Do others find posing this topic to other catholics, espeically those in positions to change doctrines, results in the issue becoming dismissed and pushed under the rug? Who is to say the Holy Spirit isn’t working through the resurging message of equality and living it in our church? I am looking forward to all responses so I can better underswtand the view of my fellow catholics.
I don’t know to whom you’re referring when you say, “especially those in positions to change doctrines,” since, not even the Pope has the authority to
change even one Catholic doctrine. He has the authority to define dogmas that the Church has always taught in the way the Church has always taught them, with the support of the Traditions by which we have always practiced them, but that is a far cry from changing anything doctrinal. The only people “in position to change doctrines” are those who are outside the Catholic Church, clinging to the lie of Satan known as “
sola Scriptura” by which they reject the authority of the Magisterium and supplant it with their own fallible, devicive, self-destructive, private interpretations of Scripture.
The Holy Siprit never works through the tidal fashions of society, but He most certainly was working through the late Pope Blessed John Paul the Great, who spoke of
true equality of men and women, an equality that acknowledges our differences rather than pretending that mankind is a mass of genderless bio-machines built for hedonistic and materialistic selfishness. You, as a woman, can bear children; you are uniquely designed, by the very nature of your body, to welcome the life of others within yourself and to nourish them. This is something that, speaking as a man whose wife is currently carrying a life within her, is truly miraculous and is an ability that I am quite envious of. However, no matter how much I wanted to, I could never become a mother. Telling me that I can never bear a child in my womb (because I simply do not have a womb) is neither intollerant nor insensitive to me. It’s simply telling me the truth in love.
Similarly, telling you that you cannot act* in persona Christi* in the way that a priest is ordained to, is not being bigotted or anti-feminine, it’s simply telling you the truth. Priests act, in a far more real, bodily way than anyone else,
in persona Christi, so, just like Jesus of Nazareth, they must be bodily male. They are called Father because that is what they are: fathers. As a woman, you simply cannot be a father. But you
can be a mother! Both physically and spiritually. Nuns are mothers of those to whom they minister in an equal capacity as priests are fathers to them. As you live out your “feminine genius,” as Pope Blessed John Paul the Great called it, embrace your ability to be a spiritual - and perhaps, God-willing, even a biological - mother. Don’t deny it and wish for something that you will never be: a man. The only way to live out the vocation that God truly has for you in His perfect plan of salvation is to embrace the person He created you to be - a woman - not to try to change, ignore, or reject that personhood. You are a woman. Be the best woman for God you can be in a way no man ever could!
As Benedictgal said, look to Mary the Ever-Virgin and yet Mother of All the Living for guidance, love, and inspiration. She will never fail you and she will never fail to lead you to God’s most perfect will for your life as a woman. Mother Mary, like all the faithful nuns throughout the history of the Church, consecrated her virginity to God and served Him as His perfect bride. And, at the same time, like every faithful wife and mother throughout the history of the Church, she conceived, carried, and bore the Most Blessed Son of God and raised Him in perfect devotion to the Father. These two most holy vocations, both embodied in our perfect Mother are things that we men could never do, yet without them we could not be saved! Therefore, how could embracing that Truth ever be anything but liberating, empowering, and inspiring to women everywhere? Denying it in the name of “liberty” and “equality” is far, far more insulting and bedasing to women everywhere than is anything the Magisterium has ever said about womanhood.
The bumper sticker that fallaciously claims, “Obedient women never make history” ignores the most vitally important woman in the entire history of the world: Mary, the Mother of God. Without her perfect, eternal, sinless obedience to the Son of Man, this decadent American society that is now falling apart around us, but which was, in days of old, founded on Christian principles, would never have existed to allow feminists to create and proliferate that profoundly erroneous bumper sticker in the first place.
