how Catholic women feel about no ordination of women

[QuasiCatholic]

it’s not about power, it’s about relationship.

All relationships involve a power structure. That’s what the word “relationship” means – that two objects are being described in terms of how they relate to one another.

… Jesus was a man. To act fully in the persona Christi you have to be a man otherwise you deny Christ’s full humanity.

I disagree.

 

[vsedriver]

All relationships involve a power structure. That’s what the word “relationship” means – that two objects are being described in terms of how they relate to one another.

 

[QuasiCatholic]

fortunately Jesus was not selling a product.

…

so you believe only people with power have value?

I really hope you’re just saying this to be difficult, because I think the point of that analogy was pretty obvious, but here, I’ll try another tact just to humor you.

Say you knew that some people on the other side of the country were in terrible danger from some impending event and the only way to warn them was to send a messenger in person. Say you also knew that those people would be skeptical about what you were telling them, and that they had a cultural tradition that said brown-eyed people were less trustworthy.

Would you send a brown-eyed guy on a bicycle to deliver the message? Or a blue-eyed guy in a ferrari?

Jesus wanted to get his message (the product) out to as many people as possible as quickly as possible. He would have picked the best available messengers (salespeople) and at that time the best available messengers would have been men.

And yes, when it comes to spreading a message, people with power have more value than people without it. That’s why we use celebrities in commercials. That’s why fashion designers debut looks in New York and Paris instead of small towns in the Midwest. Sometimes the power isn’t what we traditionally think of as power – that’s why grassroots campaigns work – but even then the key is reaching people with high social influence in their own circles.

 

[QuasiCatholic]

QuasiCatholic;12871714:

that’s not how God is in a relationship with us. That is what is unique to being a Christian. Love can never involve power but only service for the good of the other.

God is the creator, we are the creation. God is the parent, we are the children. God makes the rules, we choose to follow them or risk eternal damnation.

Does any of that sound like a relationship that “can never involve power” to you?

Heck – what do we say at the end of the Our Father every single time we say it?
“The Kingdom, THE POWER and the Glory are yours. Now and forever.”

 

[revert_jen]

I don’t understand why I would be expected to have “feelings” about this. I don’t have “feelings” about facts. I don’t have “feelings” about the existence of Mars, gravity, the doctrine of the Trinity, or any other facts of faith or the larger world.

Well, I’m not sure I agree with that. I can have feelings about facts. I can be sad about the fact that people die in pain, or if I were a man, I could (theoretically–I’ve never met a man who felt this way) be sad that I could never give birth.

So I suppose some women could be sad that they cannot be priests. I’m not one of them, but it’s something that is possible, not illogical, and not AFAICT sinful. Being sad about a fact isn’t the same as thinking it’s not a fact.

But as for women who pretend to be Catholic priests, if I had to guess, I’d say that they have some mild form of what is now called gender dysphoria.

I think some women see their own femininity as inferior to men’s masculinity, rather than simply different. And many of them think of priesthood as a sort of “status symbol” or “power” from which they are excluded. Also, some of the arguments diminish the role of His female followers–including His Mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary! Because she was not an Apostle, somehow she’s less important? Of course not! But if they’d only follow their own logic to its conclusion… they’d see that’s exactly what they’re saying!

Great post! (not just the quoted part)

And that is to me the great irony of “feminism.” These people, who claim to be the only ones to value women highly enough, try to “better” the position of women by turning them into men. I wouldn’t degrade myself by becoming a man.

Seriously, if these feminists really valued women, they would have worked at making society appreciate feminine characteristics and talents more, rather than trying to turn all women into men. There is a reasonable amount of room for society to have a higher esteem of feminine talents, jobs traditionally held by women (homemaker, nurse, teacher), and femininity in general. If they really valued women, they’d work on that.

I’m not saying that women shouldn’t be allowed to do what have traditionally been male jobs, or that they shouldn’t be paid equally for equal work, but that isn’t really feminism in my book.

And if being a priest were just a job, I’d be OK with female priests, although it would still make me uncomfortable. But being a priest isn’t just a job.

–Jen

 

[vsedriver]

I really hope you’re just saying this to be difficult, because I think the point of that analogy was pretty obvious, but here, I’ll try another tact just to humor you.

thank you for humoring me.

Say you knew that some people on the other side of the country were in terrible danger from some impending event and the only way to warn them was to send a messenger in person. Say you also knew that those people would be skeptical about what you were telling them, and that they had a cultural tradition that said brown-eyed people were less trustworthy.

Would you send a brown-eyed guy on a bicycle to deliver the message? Or a blue-eyed guy in a ferrari?

there is no reason to believe either will be effective because they can choose to kill the messenger even if he’s a blue-eyed guy in a ferrari. Oh wait, they did kill the messenger and he was the Son of God.

Jesus wanted to get his message (the product) out to as many people as possible as quickly as possible. He would have picked the best available messengers (salespeople) and at that time the best available messengers would have been men.

Did he? if that were so he should have waited till the 20th century and he could have tweeted it and had his message go viral overnight. How inept of him to choose a backwater country without mass transit and communication. The hand that rocks the cradle rules the nation. Women transmit the majority of religious faith and lifestyle. That’s real power.

And yes, when it comes to spreading a message, people with power have more value than people without it. That’s why we use celebrities in commercials. That’s why fashion designers debut looks in New York and Paris instead of small towns in the Midwest. Sometimes the power isn’t what we traditionally think of as power – that’s why grassroots campaigns work – but even then the key is reaching people with high social influence in their own circles.

what a fool Jesus was to preach to the poor. He should have been chatting up Ceasar. It’s amazing his message got out at all since he relied on a few fishermen and tax collectors.

I get what you are saying. I didn’t miss your point. I just don’t think it holds up when you examine scripture and tradition. I think the Church is far more logical on this issue.

 

[Walking_Home]

I’m with the other ladies here.

I think some women see their own femininity as inferior to men’s masculinity, rather than simply different. And many of them think of priesthood as a sort of “status symbol” or “power” from which they are excluded. Also, some of the arguments diminish the role of His female followers–including His Mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary! Because she was not an Apostle, somehow she’s less important? Of course not! But if they’d only follow their own logic to its conclusion… they’d see that’s exactly what they’re saying!

I’m happy as a woman. I see my womanhood as a gift, not a curse. I love my “feminine genius.” I don’t need to be treated the same as men to be treated as equal in value. Too many people confuse the two.

Most of the arguments in favor of “women priests” are simply misunderstandings about what the priesthood is, and/or what it means to be a man or a woman. Some of the arguments can be pretty insulting to women. So now we’ve got people who are supposed to be “feminists”** who are promoting ideas that women are inferior by virtue of being female. ** And some of the arguments imply that God is weak, unable to change hearts, etc.

Being a priest is not just a “job” or a “career choice,” it’s a special calling from God. God doesn’t call men to motherhood. God doesn’t even call all women to (biological) motherhood. God doesn’t call all men to ordination, either… so why should I be offended that He doesn’t call me to be a priest (as if God “owes” me anything at all)? ​

Don’t know what going on with the women priest group – but I have come across men and women in the toxic/radical wing of “Traditionalism” – who do believe women are inferior to men --therefore women should not have any position of authority within the Church and/or society. To that bunch – anyone who does not follow that line of thinking is a feminist.

And you are right – not all men are called to the priesthood-- and not all women will be biological mothers

 

[agapewolf]

So many are mistaken on the “power” idea. People often think the pope is at the top of a pyramid, with Cardinals under him, then Bishops, priests, then lay people at the bottom, with women at the very bottom being “oppressed”. This isn’t true. Turn the pyramid upside down.

When a man becomes a priest, he becomes like Christ in a way… not seeing “equality with God something to be grasped, but instead he emptied himself, becoming the form of a slave”. He is “lowering” himself in service to the church. The pope is at the bottom of the pyramid in service to the church, hold the weight of the world’s souls on his shoulders.

And going up to the Cardinals, then Bishops, then priests, then lay men, and women at the top as the crown of creation.

Women, the sex that is most like God that they take part so intimately with God creating new life within them.

It is an honor to NOT take the priest role. Women are not called to die on the cross (as the priest re-presents at Mass). Women are called to be at the foot of the cross.

It is degrading to women to bring them down below their proper dignity.

 

[Walking_Home]

God gives both men and women their own unique way of bringing life into the world. Women bring about physical life by giving birth as mothers. Men give spiritual life by consecrating the Eucharist as Priests.

---

Something for you to keep in mind:

LETTER TO THE BISHOPS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
ON THE COLLABORATION OF MEN AND WOMEN
IN THE CHURCH AND IN THE WORLD

Although motherhood is a key element of women’s identity,** this does not mean that women should be considered from the sole perspective of physical procreation.** In this area, there can be serious distortions, which extol biological fecundity in purely quantitative terms and are often accompanied by dangerous disrespect for women.

vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20040731_collaboration_en.html

 

[Elizium23]

I don’t understand why I would be expected to have “feelings” about this. I don’t have “feelings” about facts. I don’t have “feelings” about the existence of Mars, gravity, the doctrine of the Trinity, or any other facts of faith or the larger world.

Those who have “feelings” on this topic are somehow under the misconception this is something other than a fact, somehow a matter on which there can be opinions.
It is a fact that female human beings are invalid matter for the sacrament of holy orders.

The matter of Holy Orders is the laying on of hands.

The subject of Holy Orders is the man to be ordained.

 

[janeway529]

If this is in the wrong forum, a moderator can feel free to move it. I was watching videos of “women priests” celebrating the “Mass” and most of the negative comments were in fact from men. (I also saw a video where a female “bishop” said that 70% of Catholics support the ordination of women, and that in Persona Christi actually means in the presence of Christ.) I have wondered for a while how Catholic women actually feel about this issue? Is it a hard teaching to accept?

No, as a Catholic woman, I don’t find it hard to accept. Interestingly, one of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI’s students was a woman who was pro-ordination of women and then later went to him with her findings that women shouldn’t be ordained because the word ‘ordination’ really means ‘sub-ordination’ and women shouldn’t be subordinated.

 

[Catholic_farmer]

If feminists really valued women, the US would have one of the best maternity leave policies, rather than one of the worst. They don’t value women doing what only women can do.

 

[Rosebud77]

I love to linger in the Cathedral when I do manage to get to Mass… when the priest has exited ( which they do with no contact with the congregation) and the big lights are dimmed, out come the ladies to tidy and organise… And to clean. I tell them YOU are the real Church. It is from them I learn about the people… the man who was buried today at 101 who was a lovely man and who had a good life… Any woman who feels slighted at not being able to be a priest needs to think… I also have the deep privilege at those times of chatting to folk who need someone to talk to. To be there for them in my womanly way. What also irks me re women as ministers is that they always try to look like men! Dog collar, etc etc etc… I am honoured to be a woman serving Jesus in the way He asks of me, quietly and humbly there for His people.

 

[Rosebud77]

Watching the webcam from the cathedral just now… the men ie priests etc are allegedly preparing for the Vigil… in reality propping the furniture up as they chat… I am certain that behind the scenes the ladies are eg cleaning the candle racks of wax so folk can pray… ensuring the linen is ready… getting the House of God ready in welcome.

 

[Brendan]

All relationships involve a power structure. That’s what the word “relationship” means – that two objects are being described in terms of how they relate to one another.
.

The definition of relationship that you offer said nothing about ‘power’. How do you derive the need for power out of that definition?

Apples and pears are related, in that they are both fruit. They thus, by definition, have a relationship Does it logically follow that an apple must have ‘power’ over a pear, or vice versa?

 

[casslean]

The only other justification for that rule I’ve heard is that Jesus only had male disciples. So only male priests. But Jewish law at that time would have prevented women from associating that closely with men they weren’t related to, or from living/traveling by themselves, etc. which was important for what the disciples were doing. So who’s to say Jesus wouldn’t have liked some female disciples but just couldn’t work it logistically in that era’s social climate.

I think the totality of Jesus’s work while on Earth shows that he couldn’t have cared less about the era’s social climate. He did what was right and said what was true, regardless of how society received the message, and exhorted his disciples to do the same.

 

[LightBound]

The OP asked about how women feel. I’m astonished at how many members on this thread I have always thought to be men are actually women

 

[Brendan]

OH man. You just had to step in it.
So I guess Mother Theresa, Catherine of Siena, OUR LADY, and others have not brought spirituality to the table? Mary gave our High Priest life with her fiat.
Come on. You know better…

Johnny had the right concept, but the wrong terminology. Spirtual was, as you pointed out, NOT the correct word.

The role of the men is to bring about ONTOLOGICAL life

In Catholic terms, a human person is a union of body and soul ( Corpre and Animus Unis). It is not a Soul occupying a body, like Plato once suggested, but what defines the human person is a soul in union with the body. Neither is complete without the other, neither is greater than the other in terms of our human ‘completeness’

We also see in God that His greatest desire is for us to spend Eternity with Him. In other words, to have Saints in Heaven with Him.

Since the human person has two realities, the biological and the ontological, we see the sexual experience in both.

The woman brings forth the biological, or more specifically, has the greater role in bringing forth the biological aspect of humanity. The priest enhances the ontological. Both operating together are what produce a saint.

We see that reality in the biological sense, where the man and the woman together, but with the woman’s unique biology, bring forth physical life.

In the Sacraments, we see the man, with his unique ontology, bring forth ontological life, in the Consecration of the Eucharist, and the in the Absolution of sin in Reconcillation. In the Eucharist, He is is Life itself is brought forward. In Reconcillation, especially in the case of mortal sin, the dead soul is restored to life! In both, the ontological reality of the soul is strengthed by Grace

Since the body is the Form of the Soul (thanks to St. Thomas Aquinas), we know that the souls of each person are not only unique, but the souls of men and women must differ as well.

Now a Platonist, who views the spiritual elements of humanity to be greater than the biological, would therefore hold that the priest has the greater role in making a saint. Not so with a Catholic. As I mentioned, we are not Platonic dualists. We are Ontologically Unitists.

Nor are we Protestants, who view the priesthood as a simply a presider role, who simply leads a congregation. In our priesthood, the priest brings forth the Sacrament of the Eucharist, an ontological reality that requires a soul that is changed and configured for exactly that purpose, as in the same way, a woman’s body is both changed and configured to bring forth biological life

We therefore see God dividing the role of the participation of His creation of new Saints to be equally and fairly divided between the sexes.

 

[TypesAndShadows]

Ordination of women is actually something I struggled with for a long time, but have eventually had to accept that because I understand and agree with Church teaching in other areas, I have to take this one on faith.

Part of what helps me with it, is that the Church teaches that matter is important for all the Sacraments. If the bread used isn’t wheat bread with some gluten, if the wine used isn’t grape wine with some alcohol, then it isn’t the right matter and the Sacrament of the Eucharist does not take place: in that context, to say that if the ordinand is not a man, it isn’t the right matter and the Sacrament of Ordination doesn’t take place, is easier to accept.

It also helps that women are visibly and formally involved in running all sorts of things in the Church, looking after and taking an active role (including being in charge of important matters) in all sorts of areas where being ordained is not required. This makes it clearer that the restriction is genuinely on the Sacramental role, not on women taking on important roles. In this way it is clearly not a statement that men are somehow just better at leading than women, across the board. Although I do occasionally run into Catholics online who take a view I associate more with certain American Protestant groups, who restrict women’s roles across the board: I find that alarming.

I do still struggle with it, but I think I would find it harder if:
a) the Church said that matter wasn’t important for other Sacraments
b) I was living in an area with more clericalism
c) priests lived otherwise ordinary lives, getting married and choosing where to live and work, getting hired as priests at jobs they applied for, with career progression and so on
d) women were not involved in all aspects of parish and diocesan life

As it is, my church is full of women there out of their own choice, looking after their spiritual lives and the spiritual lives of those around them, part of all the parish groups.

I would note that Youtube comments are exactly the sort of environment women stereotypically avoid online, because it is so hostile and unpleasant.

 

[QuasiCatholic]

The definition of relationship that you offer said nothing about ‘power’. How do you derive the need for power out of that definition?

Apples and pears are related, in that they are both fruit. They thus, by definition, have a relationship Does it logically follow that an apple must have ‘power’ over a pear, or vice versa?

Are you seriously trying to compare the relationships between people to the relationships between fruit? Give me a break. Fruit are inanimate objects. They can’t make decisions or take actions, therefore they have no power to worry about (in the sense that we think of the word at least).

All humans have power. We can move, act, think, directly affect our surroundings, etc. So any relationship between humans involves a power structure because you’re describing how two objects with intrinsic power relate to one another, and therefore power is one of the characteristics you can compare them by. It doesn’t necessarily have to be an unequal power structure (most of the time it is), but there is a power structure nonetheless.

If you think of the modern concept of a healthy romantic relationship, you probably imagine a scenario where no one is “in control.” But there’s still a power dynamic. It’s just that, if you take all the individual little compromises as a whole, each individual is surrendering power to the other equally. Most relationships don’t live up to the ideal, however, and there’s usually one spouse who wins a little more often than the other.

But anyone with an ounce of honest perspective should be able to see what I’m talking about just from their own experience. Parents vs. children, sibling dynamics (especially older brother vs. younger brother often), teacher vs. student, boss vs. employee, senior co-worker vs. junior co-worker, DMV clerk vs. shmuck stuck waiting in line … I could go on and on.

And as I pointed out to the other poster, pretending that God vs. us doesn’t involve a power structure is ridiculous because we explicitly acknowledge that fact every time we pray.