Is it ok to advocate or agitate for women's ordination?

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I’m talking about the CPA, not the National Catholic Reporter. The CPA is definitely vetted and approved.
 
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Because the Catholic Press Association is a USCCB-approved, highly reputable organization of the Catholic press. Major members include diocesan newspapers, EWTN, Our Sunday Visitor, etc.

It’s certainly not a Communist front.
 
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Tis_Bearself said:
If the Pope has called for a commission, how about you just let him and the commission study the issue and get back to us then?

No need to “agitate” about it (The commission could not care less about that stuff. They aren’t elected officials) or jump on any bandwagon being pushed by the National Catholic Distorter.
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I think it safe to say that most of the time one is agitating in the Church, one best first be a saint with a very close ear to what God is saying, as most of the time agitating is not holy.

I noticed there there is a lot of simply begging the question in the first few posts. Women’s priestly ordination has been infallibly defined by St. John Paul. When he did that, he did not, most notably, include the diaconate. Now, while the ordination of women to the diaconate has been consistently taught, it is simply not on par with the ordination of women to the priesthood. Pope Francis has allowed for this discussion to continue for quite a while. It may be that he will issue a definition of this issue, as his predecessor did for the priesthood. Or it may be he sees the discussion as fruitful to lead to a better understanding of ordination, women, or both.
 
It was an example. Nothing to get hung about.

Say, where is CAF member Strawberry Fields, anyway?
 
Not going to waste much time on this. Look up the National “Catholic” Reporter - and see that the Diocesan Bishop asked them to stop using the term Catholic.
 
This has nothing to do with that publication. The claim by C. Ray was that he would bet money that the Catholic Press Association was a Communist front.

That’s flat-out libel and demeaning to publishers like EWTN and others.
 
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My point was that CPA gave awards for excellence in journalism to National Catholic Reporter… why would a ‘vetted’ Catholic organization muddle the waters by endorsing a dissenting paper?

I’m happy to lose that bet. Note I only put ten bucks on it. Not exactly what I’d call libel but whatever.
 
C.Ray said:
Not exactly what I’d call libel but whatever.
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You need to check your definitions. Regardless of how you feel about NCR, the CPA is not a Communist front. They are reputable, verified (without the quotation marks) and approved.
 
I didn’t know there was a CPA; I was referring to the National “Catholic” Reporter.
 
And you were right about them. But C. Ray made unfounded allegations.
 
And that means, then, that what they advocate is an actual development.

Something which changes the fundamental nature of something else, to the point where, for example, the original teaching was, Thou shalt not commit adultery’ to “thou SHALT commit adultery’ is not a development of doctrine.

Something that changes the teaching of the doctrine of the Church that “The Church has no authority to ordain women” to ‘The Church DOES have authority to ordain women’ is not a development of doctrine. . .

Both the above have taken a teaching of “This teaching is a truth” and turned it to’ This teaching is not a truth’.

If something is considered to be wrong, and then stated to be right after all, it’s not a development, it’s a complete change.
 
stpurl said:
And that means, then, that what they advocate is an actual development.

Something which changes the fundamental nature of something else, to the point where, for example, the original teaching was, Thou shalt not commit adultery’ to “thou SHALT commit adultery’ is not a development of doctrine.
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I think this often only discernible in retrospect. I’m sure that the last century or so of developments to EENS, to cite one well known example, would have seemed like a fundamental change to Catholics living just a few hundred years ago. But with the benefit of hindsight, it now seems like a development into deeper understanding. And we only get those developments into deeper understanding by discussing things, even things that are not always comfortable to discuss.
 
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If you can demonstrate that EENS has changed so that instead of ‘outside the Church there is no salvation’ to ‘outside the Church there IS salvation’, it would be a point in your favor.

But the Church clearly teaches that salvation still only comes through the Church. The understanding of exactly who is a member of the Church has increased or deepened, but it has not changed. The fact that ‘the Church’ at one point supposedly only recognized baptized Catholics as members where it now recognizes all humanity STILL has not ‘changed’ the teaching because whereas baptism remains the norm, and the baptized person must still ‘cooperate’ with salvation, we note that those not baptized Catholic and cooperating only ‘may’ be saved, and that only —ONLY—through the Catholic Church.

What WOULD have been a reversal of “Outside the Church is no salvation” would have been not, “Outside the Church, which is understood to be all people, is no salvation” —which is the development and which is the teaching understood today—

Would have been, “there is salvation to those outside the Church’.
That is NOT the teaching though. That would have been a 180 and not a development.

Similarly, “The Church has no authority to ordain women” cannot do a 180 to ‘the Church HAS authority to ordain women’. That would be a complete 180, not a development.

There is really little way to develop an infallible (and it is) teaching especially one so recently ‘reinforced.’

And poor Pope St. John Paul II. Even 25 years ago and with all the brouhaha and the attempt at clarity, he didn’t realize how utterly anal and picky the dissenters were becoming. He did not realize that instead of an encyclical he needed to issue an ENCYCLOPEDIA for every single WORD in that encyclical, that pettifoggers would seize on the so-called absence of ‘diaconate’ along with priesthood (as if with ordination itself being the subtext there would be no way that ALL orders of ordination would be involved), and insist that “well he wasn’t closing it to deacons’.

As if Pope St. John Paul II wasn’t well aware of the many commissions which had found no evidence of women ever being ordained as a deacon with the same rites as male deacons, that they at most assisted with nude female baptisms or helped out poor women (much as our sisters do today!!!), and as if the entire encyclical itself was not in response to the bad decisions made by our Episcopalian brothers and sisters with their ‘female priests’.

Uncomfortable discussions are one thing. We might not be comfortable thinking about, for example, using less goods in order to give more to the poor.

But uncomfortable discussions where one tries to justify dissent or propose things antithetical to Church doctrine? Those are not only uncomfortable, they are ultimately hurtful to many.
 
The dissenters insist on things against Church teaching. They try to find loopholes. ‘You said this but you didn’t say that.’ They want what they want and some have a lot of time on their hands. They think ‘agitating,’ in this case, will get them what they want. Pope John Paul II did the right thing. The end.
 
I think a person needs to wrestle with what is placed on their conscience. If that is publicly wrestling with a church teaching, so be it - maybe the Holy Spirit wishes to enlighten them or their audience with the process and the outcome.

It’s highly frustrating to be in that space and find no home within the church to pose those questions and probe for truth and resolution. One who does so is often quickly, rashly labeled an “agitator” or “dissident”. Quipping that “Rome has spoken, let’s shut this down” does not form consciences and does a disservice to the faithful.
 
stpurl said:
He did not realize that instead of an encyclical he needed to issue an ENCYCLOPEDIA for every single WORD in that encyclical, that pettifoggers would seize on the so-called absence of ‘diaconate’ along with priesthood
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There is a huge difference between needing every word clarified and the absence of deacons, while specifying priests. I cannot imagine a theologian of St. JP’s stature not making that part deliberate. It is hardly a minor point, and definitely not a loop hole. I never thought resorting the his encyclical on this issue is a strong case compared to the case made by the centuries of teaching on ordination and the diaconate. Nonetheless, I have to give kudos just for finding the word “pettifogger” though I will remind you it is just using a label to describe a position, not the people, lest you just beg the question. And, I might add, it should be considered whether one is simply begging the question in every post, as at least half on this thread do nothing more than that.

I would be a pettifogger, except I am content to allow the Pope to hash this out on his terms. I think I know what the result will be, of course, as a closet pettifogger.
 
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Bingo. Most of the time, this does not happen. Nor do canned reasons, if expounded, often address the express concerns raised by the conscience of the person doing the wrestling.
 
stpurl said:
As if Pope St. John Paul II wasn’t well aware of the many commissions which had found no evidence of women ever being ordained as a deacon with the same rites as male deacons, that they at most assisted with nude female baptisms or helped out poor women (much as our sisters do today!!!), and as if the entire encyclical itself was not in response to the bad decisions made by our Episcopalian brothers and sisters with their ‘female priests’.
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John Paul II was also aware of commissions which had found evidence of women being ordained at the level of the diaconate, like the Pan Orthodox Theological Consultation in 1989 that endorsed the work of E. Theodorou, theology professor in Athens. He probably had many who would help him understand the weight of Epiphanios’ remarks on female baptisms.

And most importantly, he would have understood that the relation between the diaconate and the priesthood was discussed at Vatican II, and it was recognized the two orders were different. This decision laid the groundwork for Permanent Deacons, so I doubt he meant to ignore it.

He probably also understood that disagreements about ordaining women were causing great problems in the Ecumenical movement that was so important to him.

Please do not portray this as if it were some easy decision; I am sure he put a great deal of thought and energy into it. He would probably have been grateful if an encyclopedia of everything relevant to the decision had been gathered for him before he made his decision.
 
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