Those in favor of women's ordination state your case

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dennisknapp

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We on thus forum have discussed this issue numerous time, but never is a case given from someone who supports women’s ordination.

So, this thread is for those who support women’s ordination to state their arguments for it.

Let’s be charitable here and not get caught up in personal attacks.

Peace
 
Of course, this is a purely rhetorical question, since the Ordinary Magisterium of the Catholic Church has **infallibly **defined once and forever that the Church CANNOT ordain women under any circumstances.

This is a dogmatic teaching of the Church that can never change. But it might be fun to pretend the Church never defined this, and see what sorts of reasoning the proponents are able to present.

So I propose that this thread ignore the fact that women’s ordination cannot possibly ever happen. Pretend the issue has never been dogmatically defined.
 
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DavidFilmer:
Of course, this is a purely rhetorical question, since the Ordinary Magisterium of the Catholic Church has **infallibly **defined once and forever that the Church CANNOT ordain women under any circumstances.
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This is true for priestly ordination. The future possibility of ordaining women to the permanent diaconate has not been definitively ruled upon by the Magisterium.
 
Well I suppose that women should be ordained for the same reasons that men should be ordained.

It is a vital job and if someone has the abilities and the calling why deny the rest of us the benefit of their service just because of their plumbing?
 
Steve Andersen:
Well I suppose that women should be ordained for the same reasons that men should be ordained.

It is a vital job and if someone has the abilities and the calling why deny the rest of us the benefit of their service just because of their plumbing?
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Ugh! :eek: What disgusting terminology! Surely we are aware that there are far greater differences between men and women than mere “plumbing”!! :bigyikes: The differences are both physical and spiritual, and unchangable.

In fact, after reading your post again, I believe your cavalier statement was designed to elicit the exact response I gave above! :whacky:
 
Steve, thanks for your comment. You seem to say that the difference between men and women is “their plumbing”. I beg to differ with you.

Way back when, in a Senior level Psychology Class the prof started one day by asking whats the difference between men and women. The class was hesitant to answer. After a few lame atempts by students he looked directly at me and I said , “Everything, from the inside out”. He smiled and agreed as he got into the lecture.

If one thinks just a minute he will realize that the important hormonal balance is different. That fact alone make women more emotional and to have a different outlook on the physical world. They have mood swings during each month - less stability! The role of women has been established since civilization began, they are homebuilders, childbearers and the peacemakers.

If women are put in a leadership position the men will naturally disrespect them and pull away. The reult of women being made priest will be to destroy the church.
 
Joan M:
Ugh! :eek: What disgusting terminology! Surely we are aware that there are far greater differences between men and women than mere “plumbing”!! :bigyikes: The differences are both physical and spiritual, and unchangable.

In fact, after reading your post again, I believe your cavalier statement was designed to elicit the exact response I gave above! :whacky:
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No, it is too early in the morning to be “designing” my posts. 😉
Thanks for the complement, but I’m really not that Machiavellian……at least not before coffee.

I thought my “plumbing” reference was accurate, discrete, suitable for a family forum, and witty to boot. Sorry if you were “disgusted” (and no I won’t make the obvious poor body image joke…too early for that too)

I was just expressing my confusion.

The notion that you have to argue why a class of people should be included is kind of alien to me.

Are men and women different? Sure. Vive la difference!
But as we all know, while there is differences between the sexes there are also difference within the sexes. And like everything else human, the variation within the populations is greater than the variation between them.

IIRC the Church simply stated that Christ didn’t ordain women and so we don’t have the authority to change that policy.

If you want, for sake of argument, to ignore that and have a hypothetical discussion then I really don’t see any viable reason why they shouldn’t be ordained…
 
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Catholic2003:
This is true for priestly ordination. The future possibility of ordaining women to the permanent diaconate has not been definitively ruled upon by the Magisterium.
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While this might be true it will not happen as the diaconate is part of major holy orders. It would also be an innovation as there has never been female deacons.
 
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Exporter:
Steve, thanks for your comment. You seem to say that the difference between men and women is “their plumbing”. I beg to differ with you.

Way back when, in a Senior level Psychology Class the prof started one day by asking whats the difference between men and women. The class was hesitant to answer. After a few lame atempts by students he looked directly at me and I said , “Everything, from the inside out”. He smiled and agreed as he got into the lecture.
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Yes, I know that we are different on a genetic level.

But we are far more similar than we are different

My “plumbing” reference was not intended to be a catalog of all sexual specific differences

And your going into detail on it is a classic “red herring” debating technique.

(There seems to be an awful lot of literal minded people around here. It seems almost……Protestant.) 😉
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Exporter:
If one thinks just a minute he will realize that the important hormonal balance is different. That fact alone make women more emotional and to have a different outlook on the physical world. They have mood swings during each month - less stability! The role of women has been established since civilization began, they are homebuilders, childbearers and the peacemakers.
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Oh, yes bless their hearts, we can’t put women in charge of anything important. If it is the ”wrong time” they’ll just go to pieces. :rolleyes:

That is just as silly as saying that men can’t control their sexual impulses and shouldn’t be trusted with children.

Division of labor along sexual lines predates civilization and is, in its most basic forms, related to reproduction (i.e. plumbing). But even in traditional societies there have been ruling queens, Matrilineal societies, priestesses, and a range of social arrangements.
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Exporter:
If women are put in a leadership position the men will naturally disrespect them and pull away.
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Oh come on. :eek:
Where are you getting this stuff? Old “I love Lucy” re-runs?

There are women in positions of leadership all over the place. Even conservative Muslim societies like Indonesia and Pakistan have had women Prime Ministers.

Your statement is an insult to both sexes.
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Exporter:
The reult of women being made priest will be to destroy the church.
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The church is going to be around for a long time.
 
Steve Andersen:
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Exporter:
The reult of women being made priest will be to destroy the church.
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The church is going to be around for a long time.
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Exporter has it right here. If the Church ever changed and allowed priestesses then it would cease to be the Church. It would be a Church.
 
Here are the conclusions from the Canon Law Society of America’s report on the Canonical Implications of Ordaining Women to the Permanent Diaconate:
  1. Historically, women have been ordained as deaconesses. While it would be anachronistic to call “deaconesses” the women whose ministry is recorded in the New Testament, by the third century there clearly were women deacons. What their ministry involved has varied from place to place, and from century to century. Although some debate whether they were indeed “ordained,” the evidence points to an ordination parallel to that conferred on men to be deacons. Although this past experience does not require that women be ordained to the permanent diaconate today, it does indicate that this possibility is not foreclosed to the Church.
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  1. Cultural factors play a significant role in decisions to introduce the permanent diaconate today. Cultural factors were also significant factors in the decision to ordain deaconesses in local churches in the past. It is appropriate, therefore, that contemporary cultural factors recognized by church officials involving women be taken into consideration in determining whether to ordain women to the permanent diaconate today.
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  1. The diaconate is presented in canon law as a sacrament, a grade in the sacrament of holy orders. It is a permanent or character sacrament, and those ordained deacons stand in a different kind of relationship within the community and not just a difference of degree. Ordination provides sacramental grace for the witnessing presence of the ordained, but does not impede or denigrate the proper role of lay persons in the Church or in the world.
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  1. The supreme authority of the Church is competent to decide to ordain women to the permanent diaconate. It would require a derogation from canon 1024 which restricts all ordinations, including that to the permanent diaconate, to males. This can be done by legislation or individual indults to episcopal conferences.
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  1. It would not be necessary to adopt ordination of women to the permanent diaconate throughout the entire Church; as with the ordination of men to the permanent diaconate, this is a question properly left to decisions by the episcopal conference and individual diocesan bishops.
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  1. Women ordained to the permanent diaconate would be bound by the canon law which applies to men ordained to the permanent diaconate, and women who are members of religious institutes would be bound by the law which applies to male religious who are clerics. Some adjustments would be required in some specific provisions concerning clergy which are currently expressed in masculine terms.
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  1. Women ordained to the permanent diaconate, moreover, would be able to exercise ministries and to hold offices from which they are now excluded, but which are in keeping with the services women currently provide in the Church. They would be given the added assistance of sacramental grace as a result of ordination, in the same manner that men already involved in church service have received this sacramental aid through their own ordination as permanent deacons.
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In light of these conclusions from its research, the committee has reached the conclusion that ordination of women to the permanent diaconate is possible, and may even be desirable for the United States in the present cultural circumstances.
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Catholic2003:
Here are the conclusions from the Canon Law Society of America’s report on the Canonical Implications of Ordaining Women to the Permanent Diaconate:
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This group is not part of the Magisterium of the Catholic Church.

Which is a good thing because their point number 1 couldn’t be father from the Historical facts. The Western Church never really had deaconesses. It was an Eastern Church thing and they were never deacons. I stopped reading after that point becuase if they are that off on that one point the rest really means nothing.

I hear that many women were attempting to get enroled into the permanent diaconate programs and Pope John Paul II said that this was not acceptable.

The permanent diaconate would need to be redefined to allow women to enter it because as it stands today it is a major Holy Order, just as the priesthood and the episcopate.
 
They have mood swings during each month - less stability! The role of women has been established since civilization began, they are homebuilders, childbearers and the peacemakers
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Good grief. How archaic can you get? Yes, there are differences in men and women, besides the “plumbing” (which, by the way, I found neither digusting nor offensive).

There are women who make excellent leaders, just as there are man who are “emotional” and make good “peacemakers.” Yes, there are general differences, but there is vast variation among each of the sexes.
 
For those who think female ordination will solve the priest shortage, consider the experience of another church body. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) is over twice the size of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (LCMS). It is about 5,000,000 to 2,000,000. The ELCA has female pastors. The LCMS does not. One might conclude: over twice the size and both genders from which to get pastors would result in over four times the number of pastors coming out of the seminary. Right?

Wrong. Last year, a total of 245 students were awarded Masters of Divinities at all of the ELCA seminaries (what you get to become a pastor). In the last four years (the number of years you are in the seminary), the ELCA seminaries have awarded a sum total of 1052 M.Div. degrees.

The LCMS seminaries currently have 1216 students enrolled. That averages 304 graduates per year.

That’s right: even with over twice the number of members, AND with allowing female pastors, the ELCA has fewer graduates becoming pastors than the LCMS. The lesson: making the priesthood a free-for-all does not solve numbers problems.

cites:
elca.org/theologicaleducation/asp/seminary_stats.asp
sake.lcms.org/LCMSNewsEnrollments.htm
 
Historically, women were not ordained because they were considered inferior to men. Women were also not allowed to take positions of authority in the secular world, except in hereditary monarchies where birth counted for more than gender. The Church’s customary practice of only ordaining men cannot be automatically considered authoritative apart from these cultural assumptions.

The fact that all the Twelve were men and that early Christianity did not overturn the cultural assumptions about women does not prove that these cultural assumptions were correct or that the male-only priesthood has a basis independent of those assumptions. Rather, it shows that the matter is not as important as modern feminists believe it to be. Who is in authority in the Church is a secondary matter. The preservation of the Gospel is of primary importance, and the Gospel is not primarily about which groups have power. It’s far more important that whoever leads should learn to lead as a servant than that all classes of people should have an equal chance to lead. Slavery is a good example here. Christianity didn’t abolish slavery right away, but it established principles that ultimately led to that abolition. Similarly, Christianity ultimately led (in spite of itself, in a way) to the view that men and women are basically equal. And this has led to the collapse of traditional reasons for only ordaining men.

The argument from sacramental representation is suspicious because it appears to be a relatively modern one. Furthermore, it raises the question of how women can be saved, if Christ’s maleness is salvifically relevant. It would seem to follow from that premise that only men share in the human nature Christ redeemed. On a more trivial level, if it were true that only men could be priests because priests represent Christ the Bridegroom, it would follow that only women could be laypeople! We would then be left with something like the view of some fundamentalist groups in which essentially all men are priests and women are not.

Edwin
 
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ByzCath:
This group is not part of the Magisterium of the Catholic Church.
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Nor has their statement been condemned by the Magisterium of the Catholic Church.

Until the Magisterium rules definitively on this issue, faithful Catholics can hold to either side of this debate.
 
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Contarini:
Historically, women were not ordained because they were considered inferior to men. Women were also not allowed to take positions of authority in the secular world, except in hereditary monarchies where birth counted for more than gender.
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Where is the proof of this statement?

Christ chose men.

You must realize that this is a Catholic Forum.

I think everyone needs to read Ordinatio Sacerdotalis to see the Church’s infallible Teaching on this matter.

Doesn’t really matter what is said here except to know that all Catholics are bound to this Teaching as it says in paragraph 4 of Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, “*** 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***”.
 
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