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- All the baptised, including women,
share in Christ’s common priesthood.
- Luke’s Gospel presents Mary as a
‘new priest’ in Christ.
- Tradition confirms that the common priesthood of
the faithful in Mary implies openness to the full ministerial
priesthood.
- We need new liberating images of Mary, and of the
priesthood.
All the baptised, including women, share
in Christ’s common priesthood
All the faithful share in Christ's priesthood.
Christ the Lord, High Priest taken from among people (cf. Heb
5,1-5), "made a kingdom and priests to God his Father" (Rev 1,6; cf. 5,9-10).
The baptized, by regeneration and the anointing of the Holy Spirit, are
consecrated into a spiritual house and a holy priesthood.
Vatican II, Lumen Gentium, no 10.
Christ abolished the Old Testament priesthood based on the
sacrality (=presumed holiness) of times, places, cultic objects,
priestly descent. Christ instituted a priesthood in whose basic dignity all the
baptised share. Christ’s new
‘priesthood’ extends to all believers.
The fact that all the faithful share in this common priesthood of
Christ carries, as a necessary implication, that they can, through the
sacrament of Holy Orders, also share in Christ's ministerial priesthood. This
applies to both men and women, since both equally share in Christ's priesthood
through baptism.
Luke’s Gospel presents Mary as a
‘new priest’ in Christ
Capability to receive the ministerial priesthood lies implicit in the
general priesthood of the faithful. The principle applies in a special way to
Mary. And although Mary never performed the eucharistic ministry, as
Rome stresses repeatedly, Mary possessed
to an eminent degree that integration with Christ's common priesthood which
would have made her a natural ministerial priest.
This is brought out especially in St. Luke's Gospel. Luke emphasizes
the role of women in the Early Church. He obviously envisages an active role
for women in the apostolate. In this context Luke presents Mary as an example of a ‘new
priest’ in Christ.
Tradition confirms that the common
priesthood of the faithful in Mary implies openness to the full ministerial
priesthood
Tradition has regarded Mary as a full priest, including the graces and
powers implied in the ministerial priesthood. When confronted with the
Church’s ban on women priests, Tradition formulated the solution that
Mary possessed the full ministerial priesthood
‘equivalently and eminently’.
I interpret this Tradition as confirming what we have stated above,
namely that the common priesthood of the faithful of necessity implies openness
to Holy Orders, for both men and women.
We need new liberating images of Mary, and
of the priesthood
A great obstacle to our understanding both our Christian
‘priesthood’ and Mary’s exemplary role in it, lies in
deep-seated cultural fears. This is brought out very well by Tina Beattie in
Mary the Virgin Priest?
Traditional depictions of Mary emphasise her submissive obedience. They
are heirs to Augustine's argument that if the purest woman in the world was
obedient to a husband of lesser virtue, then the quality of a woman's
subordination was the index of her chastity. We need truer images of Mary as
Kim Power shows in Re-imagining Mary at Christmas.
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