By Anthony Esolen.

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Now for today's column...

Why did Jesus choose only men as his apostles? Three replies are typically given. The first two are absurd, and the third is insufficient. As the Cardinals vote for the next successor to St. Peter, it's a good time to look more deeply into this question.

First, it is said he was bowing to the culture around him. The Jews would not have looked kindly on a man traveling with women among his intimate entourage. As if Jesus was ever afraid of rejection! And what could they have done to him that they were not already going to do? Crucify him twice? Flickering beneath this first reply is the assumption that Jesus was not divine; that he was but a very fine teacher who had a few unfortunate limitations. We, today, it is supposed, know better.

Second, it is said he did choose women as apostles, but the men, deliberately or from unconscious cultural habit, shouldered them aside. That makes the apostles out to be liars, knaves, or even - after Pentecost - blockheads. It also renders their witness untrustworthy. If we cannot trust them on the names of the apostles and the special character of their mission, why should we trust them on the world-shaking matter of the Resurrection? Besides, Jesus did not choose twelve as a random number. He was reconstituting Israel and her twelve tribes. And we are told who the twelve were.

Third, it is said that the apostles, and then by extension their successors and the priests they ordain, must be male, because the priest acts in persona Christi, and sex is not a mere accident of the human person, like occupation, height, place of birth, or skin color. Here we verge upon the great mystery of the fatherhood of God himself: not biological fatherhood, but also not an abstract parenthood.

This reply concerns the individual apostle, the individual priest, and the character of the divine Father and Son. I believe Christians are bound to honor the choice Jesus made and his revelation of God as Father. To lose your hold on the determinative force of the first is to lose your hold on the second, and that is why we see the inevitable slide, in liberal Protestant denominations and in liberal orders of religious women in the Catholic Church, from feminism in sociology to feminism in theology.

As a result, the name "Father" sticks in the throat and translators, editors, hymn writers, and other camp followers will twist the English language and Scripture into knots, to avoid, as far as they can, the names "Father" and "Son," and masculine pronouns to refer to any of the Persons of the Trinity.

But we are still missing something, and it is typical of an individualistic society to miss it. It is what a friend of mine, Dr. David Pence, used to call "the missing icon" - the brotherhood. Jesus did not simply choose twelve individual men to be twelve individual apostles. He formed a band of brothers.

We have the icon of mother and child. Think of the Christmas crèche. Think of Mary at the foot of the Cross. We have the icon of husband and wife. Think of Cana. Think of the wedding feast that is the Kingdom of God. We are missing the icon of the male protective group, the brotherhood in responsibility, danger, and self-sacrifice for the common good.

If these three are fundamental to any real human society - rather than some imaginary science-fiction or fantasy world of sexlessness beneath superficially male or female forms - then we should not be surprised that to deny or weaken one of them will harm the others also.

We do not recognize the dynamism and the essential goodness of the brotherhood. Is it then a surprise that we also no longer revere the special bond between a woman and her child? Or that we can no longer figure out why man and woman are meant for one another in marriage?

Again, I often hear the objection that what was fit for cultures in those old days - we might ...