Can priests be women?

  • Thread starter Thread starter CurlyD
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
40.png
Melissa:
NO! There is no “at this time” about it. It is a matter of doctrine which cannot ever be changed.
Click to expand...
At one time the Church thought it right and just to excommunicate Gallileo but that has recently been reversed. Was the Church wrong then? is the Church wrong now? or was the Church right “at that time”?

The core meaning doesn’t change but the application and the way we look at it does. Who knows what will happen but I doubt we would ever see women priests in our life time or even in are childerns for that matter.
 
40.png
huskerfan:
Jesus chose all men as his disciples. The priest is the father of the local church and the Pope is the father of the Catholic church. What part don’t people get?
Click to expand...
Jesus died 2 thousand years ago, a few things have changed since then, what part don’t people get? I think the Church has done a good job accomodating this and has grown over time. Vatican II is a good example of this.
 
40.png
anamchara:
A women can be a priest but the church does not allow it at this time. There is nothing biological that prevents a women from performing priestly duties. I realize I’m playing with sematics here but I just wanted to point that out 😉 it’s really all about tradition, though theologically based, it is a theology sprung from gender oppressive times.

At this point, I believe the Pope banned this topic from even being put on the table for discussion. So, this Catholic girl will faithfully follow the Church and keep my trap closed hehehe. However, I think I can talk about married priests which I think they should be able to!! but don’t hate me for that comment 🙂
Click to expand...
You have another problem in addition to your your horribly stultified “at this time” comment." Women cannot stand in *Persona Christi. *Absolutely impossible and the Church recognizes this.

Jesus Christ is a God and is a man. Jesus Christ was never a woman…
 
40.png
anamchara:
Binny, about fifty years ago or more Catholics told this tale: “Once upon a time there was a church where the priest celebrated the Mass in the native language of the parishoners and he actually faced them as well…” Guess what: that fairy tale came true. 😛 🙂
Click to expand...
I am not sure which fairytale you are referring to here but it sounds off topic to me.
 
40.png
anamchara:
Jesus died 2 thousand years ago, a few things have changed since then, what part don’t people get? I think the Church has done a good job accomodating this and has grown over time. Vatican II is a good example of this.
Click to expand...
And how come you fail to “get” the fact that popular culture does not trump God?
 
The ordination of eleven women in 1976 was the begining of the end for the Anglican Church. (Actually, it could be argued that its sanctioning of birth control in the 1930s also sounded its death knell as it embraced moral relativism and moral entropy.) Two good essays on this topic, if you can find them, are by C.S. Lewis: “Priestesses in the Church?” and “The Fern-Seed and the Elephant”. A Catholic Scholar named Joseph Pierce writes about this topic also in *C.S. Lewis and the Catholic Church. *A woman can no more be a “father” than a father be mother. We all have our own roles to live out. If Christ had sanctioned the orindation of women, it would have been Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Johnelle…
 
40.png
Writer:
The ordination of eleven women in 1976 was the begining of the end for the Anglican Church. (Actually, it could be argued that its sanctioning of birth control in the 1930s also sounded its death knell as it embraced moral relativism and moral entropy.) Two good essays on this topic, if you can find them, are by C.S. Lewis: “Priestesses in the Church?” and “The Fern-Seed and the Elephant”. A Catholic Scholar named Joseph Pierce writes about this topic also in *C.S. Lewis and the Catholic Church. *A woman can no more be a “father” than a father be mother. We all have our own roles to live out. If Christ had sanctioned the orindation of women, it would have been Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Johnelle…
Click to expand...
Quite true. There is little question now that the Episcopalian brance of the Anglican Protestant Church will now be severed from the Anglican Communion because it “ordained” a practicing homosexual as a “bishop.”

Thanks be to God that the dissenters are not ruling the Catholic Church.
 
40.png
anamchara:
Thank you cest, for the reading suggestions. I was merely pointed out that women would be fully capable not necessarily arguing that they should be Priests. However the encyclical ignores the fact that Jesus had to choose men because women of that time would not be allowed the access necessary to deliver his message. Again as it was clearly stated this subject is not up for debate at this time 😉

Personally, I’m very with men being and don’t have a real big issue with it 🙂
Click to expand...
I wonder did anyone else notice that the above assertion implies that Jesus Christ, who was about as counter-curtural vis-a-vis the religious norms of his day (he spoke with Samaritan women, ate with tax collectors, etc.) , was still constrained by the place of women at the time so he could not choose them. Quite apart from the implicit contradiction, it posits that Jesus Christ, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, was constrained in his decisions about choosing his apostles.

Doubtful… Very doubtful.

Blessings,

Gerry
 
No, women cannot be ordained priestesses in the Catholic Church.

That doesn’t mean, however, that some chucklehead American bishop won’t try it someday.
 
If we set aside scripture for a moment (it’s witness is clear, no women in the presbyterate), we are left with looking at the example of the Church and her history.

It is true that the Eastern Orthodox Church has always made provision for the Ordination of Deaconesses in their Rites of Ordination. Deaconesses had a very specific ministry in baptizing and teaching women. Liturgically, they wore the Orarion (deacon’s stole) and held the cup for the priest when he was intincting (dipping) the Precious Body into the Precious Blood. That was it. A deaconess did not preach, did not proclaim the Gospel, etc.

This is the only witness of any ordination of women to any clerical position anywhere - and some would challenge if the Eastern Orthodox intended to ordain them (though the prayers are exactly the same as was used for a male deacon).

There is no - I repeat NO - history of any Church with orthodoxy or orthopraxis ordaining women to the presbyterate or the episcopate as the Anglican Communion has done, as the Lutherans in the Scandanavian nations have done, etc. The only history is that, in the early Church, only the heterodox bodies attempted to ordain women as presbyters or bishops.

The Church has never changed her stance on this matter, declaring that the presbyterate and episcopate is reserved to those who are male. To try to change this now, two thousand years later, would be a disaster of unprecidented proportions.

As to the somewhat off topic comment about Anglicans and Birth Control, I tend to agree. When you divorce human sexuality from it’s natural context (which includes children!) you destroy the physical foundations of the Church - the Domestic Church.

Rob+
 
The day that the Catholic Church puts a woman Priestess into my Local Church is the day I will be looking for another Church.

It is bad enough to see some girls acting as Altar Boys. Yessir when the “Priestesses” come to town, I am gone.
 
40.png
anamchara:
At one time the Church thought it right and just to excommunicate Gallileo but that has recently been reversed. Was the Church wrong then? is the Church wrong now? or was the Church right “at that time”?

The core meaning doesn’t change but the application and the way we look at it does. Who knows what will happen but I doubt we would ever see women priests in our life time or even in are childerns for that matter.
Click to expand...
You may be a little confused. The galileo controversy is very jumbled in most people’s minds, but that in no way says anything about the Church “changing” faith and morals.

The “way we look at it” cannot contradict the past teachings.
 
40.png
Exporter:
The day that the Catholic Church puts a woman Priestess into my Local Church is the day I will be looking for another Church.
Click to expand...
Please let us know when this happens - I bet there will be a lot more joining than leaving.
It is bad enough to see some girls acting as Altar Boys. Yessir when the “Priestesses” come to town, I am gone.
Click to expand...
Yeah, and since Jesus only chose to give communion to men, how dare we allow women to receive!
 
40.png
anamchara:
At one time the Church thought it right and just to excommunicate Gallileo but that has recently been reversed. Was the Church wrong then? is the Church wrong now? or was the Church right “at that time”?
Click to expand...
No, the Church was absolutely right about Galileo. Galileo tried to teach heresy by claiming that the Bible was wrong.

He even went so far as to suggest that it needed to be re-written (the parts about the sun moving)

If you read the Charges, it is THAT for which Galileo was threatened with excommunication.

And you are correct that there is nothing biological to prevent women from being priests.

But humans are made of two parts, physical and spirit, body and soul. Where is your proof that women are ontologically capable of being priests?

Priesthood is not just a physical act, but is really more of a spiritual one.

The Church has no more authority to declare that a woman is ontologically capable of being a priest than to declare that a man is biologically capable of bearing children.
 
40.png
patg:
Please let us know when this happens - I bet there will be a lot more joining than leaving.
Click to expand...
You know, I keep hearing that argument posited… but in those Churches that have begun ordaining women, the attendence numbers have signifcantly dropped.

The Episcopal Church has experienced such a downward spiral, as has the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, that the two are essentially working on a merger just to keep going. ELCA is down to 2.5 mil members last I checked, and ECUSA about 4 million… down from 10 mil and 20 mil about 35 years ago.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen! There isn’t one shred of evidence that ordaining women would bring people into the pews, and given what happened to other elements of their theology in the wake of ordaining women to the presbyterate and episcopate… well… :bleech!:

Rob+
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top