SPLIT: Women priests possible?

[Marsha_Adams]

This concerns me…please tell me you’re not saying that women who bear children are therefore more capable of following Mary’s example, as a saint, than those who for whatever reason have or do not bear children?

And, of course, please tell me you’re not saying that the ideal woman, following Mary’s example, should expect to conceive without having sexual relations and give birth virginally?

No, I am not saying that women must bear children in order to follow Mary’s example. I am saying that there are things that men can do and women can’t and vice versa. Bearing children is merely the most obvious example.

You know this whole discussion reminds me of Adam and Eve in in the garden. All God asked was one little thing, leave that tree alone. You can have all the other trees in the garden but leave that one alone. But they just had to eat from THAT tree.

Women can have anything they want, they can be brain surgeons and rocket scientists. They can marry and have children or not. They can run for political office or be CEOs. They can enter religious life and become abbesses who hold the same authority as bishops complete with crozier. Only one thing has been refused women, the sacrament of Holy Orders, and people jump up and down and scream as though they had been sold into slavery. They just have to eat from THAT tree.

Maybe the discussion shouldn’t be about women and the priesthood. Maybe it should be obedience, submission and humility.

 

[CentralFLJames]

Of course. I know many single dads who fill the role of eternal compassion. Certainly there are physical complications to a male birthing and suckling the young, but a male can certainly play the ‘feminine role’ in relationship dynamics.

Complications? Indeed. The complications are with your absurd logic and denial that form has no relationship to function. You seem here to be well beyond the limits of natural reason and inclined to want to transgender or gender-bend everyone just to force fit your perspective. Let me guess - you think there are no material differences in strenghts and weakness between the genders?

Mispurposed sarcasm won’t help your case any better than your strawmen. What does any of this have to do with a woman being a spiritual leader?

I’ll be the judge of the former thank-you; and I reject your assessment of the latter.

My comments have nothing to do with limiting a woman’s spiritual leadership. Anyone can lead by example within their domain of influence. A woman can lead by inspiration as can a man. That does not make all men equivalent to all other men or women; nor all women equivalent to all other women or men. There is no such concept as holistic equality except in the oblivion that the atheist’s looks forward too where the concept of equality can’t even exist; and in the automaton of a scifi robo-land.

You can be a better atheist leader than I can since I am not equipped to be an atheist - I am equipped with faith and that invalidates me as a leader of atheists. Likewise you make a terrible spiritual leader since you are not equipped to be a spiritual leader since you lack faith. So why are you given people spiritual advise and why are you trying to tell us that there are no differences in the styles of leadership that are available to men or women in the Catholic Church? Catholics know better since we are equipped with the true faith that tells us a woman can not be a priest but she can be a superb religious leader as a consecrated lay or religious sister. The Catholic church has MANY high level female saints that came out of that leadership channel – in fact 3 are female doctors of the Church.

If anyone’s being dogmatic, I do believe it’s you.

I, do believe it’s you?

Ahh, how interesting a hint of an admission of infallability and the rare atheist who can externalize beyond his own introspective universe to acknowledge and relate to somone other than himself.

Ahem, in case you have not noticed this IS a Catholic forum and we are defending our dogmas. That’s what Catholics apologetics is all about. Are you misplaced here? What we are not doing is entertaining or taking seriously personal opinions that are being presented as personal dogmas against our faith. Back up what you claim with reason or facts or else be consigned to irrelevancy as just another opinionated person.

Only post to me again if you have something valid to say.

You are rather cheeky for a new member. Do you imagine you have some kind of authority in this forum? Continue to say absurd things and I will come right back at you and challenge you to back up what you say. Ignore me if that makes you feel like you have any control over open dialog here and over who can respond to your nonsence.

Again - I find it very queer that an atheist is in a Catholic Forum giving advice and opinions on spiritual matters. Don’t you feel a wee bit out of your element and depth?

James

 

[slyboots]

No. No. And No.

 

[CentralFLJames]

A woman’s most important contribution to the Catholic Church is via her uterus. Anything else is of secondary concern.

How absurd and juvenile to make such crass statements.
Do you have anything of any substance to add to the discussion or are you going to just snipe from a safe distance away from the horizon of reality?

James

 

[diggerdomer]

No, I am not saying that women must bear children in order to follow Mary’s example. I am saying that there are things that men can do and women can’t and vice versa. Bearing children is merely the most obvious example.

You know this whole discussion reminds me of Adam and Eve in in the garden. All God asked was one little thing, leave that tree alone. You can have all the other trees in the garden but leave that one alone. But they just had to eat from THAT tree.

Women can have anything they want, they can be brain surgeons and rocket scientists. They can marry and have children or not. They can run for political office or be CEOs. They can enter religious life and become abbesses who hold the same authority as bishops complete with crozier. Only one thing has been refused women, the sacrament of Holy Orders, and people jump up and down and scream as though they had been sold into slavery. They just have to eat from THAT tree.

Maybe the discussion shouldn’t be about women and the priesthood. Maybe it should be obedience, submission and humility.

You contradict yourself, I think.

Obviously, women can’t have anything they want contrary to what you claim. Some, sincerely and faithfully and obediently, want ordination but the Church denies this.

Maybe the discussion should be about obedience, submission and humility, but the original post to this thread was not primarily about that. Maybe you should start a new thread.

Oh, and by the way, the idea that women can achieve the “same authority as bishops” is simply ludicrous. No way the Catholic Church teaches that.

 

[Just_Lurking]

How absurd and juvenile to make such crass statements.
Do you have anything of any substance to add to the discussion or are you going to just snipe from a safe distance away from the horizon of reality?

James

Sorry, but sometimes the truth hurts.

 

[diggerdomer]

the Catholic Church has no authority to ordain women. Period. End of story.

Please correct me if I’m off topic here, but I thought at least part of this thread concerned the issue of the possibility of the Catholic Church ordaining women to the diaconate.

I have yet to see anyone say this is not possible.

So, again, it’s not completely accurate to say the Church has no authority to ordain women (period. end of story. peace.). The Church to my knowledge has not ruled out the possibility of ordaining women to the diaconate.

 

[Marsha_Adams]

You contradict yourself, I think.

Obviously, women can’t have anything they want contrary to what you claim. Some, sincerely and faithfully and obediently, want ordination but the Church denies this.

Maybe the discussion should be about obedience, submission and humility, but the original post to this thread was not primarily about that. Maybe you should start a new thread.

Oh, and by the way, the idea that women can achieve the “same authority as bishops” is simply ludicrous. No way the Catholic Church teaches that.

Women who “sincerely and faithfully and obediently want ordination” do not exist. If they were faithful and obedient they would submit to the Church’s teachings.

Do a little research on abbesses and you will find that you are incorrect on this.

 

[CentralFLJames]

Sorry, but sometimes the truth hurts.

Sorry calumny is not the truth and you should know better than attempt this nonsence here. Substantiate your reasons for making these absurd comments and charges or withdraw them. Do you have even a clue about how important women have been in the Catholic Church over the centuries and especially her female saints???

Listen, just because a female is not eligible for the formal sacerdotal priesthood due to the Church’s lack of spiritual authority to grant and institute that office to females does not mean that the Catholic Church does not HIGHLY regard her women. Oh contraire, if you had even a cursory knowledge of Church History and Catholic Theological belief and teachings then you would know that Mary is the HIGHEST revered saint in the entire Church. No male will ever ascend to her stature - ever. Do you hear Catholic men complaining about that?

It is YOU (just another “ignorant” male like me? ) through your own gender superficiality who associates Mary’s profound spiritual stature with her reproductive contribution rather than with her gender-neutral faith. It was Mary’s full assent to be God’s faithful servant without regard to the suffering and sorrows that makes her so special and highly revered. Mary shared in Christ’s suffering on the cross in ways that no man or woman on earth will ever fully understand. Mary was also divinely favored to be “full of grace” by some sublime Divine mystery that no one will ever fully understand. The Church does not esteem Mary by just her role in being the arc of the Lord. No, mostly we esteem Mary because GOD Himself highly esteemed Mary (e.g. “Hail full of grace”). Are you here suggesting that God esteems Mary only because of the contribution of her uterus to divine will??? What about the bit about “my SOUL magnifies the Lord”???

And you need to get a grip on social history as well since The Catholic Church is UNEQUALLED for its contributions in bucking the historically male dominated social norms to insist on giving women EQUAL dignity to men. The Church has taught the equality of dignity of all people irrespective of gender and race and had it in our Catechism and Canon Law for longer than the US was even a nation! So spare us these false accusations.

Also you might want to do a wee bit of research on the role of such women as St. Catherine of Siena who in 1377 shamed and chided Pope Gregory XI into relenting his aggressive punishment of the rebellious churches in Florence, Sienna and other Tuscan cities. While respecting the authority of the Church leadership she insisted that the pope use his papal authority in the way Christ intended - through binding and loosing - not in making war. And he listened since Catherine was highly respected for her Christian virtue - NOT as you put it, her uterus. This same female Catholic saint spoke out strongly and effectively against the Cardinals, bishops and priests for crimes against morality and their embracing of earthly luxuries. She was successful at getting some true “reformations” (as opposed to whole cloth revolution) in place. Again, this spiritual and moral leadership had nothing to do with her gender - rather it was because she was simply correct and morally proper.

I don’t think you have an appreciation for just how much the laity as a genderless class are relied on in the Catholic Church. The priests are at the service of The Church as are all the laity. We love the church - it is the body of Christ. Leadership is given by example from top to bottom and bottom to top as well as side-to-side – male to female and vice versa. It is only those with sterile intellect and effeminate males who creates these false dichotomies – and usually the motive is to gain the attention and affections of women (which is usually ineffective).

There is no need for gender wars in society nor in the church. Nor is there any need for false accusation…

James

 

[pickguard1]

Please correct me if I’m off topic here, but I thought at least part of this thread concerned the issue of the possibility of the Catholic Church ordaining women to the diaconate.

I have yet to see anyone say this is not possible.

I believe I have said it is not possible, since Holy Orders (not just “orders”) includes the diaconate, and always has, and Holy Orders has only been and can only be conferred upon a baptized male.

So, contrary to what anyone wants to place “under study” or imagine to be a possible open door, no matter how small, I believe this door was never “open” in the first place. The Church cannot make a “mistake” about one of Christ’s divinely instituted sacraments, and supposedly deny it unjustly to half the world’s population since its inception. If it could, the whole foundation of Christianity would vaporize. So, in my opinion, you’re either among the group that believes Christ is God and did establish a Church that would not lead His followers into error, or you believe that Christianity is hogwash. It’s hard to take middle ground without contradicting one’s self.

 

[Just_Lurking]

Substantiate your reasons for making these absurd comments and charges or withdraw them.

Pope St. Gregory the Great said that woman’s use is twofold: harlotry or maternity.

See here for the following footnote:

The most shocking contribution in this book was Daniel Sullivan’s history of Catholic thinking about women, marriage, love and sexuality. This thinking, wrote Sullivan, has been based, in part, on the views expressed by some of the most eminent fathers and doctors of the church: of St. Jerome, that a woman is ‘the devil’s gateway, a dangerous species, a scorpion’s dart.’ Of St. John Damascene that she is a ‘sicked she-***, a hideous tapeworm, the advanced post of hell.’ Of St. Clement of Alexandria that it ‘is shameful for her to think about nature she has.’ Of St. Francis de Sales that married couples should not think about the act they might have to perform at night. Of St. Thomas Aquinas that ‘woman is misbegotten and defective.’ Of Pope St. Gregory the Great the woman’s ‘use’ is twofold: harlotry or maternity.

---

Also, Fr. Andrew Greeley describes how he was educated about women in his pre-Vatican II seminary training in his Confessions of a Parish Priest, pages 119-120:

In Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose there are repeated references to women as swamps and traps designed to swallow up the souls of men. John Broomyard, an English Dominican of the same era, lifting a metaphor from scriptures, warned that women were a graveyard, well kept on the outside and filled inside with death and corruption, attitudes not all that different from that of the spiritual director who warned us of the dangers lurking in the splendid form of Janet Leigh. Women were portrayed as a threat to the virtue of celibates and the manliness of married men. They were, as one medieval saint put it, “vomit and ordure. … How then can we ever want to embrace what is merely a sack of rottenness.” St. Jerome said woman was the door of the devil. St. Maximus said she was the shipwreck of man. St. Athanasius thought she was the clothed serpent.

And you wonder why the Church is hung up on sex!

How was this hatred for women reconciled with devotion to Mary the Mother of Jesus? And did Lady Wisdom even exist for such people?

The answer was that Mary (and Lady Wisdom to the extent that She was recognized at all) were utterly desexualized. The mother of Jesus was admirable not because she shared a common womanhood with all her sisters, but because she was radically different from them.

 

[Just_Lurking]

It’s hard to take middle ground without contradicting one’s self.

You are free to hold this opinion, however, the Catholic Church has not taken a stand on the issue of whether women could possibly be recipients of the Sacrament of Holy Orders in the grade of the diaconate.

Catholic theologians and historians are actively debating this issue. I don’t have any expectation that this debate will be resolved any time soon.

From Wikipedia (see here):

In 2003, Father Ronald G. Roberson gave a presentation on the diaconate in the Latin Church to annual meeting of the U.S. Oriental Orthodox-Roman Catholic Consultation. He summarized the state of deaconess issue as follows: “The possibility of ordaining women to the diaconate is still an unsettled question in the Catholic Church. Latin rituals for ordaining deaconesses exist from as late as the 10th century, but the precise sacramental nature of these ordinations has not yet been determined authoritatively. There are recent indications that the Holy See intends to continue the exclusion of women from this office.”[46]

 

[diggerdomer]

I believe I have said it is not possible,

Oops, sorry, let me clarify what I meant to say better: the Church has not said that women could never be ordained to the diaconate. It’s not been definitively decided as priestly ordination has. Sorry for any misstatement on my part.

 

[diggerdomer]

Women who “sincerely and faithfully and obediently want ordination” do not exist. If they were faithful and obedient they would submit to the Church’s teachings.

The only disobedient ones are the ones performing or participating in illicit and invalid ordination. I was not referring to those people. So I stick by what I said. I don’t think it’s disobeying the Church to have some questions or problems with Church teaching…it’s what we DO about it that would entail issues of obedience. If we ACT against it then we’re disobeying.

Do a little research on abbesses and you will find that you are incorrect on this.

Um…what? I didn’t bring up abbesses. Oh, are you implying they have the same authority as bishops? I don’t need to research abbesses to know that’s not true.

 

[edwest2]

Please correct me if I’m off topic here, but I thought at least part of this thread concerned the issue of the possibility of the Catholic Church ordaining women to the diaconate.

I have yet to see anyone say this is not possible.

So, again, it’s not completely accurate to say the Church has no authority to ordain women (period. end of story. peace.). The Church to my knowledge has not ruled out the possibility of ordaining women to the diaconate.

This is not possible. There are absolute truths that the Church defends. See Pope John Paul II:

vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/apost_letters/documents/hf_jp-ii_apl_22051994_ordinatio-sacerdotalis_en.html

Peace,
Ed

 

[diggerdomer]

This is not possible. There are absolute truths that the Church defends. See Pope John Paul II:

vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/apost_letters/documents/hf_jp-ii_apl_22051994_ordinatio-sacerdotalis_en.html

Peace,
Ed

Yes, I’ve read it numerous times, and nowhere does it say that the Church could not, if She decided it was proper/fitting/ok, ordain women to the diaconate.

Where do you read otherwise?

It’s really all in the title, the document is about reserving PRIESTLY ordination to men. Nothing about ordination to the diaconate. But again, if you see something I missed please help.

 

[mlchance]

But again, if you see something I missed please help.

Well, as has been pointed out numerous times, there is the Church’s clear, consistent teaching that the only people who can be ordained at all are baptised men. So, unless there is some way that a woman can be a baptised man…

– Mark L. Chance.

 

[diggerdomer]

Well, as has been pointed out numerous times, there is the Church’s clear, consistent teaching that the only people who can be ordained at all are baptised men. So, unless there is some way that a woman can be a baptised man…

– Mark L. Chance.

Those teachings can be changed, as has been pointed out previously on this Thread.

 

[mlchance]

Those teachings can be changed, as has been pointed out previously on this Thread.

No, they can’t. Doctrine can develop, but it cannot change so as to contradict itself. The Church has always maintained the Holy Orders can only be validly received by a baptised male.

– Mark L. Chance.

 

[diggerdomer]

No, they can’t. Doctrine can develop, but it cannot change so as to contradict itself. The Church has always maintained the Holy Orders can only be validly received by a baptised male.

– Mark L. Chance.

Ok, fine then I’ll rephrase to say the Church could decide to “develop” Her doctrine to allow females to be ordained deacons.

Not everything in Church teaching can “develop” in this fashion (we’re not going to add a fourth person to the Trinity) but this is one that can. Again, I’m not claiming anything about the priesthood, which I would agree the Church clearly teaches She feels She has no authority to ordain women to.

You can disagree, that’s fine with me. But unlike ordination to the priesthood, I doubt you’ll be able to find any unchangeable teaching that the Church has that has decided the issue similarly for the diaconate. And if you do, of course please let us know.