So, what you’re saying is, it’s okay to use incomplete images. If a woman were to say mass, and if she is an incomplete image of Christ (aren’t we all!), that’s OK, because the marital imagery in the mass is MYSTICAL.
I’m glad we can agree on this fact. Since this oft-used argument fails, the rest of your post was an appeal to blindly accept authority. No one has said that the Church does not have the authority to make the pronouncements that it does. However, a responsible use of one’s God-given conscience and faculties of reason should question authority on matters of importance.
Uh, bless EWE too?
No, I said nothing of the kind. I said that we can use incomplete images as examples to ILLUSTRATE a teaching, not that we could ‘circumvent’ the teaching.
Um, where did I say to BLINDLY accept? My friend, I use my God-given reason to examine the teaching, and my God-given reason to fully, freely, and obediently but not BLINDLY to accept God’s authority. Don’t you?
You know, I’ve heard the ‘question authority’ statements for a LONG time. So. . .when do we ‘stop’ the questioning? Ever hear a 3-year old? Why is the sky blue? Because the visible light spectrum reflects that pigment and our eyes identify what we see as blue, well, most of us anyway who aren’t blind, or color blind. . .But why is the sky BLUE? Why not pink? Why can’t it be pink? Who made up the name of the color?
Etc. etc. You could wind up going over and over a bunch of totally irrelevant ‘data’ in ‘questioning’. But at some point, you have to STOP. Because no matter how the child questions, she is not going to be able to magically make the sky pink or to change historical facts by saying that maybe people in the NT ‘meant’ to write that Jesus wasn’t REALLY God and if we ‘question’ enough we’ll find that out.
So, tell me, are you questioning the Trinity too? I mean, IT is a mystery. So surely you’re wondering if God can’t really be a Quartet. I mean, sure the Church has TOLD us God is a Trinity, but after all, we NEED to QUESTION AUTHORITY. . .
If you aren’t questioning the Trinity, then I ‘question’ just exactly why you’re questioning the Church teaching on priesthood. . .