Catholic women priests - a theological break through on its way!?

"Few people will have noticed that a subtle shift has taken place in the central Catholic Teaching Authority with regard to the reasons for which women are being excluded from the ordained ministries.

In the document Inter Insigniores of 1975 a number of arguments had already been abandoned, arguments favoured by earlier theologians. Among these we find:

* Women may not touch sacred objects . (for example: Richard of Middleton)
* It is not becoming for women to have the clerical tonsure. (for example: Henricus de Sergusio)
* Women are not created in the image of |God. (for example: Huguccio, Antonius de Butrio)
* Women are less intelligent than men and highly unreliable. (for example: John Duns Scotus § 19). This last reason, incidentally, was still part of the Church's official Canon law until 1915.

Over the past 25 years some of the arguments of Inter Insigniores itself are now seemingly being ignored.

Reading the documents in which our present Pope, Pope Benedict XVI, has been involved, we find that little weight is attached to reasons such as:

* Paul did not allow women to teach men (1 Timothy 2,11-15).
* Women should be subject to men ( 1 Corinthians 11,2-XVI).
* Only a man is a perfect human being and can thus properly represent Christ (Thomas Aquinas).
* Christ was incarnated as a man, in fact maleness is an essential ingredient of the Incarnation in God's plan of redemption, an argument Pope John Paul II was fond of (Mulieris Dignitatem § 26).

In documents of the last 25 years Pope Benedict XVI no longer mentions such reasonings. Rather he narrows his focus. He reduces the argument simply to three central key assertions:

1. Jesus appointed only men as apostles.
2. In doing so Jesus established masculinity in the ministry as a permanent norm that has to be followed by the Church.
3. This norm of having a male ministry has been confirmed by the constant and universal Teaching of the Church throughout Tradition.

In short we may say that, according to Pope Benedict XVI, Christ established a masculine order of bishops and priests; and that the Church of all times and places has constantly affirmed this as a norm through its practice and teaching.

So what to make of these central assertions by Pope Benedict XVI? We can do no better than briefly examine the validity of each of the three pegs on which he now hangs the argument."

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