Catechists' Corner / 11_VaticanCouncil_Vol2

To illustrate the kind of information that you could find in this book, let's use an example and find out the answer:

"Why aren't women allowed to become priests ?"

I am sure that, as catechists, you have heard this question quite often from your students. I heard many funny and misleading answers. If you (the catechist) say that Jesus in His time did not choose women as His Apostles, then you'll typically hear the following argument: "Yes, but that's because Jesus didn't want to go against the sociological and cultural trends of his time."

Did he ?

If you have the above book handy, you'd find your answer in the following document: DECLARATION ON THE ADMISSION OF WOMEN TO THE MINISTERIAL PRIESTHOOD, S.C.D.F, Inter insigniores, 15 October 1976, chapter 2 "The Attitude of Christ". Here's an excerpt:

Jesus Christ did not call any woman to become part of the Twelve. If he acted in this way, it was not in order to conform to the customs of his time, for his attitude towards women was quite different from that of his milieu, and he deliberately and courageously broke with it.

For example, to the great astonishment of his own disciples Jesus converses publicly with the Samaritan woman (cf. Jn 4:27); he takes no notice of the state of legal impurity of the woman who had suffered from haemorrhages (cf. Mt 9:20-22); he allows a sinful woman to approach him in the house of Simon the Pharisee (cf. Lk 7:37ff.); and by pardoning the woman taken in adultery, he means to show that one must not be more severe towards the fault of a woman than towards that of a man (cf. Jn 8:11). He does not hesitate to depart from the Mosaic Law in order to affirm the equality of the rights and duties of men and women with regard to the marriage bond (cf. Mk 10 2-11, Mt 19:3-9).

In his itinerant ministry Jesus was accompanied not only by the Twelve but also by a group of women: "Mary, surnamed the Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, Joanna the wife of Herod's steward Chuza, Susanna, and several others who provided for them out of their own resources" (Lk 8:2-3). Contrary to the Jewish mentality, which did not accord great value to the testimony of women, as Jewish law attests, it was nevertheless women who were the first to have the privilege of seeing the risen Lord, and it was they who were charged by Jesus to take the first paschal message to the Apostles themselves (cf. Mt 28:7-10; Lk 24:9-10; Jn 20:11-18), in order to prepare the latter to become the official witnesses to the Resurrection.
[...]