"He who has the bride is the bridegroom¹"
The exclusion of women from the Priesthood

          In 1976, the Roman Catholic Church declared that women would not be admitted into the priesthood.  One of the most important arguments against them hinges on the nuptial theme of Christ as Bridegroom and the Church as Bride.  It maintains that as human bodies are distinctly gendered, so too are the human roles played out in the Church.  Though the female-gendered Church may confidently cross the line of such prescribed roles, human women may not.

          One of the first reasons given for the exclusion of women from the Roman Catholic priesthood is that "the Church, in fidelity to the example of the Lord, does not consider herself authorized to admit women to the priestly ordination" (Declaration, Introduction, ¶5).  Fidelity is key.  The Church, gendered female by numerous references to "her" and "she," must be faithful to the Lord Jesus Christ's authority over her.  In fact, the Church owes her very existence to Christ as Eve did Adam (Declaration, Article 5, ¶29; Gen. 2:18-23).  This woman-from-man idea, the Church claims, is part of "the divine plan of creation" as pointed out by St. Paul (Declaration, Article 4, ¶20).  However, the Church also claims she is "not implying an alleged natural superiority of man over woman," but merely that difference in gender "is the effect of God's will from the beginning," citing the other reading of the creation of Adam and Eve (Declaration, Article 5, ¶31).  In that rendition, both sexes are created at the same time and both are created "in the image of God" (Gen. 1:27).  That idea will be important later, but for now, we have two separate genders - male and female - with the Church being female in relation to Christ as male.

          That the Church must remain faithful to Christ relies, in part, from his close relationship with her, which is as a groom to a bride.  The Church sites the Hebrew Bible for this imagery, noting that God likened the Hebrews, "the Chosen People ... as ... [a] spouse," (Declaration, Article 5, ¶29).  Because Christ is the Son of God who came to give his flesh and blood for the sake of establishing the Church, he enjoys the same marital relationship with his new chosen people, the Roman Catholics (Declaration, Article 5, ¶29). 

          Nuptial imagery alludes to intimate relations between a bride and groom.  Since the prevailing norms, then and now, of physical intimacy involved a man and a woman, the Bridegroom and his Bride can only be gendered male and female respectively.  Then and now, two women (or two men) cannot be married in the Church.  Since the Church is female, only a male may represent Christ, which is the prime responsibility of the priest (Declaration, Article 5, ¶29).  Furthermore,since one of reasons for (or results of) marriage was the production of children, the bride and groom must be one male and one female.  Since Jesus was born male, Karen Jo Torjesen notes, "the male body thus reflected the image of God in a way that female body did not, since the female body reflected only sexual function.  Christ represents God through the maleness of his body.  Women['s] ... bodies are capable of representing only their sexuality, not God" (223).  Since there is only one God and Christ (gendered male) was the embodiment of him, the Church (gendered female) is not-God.  Since she is not-God, human women, by virtue of shared gender, are also not God.

          As for the fidelity of the Church to Christ, Augustine noted, "the wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband" (Augustine 63).  This is an idea that prevailed in ancient Rome and Greece, where "the rule of the male over his household had its counterpart in the rule of soul over body and intellect over appetite" (Torjesen 196).  Rationality became associated with the mind and maleness which meant that women were associated with irrationality and the body, aligning man with the spiritual realm but women with the temporal (Keefe).  Christ, clearly in the spiritual realm as man, as head of his household (the Church), and as God, became known as "an incarnation of universal Reason" (Torjesen 206).

          Because of their intellectual and physical inferiority, women had to be protected and controlled.  "Womanhood," notes Torjesen, "was indicated by passivity, subordination, and seclusion in the household" (137), and women's "obedience ... [was] as a virtue ... [which] expressed primarily their subordinate position in relation to their husbands" (121).  Gendered bodies equal gendered roles.  Ancient Greek and Roman men, encouraged to be sexually aggressive, authoritative, outspoken and socially active, would naturally lend such attributes to the developing Catholic Church's theology (Torjesen 137).  "To be active meant to dominate, master, and control; to be passive meant to be dominated or ruled and to obey" (Torjesen 185), a sentiment not lost on the female-gendered Church's unwillingness to oppose the will of her husband, Christ, in allowing women into the priesthood.  Christ's role, which the priest fulfills most notably in the Eucharist, "must be taken by a man.  This does not stem from any personal superiority ... but only from a difference of ... functions and service" (Declaration, Article 5, ¶30).  Roman Catholicism readily admits that ancient gender roles still hold today (Declaration, Introduction, ¶5). 

          Ancient Greco-Roman society, however, also produced women who functioned in the male realm of reason and authority.  Such women often succeeded best when they were attached to well-known males: "Roman women's power in public life was related to their being wives, sisters, and daughters of Rome's great families," notes Torjesen (124).  By virtue of their being relatives of powerful men, the sexuality of said women was spoken for and controlled.  Uncontrolled female sexuality, unlike that of the male, was "dangerous, corrupting both men and women and threatening the social order itself," Torjesen relays (159).  It is "the whore ... [who] represents the woman whose sexuality is uncontrolled.  By not belonging to one man, she becomes available to all" (Torjesen 142).  Torjesen further reminds us of the connection between womanhood, power, and sexuality through Tertullian's anger over the Gnostic female deacons: "'The very women of these heretics, how wanton they are! For they are bold enough to teach, to dispute, to enact exorcism, the undertake cures - it may be even to baptize'" (159).

          Perhaps because of women's history, the Church is careful to claim her power of reason and authority from her privileged position as the Bride of Christ.  The Vatican contends that "when she judges that she cannot accept certain changes [such as the admittance of women into the priesthood], it is because she knows that she is bound by Christ's manner of acting" (Declaration, Article 4, ¶23).  Though the Church is an active, assertive, authoritative, socially autonomous, and socially dominant institution today (not unlike the ancient Greco-Roman male) who controls her congregations much as an ancient groom controlled his bride, she is safely sheltered in nuptial bliss, her 'sexuality' protected by the Creator himself.  Though practicing the arts of ancient male honor, such as "courage ... authority over family ... willing to defend one's reputation ... [and] refusal to submit to humiliation" (Torjesen 137), the Church proclaims for herself only humility in her God-appointed role in his plan for salvation (Declaration, Article 5, ¶29).

          As in the ancient male model where "speech became the political tool, par excellence, the key to all authority in the state, the means of controlling commanding and dominating others" (Torjesen 120), the Church's 1976 Declaration is the final word on the subject of female ordination.  Her power of speech too comes from her husband, Christ - the Word, "the incarnation of [which] ... took place according to the male sex" (Declaration, Article 5, ¶28).  Despite the numerous women in Catholic history who have been raised to sainthood for putting off gender roles ancient society and the Church enforced on them, in effect surpassing the irrational mind and sensual body and becoming males (the perpetual Virgin Mary and St. Teresa of Avila² for example), modern women are apparently not being heard.  Though at least one Scriptural reference explicitly states that women too are in the image of God (Gen. 1:27), putting them on part with men who may legitimately become priests and represent Christ, women have failed to persuade the Church to change her mind about their roles.

          In disregard for their membership in the Roman Catholic Church which unites them in nuptial bliss as co-brides of Christ (Declaration, Article 5, ¶29), women today are barred from receiving the full power and autonomy enjoyed by the female-gendered Church-Bride.  They are not even allowed to exercise priestly duties amongst other women as did the first apostles' wives (Clement 29).  If these apostles, who had witnessed Jesus' ministry and received his commandments firsthand, valued female ministers and asked that they be allowed to continue their work in obtaining converts, surely female priests can be valuable assets in the Church today without fear of damaging her reputation or usurping her husband's authority.  If marital relations are to be successful, there needs to be reciprocity and understanding:  "'For thus says the Scripture: Let the husband render unto the wife her due; and likewise also the wife unto the husband.  The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband; and likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife'" (Augustine 63; 1 Cor. 7:3-4).  It is time for human women to have some measure of control over the body of Christ.

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¹John 3:29
²The Declaration was presented on the feast day of Saint Teresa of Avila (Article 6, ¶42).

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Works Cited

Augustine: Sinfulness and Sexuality.  Women and Religion.

Clement of Alexandria and the Gnostics: Women, Sexuality, and Marriage in Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy. Women and Religion.

Declaration on the Question of the Admission of Women to the Ministerial Priesthood.  Rome: 1976.

Keefe, Dr. Alice.  Class lecture.  11 September 2003.

The New Oxford Annotated Bible. Ed. Bruce M. Metzger and Roland E. Murphy.  New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.

Torjesen, Karen Jo.  When Women Were Priests: Women's Leadership in the Early Church and the Scandal of their Subordination in the Rise of Christianity.  Harper San Francisco, 1995.