“Women and Men are Biologically 99.5% the Same” - Catholic Women Priests Part 4 by Diana Milesko

             In the past few decades there have been breathtaking advances in science.  Perhaps one of the most astonishing is the mapping of the human genome, which contains all of a person’s genetic information. This work has shown that every single difference in our physical bodies--our sex, skin color, eyes, teeth, height, bone density, etc. comprise less than one-half-of-one-percent of the human genome. That means all humans on earth, all women, all men and all races, are biologically 99.5 % the same.

            One justly asks, then, what it is about women that so frightens the male Catholic hierarchy; why the Church, for millennia, has gone to such great lengths to diminish and denigrate women. The answer is part culture and part quest for control.  Wise individuals both within the Church and without (in more ways than one,) are trying to change this situation; but inequality between women and men is still pervasive.

            In refusing to recognize women priests today the best argument the Vatican can come up with is it’s 1976 Declaration on the Question of Admitting Women to the Priesthood, which justifies exclusion of women on the grounds that the female body does not resemble the male body of Christ. This is sadly risible.

            Taken literally, it creates an Alice in Wonderland spiral that descends into nonsense.  It says that in Catholicism, one’s physical body is more important to God than one’s spiritual soul. 

            If that is correct, then the 1976 Declaration on the Question of Admitting Women to the Priesthood must be read in one of two ways. First, to channel Christ’s energy, the male body of every priest must resemble the presumably healthy (according to artwork,) body of Jesus.  Thus disabled or impotent men are excluded from the priesthood because their bodies do not resemble the male body of Christ. Further, a blonde man with blue eyes, a Hispanic, Asian, or Black man is excluded from the priesthood because his body does not resemble the male body of Christ, as depicted in artwork. But what if Jesus was Black, being of Middle Eastern descent? If so, then all White men must be excluded from the priesthood because their bodies don’t resemble the male body of Christ.

            Since it is impossible to determine exactly if Jesus was a Black man or a White man, a sexually potent or impotent man, then just to be safe--because the Vatican doesn’t want to include anyone whose body does not resemble the male body of Christ--all men must be excluded from the priesthood.

            But maybe the Church is talking here about genital organs. It has been said that at times men think with them, but that usually refers to concupiscence, not reason or faith. The teachings of Jesus are based on spiritual qualities of compassion, equality, forgiveness, peace and justice. Given these, one’s sex has nothing to do with the priesthood. (We’re not talking about clerical sexual abuse here. Or are we?)

            According to Catholic dogma,“...a priest, by ordination, receives the power to celebrate the Eucharist, to forgive sins, to bless, to preach, to sanctify.” One does not need a male sex organ to perform any of these functions. If truth be told, a male sex organ often gets in the way of the proper performance of priestly tasks. Furthermore, women priests (presbyters), deaconesses, bishops, prophets and abbesses in earlier centuries and today have performed all of these duties.

            In the 1970‘s during communist rule in Czechoslovakia, Ludmila Javorová was one of several Czech women priests ordained by a bishop because the Communists would not suspect a woman of saying mass.  As Javorová says, “A principal reason for our ordination was that in women’s prisons, nuns and other inmates died without priestly support or the sacraments.”

            All humans are 99.5% the same biologically.  But much more importantly, there is no difference in the spiritual relationship of women and men to our loving God. The word, “catholic”, from which the Church took its name, means “all-embracing.”  To live up to it’s name, the Catholic Church must work for common humanity.  A huge step in this direction would be to welcome women priests on all levels of Church Clergy.