Pope May Give Women Larger Church Role

[Vicia]

EtienneGilson:

Or simply reverse John XXIII decision to make it mantatory for Cardinals to take holy orders and have a couple female Cardinals.

I have a hard time believing that there are no qualified women for such positions.

I wonder why we women think that we should try to be more influential in the Catholic church. We see were it has lead us here in America. We are so powerful that we are able to kill our unborn children and have absolutely no regrets, because, after all, it is our body. We can do whatever we want. If we can get ourselves higher up in the church, maybe we can turn it into a bureaucracy. Then we can make it ok to have women priests!!! Yeah!!! What then?

I guess I would just like to know why it is so important for us to want to have a hand in the higher ups of the church when our Lord and Savior obviously did not want that. Give it up, please.

 

[shawnbm]

MrS:

I believe you have that backwards. Mary said to the steward “…do whatever He asks you…”

and that is the same message which she has given to all of mankind ever since.

…and no woman can be “in persona” of Christ. JPII has not only emphatic, but he was final. Ordination of women will never be valid in the Catholic Church. Those who want that special grace can only look for it in other churches.

I stand corrected. As to JPII and his apostolic letter, I haev heard from many faithful Catholics that there is a dispute as to whether his pronouncement is on the same level as those doctrines I mentioned in my post. On another note, wasn’t Cardinal Dullas a priest, and not a bishop, when he was picked by JPII to join the cardinalate? I was just wondering. As for women and the priesthood and the placing it in context of twentieth century feminism and whatnot (referenced in other posts, not yours), there is some force to the argument. Even though some disagree with women being priests, it should not be in such angry tones and with such biting criticism. If this is a discipline and has not been pronounced definitively as a doctrine of the faith, then if it were to change that would be acceptable to everyone out there, right? In asking, I assume none of you are members of the Magisterium.

 

[EtienneGilson]

MrS:

Otherwise you might be further mislead into thinking there will be women priests. Ain’t gonna happen:nope:

Who is being mislead here? If you can give one example where I have pushed for female ordination I will eat my keyboard. The fact that you are unable or unwilling to differentiate between the ordained priesthood and the unordained Cardinalate indicates to me that you are either building straymen arguments against it or you truly do not understand the difference.

Furthermore, the red hat of the Cardinal has only “normally been reserved for priests” since John XXIII…40 years…hardly a drop in the water compared to the other 1960 years of Church praxes.

Vicia and dafalax, those are straymen arguments against giving women higher roles in the magisterium. We might as well prohibit higher education because higher education also seems to lead to liberalism. Historically the right to vote was argued against for any number of readons though I doubt you would be willing to return to an all male-electorate. Ironically, in manye cases, such as in France, women were denied the right to vote because of fears that they would vote more conservative than men.

Brain, I can think of a number of good religious women who would be more orthodox Cardinals than a number of the Cardinals so often libeled here. But historically the Cardinalate has been open to non-religious men as well. Since there is no theological impediment to it and at least one bishop thinks it is time to look at other options.

In closing, and hoping his words are not lacking in too much charity, let me quote the fairly popular apologist Mark Shea

Similarly, women have long exercised the kingly office that is part of their baptism. That’s why we have had abbesses, hospital administrators, principals, college presidents, and any number of other governance roles filled by women. Nothing in the Tradition forbids this.

So we are left with what? Basically, a kneejerk horror of doing things differently. But that’s not faithfulness to the Tradition. That’s simply traditionalism, which works (as the circumcision party at the Council of Jerusalem discovered) right up until the moment the Church says, “We aren’t bound by old ways simply because they are old. We are bound by old ways if they are apostolic.”

Here’s the facts: the College of Cardinals is a bureaucratic device fadged up in the High Middle Ages to handle an administrative problem. It is useful, not sacrosanct. It is no more a feature of Sacred Tradition than a parish finance council. Currently, the Church opts to have only ordained men as cardinals and it is fully within it rights to do so. But the fact remains that there is absolutely nothing standing in the way of the Church’s governors opting to alter the canon law that is their own creation and make lay men and women cardinals, if they see fit.

mark-shea.com/bind.html