More from Lemmons on Male Priesthood

My friend and colleague from UST's Philosophy Department, Mary Lemmons, offers this additional explanation of her argument against female priests, in response to Susan's question:

The gist of the argument is that due to Original Sin, men are plagued with a reluctance to respect the equality of women; and, women are plagued with a tendency to expect their men to satisfy all their needs. As a result, men tend to oppress women and women tend to take it--just as described in Genesis. Christ opposes these tendencies by teaching men that love requires self-sacrificial love even to the point of death and by teaching women that only Christ is able to satisfy the deepest longings of their heart. If Christ had been a woman, her death on the Cross would have sent men the message that self-sacrificial love is a "woman's thing." It would not have altered the tendency to regard women as a resource to be managed and controlled. (Watch John Wayne's McClintock for an illustration of this prejudice.)   And if Christ had been a women, women would never have known that men could love them without subordinating them and that God is the one who meets their desires for all-consuming love. For these reasons, the Gender Mission of Christ requires Christ to be a man.  I then extrapolate this argument to give support to the Roman Catholic Church's decision not to ordain women priests in its Latin rite.

But since I've been warned by Lisa not to be lengthy, I can only invite those who cannot access the Godspy article or the Logos article to contemplate the mystery of an institution that sees the refusal to ordain women as a way to support sexual equality. If this seems oxymoronic, then it is because we are making various assumptions that make it so, e.g., the assumption that unless an institution refuses to distinguish between male and female gender roles, it is committed to sexual inequality. If we prescind from these assumptions, the possibility that the refusal to ordain women is prophetic becomes pressing. It may well be the case that in a few decades, the only institution that distinguishes between the work of men and women will be the Roman Catholic Church.

Lisa