Great book about why women can't be priests

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It’s by Peter Kreeft and Alice von Hildebrand. It also discusses why God is considered masculine, the problem of radical feminism and why it disqualifies women who believe that way and other enlightening arguments against having priestesses. I forgot the title though! If anyone is interested, I’ll give the title next time I can. I bought the thing so it would be quick. It’s a little easy-reader book but so full of good explanations to back the thesis.
 
Two of my favorites! Both are excellent writers and stalwart knights of the faith.
 
Women and the Priesthood, I believe, is the title. I am not looking for a fight with those who disagree with the Church’s opinion, but I knew the Church had to have a better reason to give Catholics who disagree than “Jesus just picked men to be his apostles (clergy, in general)” (I mean, there are many today, I think, who won’t become docile having learned it’s a closed issue and the adamant still won’t buy the reasons I read in this book), but I got many reasons in case a truly open-minded person does consider them. I have to admit I didn’t buy that the 1970 missal was valid after having read some SSPX type of literature with what looked like good documentation. It can happen.
 
I haven’t read this book, and I could go broke ordering all the books from Amazon that I have seen recommended on this site. (We need a lending library!) Anyway, I have entertained a purely psychological reason that men are so aggressive, eccentric and potentially destructive (hence more male geniuses & psychotics) that their energies must be channeled by conferring on them an important and exclusive privilege. Or else they would walk away from the Church and wreck it from the outside.

Not elegantly put, but am I close? Can you summarize some of the author’s reasons?

Carol
 
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caroljm36:
I haven’t read the books, and I could go broke ordering all the books from Amazon that I have seen recommended on this site. We need a lending library! Anyway, I have entertained a purely psychological reason that men are so aggressive, eccentric and potentially destructive (hence more male geniuses & psychotics) that their energies must be channeled by conferring on them an important and exclusive privilege. Or else they would walk away from the Church and wreck it from the outside.

Not elegantly put, but am I close?

Carol
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Close, but no cigar – to coin a phrase. Yes. It IS partly a testosterone thing. Leadership needs to be courageous and capable of being dangerous. The Mister Rogers “unconditional acceptance” model of the past 30 years has cost the Church both in strength AND in compassion. I believe it does not reflect the power of Jesus.
 
Mother Angelica said women shouldn’t be priests because they can’t keep secrets. I don’t know if she were being half-serious, but it was meant to be funny.
I found it interesting, in the modern Stepford Wives, that the wife was turned on when her husband got assertive. From what I heard, women get bitter when their men don’t take control (which does not include abuse because the man is out of control) because they have to act outside of their nature and that can be stressful, apparently. Apparently, according to one of those authors, women are more naturally “being” and men are more naturally “doing” when it comes to ambitions in the world.
Regarding the “bitter” part, I think we laypeople have a bit of the femininity in us as our role of laypeople (the Church and thus, our being of the the bride) and expect the clergy, representing the groom, Jesus, to be a shepherd and keep us alive and safe, spiritually. I think maybe many of the leaving of Catholics from the Church is a bitterness of the laypeople, who feel lost after Vatican 2 and the apparent shepherds’ (in a kind of emasculation) satisfying our sensual pleasures by decreasing disciplines and such instead of being like men and leading us like men shepherds who represent the God-man, Jesus. I think the Reformers and those who followed them had the same crisis and their feminine status as laymen turned into a kind of porotofeminism after too much laxity on the part of their clerical leadership. Hey, even guys, who have less of a struggle with overpowering emotion with reason, can get lost in their passions without a leader leading us guys with such an authority as if he encompassed the Magesterium within him (if not the priest, the bishop. Catholic Churches were being torn apart during the Reformation and during later rebellions of laypeople–some with the help of priests; in modern times, it’s like that except the Church, as instituition (not so much the buildings themselves, are being attacked.
Some high clergy are getting serious. Thank God for giving us more mercy (even though, by our behavior and voting, we American Catholics still probably deserve weak priests) with them and with EWTN, the FSSP and people who are associated with each of them, practitioners of the right novus ordo mass or the Tridentine mass!
 
Women can’t be priests because of how the church sees the roles of men and women. The three things that make women “women” (by this I mean the unique things that only women can do and men can not do) are…only women can be mothers, wives, and only women can feed an infant with her own milk. Only men can be fathers and husbands. In the eyes of the church, the priest is an *alter Christus *and therefore the “bridegroom” or husband of the church, and he is the father of the family there gathered.
 
Well, whatever the reason, I am perfectly happy to see men keep this role. It seems like when women go into a profession, it drives the men out (and the pay down). Not right away, but I always think long-term.
 
Doesn’t anyone who is for women priests ever wonder why the Blessed Virgin wasn’t a priest?
After all, she was there in the upper room at Pentecost.

if anyone was qualified to be a priest, it was Mary. Yet, the APostles who were filled with the Holy SPirit never even considered it. Not even when they chose Judas, did the question of mary ever come up.

I honestly doubt that they thought that the Mother of our Lord was inferior.
 
work(name removed by moderator)rogress:
From what I heard, women get bitter when their men don’t take control (which does not include abuse because the man is out of control) because they have to act outside of their nature and that can be stressful, apparently.
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I think it might depend on the woman, dear. Maybe you should try meeting some, instead of just hearing about them.
 
I have met women and too many only support my theory (though it was meant to be speculative anyway). Men should not be nuns because we have a hard time with holy purity in other ways than women–especially when so many women in recent decades have made being a gentleman outdated. Can you imagine a man talking about doing little things and showering roses upon people? It’s not our spirituality. We are not generally nurturingThere is objective info. out there (the Magesterium, to name one–the biggest one of all in the world of faith and morals in all areas where they apply), but it always helps to hear it from someone who would have a more subjective opinion but sacrifices their ego for Holy Truth.
Understanding women will not get you to any truth about whether women cannot be priests though it would help you present the women who want that the truth with a more effective form of charity. The Pope could beg for embryonic stem cell research because he has Parkinson’s, but he doesn’t–and I don’t believe it is because he knows those cells don’t work. After all, Michael J.Fox and Christopher Reeve (unless they only had newspapers and television that said all against embryonic stem cell research are fundamentalists or unless that rhetoric was the board covering their eyes from reason) would have had to have heard the other’s side, but with no effect on reason.
Read “Ungodly Rage” by a woman, no less, named Donna Steichen. It would freak you out what things many women who want women as priests also want to happen.
I, myself, was going to the other end. Because our bishops and priests were not being men (where the scandal really started last century), I, as a layman (thus representing the feminine side of the marriage feast of the lamb as united to the bride, the Church) went from “being” (a feminine existence) Catholic to having (once I came upon Fatima Crusader magazine left in a novus ordo church) to figure things out on my own because the hierarchy lost credibility for that time after reading the mag well before the sex scandals (of course, I knew something was wrong but was more naive). I went from liberal to EWTN to ultra-conservative over the course of about 4 years. The first two are examples of an internal version of doing to the Church what the Reformers and later, communists, did to Catholic churches in the world and within themselves. There seems to be a lack of faith (doctrinal and otherwise), charity (lots of bitterness blinding the intellect resulting in mean thoughts, words and deeds towards those who disagree) and hope (in God’s promise to the Church) Anarchy, confusion and chaos seem to be adjectives describing these rebels who deceive themselves into mistaking dissent for rebellion. Real dissent, I believe, would be disagreeing with a pastoral decision that does not violate natural law, God’s law or anything as serious, but accepting it sadly as the rule unless changed (and maybe working patiently and charitably for its reversal); but rebellion would be like inciting an overthrow of the pastor illicitly or making their authority void in the eyes of their flock.
I have not read ant theology of the body literature or heard any speeches regarding it, but what I have heard, I have drawn upon for my speculation–take it or leave it, but read the Catechism about it.
 
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