Girls Still Not Allowed

I couldn't decide which portion of this essay to clip so I am quoting the entire thing. Part of the reason why I am not a practicing Catholic (and/or don't buy into church doctrine) is the archaic stance that women cannot be members of the clergy. It's just plain stupid and, as this author says, is steeped in the view that women are inferior, less than and unworthy. Why on earth would I commit myself to a theology who thinks that by virtue of lacking a penis, I am not a full and equal citizen of God's kingdom?

In claiming church tradition doesn't allow women to be ordained priests, Vatican and Catholic officials would do well to consider the history of their tradition.

According to Dorothy Irvin, a Catholic theologian and archaeologist, the traditional Christian church had women priests and the archaeological evidence of this is preserved for us to see today.

In the Church of St. Praxedis in Rome there's a mosaic depicting four women leaders. One woman, Theodora (ca. 820 A.D.), has the title Episcopa above her head, which means a bishop who is a woman.

In a cathedral at Annaba, in what is now Algeria, is a mosaic covering the tomb of a woman. Along with her name, Guilia Runa, is her title "presbiterissa," which means female priest. The same title is on women's tombs in Rome. Two read, "Veronica presbitera daughter of Josetis" and "Faustina presbitera."

Additionally, a fourth-century fresco in Rome's Catacomb of Priscilla shows a woman being ordained. She's wearing an alb under her chasuble, which is first worn at ordination. Only priests and higher church leaders could wear it. Next to her, with his right hand on her shoulder, is a bishop, identified by his chair and his pallium, also worn during ordination.

Although tradition is a key argument used to oppose women's ordination, another cites the fact the 12 disciples were all male. It contends if Christ wanted women to be church leaders, some of his twelve would have been women.

While initially convincing, the rationalization crumbles when another pivotal distinction of the day is considered: ethnicity. The disciples were also all Jewish. Does this mean when we choose church leaders today, only those with primary Jewish ancestry can be considered candidates?

Every argument the Vatican and other denominational officials give to block women's ordination can be biblically and theologically challenged. Saying "no" to women priests and pastors is nothing more than the "good old boy" system at work in a sacred institution, and remnant survivalism of the sub-Christian thought that leached into the early church influencing the way men and women were perceived.

Elements of gnostic and ancient pagan thought systems saw women as flawed, problematic, and more susceptible to malfeasance than men. The early church failed to adequately challenge and eradicate these permeating cultural distortions and in time scripture was interpreted through the contaminated lens of women's ontological inferiority.

This is reflected in the statements of great early church leaders such as Thomas Aquinas, "Woman is defective and misbegotten"; Gratian, "Woman is not made in God's image"; and St. Augustine, "What is the difference wither it is in a wife or a mother; it is still Eve the temptress that we must be aware of in any woman.... I fail to see what use women can be to man, if one excludes the function of bearing children."

While the inferiority argument is considered heretical in the church today, the unbiblical prejudicial constructs it upheld still exist. Replaced and repackaged with expressions like "equal in essence, but unequal in function" and "different roles," the dismissal and diminishment of women has a modern home in the modern church.

Very early church tradition had women serving in all areas of ministry. Women's restriction in the church did not derive from tradition, but from the gradual importation of sub-Christian thought from outside the church, into the church.

Until the Vatican and other denominational leaders acknowledge women's call to full discipleship and reinstitute the tradition of women's ordination, they will continue to perpetuate constructs of the heretical thought that diminished and dismissed half the redeemed based on an innate fleshly distinction: femaleness.

I know a few faithful Catholic women who manage to conveniently forget that their church is inherently sexist. I know a catechism teacher who speaks of being hopeful that one day ... I'm just not that kind of girl.

Don't get me wrong. I don't hate the Catholic Church and am not vehemently opposed to popping into mass every now and then. But, I don't believe in its tenets enough to work within the church in order to try to change it. I don't think it can change.