Shortage of priests

Considering that the shortage of priests in our community will only escalate with time and further aggravate the difficulties and inconveniences that our community is already facing in religious ceremonial matters, should we not, as a hitherto progressive community, move with the times and modify the class system we have hung on to for centuries?
I am aware that our scriptures do define four classes on lines similar to the Hindu class system, which has now been reduced to two, viz. athornan (priestly) and behdin (non-priestly). In fact, I would say that the appellation behdin for the non-priestly "class” is itself a misnomer, as it means "follower of the faith;” and keeping a behdin away from the priesthood would be, to say the least, an irony. If a young worthy behdin male is ready, willing and able to go through the navar ceremony, and serve the community as a mobed, regulating his life in accordance with the prescribed norms (hence my use of the word "worthy”), why should he be prevented?
Should birth determine the qualification for service to God and community?
KERSHASP R. DADACHANJI
dadakr@gmail.com

At Parsiana’s request London based independent researcher on Zoroastrianism Farrokh Vajifdar explains:
Your correspondent has a good general grasp of the class system which has conferred a quite unworthy and undeserved status on our priests. For too long has an exclusively male clerical coterie allowed a sociopolitical situation of their own contrivance to dominate. The reality of this unZoroastrian imposition of sons only of fathers from a priestly line has worked its way into the community consciousness. It is also a reality that many of these generational descendents are lacking in broad based basic education, and even more so in matters of religious knowledge and practices: their socioreligious understanding is abysmal.
Therefore, to "move with the times” is a tall order which will remain unfulfilled as long as the other, limited, requirements from the current roster are: that they should learn to wind their turbans properly, to memorize such prayers as are needed by rote for a largely Hinduized set of prescriptions for festive and social occasions and to imitate the gestures that support them.
Any and all behdins (i.e. "those of the good religion”), men and women can, if they so wish, seriously take up the proper duties which satisfy modern day requirements. There is absolutely no religious bar to acceptance from either sex of either class (three anciently derived classes). The fourth class corresponding to Hinduism does exist among Parsis in the shape of the ostracized nassessalars. To maintain these vindictively excluded persons as an underclass is a cause for lasting shame among Bombay Parsis. In a nutshell, they too can serve priestly functions. Where are any religious interdicts to be seen?
Taking readers back briefly to the Avestic texts, specifically Yss. 46.10, 48.5 and 41.2, be assured that we have the clearest and highest authority for any and all behdins to fully become true priests of the Zarathushtrian faith without any of these new-fangled "mobedyar” and "paramobed” labels. All this, however, comes with sober warnings against false priests. These may be consulted in Yss. 46.11 and 49.11 which contain Zarathushtra’s forthright condemnation of the karpans (false, deceitful priests: today’s dhongis) and their "paymaster” kavis (local rulers; princelings). Ys. 46.11 states: "During their misrule the karpans and kavis have yoked/subjugated their followers to evil deeds that destroy this world and mankind. Because of this their own souls (urva) and their own spiritual conceptions/selves (daena) shall torment them when they arrive at the bridge of the crossing (the Chinvat: their individual transition point from deceit to truth/their own judgment in this very life), thereafter to be guests in the house of deceit/lamentation (Drujo demana).” Ys 49.11 warns: "Such deceitful persons of evil rule, of evil deeds, of evil speech, of evil daenas and evil minds – their own souls shall forever meet them with foul food when they become guests truly in the house of deceit.”
The following should be read slowly and carefully: "A Parsee has to believe that for the salvation of his soul he has to look to nobody else, but to himself. Nobody — no priest, or no prophet — will intercede for him... Think of nothing but the truth, speak nothing but the truth, and do nothing but what is proper, and you are saved.” They are the words not of some fashionable radical or reformist but from no less an authority of some hundred years ago — the scholar-priest firmly rooted in Parsi traditions and practices, Dr Sir Jivanji Jamshedji Modi in his 1914 guide to The Naojote Ceremony. Modi repeated this, with added emphasis, in Dr J. H. Moulton’s The Treasure of the Magi (Oxford University Press, London, 1917, pp 205, 206).