Need help defending the all male clergy

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I can’t come up with a good enough argument for a non-Catholic friend. I’m not trying to change her mind, but at just to get her to understand why this is our Church doctrine.

Any help?
 
Here are some links…

This link discusses why it is definitive and will never change for the Catholic Church…

Catholic ordination of women priests? - View

This link discusses the theology behind it, and has a link from Protestant author, C.S. Lewis…

**Ordination of women priests–Part II - **View
 
I would recommend reading up on the Theology of the Body. Apart from that though, I can think of 12 good reasons: Peter, John, James, Matthew…you get the picture. Jesus chose an all-male priesthood despite the presence of capable, holy women who followed him. Now, the typical argument against that runs, “Well, Jesus was following the conventions of his day”. Nonsense—we’re talking about God here. God isn’t bound by cultural conventions. Also, the Roman Empire had plenty of priestesses in its pagan worship. God established an all-male priesthood in the Old Covenant—again, not because He was bound by cultural conventions: an all-male priesthood set the Jews apart from their pagan neighbors. I think the answer to why God chose an all-male priesthood in both Old and New Covenants is found in the Theology of the Body: our bodies’ design reveals our purpose. The male creates exteriorly; the female is receptive. (This is why the women is the “type”, so to speak, of the human race, as we receive God’s word.) The priest acts as Christ in the consecration of the Eucharist—to say that Jesus’ gender was accidental and not a revelation of its own is to deny the meaning of the design of our bodies. Hope that helps.
 
I read something from a Fr McBride saying that there was historical evidence of womens ordination. Has anyone ever heard of what this is? Proponents always use this argument but are short on details.
 
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epr1993:
I read something from a Fr McBride saying that there was historical evidence of womens ordination. Has anyone ever heard of what this is? Proponents always use this argument but are short on details.
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Women have never been ordained as deacons. The early Church evidence affirms what the Catholic Church has always taught, that women were never ordained.
Hippolytus in the third century affirms what was always taught:

“When a widow is to be appointed, she is not to be ordained, but is designated by being named [a widow]. . . . A widow is appointed by words alone, and is then associated with the other widows. Hands are not imposed on her, because she does not offer the oblation and she does not conduct the liturgy. Ordination is for the clergy because of the liturgy; but a widow is appointed for prayer, and prayer is the duty of all” (The Apostolic Tradition 11 [A.D. 215])."
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Hippolytus is affirming that only men could offer an oblation and by oblation he means the sacrifice of the Eucharist at Mass. So, if women can’t offer the sacrifice of the Eucharist at Mass, then only men can be ordained as priests.
When he says “she does not conduct the liturgy” again he is affirming that only men could conduct the liturgy [Mass] and only a priest could and can conduct the Mass, therefore only men can be priests.

He also says the “hands are not imposed on her” which means the laying on of hands, which occurs when deacons and priests are ordained are not to be imposed on her therefore she can’t be ordained as a deacon nor priest.

This type of ordinational laying on of hands is addressed in Scripture in Acts 6:6, 9:15-19,13:2-3, 1Tim 4:11-16, 5:22, 2 Tim 1:6. Hope that helps.
 
I came up with an answer for wiccans once, and while i doubt your friend is pagan, this may prove helpful to someone at some point. If a coven were to perform a “drawing down the moon” ritual where one of them harnesses the moon goddess, you wouldn’t have a man performing this ritual because the moon goddess is female. Priests act in persona christi. While God might not be a man per se, when He became human, He was a man. Therefore the priesthood is male. It’s odd to note, too, that in the wiccan world, male bashing is accepted but were a man to set up a woman hating cult, half a billion women’s groups would drive them into extinction. Anyways, i think Theology of the Body is a capital idea. It’s not so much important that the priesthood is all male. People focus way too much on that. It’s what we can extrapolate about what God intended when he designed us as He did, what it MEANS to be a male or to be a female. Our genders are so beautiful, i hate it when people focus on the priesthood as a limit, an “I can’t”. Whether you can or can’t is sooooooooo irrelevant when you actually put the ego injury aside and think about the implications. It’s not an insult that we can’t be priests because our femininity is a beautiful gift.
 
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