Ordaining Female Catholic Priests

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Ordaining women is like consecrating carrots to become the Eucharist. It just won’t work.

I’ve seen many women play great roles in the Eastern Churches today. Most of them even are wives of priests. I think they are great examples of how women contribute to the Church without asking for something that isn’t theirs to receive.
 
Believe it or not…

When I was in RCIA back in 1997, one of the teacher/helpers was saying how much “better” the church would be when women could be priests.

I was shocked. Even in my newness in faith, I knew this was wrong. I can’t understand why people are always trying to mess and twist the truth. I was almost ready to walk away. Had there not been more orthodox, faithful teachers there, I would have walked, for sure.

And this is what we have as Catholics - a male priesthood, for over 2,000 years. That’s it. No changes. Jesus mandated it. We follow it. Just as Jim Dandy, TrueLight, Constantine and other Catholics say. This is our Chuch. We’re Roman Catholic. Period. And really, what other churches decide to do is their choice. That’s not what or who we follow, right?
 
Believe it or not

When I was in RCIA back in 1997, one of the teacher/helpers was saying how much “better” the church would be when women could be priests.

I was shocked. Even in my newness in faith, I knew this was wrong. I can’t understand why people are always trying to mess and twist the truth. I was almost ready to walk away. Had there not been more orthodox, faithful teachers there, I would have walked, for sure.

And this is what we have as Catholics - a male priesthood, for over 2,000 years. That’s it. No changes. Jesus mandated it. We follow it. Just as Jim Dandy, TrueLight, Constantine and other Catholics say. This is our Chuch. We’re Roman Catholic. Period. And really, what other churches decide to do is their choice. That’s not what or who we follow, right?
I believe it! I can tell a little story of my formation to the diaconate. One of our instructors, a retired priest, while teaching a class on ecumenism stated several times how women should be ordained, they would make better priests, the other denoms have it right, etc.

Well he was talking to nine men and several wives who are very conservative, and the diaconate director for our diocese. He should have thought that situation out a little better. After the first class where he stated these idiotic statements, we called a meeting with our director and filled him in on our plan to go to the bishop if we hear one more time about ordaining women, mysteriously the subject never came up again; he just taught the material he was brought in to teach.

I’ve heard this stated many times and in the past failed to object, no more will I keep silent. It’s our duty as Catholics to set the record straight when people talk in ignorance; even priests, deacons or religious.
 
I believe it! I can tell a little story of my formation to the diaconate. One of our instructors, a retired priest, while teaching a class on ecumenism stated several times how women should be ordained, they would make better priests, the other denoms have it right, etc.

Well he was talking to nine men and several wives who are very conservative, and the diaconate director for our diocese. He should have thought that situation out a little better. After the first class where he stated these idiotic statements, we called a meeting with our director and filled him in on our plan to go to the bishop if we hear one more time about ordaining women, mysteriously the subject never came up again; he just taught the material he was brought in to teach.

I’ve heard this stated many times and in the past failed to object, no more will I keep silent. It’s our duty as Catholics to set the record straight when people talk in ignorance; even priests, deacons or religious.
Sometimes you get these stealth “teachers” who think they can form a new generationt to their less-than-Catholic ideas. We had a deacon who used to do a lot of the Catechist training. He was very intellingent and knowledgeable so people tended to take him at his word. But then he went off the deep end and started teaching things like Deacons can hear Confessions when the person is in the hospital or that Confirmation isn’t a real Sacrament. Quitetly, the right people were consulted and he went off the speaker lists.

I am guessing there are lots of RCIA classes that have that kind of faulty leadership or misplaced liberalism. My point was less on the idea of women clergy than on the poster’s misunderstanding of the priesthood and of the Sacrament of Holy Orders.
 
If anyone is still interested in this interview, it is on the archive page now and you can listen - no log required.
 
Sometimes you get these stealth “teachers” who think they can form a new generationt to their less-than-Catholic ideas. We had a deacon who used to do a lot of the Catechist training. He was very intellingent and knowledgeable so people tended to take him at his word. But then he went off the deep end and started teaching things like Deacons can hear Confessions when the person is in the hospital or that Confirmation isn’t a real Sacrament. Quitetly, the right people were consulted and he went off the speaker lists.

I am guessing there are lots of RCIA classes that have that kind of faulty leadership or misplaced liberalism. My point was less on the idea of women clergy than on the poster’s misunderstanding of the priesthood and of the Sacrament of Holy Orders.
Error comes into the Church in three stages: First error asks for toleration, it will keep its opinion private and not disturb the doctrines of the Church. After awhile, error says that it is equal with Truth and both views should be tolerated. Again after awhile error say that it is the majority view and that Truth will have to leave because Truth is a disturber of the peace of the Church.
I seen this happen in the ELCA, first the leadership changed their view on how the Bible is to be interpreted, then came women ordination and now they have non-celibate homosexual ordination and talk of same sex marriage in the church.
 
I believe it! I can tell a little story of my formation to the diaconate. One of our instructors, a retired priest, while teaching a class on ecumenism stated several times how women should be ordained, they would make better priests, the other denoms have it right, etc.

Well he was talking to nine men and several wives who are very conservative, and the diaconate director for our diocese. He should have thought that situation out a little better. After the first class where he stated these idiotic statements, we called a meeting with our director and filled him in on our plan to go to the bishop if we hear one more time about ordaining women, mysteriously the subject never came up again; he just taught the material he was brought in to teach.

I’ve heard this stated many times and in the past failed to object, no more will I keep silent.
That’s a rather odd way of putting it, when the story is about your silencing someone else.

Who wants you to keep silent? You seem to be the one who wants those who differ with you to be silent.

The assumption made by conservatives throughout this thread is that real tolerance is impossible. It’s certainly difficult–hence the many examples of liberals failing at it.

And it’s not always a good thing. Some things should not be tolerated. So if you think it’s your duty to silence those who advocate women’s ordination, I can respect that. But speak of it honestly–don’t word it as if you are the one whose ability to speak was being threatened.
 
Precisely…Jim, this was resolved in 1994.
It is not clear to all members of your Communion that unilateral statements ever resolve anything.

I recognize that conservative Catholics respond to this fact by saying that such “liberals” should go join the Episcopal Church or something. Well, that’s something you guys have to resolve among yourselves, although I’ve never been comfortable with heeding your advice passively (i.e., by remaining Episcopalian in part because of my discomfort with the unilateralism prevalent within your Communion).

Edwin
 
I had an Old Testament class taught by a feminist nun…

She told us she was accepted because she came from this so called ‘orthodox’, Roman Catholic college. But she was not orthodox. We were in ministry formation that was correcting errors out in the field. She would renounce the Church in class with all the feminist issues…there were some things she said I thought correct…like help people’s needs by developing their talents…the nuns had it over the priests in this area…

The next class, the priest who headed the program would come in. We just sat there seeing two completely polarized positions, minutes apart. I didn’t say anything about her to him. After awhile, people went to the program director about what was happening. She came in the next week, and went right up to me with a big smile…giving me the impression she would have seen me be the one to contest her position, but I didn’t. It was OK as we went along.

I made it in on test day when the roads were icey. I said somethings. She was mad, this was December, 1994. She said Cardinal Ratzinger just made a definitive statement that women could not become priests…that was it. The way he did it, it included the Pope. She said she and other women were going to ship out and move to the Episcopalian Church. She said there were people in her class she could become friends some day but not now because there were people in there raising her blood pressure.

She may be in the Episcopalian Church now!
 
…And this is what we have as Catholics - a male priesthood, for over 2,000 years. …
Haven’t you heard? The Church has been wrong for those 2,000 years, but one generation, the most recent, got it right.
 
Well said! If you break with a male only priesthood, you will start down that slippery slope that the liberal Protestant churches have taken, to a bad end.
Exactly. Everyone who thinks otherwise needs to take a look at the Anglican Communion.
 
Sedonoman,

You said it all…but I would include the Jewish tradition as well, going back another 3,000 years or so…making it 5,000+ years of male leadership and priesthood.

There are alot, alot of women who want men to resume their leadership roles–everywhere…but to respect women and our gifts.
 
Sedonoman,

You said it all…but I would include the Jewish tradition as well, going back another 3,000 years or so…making it 5,000+ years of male leadership and priesthood.

That makes my point even better. 😉
 
So the Latin church will lose some of its most noisy and belligerent heretically-inclined women and men. Good. May the rest follow quickly behind them. I may not be a Catholic anymore myself, but that won’t prevent me from agreeing with Cardinal Ratzinger/Pope Benedict on this one: Women cannot be priests. Cannot. As in, it is literally impossible. They can dress up, they can play, they can even get men to bless them in such a way as they really, really think they are (or become) priests. That doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change the fact that they’re not, and will never be because they can’t be.

This will remain the case forever and ever, even if (God forbid) the Latin church were to reverse itself on this point. May we all hope that this does not ever happen.
 
I have to say through this doesn’t distract that the Sisters are sorely missed in the Church and a very needed vocation is an understatement.
 
I don’t think the Catholic church will ever ordain female priests. But if they did, it would remove one of the obstacles to my becoming Catholic.
 
… They can dress up, they can play, they can even get men to bless them in such a way as they really, really think they are (or become) priests. …
I think part of their problem is they look upon the ban as a block to their career opportunities. But the priesthood doesn’t exist to provide such opportunities.
 
Yeah, I agree. I’ve ranted somewhat extensively on this before, and I really do think this is a residual effect of the “anything you can do I can do better” brand of feminism that makes absolutely everything fair game for gender revolutionaries, so that if they don’t go after every possible position under the sun then they’re somehow not truly equal.

It is perhaps a radical feminist’s version of George Mallory’s famous quip wherein someone asked him why he climbed Mount Everest and he replied “because it’s there”. By this I mean: They don’t seem to want it because it is properly glorifying God (or else they’d be doing any of the many, many things they could properly be doing instead of going after the priesthood); they want it because it’s there, and, as in the case of the intrepid mountain climber, a summit to be conquered in their desire to have complete mastery over nature. If the situation were reversed and only women could be priests and only men could be nuns, similar groups would rise up to challenge that state of affairs as well.
 
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