Of Selective Thinkers Who said women can’t be priests?

Thursday, 12th November, 2009

EDITOR—There is a breakaway group of Anglicans who want to join the Catholic Church. Reason? Ordaining homosexuals and women in the Anglican Church.

They might have a point on homosexual priests but lumping women with homosexuals is simply unacceptable. True, all the 12 disciples of Jesus were men but then what was (is) the status of women in Palestine and the Middle East in general? This was a Jewish society which did not seem to recognise the presence of women. For example, when Jesus fed 5,000 people, the ‘people’ were only men. They did not include women and children! Secondly, we must contextualise the circumstances under which Jesus did his pastoral work. His ministry was nomadic, as it were. Surely, it would not have been reasonable to tag along with women, probably carrying children as he trekked from Capernaun to Galilee, from Jericho to Jerusalem. His first disciples were fishermen. This suggests physical stamina and not spiritual superiority. Denying women service as priests is male dominance misread from Jesus’ time. I cannot imagine a sectarian God who thinks like human beings.

Jeniffer Kaita
Kampala