Are Paul's teachings re:women still relevant?

[petra]

Kendy:

Didn’t St. Catherine of Sienna write books on spirituality to a general audience?

Kendy

She sure did. Thanks for the reminder. I guess the distinction is that women who write books are not in a position of spiritual authority or pastoral care. They are merely providing information.

 

[petra]

trogiah:

I do acknowledge that Jesus used the term Abba to address God, he must have preferred that term and it makes a lot of sense to me. Not because it is a male noun but because it is noun closely associated with both power and love.

I don’t see anything in Scripture where God demands to be addressed as male and at least one Scripture where God specifically demands to not be considered male (see the quote from deuteronomy above.) I would say that correct theology demands that we view God as absolute power as well as absolute love but not as absolutely male (nor female for that matter)

peace

Jim

The fact that God is referred to as “Him” does not suggest that He has a sexual identity. It is intended to help us associate our relationship with Him with 2 types of earthly roles: husband and father. God designed these roles specifically that we may better understand his nature and know how to have a right relationship with Him. Both husbands and fathers correctly assume a role of loving leadership and self-sacrifice. This teaches us about God the Father and Chist as the Church’s Bridegroom.

If we subvert the proper roles of husband and father, it disorders those relationships and we miss the important lesson about our God.

 

[Maranatha]

Sexual Symbolism

The obvious and ubiquitous objection to this view is that it is male chauvinism. To quote my colleague Mary Daly, “If God is male, then the male is God.” Besides the logical fallacy of the illicit conversion of an A proposition, I see five other mistakes in this argument

The first and most obvious of which is her claim that Judaeo-Christian tradition claims that God is male. It does not. God is masculine, not male. Women as much as men represent the image of God (cf. Gn 5.1-2). But at the heart of divine revelation is the simple fact that the First Person of the Trinity has chosen to reveal himself to us as Father. This is a category which transcends human biology (male and female), and of which human fatherhood is a shadow (cf. Eph 3.14).

Second, another essential part of the Christian data is the fact that the Eternal Word chose to incarnate and reveal himself as the Son of the Father and Bridegroom of God’s People…

**Third, . . . **The Incarnation was the kenosis, the “emptying.” The Son of God came down to the lowest place, a crucified criminal in a Roman-occupied hick town—not an angel or an emperor, and not a woman. The Incarnation was not into privilege and power, but into suffering and service, and it was into a male. It is the modern feminists who are the real male chauvinists, lusting for reproductive freedom (sexual irresponsibility) like playboys and demanding empowerment, that is, envying and imitating not only males, but male fools

Fourth, women priests would demean and insult women, for it would be like asking them to be cross-dressers or to wear male sex organs. It would remove the distinctive dignity of women qua women as symbols of the Church, whom Christ, symbolized by the priest, marries.

Fifth, Christ’s maleness is not chauvinistic because he had a mother (but no earthly father). Mary is the definitive refutation of the charge of chauvinism. No merely human being was ever nearly as great as this woman, according to the distinctive teachings of this “chauvinistic” Church. Mary is “our tainted nature’s solitary boast.”
more

 

[inJESUS]

i was told by a priest that St Paul was refering to certain women who used to preach false doctrines, and to separate between pagan norms at that time; the proof that Paul did not prohibit women from teaching is that he himself mentions 2 women preachers helping him during his time;

 

[Kendy]

petra:

She sure did. Thanks for the reminder. I guess the distinction is that women who write books are not in a position of spiritual authority or pastoral care. They are merely providing information.

There are women who serve as pastors in catholic churches. They don’t say mass or give sacraments, but they do everything else, like run the church, provide spiritual direction, and even work with the priest on liturgy.

Kendy

 

[christaddict]

Last Sunday, I was having a personal study of the sacrament of marriage, and browsing through the scriptures in conjunction with the Cathechism, I ran into this scriptural reference. (Please note that I can only endorse it in the context of matrimony, and I am putting this as a proceeding to the discussion. I just felt that I would share something)

In the beginning of time God did create man and woman as equal … but something took a turn …
In Genesis, we read as God saying this to the woman:

“I will intensify the pangs of your childbearing; in pain shall you bring forth children. Yet your urge shall be for your husband, and he shall be your master.”

The new Adam has definitely taken away the original sin, but left the rest of the physical aspects subsist. (the reason for that is another long story)

(I do want my wife to be independent … I don’t want her to be too dependent on me … just for the fact that when I am sick or when I die, who will take care of the children and herself for the rest of the life? Well, if she manages to do it all by herself … cool! I just don’t want anything else. However, in the long run, Genesis does sound to be natural, doesn’t it? )

P.S. Please, remember this is my take of the subject solely in the context of marriage.

 

[puzzleannie]

Kendy:

There are women who serve as pastors in catholic churches. They don’t say mass or give sacraments, but they do everything else, like run the church, provide spiritual direction, and even work with the priest on liturgy.

Kendy

no non-ordained person serves as a pastor in a Catholic Church, no matter what title someone appropriates for themselves. There are parishes with no resident priest who have hired lay people, even women as “pastoral administrators” (lousy title) who are essentially business managers, but by definition only a priest under the authority of a bishop may be a pastor, because that is one of the 3 essential roles of the priest: teaching and preaching, sanctifying through liturgy and sacraments, and pastoring, that is shepherding souls. Every parish or mission has a pastor or vicar assigned, but this priest may be in charge of more than one parish or mission, and may not be in residence most of the time, but he is the pastor, under the bishop. No lay person may claim the title of pastor.

 

[Kendy]

puzzleannie:

no non-ordained person serves as a pastor in a Catholic Church, no matter what title someone appropriates for themselves. There are parishes with no resident priest who have hired lay people, even women as “pastoral administrators” (lousy title) who are essentially business managers, but by definition only a priest under the authority of a bishop may be a pastor, because that is one of the 3 essential roles of the priest: teaching and preaching, sanctifying through liturgy and sacraments, and pastoring, that is shepherding souls. Every parish or mission has a pastor or vicar assigned, but this priest may be in charge of more than one parish or mission, and may not be in residence most of the time, but he is the pastor, under the bishop. No lay person may claim the title of pastor.

Fine. Pastoral administrator. It doesn’t matter a whole lot when she’s the one running the parish and the priest comes in on the weekend to say mass.

Kendy

 

[stanley123]

rjs1:

I personally believe this is one of the key areas in which the Church is failing to be obedient to God.

While it is true that the Catholic Church has not, and in fact, cannot, officially teach anything that is contrary to God’s will; nevertheless the Church in the last 50 years has in general failed to teach the Biblical standard about the differences in role between men and women…

Here’s where you lose me. I don;t see how one can maintain both positions simultaneously, without contradicting oneself:

1. The Church has failed to be obedient to God and has failed to teach the Biblical standard.
2. The Church has not taught anything contrary to God’s will.
   I see these as mutually contradictory propositions and I see this as a case where you have to hold to either one or the other.

 

[AJV]

Ok, 1 question: Someone brought up 1 Peter 3. Now St. Peter writes

5 For after this manner heretofore the holy women also, who trusted in God, adorned themselves, being in subjection to their own husbands:
6 As Sara obeyed Abraham, calling him lord: whose daughters you are, doing well, and not fearing any disturbance.
7 Ye husbands, likewise dwelling with them according to knowledge, giving honour to the female as to the weaker vessel, and as to the co-heirs of the grace of life: that your prayers be not hindered.

Now I suppose one would say that “co-heirs” indicates equality but how does one read the parts in bold?

Another thing: When St. Paul writes to St. Timothy in 1 Timothy 2, I think he ends by saying something about women “being saved/restored through childbearing”. What precisely does this mean?

 

[deb1]

AJV:

Ok, 1 question: Someone brought up 1 Peter 3. Now St. Peter writes

5 For after this manner heretofore the holy women also, who trusted in God, adorned themselves, being in subjection to their own husbands:
6 As Sara obeyed Abraham, calling him lord: whose daughters you are, doing well, and not fearing any disturbance.
7 Ye husbands, likewise dwelling with them according to knowledge, giving honour to the female as to the weaker vessel, and as to the co-heirs of the grace of life: that your prayers be not hindered.

Now I suppose one would say that “co-heirs” indicates equality but how does one read the parts in bold?

Another thing: When St. Paul writes to St. Timothy in 1 Timothy 2, I think he ends by saying something about women “being saved/restored through childbearing”. What precisely does this mean?

We women worry about being submissive and when I was a Protestant I often heard sermons on the male headship but I never heard any sermon on the fact that a ‘man’s prayers can be hindered’ if he doesn’t honor his wife. That would frighten me if I was male.

The parts in bold…weaker vessels…we females are normally less physically strong then males. I would guess that ‘Lord’ was a term of respect that no longer has the same meaning today. I used to wonder at Sarah being upheld as an ideal wife by Peter. She seemed at some points to doubt her husband.

I have heard various ideas on women being saved through childbirth. One was that the world’s salvation came through Mary’s giving birth to Jesus. Another is that women of the past often suffered tremedously through childbirth, facing possible death everytime they bore a child, so that the act contained some salvic value through the woman’s suffering. I am a little confused over the second reason but I am only repeating what I heard.

I know that people say that the bible is sexist but the more I think about this the more I don’t think that it is. Nowhere does it say, “Man, go make your wife submit.” Or like the Koran give the man instructions on how to punish a disobedient wife. Instead Paul tells the woman that she is to submit, the power in her hands. That is why marriage represents Christ’s relationship with the church and us. We use our freewill to submit to Christ and the wife does the same thing by submiting to her hubby.