Vatican Outlines Its Case Against Female Priests

Marshaling its arguments to quash a debate that won’t go away, the Vatican on Friday presented its most comprehensive case yet against women becoming Roman Catholic priests.

The Vatican called out its chief guardian of orthodoxy, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, and other officials for a news conference to present a book that stitches together recent major papal pronouncements on the issue, along with essays by theologians and scholars.

The church’s long-standing argument, essentially, is that Christ was male and wanted his priests to be male and that the church can’t overrule that.

“The church does not have the power to modify the practice, uninterrupted for 2,000 years, of calling only men” to the priesthood, Bishop Angelo Scola told reporters.

“This was wanted directly by Jesus,” said the bishop, who heads the Vatican’s prestigious Lateran University. He cited traditional arguments that Jesus decided to choose only men for the 12 apostles and that the priesthood is “objectively linked to the male sex of Jesus.”

The news conference was held to promote a series of books presenting the documents of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which Ratzinger heads. They deal with issues such as homosexuality, the Holy Trinity, contraception and role of the theologian.

The Vatican’s most recent publication is a comprehensive edition on the all-male clergy. Scola called it “an obligatory point of reference.”

It was not clear why the Vatican chose now to focus on the issue of female priests.

The book presentation follows a visit to the Vatican last month by the spiritual leader of the Anglican Church--which ordains women. The pope has called the practice an obstacle to unity with the Catholic Church.

Ratzinger clarified the gravity with which the church views those who reject the ban on female priests. Such rejection is not heresy, he said, but a “clearly erroneous” position that is incompatible with the faith.