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Della
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I have a B. A. in religious education and have studied St. Paul’s writings–not extentively, but enough to understand that you are misinterpreting and misjudging Paul’s writings. Paul didn’t introduce new concepts, but rather delved into them because he was presented with issues that needed to be dealt with. Let’s take his admonition that women be silent in public, for example, before Christ no Jewish woman ever spoke in the synagogue, it was completely the province of men. Only after the spread of the Gospel were women even allowed to sit with the men at Mass. So, Paul was not without precedence in his judgment. Paul wasn’t making his decisions in a vacuum or totally independent of anyone else. We have to understand the cultural and theological context of Paul’s writings, as in the rest of scripture, in order to understand what he was talking about/meant to convey and how it applies to us in our own time.
St. Peter himself equated Paul’s writings to scripture, as I cited in one of my posts. If the first pope understood the importance of Paul’s writings we certainly should. The Church fully and completely investigated whose writings should be in the canon of scripture and whose should not. St. Jerome, who was commissioned by the then pope to take on that task was a profound theologian and historian who was much closer to the time when the NT was written than we are. He took everything into consideration before making his recommendations. The Church decided which writings were to be included under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. So we can be sure that the canon is correct in every respect.
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jinc1019
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jinc1019
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pablope
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jinc1019
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I agree with much of what you say here, but I don’t think your response regarding Paul’s passages are completely fair. I agree we should look at his writings in relation to the context of the writing itself, but it doesn’t change the fact that Paul said women can’t speak in Church…regardless of the context that led him to say that, that’s what he said and it is now attributed as being the Word of God. So is it true? Do you believe women should be silent in church? Or do you only believe they should be silent in THAT church at that time? If so, why should it only apply to THAT church? If it does only apply to THAT church, what about other things Paul wrote? Are they universally applicable or not? If they are, how do we know when Paul is talking about a universal principle or just a principle that applies to one context?
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PJM
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JUST SETING THE RECORD STRAIGHT HERE
DOUAY BIBLE:1st. Cor. 14: [34] Let women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted them to speak, but to be subject, as also the law saith. [35] But if they would learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is a shame for a woman to speak in the church"
In present times this is to be understood and women or for that matter; “lay-men” are NOT to preach the Gospel or give the homily… “laymen” does NOT mean “Deacons.”
Paul’s “ideas” are formed from who he is [a TRAINED Pharisee] ; his backgrounf and the Sacred Tradition following 1st. Jewish Practice; 2. BUT ALSO Christ choosing ONLY men for PUBLIC ministry. 3. The times that he lived in.
JESUS WAS NOT A “GO-ALONG TO GET ALONG” KInd of leader. Christ; our Perfect God did always and everytime what He as GOD knew to be the right thing to do.
There are examples of women even in the NT having ACTIVE roles within the early church.
God Bless,
pat/PJM
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Della
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This is where the question of authority comes in. Who has the authority to decide these questions? Is it somewhere in the 33,000 Protestant denominations, all claiming to interpret the Bible according to how they see it? Or is it the Church Christ founded to whom he gave the charism of infallibility in matters of faith and morals?
The Church has decided this issue, and the others Paul talked about, in its practices and in Canon Law. For example, the Church has said that only ordained men may preach, but that anyone may teach in a classroom situation. The Church has determined that St. Paul was talking about who may preach/teach within the liturgy of the Mass. Outside the Mass, anyone may teach, but only an ordained man, most specifically a deacon, should preach. It’s why we have women readers, but only men are acolytes, who hold the office of reader.
Not only must we understand Paul within his own times and the situations he was dealing with, but within how the Church has applied his teaching under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
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jinc1019
Guest
I think you are missing the point again. The passage doesn’t say preaching only…it says talking. It even goes on to say that if women have a question for their husbands, they should wait until after mass.JUST SETING THE RECORD STRAIGHT HERE
DOUAY BIBLE:1st. Cor. 14: [34] Let women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted them to speak, but to be subject, as also the law saith. [35] But if they would learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is a shame for a woman to speak in the church"
In present times this is to be understood and women or for that matter; “lay-men” are NOT to preach the Gospel or give the homily… “laymen” does NOT mean “Deacons.”
Paul’s “ideas” are formed from who he is [a TRAINED Pharisee] ; his backgrounf and the Sacred Tradition following 1st. Jewish Practice; 2. BUT ALSO Christ choosing ONLY men for PUBLIC ministry. 3. The times that he lived in.
JESUS WAS NOT A “GO-ALONG TO GET ALONG” KInd of leader. Christ; our Perfect God did always and everytime what He as GOD knew to be the right thing to do.
There are examples of women even in the NT having ACTIVE roles within the early church.
God Bless,
pat/PJM
Catholics always point to this and say it is only talking about being priests, but it isn’t. It’s talking about TALKING…any talking…That is what the text plainly says.
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jinc1019
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Ok so then I think this issue can be resolved from the Catholic perspective. On its own, Paul’s writings are just writings from a Christian teacher. With the endorsement of the Church, they are affirmed to be inerrant. Additionally, the Church, because its infallible, has the ability to interpret what Paul meant, even if what he appears to mean is plainly different from what the Church decides.
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Della
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It isn’t “plainly different”. That’s how you may see it, but it’s not how the Church sees it based on the whole of Sacred Tradition and the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Paul was more than a “Christian teacher”. He was an Apostle, a bishop of the Church, a deep theologian, a martyr for the Faith, and a great saint.
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Aloysium
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i personally never gave the verses much thought
it has always seemed to relate to things that were going on in the church at the time
and did not mean that women were held to be less than men by God
i figure that women may not have been allowed in synagogues or other houses of worship, so they would not know the rules;
i imagine the priest speaking, and ppl not realizing it wasn’t a social function, interjecting and asking questions, which would be better discussed at home
at any rate it has to do with rules and procedures of an organization rather than our relationship with Christ
it has always seemed to relate to things that were going on in the church at the time
and did not mean that women were held to be less than men by God
i figure that women may not have been allowed in synagogues or other houses of worship, so they would not know the rules;
i imagine the priest speaking, and ppl not realizing it wasn’t a social function, interjecting and asking questions, which would be better discussed at home
at any rate it has to do with rules and procedures of an organization rather than our relationship with Christ
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jinc1019
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All true about Paul. I don’t deny any of that.
But just because he was an apostle doesn’t mean everything he ever said was correct. As I said before, we don’t say that about Popes either.
And it is PLAINLY different…that’s an objective statement. The Church’s subjective view may very well be right, but if you read the words in plain language as they are written, there seems to be a very different meaning.
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jinc1019
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All very good points. But then doesn’t that analysis lead to the conclusion that those parts of Paul’s writings are not really directly from God? Why would God care if all of humanity for the rest of time knew something that only applied to a small unique group of people in history?
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Della
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No. I’ve explained this issue and won’t do so again. As a Catholic it is up to you and to me to submit our will to the mind of the Church, not the other way around. How can you think that either you or I, hundreds of years later, with little to no education in these matters have the ability to contradict Christ’s Church? Why do you persist in this line of thinking? What do you hope to gain from it? I will not speculate because I wouldn’t want to chance being uncharitable, but really you should ask yourself these questions. And you should consult someone educated in wuch matters, perhaps your priest, about your issues. I have nothing further to give you, so I’m bowing out. God bless you.
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Usagi
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The vast majority of humans were never bound to follow the Mosaic Law, and we believe that for the last two thousand years no one has been, yet we are not tossing Leviticus and Deuteronomy out of the canon.
Every writing of the Bible, first and foremost, is a document written in a specific time and place and usually with a specific audience. The authors in their own day probably did not know they were inspired or view themselves as writing something that would be treasured on par with the smaller collection of Scriptures they knew.
The “specific audience” thing is especially true of the New Testament epistles. They started life as actual letters written to specific local churches. They might well address problems that also exist in different places and times, or explain theology that will become a universal part of Christian belief, but they were written first and foremost to specific groups of people. It is not necessary for us to spend a lot of time trying to glean the divine significance of the passage in which Paul mentions that he left his coat behind last time he was in town and would like it sent to him, or notes that the original readers will easily recognize his oversized handwriting. For us, those are just neat little glimpses into Paul’s life.
The teaching about women remaining silent in the churches is not so easily relegated to Paul’s specific situation, of course. Some have posited that there was an outspoken group of female heretics in that particular community who would interrupt the liturgy with their questions and objections, but I’m not sure how much evidence there is for such a claim. More significant, to me, is that Paul in other places speaks of female prophets and leaders. Since we are to read Scripture as a whole, even if an isolated statement seems clear in its meaning, we must check our reading against the rest of the evidence. Likewise, since the Church has had that teaching from a very early time, her practices throughout history may be examined to see how she understood it. With the possible exception of the specific congregation Paul was addressing (and we have no evidence either way how they responded), I know of no era or land in which the Church has enforced absolute silence on female parishioners because of this teaching – at least, not beyond the usual rule that it’s rude for anyone to interrupt the mass without very good reason.
There are a few cases in which Paul actually tells us whether a teaching or command is coming from him or from the Lord. In the former case, he was exercising his apostolic authority and obviously expected to be obeyed, but other apostles or bishops or popes might have chosen differently in other circumstances. That’s like the Church’s disciplinary rules, which we are bound to obey but which can be changed in different times and places. When he says that a command or teaching is from the Lord, I would equate that to an irreformable dogma or moral law. I know that in at least one case, Paul expressed a limitation on female teachers as “I do not allow,” implying that it was his rule and not a universal requirement, but the “women shall remain silent” case is not so clear.
Usagi
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PJM
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HmmmmmmInterestering take.
But the Mass did not exist in Paul’s time; even though the point would still be vaild in the Jewish practices of the time.
But you understanding SEEMS??? to say men can “talk” in church; women not:shrug:
SORRY but is disagree. NOONE ought to be just 'talking" in church except for essential matters.
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