“You are the salt of the earth. But if salt loses its taste, with what can it be seasoned? It is no longer good for anything but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.” (Matthew 5:13)
Salt is something we cannot live without, and yet it’s something so small and seemingly insignificant. Salt can lose its taste if it contains impurities, so after the moisture evaporates, you are left with something that looks like salt but is not salt. Salt in the ocean water prevents earthquakes; salt in food production helps preserve our food for long periods and, most commonly, flavours our food.
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| Sculpture of St. John Paul II in Rome, 13 May 2019 |
A priest is just like salt in its pure form. Nothing could take its taste away unless it were some artificial replacement from the onset. At ordination, the priest receives a permanent spiritual character marked on his soul that can never be removed. It is a grace conferred by Christ and cannot be repeated or given temporarily.
A priest is not someone who decides tomorrow I’m going to be a preacher. In the Catholic Church, the priest is a minister of sacraments, such as Baptism, Confession, Holy Communion, Holy Orders and Anointing of the sick. In the Mass, the priest consecrates the bread and wine through the action of the Holy Spirit into the body and blood of Christ. This unique power is the grace of Christ working through the priest, and this great power demands great responsibility.
Why cannot this grace work through a woman? What makes a man more special?
Feminists and LGBTQ+ persons, or whatever letter of the alphabet are in there now, need to hear this! Man and woman were created in the image and likeness of God, and the difference is embedded in the very thing that makes a man and woman biologically different. How do you explain to your two old that he is a boy and not a girl? When he bathes, he will want to ask what is this? It is your knee. What is that? It is your toes. What is this between my legs? It is your special gift of genitals, and for a boy, it’s a penis, and for a girl, she has a vagina and two breasts for nursing. Is it not odd we call every part of our body by its biological name, but for our greater parts we find alternate or diminutive names?! Or is it not crazy to say to your child if your toes want to be fingers, they can be fingers, just like if you want to be a different gender, you are free to be whatever you want?!
I will try to rephrase Christopher West, who unpacks this so eloquently. ‘Genitals’ are biologically referred to as our reproductive organs. In other words, it relates to our ability to ‘generate’ life (hence they are greater parts of our body). No wonder the first book of the Bible is called ‘Genesis’. Where does this life come from? It starts with the man who has ‘testicles’ which ‘testify’ he is a man that bears new life through the production of ‘semen’, a reproductive fluid. While male priests study and train to be priests in the ‘seminary’ derived from the root word ‘semen’, meaning ‘seed’. The world can make up its own rules, but it cannot break with natural law. A man gives life through his seed, and a woman receives life in the womb of her fertile garden; she germinates this seed and allows it to grow to one day give life to a child. A man will never bear and nurse new life as the seed giver, which makes man and woman complementary in their design. I repeat, men and women complement each other. They are not substitutes, nor is there a superior gender.
A male is a priest because he bears the seed. A man gives life, and this is why Jesus Christ is both Man and God and why he chose twelve men as his apostles. Do you think God, who created us in his image and likeness, was sexist or thought that man was superior to a woman?!
Therefore, a priest is a male because it is imprinted in his identity, not because the Church is old-fashioned or biased against women. Instead, for the same reason, a wife cannot produce semen and pass it to her husband to conceive a child. A man cannot naturally conceive and bear a child in a womb. Now, what if I go for some biological surgery? Then it is possible! Sure, doctors can work their immoral magic. Still, the fact that you have to go for some artificial surgery proves that it is not biologically possible and out of our design as male and female.
The priest is Jesus Christ's representative on earth, and it makes sense that a man mirrors Our Lord. Does this make women less important in the Church? Women mirror the most perfect woman to have walked this earth, Our Lady, Mary the Mother of God. She beautifully expresses that God wills women to bear life in their blessed wombs. Jesus, Peter, Popes, priests and all men came into this world only because of a woman, so she is the nurturer of life in the Church. If it were not for another woman, Mary Magdalene as the first person and woman, to see the resurrected body of Our Lord, we would not have any Christian believers today.
Priests, like salt, keep the foundations of the Catholic Church from buckling under the pressure of worldly earthquakes by standing up for the truth. Priests have preserved the life of the Church by not breaking the line of vested power from Jesus to Peter, to the Apostles, and to our present-day priests. The passing on of the sacrament of Holy Orders is what separates the priests from the pop-up pastors. Finally, through holding to tradition passed on down the generations through the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the priests have kept the body of the Church (the people) alive and full of flavour and vibrant with life.
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