Recently, I stood outside a Catholic ordination ceremony holding a sign and participating in a peaceful picket. The young man being ordained was not the issue. My purpose was to draw attention to a question that has been asked for generations:

Where are the women?Women make up a significant portion of the Catholic Church. We serve as educators, ministers, volunteers, caregivers, theologians, and leaders in countless ways. Yet when it comes to the priesthood, women remain completely excluded.

At its core, this is a question of equality.

For centuries, the Catholic Church has offered various reasons why women cannot be ordained as priests. Among them are the following beliefs:

1. Women were not created in the image of God.

2. Women were never permitted to teach in the Church.

3. Women continue to bear the punishment for Eve’s sin.

4. Jesus deliberately excluded women from the apostolic team.

5. Because Jesus was male, only a man can represent Christ at the Eucharist.

The problem is that these arguments are not truly rooted in Scripture. Rather, they are rooted in cultural assumptions and historical bias.

As theologian John Wijngaards explains in his book The Ordination of Women in the Catholic Church, these commonly cited reasons do not withstand serious biblical examination.

While standing at the picket, a man in his thirties approached me. Clearly irritated, he asked, “What more do you women want from our Church? You already have Mary Magdalene and Mary, the Mother of God.”

His question revealed more than he perhaps intended. To many Catholic women, the issue has never been about recognition alone. It is about participation. It is about equal opportunity to answer God’s call.

A man’s call to the priesthood is never blocked simply because he is male. For women, however, the door remains firmly shut. The question is not whether women have contributed to the life of the Church. History proves that we have. The question is whether the Church is willing to acknowledge the full equality of women that is reflected in Scripture itself.

In Genesis 1:27, we read:” So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”

The message is clear. Women and men alike are created in the image of God.

Catholic women are not asking for special treatment. We are asking for the Church to recognize what Scripture already proclaims—that women are equal in dignity, equal in humanity, and equal in their ability to respond to God’s call.

Until that conversation is allowed to fully take place, many of us will continue asking a simple but important question: Where are the women?