Jesus Established a New Priesthood

Christ made women’s ordination possible when he revoked the Old Testament priesthood of Aaron and brought both men and women into a new convenant; into a new priesthood through baptism.

"All of you are children of God through faith in Christ Jesus. All of you who have been baptized in Christ, have clothed yourselves in Christ. Thus there is no longer Jew nor Greek, free nor slave, male nor female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus." Galatians 3,27-28

Christ abolished the priesthood of the Old Testament, removing any difference between the sacred and the profane. He did away with a priesthood founded on the holiness of certain days, places, objects or priestly lineage. No longer was the temple more holy than the market, or the sabbath the most sacred of days, nor the priest a manifestation of the divine.

Jesus abolished these Old Testament distinctions. He disagreed with the Pharisees about continuing his work on the sabbath. Jesus tells us, "The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath" (Mk 2, 27). When Christ died the Temple curtain, which hid the Holy of Holies, "was torn in two, from top to bottom" (Mk 15,38). The early Christian communities understood the meaning of this. They had no churches or temples. Wherever they gathered as a community they celebrated the Eucharist. However by the fourth century the setting aside of special places of prayer had gradually reappeared .

Likewise, Christ did away with the priesthood as a sacrad tradition. In fact, Old Testament ideas of the priesthood were so foreign to Christ that he never applied the word priest to his followers or himself. He would not have wanted his followers to establish a new sacred group as in Old Testament times. The subsequent growth of a separate clergy class, with its sacred vestments, special status and privileges would have troubled him.

The ordination to the priesthood is a fuller participation in baptism’s sacrificial and prophetic gifts. Christ replaced a priesthood based on the sacred by a priesthood based on grace; a universal priesthood shared by all the baptized. This priesthood is given through the sacrament of baptism, and baptism is the same whether for a man or a woman.