Answer

Yes. Absolutely and without any doubt.
Maimonides’ words are well known, but in my opinion they are not relevant to us. Nowadays all kinds of intellectual and spiritual figures are supported at public expense, because the world has progressed and people understand the importance of engaging in matters of the spirit for the public as a whole. So should a priestess be treated worse than an innkeeper? The problem is that among us there is an entire public that makes its living from this (albeit meagerly, and only as a stipend rather than a salary, which straightforwardly is only for lost time) and not just a select group that is worthy of it, and that is of course a crazy distortion. But one should not throw out the baby with the bathwater. See Column 34.