Questions regarding "female ordination"

[Tantum_ergo]

Also…to use the example that women should not be ordained because the apostles were all men…another reason why this seems a leap to me is that there are a lot of specifics Jesus performed that we *don’t *follow in this same way.

For example…there were supposedly only men at the last supper, yes? (Unless the women were, um, serving? At least, if there were other women present, serving, cooking and/or eating with the men, it’s not mentioned).

And that is when he did the whole bread/wine this-is-my-body talk, right?
So only men received the eucharist; he only gave it to men.

So using the same line of argument, I am curious…why do we not take that act, for example, as meaning *only men can receive the eucharist? *
He only chose men to receive it the only one time he did it, so it follows that…he only meant for men to receive it…?

As other posters mentioned, the ideas mentioned are not the ONLY reasons that priesthood is male only.

Remember, there was no ‘Bible’ as we know it for the first 350 years of Christianity. People PREACHED the gospel orally. And some people started out preaching correct teaching (and we had the apostles early to ‘set them straight’ and the Church to guide people) but then drifted off (gnosticism). Since the early Christians did NOT have the Internet or even regular Churches where they could meet or a place where all the bishops could get together and proclaim the laws freely, it was kind of hard for a group of Christians in Phyrgia who started getting ‘gnostic teaching’ by Flavius the apostate both to hear the correct teaching from Junius the orthodox, or for JUNIUS to let his bishop know that Flavius was teaching untruth. Junius couldn’t pick up the phone; couldn’t get into a car, etc. It could take months to travel places (you had to wait for good weather, avoid bandits, plagues, etc.).

BUT when Junius managed to get to his bishop, the bishop got on the stick and as quickly as possible sent out people to CORRECT Flavius. Of course it might take 10 years between Flavius’ starting to teach heresy and Octavio coming to correct Flavius. By this time, you might have people who liked Flavius teaching BETTER than the truth, and they might make a lot of fuss. (sound familiar to our times?)

Point is, when people started teaching wrong, the Church came BANG OUT to correct people.

Here’s the thing. If people were teaching and hearing the CORRECT TEACHINGS OF CHRIST, THERE WAS NO NEED TO SET OUT ALL KINDS OF LETTERS SAYING, "OK, PEOPLE, YOU’RE ALL FINE HERE.'

It was only when people starting going OFF THE TRACK that you would get letters from bishops and the early Church Fathers saying things like, "No, Jesus is both God and Man. He isn’t just God alone. Stop teaching He’s God alone, that’s a heresy."

Or, "No, Christ doesn’t tell us that matter is evil and ONLY spirit is good. That’s a wrong teaching. Stop it."

IOW, if people were doing the things Christ taught, that His apostles upheld, and that the Holy Spirit confirmed through the Church (things like the Trinity), there was no NEED to fire off ‘memos’ to correct non-existent errors.

SINCE the people all along were following Christ’s CORRECT teachings that only men could be priests, there was no need to set out big old documents proclaiming “Only men can be priests.” WHY WASTE TIME STATING WHAT WOULD HAVE BEEN OBVIOUS TRUTH when there were PLENTY of errors going around that needed to be corrected?

It is only in the last few decades or so that (as usual) the heretically inclined have come along to ‘question’ the truth, and that’s why you’ll find that Pope John Paul II had to come along and make it CLEAR. . .PEOPLE, THE CHURCH HAS NO AUTHORITY TO ORDAIN WOMEN. Not “the Church has made up a law about only male priests which it could change if it wanted.’ But” THE CHURCH HAS NO AUTHORITY TO ORDAIN WOMEN.

 

[adrift]

She does make the point though that more of a reason is needed than “because only men were at the last supper.” While I believe in the all male priesthood some of the reasons given in defense of it fall flat.

DaddyGirl, what about the reason posted by jmcrae and Marc Anthony that priests must be men to make atonement for the sin of Adam which was mortal compared to Eve’s venial sin?

As I have pointed out, the priesthood did not start at the Last Supper. It started with Aaron and his sons Exodus 28. Emphasis mine.

1 And bring thou near unto thee Aaron thy brother, **and his sons **with him, from among the children of Israel, that he may minister unto me in the priest’s office, even Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar, Aaron’s sons.

If there were to be priestesses than God would have appointed Aaron and children. Priestess were common at the time. It was God’s plan from the beginning. Jesus didn’t change it. What more of a reason can you have than it was God’s plan?

 

[Tantum_ergo]

As I have pointed out, the priesthood did not start at the Last Supper. It started with Aaron and his sons Exodus 28. Emphasis mine.

If there were to be priestesses than God would have appointed Aaron and children. Priestess were common at the time. It was God’s plan from the beginning. Jesus didn’t change it. What more of a reason can you have than it was God’s plan?

Right. It seems to me that people are building up these huge strawmen based on a fundamental misunderstanding of men, women, God, and priesthood. . .

As if God would say, "Ok, Jewish people. YOU, unlike all the other people around you, who are enlightened enough to open ‘priesthood’ to men and women because they understand equality, even though you are MY people, and I am God, and totally good. . .YOU have to have men-only priesthood even though in your time it’s actually WOMEN in other societies who do priestly ‘duties’ more than men. Because even though I’m God and perfectly just, and even though My Ways are unchanging, and I don’t teach things as being true ‘just for this time’. . .and even though thousands of years from now every OTHER ‘non-Catholic Christian’ group and other religious group is going to be offering priesthood to women and men because it is so right and just and perfect to do so–. . .somehow I, God, am LESS ENLIGHTENED than people living in AD 2012. I am less just. In fact, I’m actively unjust and I hate women because I am making this ‘rule.’ ]And even when MY OWN SON comes to earth He won’t be able to change this rule because He just doesn’t have the POWER to go against the engrained MALE CHAUVINISM that I am pushing on you. So Catholic Christians will have to carry on my Teaching and everybody will call them hateful and mean for disrespecting women, and will make up conspiracy stories about how I never MEANT for priesthood to remain ‘men only’, or that I really taught differently but the bad ‘they’ ‘covered it up’, or that if I DID mean this, I should be disobeyed on principle because I’m a mean poopy head. . .

Yikes.

 

[estesbob]

Sigh. I understand the words you are saying…but the arguments/reasons still don’t make logical sense to me that a change would not be made today.

In my mind, the issue has nothing to do with so-called “feminism” (people still use that word? It’s so Seventies!) or anger or wanting to be like men or so-called “straw men” (my example wasn’t based on a fallacy, it was based on and paralleling a line of thinking already presented).

It has to do with the fact that…women feel deeply called to do it; they’d be great at it; there are many other important acts Jesus did that the Church doesn’t follow to a T (eg, the eucharist scene) so why this one; an observation that many perceptions about women when the church structure was set up thousands of years ago are grossly outdated (eg, “women should not speak in church”) and we do not heed those ones today; that, indeed, many rules have been updated/changed in the last 2000 years (we now have female altar servers, for example); and, finally, the most important of them all…Jesus never said that only women should be priests.

Alas, I see that we should just agree to disagree.

I will never understand this line of reasoning (and you will never understand mine?) and it baffles me that more Catholics would not be embracing of women–half the congregation!–having the opportunity to seek out this type of spiritual calling if they feel it deep in their heart and gut.
It bewilders me that, taking into consideration all the reasons listed in the many posts here…that still, the higher ups would not see an unavoidable need for a change.

Oh well!

IMHO, this will update in another generation or two. When a group of people have an honest and true need for a change to be made, it seems that time and tide and history will make it so.

Let’s reconvene to discuss in another…fifty years?

Pax Romana!

So what makes us(or even the culture 50 years from now) so much wiser and more enlightended than all who went before us? Why would God allow his Church to be in error for 2,000 years?

 

[stanczyk]

Let’s reconvene to discuss in another…fifty years?

It will be just as infallible fifty years from now as it will be 500 years from now or five minute from now.

 

[Michael_Francis]

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