The Forbidden Subject: The Ordination of Women

[revert_jen]

The Catholic church is having issues attracting men to the Priesthood in the US and I presume Canada. I doubt it’s the presence of female Pastors causing men to “shirk their call”.

I think you have misunderstood the implied cause/effect relationship. (Or quite possibly I have, but anyway.)

The women’s ordination was implied (I think) to be an effect of men “shirking the call,” not the cause of it.

As for me (a woman), I believe women have great value in our own womanhood. That is, we don’t have to be the same as men to be as good as men. Is anyone saying that men who stay at home with the kids are better than men who go to offices? Not that I’ve ever heard. So it’s not just crossing gender roles that is admired. But women who stay at home with the kids are told they’re not as good. So society says that everyone (man or woman) is better the more classically manly they are. I ain’t buying it.

I’ve never felt belittled because I couldn’t be a priest. I’ve never felt that I was less holy than a man just because I’m a woman. Nonetheless, I make a terrible earthly symbol for a Father or for a Son. Christ wasn’t just a spirit, and He wasn’t only God, He was also a man. I think that is something we might be in danger of forgetting (emotionally, rather than intellectually) if we weren’t reminded.

I feel very sorry for the woman who was quoted in the OP; to me, she just sounds neurotic. She doesn’t seem to understand that “natural resemblance” and spiritual resemblance are not the same, and women most certainly can have as much of the second as men, and that really the second is more important in day-to-day life. But the natural resemblance is particularly important in something as deep in symbolism as the liturgy.

Anyway, that’s my :twocents: .

–Jen

 

[pianistclare]

Who ever said it was a forbidden topic?

It is settled and if people knew Catholic theology, they would know why.

NO ONE on this thread has said it is a forbidden topic. That is the TITLE of the OP’s thread.

 

[pianistclare]

No angel has ever greeted a Priest with the words, “Hail Kecharitomine”
No Priest has conceived supernatually.
No Priest has even borne God in his body.
No Priest has ever nursed God.
No Priest has ever taught God.
No Priest has accompanied God from virgin womb to virgin tomb.
The most blessed of all humanity is…a woman.
This goes on and on.

It is not equality, it is supremacy that is desired in this evil and corrupt generation.

Beautifully stated.

 

[pianistclare]

Female priests need to be ordained, like, yesterday. It is inherently discriminatory to say men can be priests, and women can’t.

And if the pope won’t do it, the local parishes need to take matters into their own hands.

Is this the smidgen of Catholic teaching or the snark talking?
Because it’s so far off the mark (see what I did there?) that it’s not funny.

Parishes don’t independently ordain.
Nor do they conduct interviews for leadership.
Discrimination is not a factor here. :nope:

 

[Tantum_ergo]

The title of this thread should be: The already-settled subject which still has people desperately arguing that it is not settled.

I’m a woman. I stand with pianist Claire and with po18guy, who have stated things clearly, succinctly, and beautifully.

The Church has no authority to ordain women.

Period.

Now I suppose it is time for the next “The Forbidden Subject: The confection of Beer and Pretzels in the Eucharist” with its Spanish variant of ‘tacos and cactus juice’, Japanese of rice cakes and sake, the Children’s Eucharist of Milk and Cookies, etc. etc.

 

[pianistclare]

The title of this thread should be: The already-settled subject which still has people desperately arguing that it is not settled.

I’m a woman. I stand with pianist Claire and with po18guy, who have stated things clearly, succinctly, and beautifully.

The Church has no authority to ordain women.

Period.

Now I suppose it is time for the next “The Forbidden Subject: The confection of Beer and Pretzels in the Eucharist” with its Spanish variant of ‘tacos and cactus juice’, Japanese of rice cakes and sake, the Children’s Eucharist of Milk and Cookies, etc. etc.

 

[Evan]

I am male. My problem has always been how to image myself as the bride of Christ. Although, if I had been called, l would be fine as a priest, I still occasionally have difficulty seeing myself as a bride.

It seem this image of God’s people would come easier to the women among us.

 

[GEddie]

Female priests need to be ordained, like, yesterday. It is inherently discriminatory to say men can be priests, and women can’t.

And if the pope won’t do it, the local parishes need to take matters into their own hands.

Not gonna happen amigo.

 

[jmcrae]

I am male. My problem has always been how to image myself as the bride of Christ. Although, if I had been called, l would be fine as a priest, I still occasionally have difficulty seeing myself as a bride.

It seem this image of God’s people would come easier to the women among us.

That’s an excellent point.

 

[Thom18]

Female priests need to be ordained, like, yesterday. It is inherently discriminatory to say men can be priests, and women can’t.

And if the pope won’t do it, the local parishes need to take matters into their own hands.

If I “didn’t like” what the Church had to say about something, I would find a new church rather than “take matters into my own hands” and be Catholic, “but without all the stuff I don’t like”. Catholicism doesn’t give you that option.

 

[simpleas]

No it doesn’t. Frankly it annoys me and saddens me as to just how little Church history and Catholic theology people have even been exposed to.

As I have said a zillioin times:
Show me a successful priest and I will show you an army of women doin the heavy lifting.
And not for the glory, the prospect of being revered or to be noticed.
For the simple love of God and His Church on earth.

We women who work hard in the church are baffled by this assumption that we are less.
Priests are priests. I am not. God knows the difference, and so do I.
I do not need to be ordained. I have a role. It’s not confect the Eucharist or Sacraments. That’s fine by me. I will help my priest to do his job in any way he needs though.

God bless our priests.

You sound very contented with the role you have within the church and that is a good thing

It’s not about ‘behind every successful priest is an army of women doing the heavy lifting’
That’s much like the saying ‘behind every great man, there is a great woman’
Though the two sayings are probably true

It’s about the Church stating that women can not image Christ because they are not men.
It confuses me because we all are supposed to ‘put on Christ’ we all die with Christ at baptism, and all are reborn in Christ.
Women and men can baptise in emergency situations with the correct words and faith, but when it comes to the words of consecrated at the altar, no woman can say those words because they are not a man?

If we are all in the one priesthood as baptised children of God, both male and female, then a woman could take the role as priest, more rightly priestess.

It seems to be man that withholds the laying on of hands to woman, not God, by man I mean men and women.

 

[simpleas]

It’s an ontological thing. Just like an XY male cannot become an XX female, or a same-sex couple cannot be “married” (at least to each other!), the priesthood is in the nature of men, not women. No amount of heartfelt sentiment can change an ontological reality.

God made men and women distinct. Without wanting to sound crass, men cannot have babies and women cannot be priests. As a man and father, I have had to stand back in awe at my wife as she grew a life inside her, gave birth, and nurtured new life. Three times. As much as I wanted to be involved as a father, I could not ever be a “mother” to my sons; a women’s motherhood instincts gift her to do things beyond my reach. It was humbling indeed to watch this process, that did leave me a little bit jealous! But in the end we have to accept the nature God gave us.

On the other hand men have their own instincts. My wife gets annoyed at me when we travel by public transport. My wife likes to wander off and look at shops in airports or train stations, and I start to get nervous and start acting like a shepherd trying to round her up to the gate as the departure time gets closer. It’s in my nature and it drives my wife crazy but I can’t help myself. Similarly God wanted shepherds for His flock and for bringing His sacraments. If He had wanted this role assigned to women, there would have been women apostles.

Tongue-in-cheek sometimes I say to people who want women’s ordination but are thin on theology, that the person at the altar is acting in Persona Christi, and thus would you get someone like Elisabeth Taylor (RIP… I’m giving away my age) play Winston Churchill in a movie? Sorry if that sounds crass but it boils down to the ontology and our natures.

A woman got to carry God inside her. How awesome is that? NO man can boast that, and NO man other than her Son even comes close to her awesomeness; He of course surpasses it, but He is God. None of the rest of us mere mortals even come close.

I’ve grown somewhat close to a community of Benedictine women of the same congregation as the abbey I’m associated with and have helped them with a project they’re working on. These cloistered women are great. Their excellent abbess is a perfect example of the leadership roles women can have in the Church. Their humble submission to God is an example to all of us, men or women.

The men can’t give birth explanation doesn’t seem to cover it. Men do participate in bringing life into the world. Granted they do not carry a child, labour for sometimes hours or days in pain, how many men would want to do this?

A woman got to carry God inside her. How awesome is that? NO man can boast that

Neither can any woman.
Not all women bring life into the world.

 

[simpleas]

No. Christ died on the Cross in His role as “the second Adam.” The original Adam was not just male - he was the prototype of all male human beings. His maleness isn’t just incidental - it’s the core of who he is as the male ancestor of the human race, and the first male human being ever to walk on the earth.

Therefore, in His Sacrifice, which unlashes the rope with which Adam bound the human race to sin, Jesus is not just incidentally male; He is proto-typically male.

The Christian priest images Christ, not merely in His humanity (all Christians do that), but specifically in His Sacrifice on the Cross. It is by means of the hands of the priest that the graces poured out from the heart of Christ in the blood and water that gushed forth upon the earth are made present to us by means of the Sacraments, most especially in the Eucharist.

Just as it was not the role of Eve to commit the sin that bound the whole human race to slavery and death (although the ignorant continue to blame her for that, her sin was not mortal), it is also not the role of her daughters to atone for Adam’s sin - neither on the Cross, nor at the Altar.

It is Mary who undid the sin of Eve, with her “Yes” to the Angel, which undid Eve’s “Yes” to the Devil. As Christian women, it is our role to continue that “Yes” to the Angel, to accept Jesus into our lives for total transformation, and to become that woman of God who brings Jesus with her where ever she goes.

But it is not her role to make the Sacrifice of the Altar; that belongs to the sons of Adam.

If that is true then no-one since Christ’s sacrifice would be born with original sin.

 

[simpleas]

I am male. My problem has always been how to image myself as the bride of Christ. Although, if I had been called, l would be fine as a priest, I still occasionally have difficulty seeing myself as a bride.

It seem this image of God’s people would come easier to the women among us.

Interesting point.

Maybe this is why more women are active in church than men.

Though I don’t see myself as a bride to Christ, for that I would need to be a nun or sister.

 

[Dorothy]

Caveat: I’m a guy.

But I think pianistclare has it right. We shouldn’t confuse “different” for “less than.” Women have a different role than men in the Church, in the sense that they can’t administer the Sacraments. That does not mean that women are less than men, don’t have equal dignity to men, and don’t contribute in huge ways to the Church.

Yes, we do have a different role in the Church, and I am very happy about that. I believe in obedience to the legitimate authority of the Church. The opposite of obedience is rebellion.

I agree with you and pianistclare.

I remember a priest at a retreat I went to a while back who said: “Women have the power to make men unfallen.”

Lord Jesus Christ help us men and women to more fully understand our roles!

Thank you Blessed Mother Mary for your “yes”!

 

[simpleas]

Thanks all for your replies, I couldn’t possible reply to all, so I picked out the ones that were best to address.
I do see a pattern in the way both men and women think about women who would like to discern the priesthood but can not, there is a belief that they are mad crazy egocentric women who want power over any sort of spiritual ‘power’

Although it has been settled according to the teaching of the church, it is still an interesting topic to me and others.

To be told as a women I could not image Christ as a minister because I am not a man in some way reduced how I saw Christ. Then when women start with the questions, they are deemed disobedient, and feminist, and should really shut up, or go to another church.

There have been some ordination of women by bishops, though they won’t be recognised by the official church, but there does seem to be a growing move for female priests.

And I still can not understand why it is seen as a bad thing…

PS. I don’t wish to be a priestess.

 

[Irishmom2]

There have been some ordination of women by bishops, though they won’t be recognised by the official church, but there does seem to be a growing move for female priests.

Source for the ordinations?

And for the “growing move?”

It would be interesting to know who was included in the “poll.”

 

[reggieM]

No it doesn’t. Frankly it annoys me and saddens me as to just how little Church history and Catholic theology people have even been exposed to.

As I have said a zillioin times:
Show me a successful priest and I will show you an army of women doin the heavy lifting.
And not for the glory, the prospect of being revered or to be noticed.
For the simple love of God and His Church on earth.

We women who work hard in the church are baffled by this assumption that we are less.
Priests are priests. I am not. God knows the difference, and so do I.
I do not need to be ordained. I have a role. It’s not confect the Eucharist or Sacraments. That’s fine by me. I will help my priest to do his job in any way he needs though.

God bless our priests.

Very good!

 

[GEddie]

The men can’t give birth explanation doesn’t seem to cover it. Men do participate in bringing life into the world. Granted they do not carry a child, labour for sometimes hours or days in pain, how many men would want to do this?

Someone said once, that if males had to deal with childbirth, opioids would be sold in vending machines

Neither can any woman.
Not all women bring life into the world.

True, but far more do than men become priests.

There is no right to ordination, therefore the issue of ‘fairness’ rings hollow.

ICXC NIKA

 

[Dorothy]

Not all women can bring life to the world; but women can mother. (verb)