Bridget Mary Meehan fashions herself a Roman Catholic priest.
This 2013 photo was taken by the Italian photographer Giulia Bianchi and appeared in this issue of National Geographic which shows women shamans. The article fails to make an important anthropological distinction between the offices of priest and shaman and their contrary worldviews.
The question of women priests should be considered in the larger context of the Received Tradition. I have spent many years investigating that Tradition from the perspective of cultural anthropology. The priesthood of Jesus Christ is not a metaphor. His mother was the daughter of a shepherd-priest Yoachin. Jesus belonged to the most archaic priesthood known. The Bible reveals that the priestly lines intermarried, were attached to great kingdom builders, and dispersed throughout the ancient world. They were known for their devotion to the Creator, and for their pure and sober lives. Messianic expectation began with them at least as early at 4000 BC. So when we speak of Received Tradition we are speaking of something older than all the world religions; long before the religions that emerged in the Axial Age. That is why I find it ironic that those who favor the ordination of women often attempt to justify this using the argument of antiquity. The simple fact is this: in the Received Tradition of the Church, women never served as priests.
Other related articles include:
The Mushy Thinking of Neo-Anglicans
C.S. Lewis on Women Priests
Alice C. Linsley's address on Creation and the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ
Alice C. Linsley's address to the International Catholic Congress of Anglicans
The Anglican Priesthood in Anthropological Perspective
Women Priests and the Anglican Church of North America
Women's Ordination Must be Addressed
Impressions of North American Anglicanism
The Feminization of Anglican Orders
Males as Spiritual Leaders: Two Patterns
Blood and Gender Distinctions
Shamanic Practice and the Priesthood
Female Shamans, Not Women Priests
Why Women Were Never Priests
What is Lost When Women Serve as Priests?
Priests and Shamans Hold Different Worldviews
The Modernist-Traditionalist Divide in Anglicanism
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