When Female Priests Aren't Enough

(Persephone is The High Priestess in The New Mythic Tarot. As the second card in the Major Arcana, the High Priestess is a symbol of feminine spiritual power). 

 "Women can't be priests," my Catholic school theology teacher told me, "the way that men can't bear children."

Well, okay... After my initial outrage (biology ≠ equal gender!), I was struck by how deep that assumption goes. In Catholicism, priesthood is a veryyyyy masculine role, hence the honorific "Father." (Those stuffy old men never felt like anyone's father, or anyone’s). A Catholic priest is a paternal figure who watches over his sheep, vowing to be perfect and never, y'know, have sex. Women have no place inside the system except as nuns, who can’t even say Mass. 

Yeah, the Roman Catholic Church needs to acknowledge we're living in the 21st century. 

It wasn't always this way. Across the pre-Christian world, people of all genders held positions of religious authority, including trans and non-binary folks. One common pattern was that ritual leaders identified with the same gender as their deity. By defining their God as a masculine father figure, conservative Christianity has made it impossible for women to truly gain spiritual power. 

The dictionary definition of priestess is "A female priest of a non-Christian religion." Note the word choice, non-Christian. Although I've met some wonderful women ministers, none of them have identified with the term "priestess." Probably because it feels so, well… Pagan. 

The most common argument against the term priestess is that it marks women as "other." Look how words like waitress and actress are becoming replaced with gender-neutral terms like waiter and actor. That’s a great step forward for waiters and actors, but my fear is that turning priestess into priest reinforces male experience as the default.

One could argue that women/trans priests do the same work as male priests, so there's no need for a separate term. This is where a female priest diverges from a priestess. To me, a priestess is a woman-aligned person who celebrates the mysteries of a particular Goddess or God. Mainstream religion has excluded women and queer people for SO MANY CENTURIES that I think it's essential to emphasize our unique experiences of the Sacred. I also love the non-binary term "priestx," although it's not super common. 

Some progressive Christian churches try to portray God as a genderless or even feminine figure. While I appreciate the effort, the idea of a feminine God has always felt weak in comparison to the idea of a Goddess. These weak attempts often fall into the cliche of a perfect, de-sexed Mother watching over Her children. The ferocity and raw power of Pagan Goddesses are missing.

As a devotee of the Two Goddesses, I've experienced the Divine in ways that many Christians refuse to consider, which I wrote about in this poem: 

They told me to envision God as a father

& son.

blasphemy(!)

Why not god-as-monster,

or lover?

- (it is said they are often both)

Like the poets of old

I dare you-

envision her as Circe,

transforming you with her touch… 

or Scylla and Carybdis,

waiting to consume you-

Until they acknowledge the messiness and wholeness of the Divine Feminine, I think most Christians will end up stuck where they started: with a perfect, sanitized Virgin Mary figure who will never be relatable to many women.

Of course, I understand that the Virgin Mary holds a lot of power, that female priests are doing badass work, and that there's a long tradition of Catholic mysticism. But these beliefs are nowhere near as prominent as they should be. After a lifetime of struggling to relate to Mary, I was overjoyed to find Demeter- a woman defined by more than just motherhood, a Goddess unafraid to express rage, grief, and desire. She’s not a perfect, patriarchal ideal of womanhood- She’s a full person. 

We can’t move forward until we create new systems of religious leadership instead of forcing women and trans people into the old ones. For me, the word “priestess” conjures images of dancing barefoot beneath the moon, wearing flowers in your hair, and channeling primordial spiritual power. So forget being a priest. I want to be a priestesses 

“In my arms, I held my god

and she slithered inside my body like the serpent of creation 

a bolt of blue fire. “

~ Rose Eleusis 🌹