Maybe so, but God has not called her to be a priest/bishop any more than God has condoned abortion, gays, gay marriage and the rest…
Christ had no problem bucking the system of His time and creating controversy to the point where people wanted to stone Him. If He wanted women priests, some of the 12 would have been women. Social norms of His day played no part in any of His decisions. After all, He claimed He was God or a least inferred numerous times and was accused of BLASPHEMY which led to the Cross. He had a fondness for bucking the current beliefs of His time. “The Lord of the Sabbath” and “Something greater than the temple is here” come to mind instantly.
People want female priestesses for feminist reasons and not theology.
Great point. People forget about obedience to the Holy Church.
Lol…trotted out? Oh regardless of the pejorativeness of your remarks, she was declared by Paul to be a deacon, something your church claims is not possible today. The greek word Paul uses does not separate Phoebe out as different from the men. It is used as “one who serves” interchangeably, he only uses the word deacon.
I would imagine that some theologians and biblical experts might be a tad surprised to learn that they are feminists! LOL…Your continuation of repeating your beliefs is noted, but of no obvious debate effect. Saying it don’t make it so as they say, nor does stomping your foot. I understand that YOU see no good reason to change things. Pity that you don’t make the decisions but you don’t.
This is not the first time I’ve seent his kind of thing. Of course should we label such a picture of someone Catholic like this, we would be banned in minutes. I’m rather shocked actually that the powers that be here allow this kind of thing. I’m sure it’s just this kind of behavior that has so got the Vatican worried about the radicalization of the Catholic right.
But you are mocking. Mores to the point, its always easy to find someone to blame for what you think is wrong with the world. Blame it on women, or immigrants, or gays, or whatever is fashionable and acceptable in the day. Perhaps it might be worthwhile to try to determine whether this is what Christ and his apostles really intended, after all. You see, friend, we would suggest that God never intended that patriarchy would rule the day. Certainly that Jesus never intended any such thing. And if you read Paul’s authentic letters, it’s really quite clear that he didn’t either. He meant it when he said, there will no more be male or female, slave or master etc. It was just more than could be handled in the society and so little by little it was turned back into the what it has always been. Men decide, women obey. All others obey.
Peter I think he did see it that way. A bit of exegetical explanation. The portion of Corrinthians where “paul” says women should be silent is not thought to be original to the document. It is nearly an exact paraphrase of what occurs in Timothy, a letter not believed by most scholars to have been written by Paul. In several manuscripts, one finds this portion of Corinthians in the margin, after the verses which now wrap it. If you look at the NRSV you will see that this verse is in parentheses exactly because it is not thought original. It is highly helpful when looking at Paul to divide paul into what are nearly unanimously thought to be his letters, those nearly unanimously thought to be not his writings, and those where there is no clear determination. The represent basically the radical Christ follower, the reactionary fake Paul, and the conservative pseudo-Paul.
Why do black people have to be free? If the anti-slavery people are right and blacks should be free citizens nothing happens but that a few million people don’t get to live out their dreams. God will reward their obedience, and punish those who were wrong. If the pro-slavery people are right, then you have destroyed a time honored institution and an economy…
Yes, of course you are right. But, as an argument it just won’t convince. There are ways to answer it. It is an argument founded on reason and logic, and reason and logic can be used to circumvent it. Our faith, though, is not about human reason, but revelation. The Church and the Spirit have seen fit to tell us what is true in this regard, and the answer has been definitive and consistent throughout history, from the Lord down to now. The priesthood is for men only, and that is that. I would have been nothing but comfortable with women in the priesthood if God had revealed that that was his will. And he did not.
This is a non sequitur. All you can say is that if He had wanted some of the 12 to be women, some of them would have been. You can’t assume that His choice of twelve men was intended to be normative. (You can of course invoke Catholic tradition to give that meaning to His actions, but you can’t reasonably read this from the actions themselves without reading them through the lens of tradition.)
That makes no sense. Most of what He did, like most of what any human being does, was shaped by social norms. Jesus defined social norms when His ministry required it. Clearly His ministry did not require Him to make some kind of feminist statement when choosing the Twelve. That’s all you can conclude. Period.
All of these were required by His mission. Your claim that Jesus went around bucking the current beliefs just for the fun of it is completely unsupported.
The two are not incompatible. The reason for ordaining women is deeply rooted in basic Christian theology.
You are arguing that portions of the scripture are not reliable and were not inspired. That is an evil argument without any merit at all. One cannot reasonably say that this or that paragraph is false or less inspired than another one. It is all equally inspired and inerrant.
you seem to be approaching things from a fundamentalist point of view. To say that some portions of scripture are erroneous is not to say they are uninspired. Inspired persons can make error and incorrectly perceive truth. There is nothing evil about it, and many of these scholars are Catholics in good standing with the Church. The RCC is continuing to research scripture in an attempt to uncover all meaning. I would perhaps give more credence to scripture itself that to the Church, that is akin to idolaltry I would suggest.
I just don’t have alot of faith in arguments from American Episcopalians anymore. When Gene Robinson gets up in front of GLAAD to tell them how wrong Christians are, showing more allegiance to his homosexual cohorts than to the Christian church… and he is not disciplined… I really don’t have alot of faith in Episcopalianism to know the will of God. The whole thing smacks of humanism.
Could you expand a little on the Anglican Church traditionally having deaconesses? Beginning when, and where?
Why didn’t the Lord choose women?
The Lord’s example as well as the Apostles are all we need.
He didn’t denounce homosexual acts either, but His Father did and even St. Paul did. St. Paul’s condemnation by itself is good enough.
So you say a woman should be made priests because she was made in the image of God. That Jesus became man…and she could recite the words of consecration and lift the chalice as good as any man…
There are no examples of female priestesses in Sacred Scripture or Sacred Tradition on the level of a priest. ZERO. Just because a woman was created in the image and likeness of God doesn’t mean she is called to be a priest. Just because she can recite a few lines and raise a chalice doesn’t mean she is meant to be a priest at all. It is not theologically correct for female priests.
I have never heard of this before, and I thought I was fairly well read in both the Tractarian and the Ritualist movements. She was ordained, then? Through the imposition of hands, by at least one bishop?
man … if you can’t go to a funeral and pay respect for the dead in the way everyone else does just to make a silly point … then you have serious problems. What ever happened to plain old common decency? Apparently it’s only an atheist virtue
Even supposing that the women in question ought to be allowed to “live out their dream” of being priests, I would still find it quite disturbing that you juxtapose that with the idea of slaves being allowed to “live out their dream” by being freed.
Actually I think that, to an extent, SpiritMeadow has a point. I had asked her “If ‘in Christ there is no slave or free, male or female’ means that women can be priests and bishops, then wouldn’t St. Paul himself have understood it that way?” (and you’d asked pretty much the same thing), hence I think it’s fair for her to bring in the theory that St. Paul wasn’t the author of those other Scripture verses.