Women as Religious Leaders

The role of women in
religious leadership: it’s a highly charged topic that has been debated and
discussed for centuries. Even today, after the significant progress women have
made in business and government, there are many perfectly intelligent people,
both male and female, who insist that women do not belong in positions of
church leadership.

Who can forget the
Alaskan woman who recently stated that Governor Sarah Palin could serve as vice
president of the United States but could not serve as a pastor in her own
church?

Let’s review a few of
America’s major religions and see what history reveals about the prospects of
women attaining leadership positions.

The teaching of the Catholic
Church has been very clear.
During the 26-year pontificate of Pope John Paul II women were appointed
chancellors of dioceses around the world, they assumed pastoral and
administrative duties in priestless parishes, and they began populating the
ranks of “experts” at Vatican symposiums and synods. In 2004, for the
first time, the pope named a Harvard University law professor, Mary Ann
Glendon, to be president of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, and he
appointed two women theologians to the prestigious International Theological
Commission.

Nevertheless, while
decrying discrimination against women and supporting their promotion in many
areas of community and social life, the pope unequivocally upheld the
traditional teaching that the Catholic Church cannot ordain women to the priesthood.
The most direct statement of the pope’s position can be found in his 1994
apostolic letter, “On Reserving Priestly Ordination to Men Alone”:

“Wherefore, in
order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a
matter which pertains to the Church’s divine constitution itself, in virtue of
my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32) I declare that the Church
has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that
this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful.”

Have you ever heard
of Regina Jonas? Probably
not. But Regina Jonas was a heroic trailblazer. Born in Berlin in 1902, Jonas
enrolled at the Hochschule f?