Pope reaffirms ban on women priests

[PRmerger]

I don’t.
I think these would-be women priests would be better off just leaving the Catholic Church:shrug:

And then they would be creating a god in their own image.

Any true seeker will endeavor to conform her beliefs to Truth, not shop around for a place that preaches that which she finds palatable.

 

[Marybeloved]

If his apostles were only of a certain age range…would that mean older men could not become priests ever?

This makes no sense because priests like all people grow old and die . Also,there are quite a few Old men who were Priests in the Old Testament.

Also, you are leaving out the context for the priest-hood. The priesthood was derived directly from the levitical priesthood of the Old Testament which specifically required MEN from a certain tribe to be Priests- This in turn only followed the earlier priesthoods where MEN and FATHERS of families and clans were priests. There is NO woman priest in ALL of the Bible.
-First it was Cain and Abel, not their sisters.
-Then it was Noah, Job, Abraham, Melchizedek, Isaac, Jacob, not their wives, daughters or sisters.
-Then Comes Moses and siblings: His sister Miriam clearly has rank and stature among the Hebrews, but God chooses Aaron alone and his SONS to be priests.
-Then comes the Levitical Priesthood of Men from the tribe of Levi.
-Finally Jesus comes and takes the place of the High-Priest (Old Priesthood) and all the previous priests in himself- He becomes the eternal High Priest for ALL mankind. He decides to chose participants in this priesthood to continue to make the new sacrifice of himself present to all his people for all ages- He then chooses ONLY men from among his followers to be priests. This action of his is in keeping with the teaching and understanding of the Priesthood from which he takes his own priesthood and raises it up higher. It’s NOT insignificant.

Someone had to interpret it this way, decipher his actions as meaning this.
Who was it?

The first Christians who all knew and loved him and knew the nature of the priesthood and the meaning of all his actions. Can anyone now tell us that we in this century understood more of the significance of his actions than these people?

Yes. But.
Women were also not allowed to be many things two thousand years ago.
Do we find women in the bible as doctors and landowners and carpenters and fishermen and politicians and bankers?
I don’t think so (but do correct me if I’m wrong, would love to be wrong on this).
Yet the church allows them to do these things today.

This totally misses the point. For this to be an appropriate analogy to the Priesthood, you would have to show us:
1)That this was Christ’s own practice, not just the larger society’s- That Christ *** himself ***somehow prevented/excluded women from these professions and then later on the Church decided to include them.
2) That this was the ***Church’***s teaching and practice from the Apostles down through History, yet the Church later permitted women to do these jobs.

So just because we don’t find women doing certain things then, it shouldn’t and doesn’t mean they cannot do them* now*.

It’s not what we find WOMEN doing/not doing- It’s what we find CHRIST doing/not doing when the options were perfectly available to him (Just like it is what we find GOD doing in the OT when the other options are perfectly available to him)- which is, NOT ordaining any of his faithful women disciples priests along with the men disciples.

Maybe she wasn’t a priest for many reasons…she had other work to do and an entire family to take care of…maybe she didn’t like to talk in public…maybe she was shy (she stays in the sidelines for much of the bible)…maybe she had sore feet…there could be zillions of reasons. Maybe she didn’t want to be a priest.

So ALL the women disciples happened to be shy, have sore feet etc, and it cannot possibly be that CHRIST just chose not to ordain them? Talk about implausibility!

By the way did you know there were women who remained celibate (virgins) for Christ from the very beginning of Christianity? What would be the inconvenience in ordaining these women, for example? Yet the Apostles did not. Clearly, these people (both men and women) who lived with and knew Christ and loved him, understood and interpreted his actions very differently than you. And why should anyone in this century purport to understand Christ’s motivations in his actions better than this group of people?

The point is…if he never said women can’t be priests, we don’t know that that is what he was thinking.

We know that he did not chose ANY of them, yet they were perfectly available for the choosing, they were willing and faithful and loyal- Would have obeyed perfectly. It’s not for us to decide that he did not really “mean” to do what he did (exclude them) based on our 21st century sensibilities and then purport to contradict that very action of his. The first Christian understood and loved this man better than anyone, they went to horrific deaths for him and they understood his wishes very clearly.

The sacraments are very special. God takes something from nature and sets it apart. He combines it with grace in away that makes grace transferable directly to anyone who receives that thing taken from nature. His choices in this area (What things he uses) is very deliberate and no one can just come up with his own ideas of what to use apart from what God chose. To Catholics, Christ is YHWH- His actions are not just like any Great Prophet’s or Messenger’s- They are the actions of GOD. They are very significant, even in seemingly small things.

 

[Tantum_ergo]

What I don’t understand is heaintheavy claiming Jesus “never said no to women priests.”

Excuse me? How do you ‘deduce’ that?

Because"And lo the Lord Jesus sayeth, 'no women priests",isn’t found in 'the bible?"

Would you care to point out to me the Scripture which says," and all that the Lord Jesus said and taught to His disciples, which containeth ALL truth forever and there is no truth that will not be revealed otherwise, is to be found within the covers of the Holy Bible, and only there?"

Since Scripture itself teaches that not everything the Lord spoke and taught is contained in Scripture, and since Scripture teaches of a Holy Spirit who will guide to all truth (um, if somebody has to be guided to something, it isn’t already THERE and known to them, by definition), and since Scripture itself points out the apostles already (in acts) doing something on their own under the guidance of the Holy Spirit (which is appointing another apostle in Judas’s place. Jesus NEVER SAID, “oh guys, I like the number 12, go appoint somebody now that Judas is gone, ok?” But the apostles appointed somebody because they had AUTHORITY to make that kind of decision.

And since Scripture also tells us that the CHURCH is the pillar and foundation of Truth, and Jesus told His disciples to found a CHURCH (not ‘a lot of churches’ but ONE TRUE CHURCH), and we know that the apostles (the 12 including the ONE WHO WAS NOT PERSONALLY APPOINTED BY JESUS) had authority to MAKE DECISIONS. . . BINDING DECISIONS (see Scripture Matthew 18 regarding ‘bind and loose’), and they chose not only to keep on appointing people to positions of AUTHORITY by THEIR authority, it makes sense that not only through the first 350 years of Christianity (which was WITHOUT THE BIBLE AS WE KNOW IT) and thereafter that the apostles in their CHURCH by their authority and the guidance of the Holy Spirit would be able to be guided to all truth, then and now.

That you might not LIKE this truth, heaintheavy, doesn’t mean you can walk away and claim ‘Jesus never taught this’. First, you have absolutely no evidence that He didn’t teach it (as Scripture doesn’t contain all teaching) and second, since Jesus established a Church with AUTHORITY and claimed Himself to be ONE with THAT CHURCH, then that Church DOES teach what Jesus teaches.

 

[AngryAtheist8]

This makes no sense because priests like all people grow old and die . Also,there are quite a few Old men who were Priests in the Old Testament.

**Also, you are leaving out the context for the priest-hood. The priesthood was derived directly from the levitical priesthood of the Old Testament which specifically required MEN from a certain tribe to be Priests- This in turn only followed the earlier priesthoods where MEN and FATHERS of families and clans were priests. There is NO woman priest in ALL of the Bible. **
-First it was Cain and Abel, not their sisters.
-Then it was Noah, Job, Abraham, Melchizedek, Isaac, Jacob, not their wives, daughters or sisters.
-Then Comes Moses and siblings: His sister Miriam clearly has rank and stature among the Hebrews, but God chooses Aaron alone and his SONS to be priests.
-Then comes the Levitical Priesthood of Men from the tribe of Levi.
-Finally Jesus comes and takes the place of the High-Priest (Old Priesthood) and all the previous priests in himself- He becomes the eternal High Priest for ALL mankind. He decides to chose participants in this priesthood to continue to make the new sacrifice of himself present to all his people for all ages- He then chooses ONLY men from among his followers to be priests. This action of his is in keeping with the teaching and understanding of the Priesthood from which he takes his own priesthood and raises it up higher. It’s NOT insignificant.
The first Christians who all knew and loved him and knew the nature of the priesthood and the meaning of all his actions. Can anyone now tell us that we in this century understood more of the significance of his actions than these people?
This totally misses the point. For this to be an appropriate analogy to the Priesthood, you would have to show us:
1)That this was Christ’s own practice, not just the larger society’s- That Christ *** himself ***somehow prevented/excluded women from these professions and then later on the Church decided to include them.
2) That this was the ***Church’***s teaching and practice from the Apostles down through History, yet the Church later permitted women to do these jobs.
It’s not what we find WOMEN doing/not doing- It’s what we find CHRIST doing/not doing when the options were perfectly available to him (Just like it is what we find GOD doing in the OT when the other options are perfectly available to him)- which is, NOT ordaining any of his faithful women disciples priests along with the men disciples.
So ALL the women disciples happened to be shy, have sore feet etc, and it cannot possibly be that CHRIST just chose not to ordain them? Talk about implausibility!

By the way did you know there were women who remained celibate (virgins) for Christ from the very beginning of Christianity? What would be the inconvenience in ordaining these women, for example? Yet the Apostles did not. Clearly, these people (both men and women) who lived with and knew Christ and loved him, understood and interpreted his actions very differently than you. And why should anyone in this century purport to understand Christ’s motivations in his actions better than this group of people?
We know that he did not chose ANY of them, yet they were perfectly available for the choosing, they were willing and faithful and loyal- Would have obeyed perfectly. It’s not for us to decide that he did not really “mean” to do what he did (exclude them) based on our 21st century sensibilities and then purport to contradict that very action of his. The first Christian understood and loved this man better than anyone, they went to horrific deaths for him and they understood his wishes very clearly.

The sacraments are very special. God takes something from nature and sets it apart. He combines it with grace in away that makes grace transferable directly to anyone who receives that thing taken from nature. His choices in this area (What things he uses) is very deliberate and no one can just come up with his own ideas of what to use apart from what God chose. To Catholics, Christ is YHWH- His actions are not just like any Great Prophet’s or Messenger’s- They are the actions of GOD. They are very significant, even in seemingly small things.

Of course not.
The ancient Jews thought of women as chattel.
We shouldn’t be surprised that they (i.e. Jewish women) were denied positions of respect and honor.
The fact that the Jews did honor a few women is far more remarkable.

 

[mangy_dog]

Because.
In time, we see that some rules are made to be broken…or at least, revised.
This is one of them.
But I guess it’s just not time…yet.
It makes no sense not to have women as priests. Being a priest is something spiritual and a calling of the soul, it is not linked to specific male sex organs, as childbirth is.
Jesus himself, we are told, did not take part in any sexual activity involving his gender-specific organs.
If several women–including Mary Magdalene, Jesus’ favorite–could hang out and move around with the apostles/disciples and help preach, why can’t women do so today?
It is unfortunate that mortal men–who exactly was this?–interpreted words collected in the Christian canon centuries after Jesus died to mean that women cannot be priests.
Very much so.
I hope that our granddaughters and their daughters after that will live in a time that is less rigid.

This will never occur because the gates of hell will never prevail against the Catholic Church.

The aloofness of your thread is so clueless and so full of misinformation, that it is laughable if it weren’t so disturbing.

Doctrine of demons is what you seem to be advocating here. Wake up!

 

[LilyM]

Of course not.
The ancient Jews thought of women as chattel.
We shouldn’t be surprised that they (i.e. Jewish women) were denied positions of respect and honor.
The fact that the Jews did honor a few women is far more remarkable.

JESUS did not view women as chattel by any means - he many times defied tradition and even broke the Mosaic law. A bleeding woman touched Him. That in itself rendered Him ritually unclean. Any other Jewish man would have torn strips off her for daring to so defile him, then rushed off in a huff to the Temple baths to purify themselves. Jesus instead treats her with compassion and commends her for her faith - and heals her!

Same with the woman who anoints His feet - a bad woman! Some again wold consider Him ritually defiled by her touch. Not Jesus, who again commends what she has done and defends her.

Note the episode where Martha is doing the typical wifey-chattelly thing, running around serving everyone else. Does Jesus praise her for this? No. He scolds her. Mary is sitting at his feet listening. Very significant. This was definitely NOT the place for a woman by
any means, but a place for a student, a disciple. A man.

Does He scold Mary for arrogantly assuming a place traditionally only occupied by men?
No, He praises her! He really turns nearly everything the Jews traditionally believed about
women completely on its head.

I believe this has all been said over and over again on this thread and others. Jesus was
NOT a mindless slave to traditional Jewish stereotypes of women. He was the opposite. That is why His failure to make any women Apostles, to have any present at the Last Supper where He institutes and commands the future celebration of the Eucharist, or after His resurrection where He bestows the power to forgive sins, is an eloquent failure, a glarif and meaningful silence.

 

[perro_sarnoso]

Yes. But.
Women were also not allowed to be many things two thousand years ago.
Do we find women in the bible as doctors and landowners and carpenters and fishermen and politicians and bankers?
I don’t think so (but do correct me if I’m wrong, would love to be wrong on this).
Yet the church allows them to do these things today.

So just because we don’t find women doing certain things then, it shouldn’t and doesn’t mean they cannot do them* now*.

Just because Mary wasn’t a priest…an entire gender should be shut out?

Maybe she wasn’t a priest for many reasons…she had other work to do and an entire family to take care of…maybe she didn’t like to talk in public…maybe she was shy (she stays in the sidelines for much of the bible)…maybe she had sore feet…there could be zillions of reasons. Maybe she didn’t want to be a priest.

The point is…if he never said women can’t be priests, we don’t know that that is what he was thinking.

yes but & maybe…as I pull my clueless to English dictionary…it seems that you are really saying:

yesbut - Tradtion, Revelation and Magisterium don’t matter to me.

maybe- my mind is made up, don’t confuse me with the truth.

 

[PRmerger]

yes but & maybe…as I pull my clueless to English dictionary…it seems that you are really saying:

yesbut - Tradtion, Revelation and Magisterium don’t matter to me.

maybe- my mind is made up, don’t confuse me with the truth.

Sadly, I think you are absolutely correct about this.

It reminds me of the scene in CS Lewis’ The Last Battle, in which the dwarves are being shown that they are in paradise, but they are insisting that they are in a stinky old barn, despite all the evidence being provided to them. When flowers are offered they insist that it’s manure.

They only keep repeating, “The dwarves are for the dwarves.”

What else can you do?

 

[Kithrus]

This is no about equality…

 

[curlycool89]

Of course not.
The ancient Jews thought of women as chattel.
We shouldn’t be surprised that they (i.e. Jewish women) were denied positions of respect and honor.
The fact that the Jews did honor a few women is far more remarkable.

I’m sorry, but your post here displays a complete lack of understanding of the OT.

One of the first Judges (in the book of Judges) was a women, that is that a women led the people of Israel against other nations in battle. She was also a prophetess, so she would have been effectively the political leader of Israel (as all Judges were).

The mother in 2 Maccabees is one of the most heroic people in the entire Bible. She watched her sons all get executed in increasingly excruciating ways, and all the while encouraged them to not give in and to trust in God as she trusts in God. In a way she is a precursor to Mary, who watched her only Son be crucified on the cross.

I’m sorry, but your position is simply false.

 

[AngryAtheist8]

I’m sorry, but your post here displays a complete lack of understanding of the OT.

One of the first Judges (in the book of Judges) was a women, that is that a women led the people of Israel against other nations in battle. She was also a prophetess, so she would have been effectively the political leader of Israel (as all Judges were).

The mother in 2 Maccabees is one of the most heroic people in the entire Bible. She watched her sons all get executed in increasingly excruciating ways, and all the while encouraged them to not give in and to trust in God as she trusts in God. In a way she is a precursor to Mary, who watched her only Son be crucified on the cross.

I’m sorry, but your position is simply false.

I have to admit that I am amused by this post more than anything else.

In the Old Testament there are instructions for selling your daughter into slavery, the 10th Commandment lists a wife as property, women (but not men) could be killed if their spouse successfully accused them of not being a virgin on their wedding night, and there is a traditional Jewish prayer for men to recite thanking God that they were not born women (there is no similar Jewish prayer for women to thank God that they were not born men).

I could go on and on, but the pattern is pretty well defined.
As I said before, women who were honored in Judaism were very much the exception, not the rule.

 

[AngryAtheist8]

JESUS did not view women as chattel by any means - he many times defied tradition and even broke the Mosaic law. A bleeding woman touched Him. That in itself rendered Him ritually unclean. Any other Jewish man would have torn strips off her for daring to so defile him, then rushed off in a huff to the Temple baths to purify themselves. Jesus instead treats her with compassion and commends her for her faith - and heals her!

Same with the woman who anoints His feet - a bad woman! Some again wold consider Him ritually defiled by her touch. Not Jesus, who again commends what she has done and defends her.

Note the episode where Martha is doing the typical wifey-chattelly thing, running around serving everyone else. Does Jesus praise her for this? No. He scolds her. Mary is sitting at his feet listening. Very significant. This was definitely NOT the place for a woman by
any means, but a place for a student, a disciple. A man.

Does He scold Mary for arrogantly assuming a place traditionally only occupied by men?
No, He praises her! He really turns nearly everything the Jews traditionally believed about
women completely on its head.
I believe this has all been said over and over again on this thread and others. Jesus was
NOT a mindless slave to traditional Jewish stereotypes of women. He was the opposite. That is why His failure to make any women Apostles, to have any present at the Last Supper where He institutes and commands the future celebration of the Eucharist, or after His resurrection where He bestows the power to forgive sins, is an eloquent failure, a glarif and meaningful silence.

Perhaps, of course Saint Paul later reaffirms the status quo when it comes to relations between men and women (as well as masters and slaves).

 

[LilyM]

Perhaps, of course Saint Paul later reaffirms the status quo when it comes to relations between men and women (as well as masters and slaves).

Is St Paul the be-all and end-all? Or at least the hardline conservative interpretation sometimes attached to his words, which may or may not be an entirely accurate one?

More than enough Catholic women have been happy, with the blessing of the men, to assert real power and influence, both in the religious sphere as teachers and advisors to the powers that be in the church and in other ways in the healing and education and social work professions, not to mention as de facto and de jure rulers of countries and managing directors of business enterprises. Which leads me to take the emphasis on St Paul with a little grain of salt.

Simply put - the most central, most revered, most emulated and exalted and endlessly lionized, most spiritually powerful and influential figure in Catholicism, after Jesus Himself, is no priest or Pope, no man, not even St Paul or Peter or John the Baptist, but a woman, the Virgin Mary.

Others may talk about respect for women, Catholics live and breathe it with her ever held up before us as a model of human perfection. Not being divine as Jesus was, she yet was without sin and unsurpassed in sanctity and virtue among all God’s creatures, and honorees by Him above all. What greater source of pride and strength could a believing woman have than that?

 

[nickybr38]

I just have one question… if the Jews hated women so much, why was the Queen Mother pretty much the second most powerful person in their culture?

Sure, socially the ordinary female was not exactly treated all that well but this is true of pretty much every culture in that time, it is not unique to the Jewish people. We can’t look backwards with twentieth century eyes and cast judgment. We have to look at them with the eyes of the world THEN… and it has always been my understanding that compared to the rest of the world in that time and in that place, they were doing pretty darn well.

 

[AngryAtheist8]

Is St Paul the be-all and end-all? Or at least the hardline conservative interpretation sometimes attached to his words, which may or may not be an entirely accurate one?

More than enough Catholic women have been happy, with the blessing of the men, to assert real power and influence, both in the religious sphere as teachers and advisors to the powers that be in the church and in other ways in the healing and education and social work professions, not to mention as de facto and de jure rulers of countries and managing directors of business enterprises. Which leads me to take the emphasis on St Paul with a little grain of salt.

**Simply put - the most central, most revered, most emulated and exalted and endlessly lionized, most spiritually powerful and influential figure in Catholicism, after Jesus Himself, is no priest or Pope, no man, not even St Paul or Peter or John the Baptist, but a woman, the Virgin Mary.

Others may talk about respect for women, Catholics live and breathe it with her ever held up before us as a model of human perfection. Not being divine as Jesus was, she yet was without sin and unsurpassed in sanctity and virtue among all God’s creatures, and honorees by Him above all.** What greater source of pride and strength could a believing woman have than that?

I have honestly always had trouble taking the Virgin Mary seriously as the ideal woman.

What is her defining characteristic?
Not courage, hope, intelligence, willpower, discipline, or fortitude.
Simply devotion to God.

A devotion that was never tested the way it was in the case of the Christian martyrs.
Moreover she was only honored after she died/was assumed into heaven.

Frankly I think my own mother was far more admirable than the Virgin Mary as she’s usually depicted (of course I’m biased ).

You could even argue that Marian devotions lowered the status of women. By promoting as the ideal (woman) someone who always meekly conceded to masculine authority:shrug:

 

[AngryAtheist8]

Is St Paul the be-all and end-all? Or at least the hardline conservative interpretation sometimes attached to his words, which may or may not be an entirely accurate one?

More than enough Catholic women have been happy, with the blessing of the men, to assert real power and influence, both in the religious sphere as teachers and advisors to the powers that be in the church and in other ways in the healing and education and social work professions, not to mention as de facto and de jure rulers of countries and managing directors of business enterprises. Which leads me to take the emphasis on St Paul with a little grain of salt.

Simply put - the most central, most revered, most emulated and exalted and endlessly lionized, most spiritually powerful and influential figure in Catholicism, after Jesus Himself, is no priest or Pope, no man, not even St Paul or Peter or John the Baptist, but a woman, the Virgin Mary.

Others may talk about respect for women, Catholics live and breathe it with her ever held up before us as a model of human perfection. Not being divine as Jesus was, she yet was without sin and unsurpassed in sanctity and virtue among all God’s creatures, and honorees by Him above all.** What greater source of pride and strength could a believing woman have than that**?

Thinking that your gender was so special and awesome that God chose to take on its form (instead of the other obvious choice)

 

[AngryAtheist8]

**I just have one question… if the Jews hated women so much, why was the Queen Mother pretty much the second most powerful person in their culture? **
Sure, socially the ordinary female was not exactly treated all that well but this is true of pretty much every culture in that time, it is not unique to the Jewish people. We can’t look backwards with twentieth century eyes and cast judgment. We have to look at them with the eyes of the world THEN… and it has always been my understanding that compared to the rest of the world in that time and in that place, they were doing pretty darn well.

I am aware of that element of Jewish history.
I frankly think its a sign of how little regard Jewish monarchs and their people had for the wives of the king. If your mother is still the most important woman in your life even after you marry (assuming your a man) something has seriously gone wrong.

 

[AngryAtheist8]

I just have one question… if the Jews hated women so much, why was the Queen Mother pretty much the second most powerful person in their culture?

**Sure, socially the ordinary female was not exactly treated all that well but this is true of pretty much every culture in that time, it is not unique to the Jewish people. We can’t look backwards with twentieth century eyes and cast judgment. **We have to look at them with the eyes of the world THEN… and it has always been my understanding that compared to the rest of the world in that time and in that place, they were doing pretty darn well.

But nobody looks at those other cultures as models worth emulating or as societies we should study to determine proper moral behavior.
The ancient Israelites were a fairly vicious, xenophobic, and misogynistic bunch.
We should not idealize them.

 

[nickybr38]

I am aware of that element of Jewish history.
I frankly think its a sign of how little regard Jewish monarchs and their people had for the wives of the king. If your mother is still the most important woman in your life even after you marry (assuming your a man) something has seriously gone wrong.

Maybe to Western civilization…

 

[nickybr38]

But nobody looks at those other cultures as models worth emulating or as societies we should study to determine proper moral behavior.
The ancient Israelites were a fairly vicious, xenophobic, and misogynistic bunch.
We should not idealize them.

We do not idealize them. We idealize Jesus of Nazareth, who amended many of the ‘wrongs’ the Israelites were committing.