Why doesn't the Church have the power to ordain women to the priesthood?

[Jack_Bauer]

Can I throw my dice at this?

One cannot baptize a kitten, because the creature does not possess that which is necessary to be baptized sacramentally.

Likewise, an infant could not be ordained or married validly without having the understanding of what is happening to them.

Further, a woman cannot be ordained becuase she does not possess the necessary requirements required by God.

Kind of loose, but something’s in there that ought to help.

If women had been authorized to be ordained, I’d have no problem with it. My mother actually raised me to be somewhat in support of women’s rights. It’s not the fact that “women” are pushing their way in to a man’s job, it’s that God does not permit it. If God wants me to not steel, not hurt, not have sex with everything that passes my way, obey the church or not have ordained women, then I’m gong to listen to him lest I lose my soul. The military is a completely different thing. Some women can handle it and some can’t. BUT, I know men that would have been better off not in the military and women that were very good in the military. It’s not whether one can “do the job,” but whether one is allowed - in this case by God. God reigns supreme above all of man’s laws, rules, preferences, etc. Obedience to the gospel is obedience to Christ and all that He handed down through the Apostles.

 

[rainbow1]

Why aren’t women deacons in the Church?

 

[formerlysure]

Such an understanding reduces the objective truth of Catholic doctrine to the subjective whims of a capricious bishop. The Church does not have the authority to ordain women because the Church does not have the authority to contravene her own doctrine.

for clarity, I was not suggesting an individual Bishop has the authority to ordain women - of course not. Rather, the point was that the Church is made of people and if the Church was so compelled to view the position on ordination of only men to be in error or outdated, etc., the Church as a whole (I believe it would have to be at the level of the Pope with great support from the Cardinals) could make such a change and determine to admit women to the priesthood. I do not think they should, nor that they are likely to, but changes do happen. The broader point is that the reason women are not ordained is that Church doctrine is clear on the subject of only men being ordained.

 

[Tantum_ergo]

No, I don’t. I was using the word “power” and “authority” synonymously. And, I was using them in accordance to how I’ve seen them used on other threads concerning this very topic of women’s ordination, i.e. that the Church does not have the authority to effect such a thing.

What was I proposing? I was asking a question, relating to the Church having the authority to do some things, and not others.

Ana, does the Church have the authority to change what is required for consecration from bread and wine to something else? Even something that is perhaps more suitable (rice for the Asian countries, corn in South America, and something like juice which is not ‘intoxicating’). . .it doesn’t, does it?

Does the Church have the authority to change the requirements of marriage to permit male/male, female/female, or to allow a man to have more than one wife at a time or a woman more than one husband at a time? It doesn’t, does it?

Does the Church have the authority to change Baptismal requirements and to allow the person to be ‘poured’ with champagne or Gatorade? It doesn’t, does it?

Does the Church have the authority to allow ‘phone’ confessions? It doesn’t, does it?

Why is it so very surprising that the Church doesn’t have the authority to change who can be ordained from men to men and women?

 

[jwinch2]

Responsum ad Dubium Concerning the Teaching Contained in Ordinatio Sacerdotalis
Prepared by the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
Approved for Publication by His Holiness Pope John Paul II
John Paul II
October 28, 1995

Responsum ad Dubium Concerning the Teaching Contained in Ordinatio Sacerdotalis
Dubium: Whether the teaching that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women, which is presented in the Apostolic Letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis to be held definitively, is to be understood as belonging to the deposit of faith.

Responsum: In the affirmative.

This teaching requires definitive assent, since, founded on the written Word of God, and from the beginning constantly preserved and applied in the Tradition of the Church, it has been set forth infallibly by the ordinary and universal Magisterium (cf. Second Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium 25, 2). Thus, in the present circumstances, the Roman Pontiff, exercising his proper office of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32), has handed on this same teaching by a formal declaration, explicitly stating what is to be held always, everywhere, and by all, as belonging to the deposit of the faith.

The Sovereign Pontiff John Paul II, at the Audience granted to the undersigned Cardinal Prefect, approved this Reply, adopted in the ordinary session of this Congregation, and ordered it to be published.

Rome, from the offices of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, on the Feast of the Apostles SS. Simon and Jude, October 28, 1995.

Joseph Card. Ratzinger
Prefect

Tarcisio Bertone
Archbishop Emeritus of Vercelli
Secretary

That pretty much sums it all up right there combined with Blessed JPII’s statement on the subject.

To be fair to the OP, she was not suggesting disagreement with the position but merely seeking the rationale behind it in my view.

Thanks for posting those links. They actually helped me in a discussion on the same topic on Facebook.

 

[Luvadoxi]

What do you do about someone who teaches that the Responsum was not an infallible statement?

 

[Little_One0307]

That pretty much sums it all up right there combined with Blessed JPII’s statement on the subject.

To be fair to the OP, she was not suggesting disagreement with the position but merely seeking the rationale behind it in my view.

Thanks for posting those links. They actually helped me in a discussion on the same topic on Facebook.

I posted it becuase someone else referenced it in the thread. I also posted it because it is standard operating procedure for me to do so when this particular thread gets brought up. And within in has the rationale behind this subject within in the document.

I am very glad that it helped you in your discussion on facebook.

God bless.

 

[Little_One0307]

What do you do about someone who teaches that the Responsum was not an infallible statement?

Absolutely nothing. I can only get the truth out there and pray that people can learn and read from it. But pray even harder that I have the grace to be in line with the Magisterium of the Catholic Church.

God bless.

 

[Brendan]

Some people will claim that Jesus was constrained by the culture of the day and he could not choose women for cultural reasons…

Such an arugment also cannot be Biblically supported either. If Christ was so constrained by the culture of the day, He never would have initiated conversations with Samaratian women drawing water at wells.

But He did.

If Christ was constrained by His culture, He never would have eaten meals with tax collectors nor healed people on the Sabaath.

But He did.

Ergo, Christ was not constrained by His culture, but challenged His culture whenever, and however it needed to be

The ordination of the women was not one area where He challenged the culture.

As a side note, Christ Himself was the one who first established the Levitical Priesthood among the Jews, so, in that sense, He was the one who DEFINED the culture for the gender of the priesthood.

 

[Brendan]

Why aren’t women deacons in the Church?

Why should they be?

That is kind of like saying “Why aren’t men nuns in the Church”

 

[jwinch2]

I posted it becuase someone else referenced it in the thread. I also posted it because it is standard operating procedure for me to do so when this particular thread gets brought up. And within in has the rationale behind this subject within in the document.

I’m glad you did. My comments were regarding others who seemed to be going after the OP a bit as though she was disagreeing with the Church’s position.

I am very glad that it helped you in your discussion on facebook.

God bless.

Thanks, it definitely did.

God bless you as well!

 

[Ana_v]

Seriously, I don’t know why people keep bringing this up. Oh well, it gets in another three extra posts I suppose. And this is all I will have to say about this.

While it may get tiring to some, to have to address a particular issue ad nauseam, there is a sense in which I think it’s a good thing that it is brought up often: it provides an oppurtunity for Catholics to explain the reasoning behind a teaching, to those who are unaware. **This is important **because – and I don’t mean to go off topic, I’m simply using this as in example – take for instance, the issue of contraception. How many people outside the Church, i.e. non-Catholics, actually know the reasoning behind the Church’s teaching that contraception is immoral (in other words, know more than just the basic “The Catholic Church believes contraception is evil”)?

If they are ignorant of the reasoning (which is not really apparent. It’s pretty theologically deep.), it’s not really surprising that they’re going to view the teaching as silly (especially when they’re bombarded with implicit and explicit contraceptive mentalities every which way they turn in society).

So back to the issue of women and the priesthood. The same thing applies here. Especially, when there are non-Catholic Christian churches ordaining women (and yes, I’m aware that these churches, with the exception of the Eastern Orthodox, don’t have valid holy orders in the first place) it’s only natural for onlookers of this phenomena to wonder why the Catholic Church does not have this.

A few months ago, I was reading through an atheistic’ page/forum on Facebook, titled “The Bible: Truth or Fiction?” (seriously, if you want to pull your hair out by way of reading straw mens, constant mockery, unsophisticated thinking, disregard for philosophy and theology, popular misconceptions about history, atheistic Sola Scriptura, etc, that’s the forum to go to) wherein one of the threads was started by an atheist who asked this question:

Why is the largest Christian church controlled entirely by men, with no woman - no matter how pious or gifted - permitted to become a priest, a monsignor, a bishop, an archbishop, a cardinal, or a pope?..

One of the responses:

Because the Catholic church enjoys misinterpreting “Paul’s” epistles to specific churches. One letter claimed that women are to be silent and the men are to keep their wives inline. Since the women are not to speak and be obedient to the men, they can’t teach.

The teachings of the Church that are publicly criticized are particularly the ones that should be more openly explained to the world, so that silence of explanation doesn’t fuel more misrepresentations and caricatures of our faith, than what already exists.

Again I want to emphasize, that I am not some sort of feminist that thinks the Church is oppressing women. That’s not it at all. I don’t have a problem with an exlusively male priesthood. Just like I don’t have a problem with men not being nuns.

As for my OP, I was not so much interested in making this a disussion about women’s ordination itself (in fact, I’m more interested in the issue of infant communion), but rather, the more general point of how the Church determines what things it can change and not change.

Here’s another way for me to have expressed my question:

Does the Church have the authority to cease infant baptism (notwithstanding the fact that it is not seeking to do such a thing)? Is it argued that infant baptism is part of the deposit of faith, but infant communion is not?

That’s probably what I should have put in my OP, as it is more parallel.

 

[Luvadoxi]

The reason for my post about the Responsum is that an RCIA director held this position (exact quote, “Cardinal Ratzinger is not the Pope”–this was in 2003), and the topic of women’s ordination always comes up and the only thing that’s concluded is that Jesus didn’t ordain Mary; that causes everyone pause; and that the Church isn’t likely to change this teaching any time soon. That’s something less than definitive, IMO. The thing that helped my understanding was hearing that Pope John Paul II did sign that Responsum. Would that signature make it infallible? I admit to ignorance on whether it’s definitive because the CDF said it is…I accept the teaching of the Magisterium completely, just so you know, but I think this is an area of confusion…

 

[Jack_Bauer]

While it may get tiring to some, to have to address a particular issue ad nauseam, there is a sense in which I think it’s a good thing that it is brought up often: it provides an oppurtunity for Catholics to explain the reasoning behind a teaching, to those who are unaware. **This is important **because – and I don’t mean to go off topic, I’m simply using this as in example – take for instance, the issue of contraception. How many people outside the Church, i.e. non-Catholics, actually know the reasoning behind the Church’s teaching that contraception is immoral (in other words, know more than just the basic “The Catholic Church believes contraception is evil”)?

If they are ignorant of the reasoning (which is not really apparent. It’s pretty theologically deep.), it’s not really surprising that they’re going to view the teaching as silly (especially when they’re bombarded with implicit and explicit contraceptive mentalities every which way they turn in society).

So back to the issue of women and the priesthood. The same thing applies here. Especially, when there are non-Catholic Christian churches ordaining women (and yes, I’m aware that these churches, with the exception of the Eastern Orthodox, don’t have valid holy orders in the first place) it’s only natural for onlookers of this phenomena to wonder why the Catholic Church does not have this.

A few months ago, I was reading through an atheistic’ page/forum on Facebook, titled “The Bible: Truth or Fiction?” (seriously, if you want to pull your hair out by way of reading straw mens, constant mockery, unsophisticated thinking, disregard for philosophy and theology, popular misconceptions about history, atheistic Sola Scriptura, etc, that’s the forum to go to) wherein one of the threads was started by an atheist who asked this question:

One of the responses:

The teachings of the Church that are publicly criticized are particularly the ones that should be more openly explained to the world, so that silence of explanation doesn’t fuel more misrepresentations and caricatures of our faith, than what already exists.

Again I want to emphasize, that I am not some sort of feminist that thinks the Church is oppressing women. That’s not it at all. I don’t have a problem with an exlusively male priesthood. Just like I don’t have a problem with men not being nuns.

As for my OP, I was not so much interested in making this a disussion about women’s ordination itself (in fact, I’m more interested in the issue of infant communion), but rather, the more general point of how the Church determines what things it can change and not change.

Here’s another way for me to have expressed my question:

Does the Church have the authority to cease infant baptism (notwithstanding the fact that it is not seeking to do such a thing)? Is it argued that infant baptism is part of the deposit of faith, but infant communion is not?

That’s probably what I should have put in my OP, as it is more parallel.

If it helps, I believe the Vatican should reimplemented holy communion to infants after they are baptized and confirmed as well. I understand the rational for it, but I believe it would be best to return to an ancient tradition still carried on by the Eastern Church.

 

[Spirithound]

Just a reminder that the person being ordained is the subject of the sacrament, not the matter. The matter of Holy Orders is the imposition of hands.

No, the imposition of hands is part of the form of the sacrament. The matter is that which receives the sacrament, as in the bread and wine that become the Eucharist.

 

[rainbow1]

Why should they be?

That is kind of like saying “Why aren’t men nuns in the Church”

Does anyone have a more helpful answer as to why women are not deacons? I get that the 12 apostles were male and hence priests are male, but why can’t women be deacons?

 

[Bluegoat]

It would be the same as the Catholic Church declaring that men are now allowed to concieve, gestate, and bear children.

They might say it, but I am not expecting to see it happen even then.

 

[Little_One0307]

While it may get tiring to some, to have to address a particular issue ad nauseam, there is a sense in which I think it’s a good thing that it is brought up often: it provides an oppurtunity for Catholics to explain the reasoning behind a teaching, to those who are unaware. **This is important **because – and I don’t mean to go off topic, I’m simply using this as in example – take for instance, the issue of contraception. How many people outside the Church, i.e. non-Catholics, actually know the reasoning behind the Church’s teaching that contraception is immoral (in other words, know more than just the basic “The Catholic Church believes contraception is evil”)?

If they are ignorant of the reasoning (which is not really apparent. It’s pretty theologically deep.), it’s not really surprising that they’re going to view the teaching as silly (especially when they’re bombarded with implicit and explicit contraceptive mentalities every which way they turn in society).

So back to the issue of women and the priesthood. The same thing applies here. Especially, when there are non-Catholic Christian churches ordaining women (and yes, I’m aware that these churches, with the exception of the Eastern Orthodox, don’t have valid holy orders in the first place) it’s only natural for onlookers of this phenomena to wonder why the Catholic Church does not have this.

Thanks for bringing this up. And I realize that I made a mistake, I actually copied and pasted these documents from another thread, and that thread was far from this one. It was about a cardinal or something saying that there was no theological obstuctions to ordaining women as priests, hence my biting comments. I should have changed them last ngiht, but forgot about them.

I don’t mind discussion.

God bless.

 

[FCEGM]

Hi GwenL, thank you for the explanations, they are helpful.

As to the second one though – and please forgive me if I am over-analyzing or “mis-analyzing” (so to speak) – it does makes sense, but at the same time I wonder the relevance of particulars of the priest, since the priest is acting in the person of Christ afterall. e.g. a priest who is black African is still acting in the person of Christ when he says “this is my body” at consecration, though Christ was not black African. . .

forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=8007956&postcount=11

 

[Little_One0307]

The reason for my post about the Responsum is that an RCIA director held this position (exact quote, “Cardinal Ratzinger is not the Pope”–this was in 2003), and the topic of women’s ordination always comes up and the only thing that’s concluded is that Jesus didn’t ordain Mary; that causes everyone pause; and that the Church isn’t likely to change this teaching any time soon. That’s something less than definitive, IMO. The thing that helped my understanding was hearing that Pope John Paul II did sign that Responsum. Would that signature make it infallible? I admit to ignorance on whether it’s definitive because the CDF said it is…I accept the teaching of the Magisterium completely, just so you know, but I think this is an area of confusion…

John Paul declared this and I repeat and quote

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.**

That sounds pretty much like infallible teaching. Bolded portions are criteria for defining something infallible by the Pontiff.

I really don’t see where the confusion is, I am trying to see the grey in a pretty black and white situation.

God bless.