Women and the Priesthood

Mr. C. S. Lewis Goes on at great length and considerable (though not perfect) cogency in his essay "Priestesses in the Church?"^[1]  What follows are a couple of the salient points, though I cannot but recommend reading the original in its entirety.

These remarks are not intended as a contribution to the criticism of Pride and Prejudice. They came into my head when I heard that the Church of England (2) was being advised to declare women capable of Priests' Orders. I am, indeed, informed that such a proposal is very unlikely to be seriously considered by the authorities. To take such a revolutionary step at the present moment, to cut ourselves off from the Christian past and to widen the divisions between ourselves and other Churches by establishing an order of priestesses in our midst, would be an almost wanton degree of imprudence. And the Church of England herself would be torn in shreds by the operation. My concern with the proposal is of a more theoretical kind. The question involves something even deeper than a revolution in order.

If Mr. Lewis could react physically to the state of his church now, he would be rolling over in his grave.  For the Anglican church does indeed appear to be fragmenting as he supposed it would.  While it might be rightly pointed out that it survived for some time after having admitted women to the priesthood, it cannot be denied that its current quandary stems at least in part because of that earlier decision.  He continues, granting many of the rational arguments that are proposed in favor of such a move: the current shortage of priests, the admirable moral lives lead by women, and traits of personality that can make them more natural visitors to the sickbed or councilors to the troubled.  He grants these while rightly denying that the argument against female ordination can be reduced to bigotry, citing the so called Middle Ages, with its traditions of chivalry, as well as its great devotion to Our Lady, as ample refutation.  Why then do we oppose such a move?

Suppose the reformer stops saying that a good woman may be like God and begins saying that God is like a good woman. Suppose he says that we might just as well pray to 'Our Mother which art in heaven' as to 'Our Father'. Suppose he suggests that the Incarnation might just as well have taken a female as a male form, and the Second Person of the Trinity be as well called the Daughter as the Son. Suppose, finally, that the mystical marriage were reversed, that the Church were the Bridegroom and Christ the Bride. All this, as it seems to me, is involved in the claim that a woman can represent God as a priest does.

But God is sexless, and both man and woman are created in His image, so how does this create an obstacle?

But Christians think that God Himself has taught us how to speak of Him. To say that it does not matter is to say either that all the masculine imagery is not inspired, is merely human in origin, or else that, though inspired, it is quite arbitrary and unessential. And this is surely intolerable: or, if tolerable, it is an argument not in favour of Christian priestesses but against Christianity. It is also surely based on a shallow view of imagery. Without drawing upon religion, we know from our poetical experience that image and apprehension cleave closer together than common sense is here prepared to admit; that a child who has been taught to pray to a Mother in Heaven would have a religious life radically different from that of a Christian child. And as image and apprehension are in an organic unity, so, for a Christian, are human body and human soul.

Simply put, in our own experience, Mother and Father do not make two interchangeable "parental units."  Two mommies is not the same as a mother and a father.  As this has been and continues to be true even in this "more enlightened" age, it stands to reason God chose to represent Himself in a way that most accurately reflected His relationship to us.  Since the roman world was full of religions in which there was at the center a goddess, served by priestesses, and since in fact the Israelites had in fact, in the old testament fallen from their relationship with God to follow just such a cult at one point, it cannot be held that this choice was a mere product of the times.   It must be of some substance.

It is painful, being a man, to have to assert the privilege, or the burden, which Christianity lays upon my own sex. I am crushingly aware how inadequate most of us are, in our actual and historical individualities, to fill the place prepared for us. But it is an old saying in the army that you salute the uniform not the wearer. Only one wearing the masculine uniform can (provisionally, and till the Parousia) (9) represent the Lord to the Church: for we are all, corporately and individually, feminine to Him. We men may often make very bad priests. That is because we are insufficiently masculine. It is no cure to call in those who are not masculine at all. A given man may make a very bad husband; you cannot mend matters by trying to reverse the roles. He may make a bad male partner in a dance. The cure for that is that men should more diligently attend dancing classes; not that the ballroom should henceforward ignore distinctions of sex and treat all dancers as neuter. That would, of course, be eminently sensible, civilized, and enlightened, but, once more, 'not near so much like a Ball'.