Female priests

[Arizona_Mike]

I think you are right since they pair self-mutilation with attempted suicide. Also, I seem to recall one of the American martyrs got a dispensation to confect the Eucharist even though he didn’t have thumbs because his captors mutilated him.

The Wikipedia article on canonical impediments to the sacraments (it’s Wikipedia, so take it with a grain of salt) says:

Impediments to the priesthood are divided into “irregularities”, which are permanent unless removed by the competent authority and “simple impediments” which may pass with time without action of an ecclesiastical authority. Canon Law also lists various impediments to the exercise of a priesthood that has already been conferred. The bishop can remove most irregularities and simple impediments, except for those involving public apostasy, heresy, or schism; abortion or murder, even if in secret; and existing marriages. Irregularities that cannot be removed by the bishop can be removed by the Holy See.

So I think the bishop can override most of them, and the Pope could override the rest if he wanted to:

The article goes on to list categories or irregularities and simple impediments to ordination, with links to the relevant canonical cites:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canonical_impediment

 

[koolmom21]

My first thought after reading this article was; why is it all of a sudden okay for states to interfere in religion? Am I the only one that sees this problem? The constitution states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Both the free exercise clause and the establishment clause place restrictions on the government concerning laws they pass or interfering with religion. No restrictions are placed on religions except perhaps that a religious denomination cannot become the state religion.
The catholic church is right and I am a women. God’s will be done, not mans.

 

[Jerry111]

This is very simplistic compared to some of the replies, but as far as I know, when the Blessed Virgin Mary received Communion, it was from a male priest

If Jesus had wanted women to be priests, wouldn’t He have designated His Mother as a priest, or perhaps Mary Magdalene, in order to make clear His intent?

Just a thought

 

[WhiteLeather]

What I keep seeing in the answers is “separate but equal” when it comes to women. Kinda takes one back to the South in the 60s… However, kudos to some of the posters on some excellent and above-par doublespeak!

In the time Jesus was in the region now known as Israel and environs, as radical as Jesus could be, the “extra step” of including women would most likely have hastened his falling out with the authorities. That was then.

There was a post about Mary receiving Communion ("…as I know, when the Blessed Virgin Mary received Communion, it was from a male priest"). What? Really, what? When and where would Mary have received “Communion”? Are you aware that the Last Supper was a Seder Meal? That what we now see as the first Catholics were Jewish men and women who also attended temple? I don’t know that anyone received Communion that early in our history, at least as we now know it. One can easily see that Jesus’ first words were to try to get the people to be better Jews.

I’m afraid that too many of us are into “Church” and not enough into being church. Given Jesus’ treatment of all those around him, including justice and being fair to everyone, one has to wonder his reaction to the “separate but equal” status being accorded to the gender that is more active in our faith than the other.

 

[jsps999]

The Bible :bible1: infers that since Jesus is the Son of God, then He has the authority to choose anyone**;** Jesus chose Apostles, not Apostle-ettes. :tsktsk:

 

[Balian]

As one converting to Catholic it amazes me actually how often the topic of women priests comes up when the Church has made it crystal clear that she has no authority to ordain women to the priesthood. It is my understanding that men who become priests are called to the priesthood by God and it seems that you might at least occasionally hear of a woman claiming she felt called to the priesthood but so far I haven’t heard of any such thing. So it would seem that anyone calling for the Church to ordain female priests does so simply on the secular basis of women should be able to do anything men do. To some degree the argument in favor of women priests is simply another symptom of the extreme selfishness present in the world today. Too many people seem to think that just because they aren’t satisfied with how something is in any organization or activity they participate in then the organization should change things to suit them. It is actually a frightening idea to me that the Church would ever change the official position and choose to ordain women since she maintains she has no authority to do so. That would call into question the Church as a whole.

 

[Bearsong]

Convoluted indeed. The reasons for not allowing the ordination of women in the Catholic church really is mostly a simple one. It’s about power, control, authority and submission. We are routinely discouraged to ask questions that may challenge the way our church has operated. The response in the old days was pretty violent, the crusades, the many years of the inquisition, the treatment of Galileo and many others who learned to think for themselves. Education of the people of the church, unless they were ordained or religious was non-existent, in particularly women, as it was deemed they were too ignorant to understand Christianity, or that by educating them they might challenge the status quo. The rules and laws of the church were used as a weapon to keep people in line, how dare they question our authority or challenge our dogma and doctrine. One of the first posts points to the “infallible” statement and stance of the decision of the Pope to deny ordination of women and therefore quash all argument. Hooey! It’s just more violence done to women using words.
Some of the other arguments talk about the equal dignity of all baptized Christians and that the roles we fulfill as ministers in the church are different and complimentary of the sexes and somehow that means the positions of authority in the church are different because men are somehow the superior aspect of the image of God in the person of Jesus Christ. As a result they are the only ones who can act as ‘persona christi’ and that the church is the womb of Christ, therefore it’s the completion of the holy sex act. Are you kidding me! How convoluted can you get! Is there really a reason for having a catechism that is 1000 pages long to justify the “authority” of the church in all things. The church is not God. We are supposed to be a vehicle of charity, love, understanding, long sufferance, gentleness, compassion, mercy; all the things that Christ expressed in his life on earth and the gift of his life as ‘the’ sacrificial lamb for all eternity so that we could partake of the life of Christ as coheirs and equals for all eternity.
God is beyond us because we are caught up in the same old human arguments for power and control and this extends even to the sexes. Feminism has little or nothing to do with the injustices faced in our church by the abuses of power so recently uncovered in the continued sexual scandals of the church, perpetrated I might add, by MEN! Covered up by MEN! Those in authority, don’t you all get it.
The radical nature of Jesus ministry was because he threatened the authority of the power structure. Anyone who argues and takes action against the power structure by honestly giving mercy and forgiveness and justice to those who have none is going to die (or be censured, or have the judgement of infallibilty thrust at them, or killed, or burned at the stake, etc.) Jesus died for us! Jesus suffered for us! For all humanity. Every woman I know, and thank the Virgin Mary, exposes herself to death for life by giving birth. Even with all of the miracles of modern medicine, birth is still tricky and women, given a real choice to choose pick the child to live. That’s what’s wrong with abortion, we have women, mostly those who are poor and oppressed and given little or no real choice believing that choosing abortion is the right thing. Women are the womb of life, just as Mary was for Jesus. Men can never be, no matter how hard we try. Ultimately it placates the egos of men to be in authority as ordained priests because we have such a small part in the birth of life. Jesus had a huge amount of respect for all of the women we read about in the bible. Each one was given ‘authority.’ They were followers of Jesus as much as the men. They spread the gospel too, but we don’t get to hear about that because men wrote the history and made the decisions about what got remembered and written. Who was the first to spread (birth) the gospel of Jesus resurrection, yeah, you remember, Mary Magdalene. Who spread the news before Paul to the gentiles the non-believers, yeah, you remember, the woman at the well. Who had the courage to believe that even the touch of Jesus clothing would heal her and free her, yeah, you remember, a woman. Men, we have such a hard time believing and understanding that women are already ordained by the mere fact they can give birth. How cool is that! No wonder our church struggles so much, it’s a concept that men really can’t grasp because we can never feel a life growing in us and understand how precious that is, not really, no matter how hard we try. So, of course, we can’t have women as ordained priests, because then we would be admitting we can’t do it all and we can’t have that, can we! (Probably gonna get someone mad with this one. Oh well, when the spirit speaks, you gotta do it.)

 

[swamiji]

As JUNIOR MEMBER pointed out in a quote of St.Paul by a feminist theologian, to vindicate her view on female priests,she forget the fact that even in Paul’s time there was no female priests.

 

[You]

How are women going to be Eastern Orthodox priests? Will they have to wear a fake beard?
And to be a Sikh, a Muslim Imam, a Coptic Christian, a hindu sadhu, or a Greek Mythological Male god…??

 

[God_1st]

The New Testament gives us a beautiful picture of the Church as the bride of Christ and Jesus as the bridegroom.

John 3:29 is just one of many verses in the bible referring to the Bride(the Church) and the Bridegroom(Jesus, a priest).
“He who has the bride is the bridegroom; but the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly because of the bridegroom’s voice. So this joy of mine has been made full”.

Wouldn’t a female priest be involved in a same sex marriage?

 

[Cirdan_XII]

Actually, I believe in order to be ordained (though Rome may be able to dispense from this rule in extraordinary cases), a man must have intact genitals.

So Hitler would never have been allowed to become a priest?

 

[Cirdan_XII]

I don’t think it was intended against someone who suffered an accident or violence from another. Self-mutilation of the first sort would be a sign of mental pathology, and/or someone from a heretical sect that practiced self-castration, such as the Skoptsys, neither of which would be acceptable for a priest, (I think there is also a requirement to have hands in order to consecrate the Eucharist.)

Is that so?

So if a priest loses his hands in an accident after consecration, does he cease to be a priest? I would have thought not, for surely the intent is more important than the action?

 

[dingodile]

It is my understanding that men who become priests are called to the priesthood by God and it seems that you might at least occasionally hear of a woman claiming she felt called to the priesthood but so far I haven’t heard of any such thing.

I certainly have.

I personally know one of the women on this page, who felt the call to the priesthood keenly, for decades, before finally deciding, after much internal struggle, to go through with this ordination. Whatever the merits of the various arguments for and against ordination of women, I can’t accept the premise that women never feel the call to the priesthood.

 

[promethius]

In the time Jesus was in the region now known as Israel and environs, as radical as Jesus could be, the “extra step” of including women would most likely have hastened his falling out with the authorities. That was then.

You and I worship a different God then. Your god is weak, beholden to the whims of men as regards his teachings and actions. That’s pathetic. I could never worship a god who was such a coward that he failed to act because it “wouldn’t be socially acceptable.”

So I’ll stick to worshipping a God who acts deliberately according to His will, and is not so weak as to be bent by the depravity of men.

There was a post about Mary receiving Communion ("…as I know, when the Blessed Virgin Mary received Communion, it was from a male priest"). What? Really, what? When and where would Mary have received “Communion”? Are you aware that the Last Supper was a Seder Meal? That what we now see as the first Catholics were Jewish men and women who also attended temple? I don’t know that anyone received Communion that early in our history, at least as we now know it.

Actually, while the first christians worshipped inside jewish temples, they were not attending jewish worship at the time. Instead, they worshipped on saturday night or sunday morning, after the Jewish sabbath had been finished (and as recorded by St Paul). From day 1 the Christians worshipped differently than the jews and in their own services.

And we might point out that Paul cautions that those who abandon the new covenant to return to the sacrificial old covenant are damned… so the idea that the first christians continued the sacrificial worship of the OLD covenant (rather than the new) is totally bunk and was one of the first anathemas of the church.

One can easily see that Jesus’ first words were to try to get the people to be better Jews.

That is correct. We are all called to be better new covenant jews.

 

[E.E.N.S]

I certainly have.

I personally know one of the women on this page, who felt the call to the priesthood keenly, for decades, before finally deciding, after much internal struggle, to go through with this ordination. Whatever the merits of the various arguments for and against ordination of women, I can’t accept the premise that women never feel the call to the priesthood.

I would argue that this would be a seeming or apparent call to the priesthood, not an authentic one, regardless of how it felt.

I don’t care how much I believe that I am being called to be a mother, I know it is not the real case. Why? Because I am a man.

 

[AnAnglican]

QUOTE=L;8443167]I am taking a faith and critical reason class at my catholic university, and for HW before every class we read articles by various theologians of different points of view both catholic/non catholic, examine what is is they are trying to prove and how they attempt to do that. (the professor isn’t teaching everything these people say is true, its just an exercise in analyzing theological arguments) And the article for this week was written by a feminist theologian in support of a leadership role for women in Christianity (not specifically at Catholic Church) but she obviously supports female priests.

Some of the points she makes is that men and women equally partake in being made in the “image of God” and so they are equally redeemable by Christ, and so they should be equal in terms of participation in the Church (including the priesthood)

She also used the “there is neither slave nor free gentile or jew” discourse by Paul to show that gender does not matter in terms of spiritual participation in the church.

So how would I go about refuting these specific arguments?

L

I can give you some help here. The theologian who wrote that piece made several theological and logical errors. Her first theoloical error was to take Paul’s discourse out of context. Paul was saying to Galatians in this discourse when Christ came he fulfilled the law we no longer needed theh law to be a guardian so there was no need for the newly converted to become Jewish before becoming a Christian. Galatians.3:19-29. In itsproper context, Paul refuted for the Church in Galatia the heresy of the judiazers. Ultimately, this was the wubject of the Jerusalem counsel. Whn she took this discourse and tried to relate it to the ordinatio of women she commited the second theolgtical error of attempting to negate one part of scripture with another by interpreting th first one improperly.

She olaso commits the logical error of a non-sequiter. Her coclusion does not logically follow from her argument…

To refute her argument once these flaws have been revealed is quite easy. Since it does not logically follow that equlity in Christ based on The image of God, His equal love of people, and his equal treatent in salvation means equal pariticipation in the call of leadership in the church. To insist upon this fallacy robs God of his soveriegnty as He must bow to the logial of man instead of setting the leadership of the church accrding to His will. Once you have shown this you need to go to the scriptures to show.Godhas indeed set qualifications for leadership. In Paul’s first letter to Timothy he sets forth the requirements for the offices of Bishop and Deacons. 1 Tim 3:1-13. While there may b an objection raised here, Paul’s usage of the greek here is literally a “one-woman man” Paul sets out the qualifiactions or priest in Titus 1:5-9… The requirement of being a “one women man” is repeated here. While we can grant women the same worth a God does, we, as his body, mus hl captive by His decrees.set forth in scripture. Women may not be Bishops, Priests, or Deacons not because the church hqas forbidden it but women do not meet the qualifcations God st frorth in scripture and the church may not do otherwise.

I hope this helps…

 

[Umvard]

I suggest a few lectures by Dr. Peter Kreeft in the area of souls, specifically his lecture about Sex In Heaven rationally explains that our souls are gender specific to our bodies. That is to say, after death our gender identity is still intact regardless of possession of our body.

His first section is fine; it then becomes, what I would call, at very least, erroneous and terrible philosophy, if not heretical. The main problem is concluding that God is a sexual being. This passage from the Catechism shows his error quite aptly:

CCC 370: In no way is God in man’s image. He is neither man nor woman. God is pure spirit in which there is no place for the difference between the sexes. But the respective “perfections” of man and woman reflect something of the infinite perfection of God: those of a mother and those of a father and a husband.

His arguments are also based on the assumption that “grace does not destroy nature but perfects it” means that sexuality ought to have some sort of function in heaven. Will the sacraments have a function in heaven? No. Their purpose will have been fulfilled, not “destroyed.”

He is confusing spiritual communion with sexuality. Sexuality pertains to souls and bodies, not pure spirits. It gets pretty bad with his “Fourth Principal: Sex is Cosmic” where the idea of sexual attraction is basically substituted for divine love; a regression to paganism. His understanding of the spiritual nature is greatly lacking when he talks. He calls “God the sexual being.”

What is concerning is that Ignatius Press is publishing this book and I had thought they were pretty orthodox. If I have totally misunderstood his arguments, please correct me.

P.S. I understand that sexuality and matrimony and such are used as a metaphor for Christ and his Church, God and Israel, etc. I also realize sexuality is a good thing, but it pertains to man, not God, and only an image of God’s fecundity.

 

[Jerry111]

White Leather

Yes the Last Supper was a Seder, but there is no mention of women being present when Jesus told the apostles to “do this in remembrance of me”

Why would you think there was no Communion in the early church? Not wafers, of course, but surely there were Masses with consecrated bread and wine distributed, first by the apostles and then by deacons

I admit that my idea of Mary receiving Communion in this form came from the visions of Anne Catherine Emmerich, which were private revelations. But it really does seem to be common sense that if Jesus had wanted women for the priesthood, His mother would have been the first, or He would have made it clear in some other way

And we are, of course, all wasting a lot of typing time on this subject. The Pope considers the question of female ordination closed

So I, for one, am starting a thread on those terrible new versions of the Mass hymns I have had to participate in the last few weeks. That we at least might be able to do something about

 

[Umvard]

I personally know one of the women on this page, who felt the call to the priesthood keenly, for decades, before finally deciding, after much internal struggle, to go through with this ordination. Whatever the merits of the various arguments for and against ordination of women, I can’t accept the premise that women never feel the call to the priesthood.

After reading many of the profiles of those women, it could be possible that she was called to the priesthood… by Satan.

 

[T_More]

Oh well, when the spirit speaks, you gotta do it.

Just what spirit that is is another matter…If you can’t stand the teachings of the Church, why call yourself Catholic?