What keeps women from being priests?
The short answer
Women are not ordained because they are not men. God became incarnate not merely as a human being but as a man, the man Christ Jesus, and priests serve in his person. Just as only women bearing children is a fact of the natural order, men being priests is a fact of the supernatural order.
God's particular choice
God created men to be men and women to be women. When he became incarnate he chose a specific time, place, people, family and mother — and a specific human being, the man Christ Jesus (1 Timothy 2:5). So those who serve as priests in the person of Christ are men.
Turning the question around
Ask proponents of women's ordination what makes men unfit to bear children. A man is not inferior to a woman, yet demanding equal rights for men to give birth would be absurd — a protest against the natural order.
The supernatural order
Likewise, men being priests is a fact of the supernatural order. That this order is unseen and harder to understand does not mean it does not exist.
Continue exploring
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- Why are Catholic priests celibate?Q&A
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- Why is becoming a nun not a sacrament, when ordination is?Q&A