No Female Priests a Dogma?

[Thing]

There is a reason why it is Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and not, Sandy, Mandy, Judy and Trish …

 

[Susan1006]

The language of the debate says a lot “Women should at least be allowed to be deacons.” Yes, let the little woman have her sop of bread and be content.

It is prouder for women, IMHO, to realize that men are terrified of the housecleaning the church would receive at the hands of the nuns and other dedicated women in positions of authority, The way it scares men to think of women being bishops and priests is almost worth the ongoing official mysogony.

However, the old boys are having to turn more and more to us. We love the church, we know how to sacrifice time and energy, we know how to stretch a dollar, and there are fewer and fewer silverbacks all the time. God’s church will NOT suffer complete meltdown because men have lost that loving feeling. This is a supernatral situation, requiring supernatural belief and faith.

God is God and we are not.

Let’s watch with joy how he rescues us from ourselves, one more time.
Stay well, Susam

 

[FCEGM]

Call me a bad Catholic, but I disagree on this one. I think women should at least be allowed to be deacons. I go to a Catholic college and I meet a lot of “independent” young women. I met a girl who expressed her deep sadness and frustration at the fact that she can not be a deacon. She wants to serve the Church, but is drawn to the fact that if she became a Methodist or an Episcopalian this would not be a problem…

It would not be a problem because she would not be a priest or a deacon in either.

But, you are approaching the teaching as a matter of function rather than the realization of an ontological change in the ordained priest. IOW, a woman can be a leader, a teacher, a doctor, lawyer; since she can do these functions she must also be able to do the functions of a priest. But a priesthood isn’t a function; the Sacrament of Ordination confers a change of being to the man so that he is now in persona Christi (in the Person of Christ), Christ the Man.

It is a particularly modern and secular attitude to reduce life to functions and not to see the depths of nature, be it of the creation or of human nature. No surprise if this spills over to the Mysteries of the Church and conflicts with them. When that happens the person can realize the conflict of visions and adjust their own to the divinely revealed one and so be corrected by God’s view of things from one’s own erroneous assumptions and judgments. This is one of the many ways the Church saves us from ourselves. Protestantism, otoh, believes that individual judgment of the Church is superior and ends up in deep error which has inevitable consequences for human life down the road, as the modern functional individualism which destroys communion and ravages nature attests to when the inevitable secularism results and has full sway. Of course, it takes time to see all the consequences. Denial of a deeper level of existence below functions is quite secular.

Your friend and you (by agreeing with her desire) are implying that the Vicars of Christ through the ages have erred and that their successor, the late and beloved John Paul II, because of his insistence that the Church cannot ordain women (or allow contraception, abortion, etc., etc., - pick the complaint), was somehow stuck in a long-ago faded theology that now requires some new revelation by the Holy Spirit to bring the Church into the 21st century (or 22nd, or 23rd, etc., etc.).

Now consider why you don’t some find the reasons given by the Church fitting. When we try to grow in our understanding of this or any other doctrine of the Church, the first and best attitude is humility; this is because a humble mind says, e.g.: “Gee, the Pope gave us a couple of leads on why the Tradition can not be reversed; maybe I should follow those leads and reflect on how they fit with ordination”.

 

[grandfather]

Call me a bad Catholic, r.

You are a heterodox Catholic at best. You might also be a bad Catholic. God only knows, and your conscience.

There is only one good or valid reason to belong to or be part of any religion. If a person believes the things the religion teaches that person should join or belong to that religion. If a person disbelieves, rejects the beliefs of that religion there is no reason to belong to it, be of it.

Imagine a political party. It says this is our ideological position, these are the policies we will implement. If you did not embrace those political ideals would you belong to the party? Here is a religion. It believes this, this and this. Why would anyone want to be identified as part of that religion if one rejected its beliefs?

How is a religion defined? It is defined by its beliefs. How can someone who rejects those things be defined, or define himself as of that religion? Why would someone who rejects those beliefs even want to be of that religion?

I am not a Methodist, because I do not believe what Methodists believe. If I did not believe what the Catholic Church teaches I would not be a Catholic. I believe some of what Methodists believe. That does not make me a Methodist. If I believed some of what the Catholic Church believes that would not make me Catholic.