Help -some references please

[rayne89]

I was having a conversation with my mom yesterday and was having a hard time explaining clearly the differences between teachings that are unchangeable like on female priests, abortion ect. and teachings that have changed like head coverings, not eating meat on friday. Some official documentation would be good because my mom doesn’t exactly just take my word for it.

She saw all the changes after Vatican II and she insists because of those changes some day we will see women priests. I did find ORDINATIO SACERDOTALIS (in reference to women being unable to be priests)and made a copy of that for her. But I was trying to find a good explanation of the differences between unchangable teachings and teachings that can change.
Thanks!

 

[noma]

I was having a conversation with my mom yesterday and was having a hard time explaining clearly the differences between teachings that are unchangeable like on female priests, abortion ect. and teachings that have changed like head coverings, not eating meat on friday…

Official documentation pending, but one way this can be argued is that all the changeable doctrines have, at one point in time, been absent in the Christian Tradition. One can find parts of the Church that did not fast from meat on Friday in the same way as other parts of the Church. But always, before and after Vatican II, there is a fast of some nature on Friday.

Head coverings have not been enforced in Eastern Orthodox Church, though some women wish to uphold that particular custom. The same thing is true with the Latin mass. Mass was said in the vernacular since the beginning of the Church.

But no time during Church history has there ever been a woman Priest, or has abortion been seen as acceptable, or has contraception been seen as acceptable. I would not say that these things are impossible (as perhaps the reasoning behind these customs is not moral, or de fide, but based on bad science or other forms of human error), but that an individual could not change them. And, if you are a Latin, you probably would hold that an Ecumenical Council will not change them, as they have already been declared by the Pope.

 

[Daniel_Marsh]

Hi rayne, we protestants tend to think of doctrines that are always true, like the nature of God, trinitrian, holy,etc.

Hebrews 13:8 says, that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”

How is Jesus always the same? being fully God

How did the Son of God change? incarnation Phil 2

Basically, these would be christian doctrines that will always from here be true.

The other things are simply “culturally conditioned” we protestants do not in general wear vails. I cor 11 Most of us don’t wash feet. Gentiles ( acts 15 ) do not keep the Jewish holidays. Some protestant churches use comtemptorary music. Thoe protestant churches that use the “old hymns” are not aware often that many of those hymns are recycled bar tunes at least among methodists and wesyians – holiness groups.

 

[Unitas]

The ORDINATIO SACERDOTALIS specifically is not ex cathedra. But the content has been taught infallibly by the ordinary and the universal Magisterium, so Pope Johhn Paul II was merely reiterating what was already an infallible teaching.

It’s a closed subject.

 

[noma]

The ORDINATIO SACERDOTALIS specifically is not ex cathedra. But the content has been taught infallibly by the ordinary and the universal Magisterium, so Pope Johhn Paul II was merely reiterating what was already an infallible teaching.

Where was this teaching proclaimed with the guarantee of infallibility?

 

[Tietjen]

I was having a conversation with my mom yesterday and was having a hard time explaining clearly the differences between teachings that are unchangeable like on female priests, abortion ect. and teachings that have changed like head coverings, not eating meat on friday. Some official documentation would be good because my mom doesn’t exactly just take my word for it.

She saw all the changes after Vatican II and she insists because of those changes some day we will see women priests. I did find ORDINATIO SACERDOTALIS (in reference to women being unable to be priests)and made a copy of that for her. But I was trying to find a good explanation of the differences between unchangable teachings and teachings that can change.
Thanks!

Unfortunately, your mom is not alone in her thinking. I met a priest here in Nashville while I was assisting in RCIA who stated that it is possible for the Church to begin allowing women priests. I questioned him later (after the class) about this, and he stuck by his statement. I left the parish and that RCIA class. Part of me wishes I hadn’t, but when the class is being taught wrong by a priest, what chance do I have to convince them that he is wrong? At the time, we were without a Bishop (our Bishop was relocated and the new Bishop hadn’t been named yet) so there wasn’t much recourse. This is one reason why so many are confused about Catholicism.

 

[Cranch]

Where was this teaching proclaimed with the guarantee of infallibility?

Here is the pertinent paragraphs from Ordinatio Sacerdotalis:

Although the teaching that priestly ordination is to be reserved to men alone has been preserved by the constant and universal Tradition of the Church and firmly taught by the Magisterium in its more recent documents, at the present time in some places it is nonetheless considered still open to debate, or the Church’s judgment that women are not to be admitted to ordination is considered to have a merely disciplinary force.

              Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church’s divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful.

The infallibility of this teaching was confirmed by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in its Responsum Ad Dubium on October 28, 1995, when they responded to a Bishop’s inquiry about *Ordinatio Sacerdotalis *with the following:

This teaching requires definitive assent, since, founded on the written Word of God, and from the beginning constantly preserved and applied in the Tradition of the Church, it has been set forth infallibly by the ordinary and universal Magisterium (cf. Second Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium 25. 2). Thus, in the present circumstances, the Roman Pontiff, exercising his proper office of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32), has handed on this same teaching by a formal declaration, explicitly stating what is to be held always, everywhere, and by all, as belonging to the deposit of the faith.

For an interesting discussion of the difference between infallibility of the ordinary Magisterium and papal infallibility and how it relates to *Ordinatio Sacerdotalis *:
http://www.st-joseph-foundation.org/newsletter/lead.php?document=2006/24-2