Non-Catholics: If you could change anything (NOT THEOLOGICAL) about the Catholic Church what would it be?

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  1. Establish cummunion between the EO , the OO , and the RCC
  2. Allow married priests, deacons , bishops etc
  3. Allow female deacons
  4. Establish impaired cummunion with Lutheranism
 
Stop treating singles like lepers and second-class citizens.

You say you want more families and more kids. Well, if you continue to alienate and push away the singles from your parish, then where are all those families and kids going to come from? 🤷
 
Starwarsfan2 said:
  1. Establish cummunion between the EO , the OO , and the RCC
  2. Allow married priests, deacons , bishops etc
  3. Allow female deacons
  4. Establish impaired cummunion with Lutheranism
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Of course you would say that, not being a Catholic. There will never be ordained women deacons in the Catholic Church, just as there will NEVER be ordained women to the priesthood, in the Catholic Church. Not sure what you mean by “impaired communion” with Lutheranism?? God Bless, Memaw
 
JustaServant said:
Thread title says it all.
Be nice.
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I would make it a requirement that every adult Catholic would have to take a course of instructions in the Catholic faith,. I am shocked at the fact that so many adult Catholics do not understand their Catholic faith in so many important ways. Many I have contact with had 12 years of Catholic School and still do not understand the truth about transubstantiation. Some think its OK to receive communion in other denominations. Or see nothing wrong with practicing artificial birth control. Think they can make up their own mind about what “follow your conscience” means. And many other important Church teachings. Somehow we have to reach the adults before we can help the young people. God Bless, Memaw
 
Memaw said:
Of course you would say that, not being a Catholic. There will never be ordained women deacons in the Catholic Church, just as there will NEVER be ordained women to the priesthood, in the Catholic Church. Not sure what you mean by “impaired communion” with Lutheranism?? God Bless, Memaw
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There used to be female deacons , so why not allow it again ?

Keep the faith, Starwars
 
Starwarsfan2 said:
  1. Establish cummunion between the EO , the OO , and the RCC
  2. Allow married priests, deacons , bishops etc
  3. Allow female deacons
  4. Establish impaired cummunion with Lutheranism
Click to expand...
Never going to happen.

A priest is on call 24/7. Adding in marriage would really mess that up.
There are married priests in eastern rites, but NOT married bishops.

No female deacons are needed.
 
JustaServant said:
Thread title says it all.
Be nice.
Click to expand...
Reminds me of a quote I read somewhere which goes “If I had God’s Omnipotence, there are many changes I would make, If I had His Omniscience too, I would leave everything as it is.”
randomuser said:
Stop treating singles like lepers and second-class citizens.
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I don’t, never have and never will. The Church doesn’t teach that either; on the contrary. If that’s a change you want, you already have it, it’s just a matter of people not knowing or following. Please pray for them.

I hope this has helped

God Bless You

Thank you for reading
Josh
 
I think the change is coming, I am hopeful. It’s being orchestrated by those who do know their faith. Several generations have been lost, but many are coming who were not of the fold, Jesus is calling them to right the ship. Example, Scott Hahn.
 
jediliz said:
Never going to happen.

A priest is on call 24/7. Adding in marriage would really mess that up.
There are married priests in eastern rites, but NOT married bishops.

No female deacons are needed.
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Priests sure are on call 24/7, and there are just not enough of them. Mandatory celibacy is the number one barrier to young men entering the priesthood, and removing the requirement for diocesan priests would solve that problem practically overnight.

I do acknowledge that neither the East nor the West has ever done married bishops. What this means for the priesthood, though, is that married priests know they will always be diocesan priests. You know how with some priests you know they’re treating it as a stepping stone to another position? That would never happen with married priests.

Additionally, with some priests being married it would not mess everything up. There are married priests in this world and it objectively does not mess things up, not just in theory but in actual reality. Married priests operate a bit differently than the celibate ones, they serve at only one parish and travel a lot less, and their hours are a bit more flexible in order to allow for family time. Celibate priests wind up being more flexible comparatively speaking, but this is something they already do- they would just have to do a bit less of it on account of the priesthood becoming at least 50% larger all of a sudden. Not only would it not mess things up, it would operate more smoothly than it currently does, considering how so many parishes do without any permanent placement and this is a relatively light priest shortage compared to anywhere south of the United States.

As for female deacons, perhaps they aren’t needed. And it looks like that’s your preference as well. But some other people have a different preference, and that is what was inquired after by the OP. So what you should do is nicely ask what the reasons are for such a preference and don’t immediately down-talk people just because they did exactly what was asked of them- which is to say, express a non-Catholic preference for a non-theological change.
 
Starwarsfan2 said:
There used to be female deacons , so why not allow it again ?

Keep the faith, Starwars
Click to expand...
St. Paul addresses “all the saints, who are at Philippi, with the bishops and deacons” (Phil., i,1). A few years later (I Tim., iii, 8 sq.) he impresses upon Timothy that “deacons must be chaste, not double tongued, not given to much wine, not greedy of filthy lucre, holding the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience”. He directs, further, that they must “first be proved: and so let them minister, having no crime”, and he adds that they should be** “the husbands of one wife**: who rule well their children, and their own houses. For they that have ministered well, shall purchase to themselves a good degree, and much confidence in the faith which is in Christ Jesus”.

"The subject of the precise status of deaconesses is confessedly obscure and confused, but two or three points at any rate seem worth insisting on. In the first place there were no doubt influences at work at one time or other which tended to exaggerate the position of these women-helpers. This tendency has found expression in certain documents which have come down to us and of which it is difficult to gauge the value. Still there is no more reason to attach importance to these pretensions than there is to regard seriously the spasmodic attempts of certain Deacons (q.v.) to exceed their powers and to claim, for example, authority to consecrate.

Both in the one and the other case the voice of the Church made itself heard in conciliar decrees and the abuse in the end was repressed without difficulty. Such restrictive measures seem to be found in the rather obscure 11th canon of Laodicea, and in the more explicit 19th canon of the Council of Nicaea, which last distinctly lays down that deaconesses are to be accounted as lay persons and that they receive no ordination properly so called (Hefele-Leclercq, Conciles, I, 618).

In the West there seems always to have been considerable reluctance to accept the deaconesses, at any rate under that name, as a recognized institution of the Church. The Council of Nismes in 394 reproved in general the assumption of the levitical ministry by women, and other decrees, notably that of Orange in 441 (can. 26), forbid the ordaining of deaconesses altogether. It follows from what has been said that the Church as a whole repudiated the idea that women could in any proper sense be recipients of the Sacrament of Order. None the less in the East, and among the Syrians and Nestorians much more than among the Greeks (Hefele-Leclercq, Conciles, II, 448), the ecclesiastical status of deaconesses was greatly exaggerated.

Another source of confusion has also been introduced by those who have interpreted the word diaconissce, on the analogy of presbyters; and presbytides, episcopae and episcopissce, as the wives of deacons who, living apart from their husbands, acquired ipso facto an ecclesiastical character. No doubt such matrons who generously accepted this separation from their husbands were treated with special distinction and were supported by the Church, but if they became deaconesses, as in some cases they did, they had, like other women, to fulfil certain conditions and to receive a special consecration.

With regard to the duration of the order of deaconesses we note that when adult baptism became uncommon, this institution, which seems primarily to have been devised for the needs of women catechumens, gradually waned and in the end died out altogether. In the time of Justinian (d. 565) the deaconesses still held a position of importance. At the church of St. Sophia in Constantinople the staff consisted of sixty priests, one hundred deacons, forty deaconesses and ninety subdeacons; but Balsamon, Patriarch of Antioch about 1070 A.D., states that deaconesses in any proper sense had ceased to exist in the Church though the title was borne by certain nuns (Robinson, Ministry of Deaconesses, p. 93), while Matthew Blastares declared of the tenth century that the civil legislation concerning deaconesses, which ranked them rather among the clergy than the laity, had then been abandoned or forgotten (Migne, P.G., CXIX, 1272).

catholic.com/encyclopedia/deaconesses
 
Starwarsfan2 said:
  1. Establish cummunion between the EO , the OO , and the RCC
  2. Allow married priests, deacons , bishops etc
  3. Allow female deacons
  4. Establish impaired cummunion with Lutheranism
Click to expand...
  1. A Catholic priest would give an Orthodox Christian communion. It doesn’t work the other way.
  2. Married deacons we have already. Married priests is a complex debate, but its practical not theological. Its a matter of possibly having more priests, but each working less hours because of family commitments. I would be strongly against allowing a priest to marry as it could cause scandal, but an already married man becoming a priest I think should be a possibility for an exceptional candidate who does not have young children to care for. Married bishops would I think be a step too far.
  3. No. This is impossible as a matter of doctrine. Holy Orders can not validly be conferred on a woman and even attempting to do so results in excommunication.
  4. I’d be in favour of Lutherans being able to receive in the RC, but only if Anglicans who believe in the real presence were afforded the same treatment.
 
JustaServant said:
Thread title says it all.
Be nice.
Click to expand...
I can’t think of anything. If anything was changed, it wouldn’t be the Catholic Church as we know it anymore, would it?

The only thing that I hear sometimes from a few Catholics I know is that the bureaucratic red tape can be very long and tedious when the Catholic Church is deciding whether someone’s previous marriage was valid or not when they are seeking an annulment or seeking remarriage to someone else who has been previously married.

In other words, the gripe is not with the Catholic Church’s policy, but with the speed in which decisions are made.
 
Uniformity in RCIA classes and a review of the content of the lessons. Extend RCIA to 2 years.
 
My ideas
  1. A far greater focus on outreach and evangelisation, to Catholics who have fallen away, those around the fringes (“Christmas and Easter” Catholics and such), non-Catholic Christians and non-Christians alike (though clearly in different ways). A recognition that this is not simply about “living by example”, but about actively making disciples.
  2. Tied into this, a lot more resources spent on educating Catholics, especially on prayer and the sacraments and what the Bible actually says.
  3. Zero-tolerance on heterodox “spirit of Vatican 2” nonsense: liturgical abuse, irreverent practices at Mass, happy-clappy dumbed down Masses or anything that distracts from the reality of the sacrifice of the Mass and its importance. Coupled with this a recognition in the value of tradition and the greater use of traditional options during Mass and other events.
  4. Zero-tolerance on clergy or religious who preach things contrary to the church’s teachings, especially on important, unambiguous matters.
 
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