extended to women. The deeper understanding of this requires familiarity with the drama of salvation history and the roles that God has habitually given to men and women distinctly in that history.
 
I thought there were jews, in the time of Jesus, who were not semitic.

perhaps not all of the Twelve were semitic?

on the question of sex, St. John Paul taught us that it is not possible for the Church to ordain a woman.

I thought the primary reason he gave was because Jesus chose not to ordain women. earlier posts have given other good and sound reasons that females cannot be ordained priests.

why are some so concerned about this teaching?
 
Memaw said:
Show us that “good evidence” God Bless, Memaw
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Self education into theology will give you your evidence. I don’t mean off- the wall theology either, but the study of the letters of Peter. Peter was a fisherman, not a writer, but a kind of rough, working guy. If you want the evidence it is up to you to look and study the findings of the letters from Peter. I could tell you the name of the women that is attributed to have written most of the letter for Peter.
 
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