Is God calling women to ordained ministries?

Part One: Scripture

Fundamental to proper discernment is information-gathering: we gather information relevant to our discernment and sort through it in the light of the Holy Spirit, inviting God to reveal what God desires us to see in what we have gathered and how God desires us to respond.

When done well, with a pure heart and inner freedom, information-gathering provides an ongoing opening for God to teach, drawing us beyond surface impressions into the depths of what lies below: possibilities previously unseen; nuance that deepens what we learned along the way; and correction of what we thought we knew.

Because information-gathering is essential to discovering God’s desires, we must never treat it cavalierly or perfunctorily, but with honesty, rigor, and transparency.

In this five-part series, we will explore the information the Catholic Church must gather to discern the question: “Is God calling women to ordained ministries?” We begin, of course, with Scripture.

The problem of prooftexting

The institutional Church’s exclusion of women from ordination relies heavily on prooftexting: singling out a passage or verse to support a belief or doctrine without adequately examining its literary and historical context.

At the top of the list is the Last Supper (Matthew 26:17-35; Mark 14:12-31; Luke 22:7-38; John 13:1-30), which the Church interprets as Jesus constituting the apostles as “priests of the New Testament” (Catechism, 1337). In addition, the Church cites the maleness of the Twelve as the basis for the permanent exclusion of women from the priesthood.

This interpretation has significant problems. The Synoptic Gospels describe Jesus—a Jew—gathering his Jewish companions to observe the Jewish Passover, the remembrance of God’s deliverance of the Jews from slavery in Egypt.

During this meal, Jesus invests familiar Jewish Passover symbols and rituals with new meaning, which the Church recognizes as the institution of the Eucharist. John’s account emphasizes Jesus washing his disciples’ feet and commanding them to serve one another.

These texts do not describe the ordination rite familiar to the Church: no laying on of hands, no anointing with oil, and no consecratory prayer over the apostles. In fact, the developed forms of priesthood and ordination emerged well after the apostolic age, so reading these later forms into the Last Supper is anachronistic.

In addition, artistic portrayals—including the hugely popular series The Chosen—commonly depict this Passover meal with only the Twelve present, but whether others were present remains very much open to question. The gospels attest that women traveled with Jesus from Galilee to Jerusalem and were also present at his crucifixion, which occurred shortly after the Last Supper (Matthew 27:55–56; Mark 15:40–41; Luke 23:49, 55).

Women named across the accounts include his mother, his mother’s sister (his aunt), the mother of apostles James and John, Salome, Mary Magdalene, Joanna and “many others” (Matthew 27:55–56; Mark 15:40–41; Luke 24:10; John 19:25). In addition, all four Last Supper accounts include the use of “disciples” (Matthew 26:18, 26; Mark 14:12–16; Luke 22:11; John 13:5), a word which throughout Scripture can—and often does—include a group beyond the Twelve.

Why, then, do we readily assume that the Jewish women traveling with—and financially supporting—Jesus (Luke 8:1–3) were absent from his final Passover observance? After all, women participated in Passover meals at this time.

Did the Lord of the mercy who liberates intentionally exclude these women—including his own mother, aunt, and closest companions—from this significant religious observance?

Is it possible that women were indeed present, but the male authors deemed their presence unworthy of recording and thus erased their participation from history, providing justification for subsequent generations in doing the same?

Further, if, for some reason, only the Twelve attended, where does the text state that Jesus intended to permanently exclude women from the priesthood—an office whose later forms had not yet developed?

There are serious problems with invoking passages like 1 Timothy 2:12 and 1 Corinthians 14:34–35 to exclude women from ordained ministry, especially when these passages are elevated without clear reason above the many passages of women praying, prophesying, and leading in the early Christian community (e.g., 1 Corinthians 11:5; Acts 18:24–26; Philippians 4:2–3; Romans 16:1–16).

Who is being addressed, under what circumstances, and why should these two passages govern how we read other passages rather than be examined alongside them?

In biblical interpretation, there is always more than meets the eye.

Establishing scriptural ground for interpretation

The movement for ordination justice can also fall into prooftexting, invoking passages of the women at the empty tomb, especially Mary Magdalene (Matthew 28: 1–10; Mark 16: 1–8; Luke 24: 1–12; John 20: 1–18); the woman at the well who is instrumental in bringing her community to faith (John 4: 1–42); and the various female leaders in the Pauline churches, especially Phoebe (e.g. Romans 16: 1–16).

Invoking passages without a larger interpretive framework may help explain why both sides seem to talk past each other.

The question “Is God calling women to ordained ministries?” demands that the Church go much deeper to find the answer. Even before diving into the text itself, the Church must re-examine its own tradition regarding Scripture: how does the Church regard the nature of Scripture; how does it understand the role of historical cultures within it; what constitutes proper biblical interpretation; and has the Church followed its own standards when interpreting the role of women in Church life?

When moving into the text itself, biblical interpretation must first engage the deepest questions: Who is the God of the Bible? Who is Jesus, and what is the heart of his ministry? What is God’s project on earth, and how is God, through Jesus, inviting people to participate in it?

For example, while there are many images of God in the Bible, the arc of Scripture reveals a God who over and over tries to teach humanity that there is a way of living that leads to goodness and flourishing (e.g., Deuteronomy 30:15–20; Psalm 1:1–3; Proverbs 3:21–35; Isaiah 58:6–12).

In other words, God has embedded into life not just physical principles but also spiritual ones. These principles must be respected and observed if humanity as a whole—and creation—are to thrive as God intends. Much of Scripture tells the story of humanity striving to understand and remain faithful to the spiritual principles that govern life.

The prophetic tradition in the Hebrew Bible especially highlights this ongoing struggle by repeatedly confronting those who claim fidelity to God yet violate God’s desires and so harm their fellow human beings (e.g., Isaiah 1: 10–17, Amos 5: 21–24, Jeremiah 7: 1–11, Hosea 6: 4–6, Micah 6: 6–8).

In this broader biblical context, Christians view Jesus as revealing the very core of God’s desires for humanity. Foundational to this understanding are passages in which Jesus describes himself: he calls himself the bread of life and the Good Shepherd (John 6:35–40; John 10:1–18), a physician who comes for the sick, one who rejects domination in favor of service, and one who seeks out and saves the lost (Mark 2:15–17; Matthew 20:25–28; Luke 19:1–10).

Significantly, in Luke 4:16–21, Jesus describes his mission in the words of Isaiah: to bring good news to the poor, proclaim freedom for prisoners, bring sight to the blind, bring freedom to the oppressed, and proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor—evoking the Jubilee promise of liberation and restoration.

Simply put, the heart of Jesus’ mission is to bring the mercy that liberates into history, and he instructs us quite clearly to do the same (e.g., Matthew 5–7; Matthew 10:7–8; Luke 10:1–9; John 20:21–22).

Every discernment, it seems to me, must be grounded in Jesus’ mission of the mercy that liberates and in our call from God to participate in this mission. Thus, the purpose of biblical interpretation—at its most fundamental level—is to advance Jesus’ core mission of bringing heaven to earth.

Exploring scripture from the mission foundation

Once we establish the scriptural foundation for our discernment question, our information-gathering can ripple outward. What does the Kingdom of God look like, and how does Jesus bring it about (e.g., Matthew 15:29–31; Mark 6:30–44; Luke 13:10–17; John 13:1-30; John 8:1–11)?

What does Jesus value in people, and how does this challenge the ways their communities judge their worth (e.g., Matthew 8:5–13; Mark 5:25–34; Mark 12:41–44; Luke 15:11–32)? How do forces of power and domination resist Jesus’ mission of the mercy that liberates, and how does Jesus respond to this resistance (e.g., Luke 11:37–54; Luke 13:10–17; Matthew 23:1–36; Mark 3:1–6; Mark 7:1–13; John 2:13–22)?

Beyond these core passages, we can look to the early Church for inspiration. For example, what does the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the gathered community—men and women alike (Acts 1:14; 2:1–18)—communicate to us about God’s action in the Church?

How does the Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15:1-21) discern the extremely fraught question of whether Gentile converts must be circumcised and observe the law of Moses? What do their vigorous debate, testimony about God’s action among the Gentiles, and fundamental willingness to recognize God’s action beyond the group’s inherited boundaries teach the Church today?

How does Paul’s declaration that all “are one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:26–29) challenge human categories in service of Jesus’ mission?

As we ripple out through Scripture, we can return to those passages often cited on both sides of the ordination justice debate.

For example, interpreting the Twelve through the lens of Jesus’ mission of the mercy that liberates can yield a quite different—and much richer—reading. Jesus, a faithful Jew, embraces the givenness of his tradition by invoking a deeply embedded symbol within Judaism: he selects twelve men to symbolize the twelve tribes of Israel (Matthew 19:28; Luke 22:30), the collective people of God.

This symbol signals to his Jewish audience that he continues—not ruptures—the tradition to which he belongs.

Harnessing such a powerful symbol likely benefits a prophetic figure who challenges even the most deeply embedded laws and customs of his faith community, including how the Sabbath is observed (Mark 2:23–28; Luke 13:10–17).

At the same time, he claims the traditional symbol; Jesus also gives it renewed meaning—using it as a sacramental opening for God to reveal the call of the entire people of God to the mission of the mercy that liberates through service to one another. The symbol of the Twelve is born of the past, but Jesus points it to the future. It is quite brilliant of Jesus.

In this context, how might we understand the Last Supper? Perhaps Jesus isn’t making a comment on the priesthood or on women at all, but is giving his community the greatest gift possible—the Eucharist.

Conclusion

It may come as a surprise, but the Church’s own scripture scholars have already undertaken much of this work. In fact, in 1976, the Pontifical Biblical Commission concluded by majority vote that scriptural grounds alone were insufficient to exclude women from priestly ordination and that “Christ’s plan would not be transgressed by permitting the ordination of women.”

Yet, despite this expert scholarship by the Pope’s own biblical commission, the exclusion of women from ordained ministry has persisted—for fifty years.

If not Scripture, then what actually is at the root of this exclusion?

In truth, forces of domination are always at work in every place and time, resisting the action of God’s Holy Spirit. Just as these forces are at work today, they are also embedded in the biblical texts themselves and in the field of biblical interpretation.

In every age, the Christian’s task is to prayerfully examine how power shapes Scripture and its interpretation, and to tease out God’s action and invitation within these currents.

The best way to do this is to apply the lens of Jesus’ mission: if biblical interpretation does not further God’s project of bringing heaven to earth through the mercy that liberates, then—to put it bluntly—we aren’t doing it right.