Questions regarding "female ordination"

[vsedriver]

You can say as much as you want about the 12 apostles being men but in this day and age it is sexist that women aren’t allowed to be ordained, Catholics venerate the virgin mary more than any other denominations yet they won’t have women priests/bishops is ridiculous in my opinion quite frankly.

so you think Jesus was sexist? After all he could have included His mother and any other of the holy women who followed him and even remained faithfully at the foot of the cross to be apostles.

 

[Marc_Anthony]

I would think that a lot of people who find the male only priesthood to be unfair would be appeased by this answer.

Earl Simpson, I’m curious, what are your thoughts to this post by Marc Anthony?

I want to clarify it a little further.

To finish my line of thinking-Adam’s sin was greater than Eve’s, because he was convinced to eat the fruit by a human entity and not a supernatural entity and because he was with God longer than Eve and thus had more reason to trust Him.

So man atones for Adam’s sin by acting in the person of Christ, in other words, letting Christ act through them to consecrate the Eucharist, absolve sins, and Anoint the Sick. This is proper because Christ is the one who atoned for the sin of Adam and so we must share in Christ’s role. The principle behind the Levitical Priesthood was the same, except that instead of acting in persona Christi they simply had the responsibility of mediating between God and the people (this was before Jesus came and became the Great Mediator), which was still proper because Adam was once the only man alone with God when Eve was never without Adam.

Eve’s sin was not AS bad, but women’s special burden associated with it is that they have the privilege and burden of being mothers; this includes the pain of childbirth and the special and unique relationship that can only be formed between a mother and a child, where the mother nurtures the children and raises them. Like being a Priest, this is both a great blessing and a great burden, because being a mother is not easy. Also like being a Priest the blessing is more than enough to make up for the burden.

In summary: Men have to be the Priest’s because it’s proper for Christ, who redeemed the world of Adam’s sin, to act through men.

Women cannot be Priests for that reason. They are the mothers, and it is proper for them because when Eve sinned women had to bring their children into a world of sin; now, through the pain of childbirth, women have the responsibility and privilege to raise the children in a world where they have a chance to be redeemed. They instill the child’s values and hopefully with the father have the child baptized. They are the only people capable of having the special relationship that a mother and child have.

 

[stanczyk]

I think they were referring to that era in Church history.

Perhaps, but it is historically false as well.

I think it is of the utmost importance not to conflate the idea of female ordination with support for marriage in the priesthood. Female ordination is doctrinally unsound. A priesthood that is permitted to marry is, of course, doctrinally acceptable.

 

[aicirt]

Yes, the teaching is already there. I think we are all acutely aware of that.
But the teaching is there because someone or a group of someones hundreds of years after he died interpreted it that way and then, after they made the rule, they made another rule that said, “we can’t change this!”

But there is a chance that…since Jesus never said why he had male-only apostles…that he may have not meant for that pattern to continue forever…and there’s a chance that there may even have been female apostles (like Mary M) that just were not included/written about in the final version of books allowed in the christian canon…and there’s a chance that the group/person who voted/decided that women cannot be ordained hundreds of years later misinterpreted Jesus’ actions completely…or that they decided this for reasons that have nothing to do with Jesus’ wishes…

There’s a chance that all the above may be true, since we don’t have Jesus’ words saying no women should be ordained.

The 12 apostles were told to go out and preach among nations. All did. All died horrible deaths except for John. We know where they preached and whom they converted e.g. Mark in Egypt, Thomas in Iraq and India, Paul in Asia Minor and Rome etc.

Mary M is believed to have gone to France and lived their quietly and died. The BVM, who, if Christ did include women as the first priests, would have been the first, also lived quietly.

 

[aicirt]

Well if that’s true, I sure do hope Mary M lived a quiet life for the rest of it.
But in all the books I’ve read–the bible as the main resource–there is only written word or evidence as brief reference as to how Judas and James died. Where are you getting the official info, beyond legend, on how the rest of them died?

Google “Death of the Apostles” and it will give you a list of various articles you may read.

 

[dean24us]

Please remind me…when did someone decide that only men could be priests and say it could never, ever change? What date did that happen, and who was it again who decided/stated it?

There might be others, but the “main” document I know of is an Apostolic Letter issued by Pope John Paul II in 1992 entitled Ordinatio Sacerdotalis. It’s a short read – I recommend looking it up – but here’s an excerpt to address your question:

1. Although the teaching that priestly ordination is to be reserved to men alone has been preserved by the constant and universal Tradition of the Church and firmly taught by the Magisterium in its more recent documents, at the present time in some places it is nonetheless considered still open to debate, or the Church’s judgment that women are not to be admitted to ordination is considered to have a merely disciplinary force.

Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church’s divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful.

God bless,
Dean

 

[Marc_Anthony]

Perhaps, but it is historically false as well.

Where is your source for this? They were allowed to marry, they just had to be celibate WITHIN marriage. And this was the tradition of that specific time period, and probably only specific communities, and not how it works now.

Do you have a countersource?

 

[jmcrae]

Yes God made us in his image but the priest is a representative of Christ and Christ was male.

And Christ was male because Adam was male - it wasn’t just a 50/50 chance, and then it turned out that he was male. There is purpose to the maleness of Christ - it is because his death on the Cross redeemed the sin of Adam. (Not the sin of Eve, which was a venial sin - she was coerced.)

 

[aicirt]

And Christ was male because Adam was male - it wasn’t just a 50/50 chance, and then it turned out that he was male. There is purpose to the maleness of Christ - it is because his death on the Cross redeemed the sin of Adam. (Not the sin of Eve, which was a venial sin - she was coerced.)

I always thought they both were punished for their disobedience? She could have said “no” to the serpent, and not bring the apple to Adam.

Shouldn’t she be held responsible for her own acts?

 

[Marc_Anthony]

I always thought they both were punished for their disobedience? She could have said “no” to the serpent, and not bring the apple to Adam.

Shouldn’t she be held responsible for her own acts?

She is-but there are degrees of culpability. She was fooled by a supernatural entity whose goal it was to trick her. Adam was just convinced by another human. So Eve sinned, but her sin was venial. Adam’s sin was mortal.

 

[He_Man]

And, also…well, as many here on this site often, often say…there are a lot of Jeshua’s words and actions that were not included in the official bible. So he may have indeed chosen women for high positions at the time, but information on that was not included when the bible was put together three centuries later…
(for example, the gospel of Mary Magdelena)

If by “put together” you mean “falsified and/or made up”, then I agree.

 

[MarkInOregon]

The question I’d ask is…what is that reason?
He never specified, so whoever set up the tradition is…guessing? assuming? that he meant no woman, for as long as we live on this earth, should ever, ever be ordained?

It seems logical to me that he picked men because at that time, no one would have listened to the women because of the sexism of the day…or they were traveling in rough terrain with much opposition and it was dangerous…or the women were either pregnant or having their periods and it would have been inconvenient.

The Christ I see and read about in the Gospels was quite the radical in his thought, teaching and actions–he rocked the boat quite a bit. I can’t see him being constrained in the way you suggest. The gospels were written much earlier than they were assembled and they present these woman as witnesses to his resurrection even though they would not have been thought credible. There is nothing logical and safe or conventional in the Gospel message. It seems illogical to suggest that in this one area well Jesus decided to go with convention.

Peace of Christ,
Mark

 

[Edan_Simpson]

The Church does not teach that because you have homosexual inclinations that you are going to hell. It is when you act on those inclinations that it become a sin of grave matter, much in the same way that an unmarried man and woman commit a sin against chastity by having premarital sex. Since Homosexual union cannot produce children, which is the Godly and true purpose of marriage, Homosexual marriage cannot and never will be ok’d by the church. In light of this any act of homosexual union is an act of fornication, and is a grave sin.

The Church loves you as the creation of Human Dignity that God made you, but hate the sin which drives you away from God’s Grace.

As for ordination of women, i think it has already been explained quite nicely by the other posters.

Pax

B

Btw i’m Earl Simpson, my account got canceled because i was apparently being anti catholic which is ridiculous so i had to make this 1 nd i no longer care for your opinions on a matter in which i purely expressed my opinion in, btw i’m only 13 and have never gone to a religious school and only go to church for special occasions, my knowledge on all of christian beliefs in general is scarce so most of the stuff i posted was my own views, i did alright didnt i?

 

[Tantum_ergo]

Please remind me…when did someone decide that only men could be priests and say it could never, ever change? What date did that happen, and who was it again who decided/stated it?

The Holy Spirit decided it. The teaching has been there since the time of Christ. Do you really think that the Man who died and rose from the dead would have been so shackled by ‘the times’ that He would not have had women priests from the FIRST if He had intended for women to be priests?

Why did God, for the Jewish nation (who all lived in a time and culture when FEMALE PRIESTESSES were the NORM), ordain that only MEN should serve as priests? God was ‘going against the grain’ here. Why is that?

I keep on saying that understanding of a dogma/doctrine can DEEPEN but it can’t ‘change’.

We can understand the nature of the Trinity more deeply than the people in AD 33, but we will never teach that the Trinity is really a quartet, because Wisdom, embodied in Mary, is ‘part of God too’. That ‘change’ would be a total denial of the teaching of the Trinity.

We can understand many reasons why Christ chose bread and wine for the Eucharist, but we cannot ‘deepen’ our understanding and say, "Well, He chose them because they were sacred items in Jewish culture. Now that we’re a multicultural world, we’ll allow corn and peyote (sacred to native American culture) for their Eucharist, and tea and rice for the Japanese and Chinese, etc.

We can understand that marriage is much more than exchanging ‘goods and services’ between a man and woman, but we won’t ‘deepen’ it by saying, "The ultimate goal of marriage is LOVE, and if two men LOVE each other they can be married’ etc.

So you aren’t going to find a day or hour when some BUREAUCRAT POPE decided to rubberstamp a policy and date it X year AD, "only men can be priests, ha ha’. It **doesn’t work that way. **

You won’t find a ‘policy date’ that states that only bread and wine may be used for the Eucharist, X date AD, ready for ‘change’ in our time, because Fluvius Gordanicus was a baker in X date and loaned money to the Pope of the time and so the Pope decided to reward old Fluv by making sure that his business prospered. It doesn’t work that way.

 

[Tantum_ergo]

Btw i’m Earl Simpson, my account got canceled because i was apparently being anti catholic which is ridiculous so i had to make this 1 nd i no longer care for your opinions on a matter in which i purely expressed my opinion in, btw i’m only 13 and have never gone to a religious school and only go to church for special occasions, my knowledge on all of christian beliefs in general is scarce so most of the stuff i posted was my own views, i did alright didnt i?

Um. No. You broke the rules, and now you’re breaking them again by making another account. Even 13 year olds are old enough to follow the rules. You’ll be banned again but I hope and pray that you’ll have the sense to go and talk to your priest (if you’re high church Anglican, you might even have confession) about this. It’s one thing to want to proclaim your faith, but you are doing it very poorly by posting untruths and breaking rules. That’s sinful BEHAVIOR and not becoming to any Christian at all by any means. I hope someday you’ll be mature enough to actually discuss Catholicism with Catholics and do so with the kind of intelligence and open mind that a very famous high Church Anglican used when he spoke with Catholics. You might recognize his name: C. S. Lewis. He’s rather highly thought of by many of us Catholics, because he treated all Christians and indeed all people with respect, even when he disagreed with them.

 

[LucyLight]

That’s one of the big things for me too.

It’s weird because growing up Protestant there was no issue in having female pastors, but it somehow just felt wrong. I just buried that nagging feeling of wrongness - until I became Catholic that is

Well it felt right because you came home to the true Church. I can’t see why there would be anything wrong with a female pastor in a protestant Church.

 

[LucyLight]

And Christ was male because Adam was male - it wasn’t just a 50/50 chance, and then it turned out that he was male. There is purpose to the maleness of Christ - it is because his death on the Cross redeemed the sin of Adam. (Not the sin of Eve, which was a venial sin - she was coerced.)

This is really interesting! I have never heard this before. Is this a generally accepted belief in Catholic theology? It seems to make a lot of sense. You and Marc Anthony are posting some interesting stuff.

 

[dean24us]

This is really interesting! I have never heard this before. Is this a generally accepted belief in Catholic theology? It seems to make a lot of sense. You and Marc Anthony are posting some interesting stuff.

I agree – I’m interested in reading more on the subject. Any sources / references?

God bless,
Dean

 

[Marc_Anthony]

I learned all of this from doing an essay on the subject in my Junior year and, more significantly, from the college level apologetics class I took my Senior year. My theology teacher had 3 masters degrees in Catholic and religious subjects and was going for his fourth in bioethics.

So unfortunately I don’t have citations I can pull up (my essay has long since disappeared), so you’re going to have to decide if you believe me. Myself, I have a source I trust very much

 

[stanczyk]

Where is your source for this? They were allowed to marry, they just had to be celibate WITHIN marriage. And this was the tradition of that specific time period, and probably only specific communities, and not how it works now.

Do you have a countersource?

[T]here is simply no clear evidence of a general tradition or practice, much less of an obligation, of priestly celibacy-continence before the beginning of the fourth century. Dennis, George T. SJ on Cochini, C. The Apostolic Origins of Priestly Celibacy (book review), Theological Studies, 52:4 (1991ec.) p.738