Mt 18:18 and women priests

[fabio_rocha]

I know JPII spoke ex-cathedra about this issue, I know he as pope, keeper of the keys of heaven (Mt 16:18-19), “locked down” the impossibility of women to become priests. I know the Church Fathers (and the Didascalia document) condemned such possibility. But here’s my question…
One of the arguments to explain the impossibility for women to become priests is that "Jesus chose male apostles, no females at all, to be his representatives on earth and afterwards the apostles appointed their successors (all men; then those chose other men, so on and so forth down the line). But in Mt 18:18 Jesus says to the church “whatever you bound or loose on earth will be bound or loose in heaven”. So why couldn’t the church, by the use of this legitimate power, “bound on earth” the possibility of ordaining women? To say, as the typical argument goes, that “we don’t have any expressed authority for such thing from Jesus” sounds illogical because the church can, in fact, turn that possibility into a reality by her given divine authority because, basically, whatever she decides to do in communion has Jesus approval. So, why the church follow the course that she did? I mean, we didn’t had any expressed condemnation of slavery by Jesus but yet, after some centuries of existence, we defined as sinful…

 

[PaulfromIowa]

John Paul II answered your question. It is not a discipline of the Church that ordination of women is not possible, it is a matter of revelation which cannot be changed.

1. Although the teaching that priestly ordination is to be reserved to men alone has been preserved by the constant and universal Tradition of the Church and firmly taught by the Magisterium in its more recent documents, at the present time in some places it is nonetheless considered still open to debate, or the Church’s judgment that women are not to be admitted to ordination is considered to have a merely disciplinary force.

Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church’s divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32) I declare that 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.

vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19761015_inter-insigniores_en.html
“SACRED CONGREGATION FOR THE DOCTRINE OF THE FAITH
DECLARATION
INTER INSIGNIORES
ON THE QUESTION OF ADMISSION OF WOMEN
TO THE MINISTERIAL PRIESTHOOD (1976)”

w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_letters/1994/documents/hf_jp-ii_apl_19940522_ordinatio-sacerdotalis.html
“APOSTOLIC LETTER
ORDINATIO SACERDOTALIS
OF JOHN PAUL II
TO THE BISHOPS
OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
ON RESERVING PRIESTLY ORDINATION
TO MEN ALONE (1994)”

w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_letters/1988/documents/hf_jp-ii_apl_19880815_mulieris-dignitatem.html
“APOSTOLIC LETTER
MULIERIS DIGNITATEM
OF THE SUPREME PONTIFF
JOHN PAUL II
ON THE
DIGNITY AND VOCATION
OF WOMEN
ON THE OCCASION
OF THE MARIAN YEAR (1988)”