Why women cant be Catholic Priests

[Arkansan]

Because race and ethnicity are not ontological qualities.

 

[guanophore]

Ed, I am assuming you are a man. I understand why you don’t understand, if that is the case. If you are a man, you have never been told you can’t participate in the hierarchy of the church.

I don’t think this can be assumed. The vast majority of men are not called to the priesthood. If they are also ego and power driven, they probably experience the same pain.

You have never been told to blindly follow the rules established by a bunch of men

Fortunately, the CC does not “tell” anyone to do such an inappropriate behavior. But your statement says volumes about your hostile attitude toward the Church founded by Christ. If you think that His apostles were just " a bunch of men" then it is no wonder you are so hostile. You do not affirm that the Creator is at liberty to choose whomever He decides. You reject that God chose this “bunch of men” and trained them to shepherd His One Body, the Church.

while knowing you will never be able to have an opportunity to carry as much weight as they do in the church.

This seems to be the crux of the matter. It is an ego driven desire to “carry weight”. Jesus already addressed this problem.

It doesn’t matter if women get to have active service roles in their church.

I suppose this is true of both men and women. If people are not content to the ministries to which God has called them, then nothing else will be suitable!

It doesn’t matter if none of them have any interest in being a priest.

How strange!?

But even if this were true, I don’t understand why this is different if one is a man or a woman? There are plenty of men who also have ego driven desires, and they are not accommodated either. I don’t think this a matter of sex.

What matters is they aren’t given the opportunity. It is hurtful. Quite painful,

I do agree that it is painful for human beings to not get what they want. I would say that this is the case without regard to sex. I wanted to go to medical school, and I was not given the opportunity. It was very painful. However, to say it is “hurtful” implies that another entity has caused something. The medical schools have standards that must be met. Do you think they are deliberately “hurtful” to those that don’t meet the requirements?

particularly if you are a person who thinks for yourself and doesn’t blindly follow anybody (or any organization).

There are two false premises here. One assumes that the CC expects anyone to “blindly follow”, which is false, and the other is assuming that the CC does not want each person to “think for yourself” which is also false.

Honestly it is a relief that the CC does not call anyone to the priesthood who has such trouble reasoning!

 

[guanophore]

And the worst part, the very worst part, is if you dare to speak up about it, most probably what you will experience is your fellow Catholics telling you how un-Catholic you are.

I would certainly hope that any educated Catholic could point out how many errors there are in this line of reasoning, and how the attitude of the heart of the person who espouses it threatens one’s relationship with their Maker.

And worst of all, how you can go to the Episcopal Church with “those types” if that is what you are after. And if you are a 12 year old kid in a devout family, you are held hostage to this for at least the next 6 years. And once you turn 18 and decide you no longer want any part of it, you are shamed for leaving.

At least the person in question has sufficient conscience formation to feel ashamed!! We can only pray that such a one will come into an encounter with the Risen Lord, so that such a one might have experiential clarity that one has not been “shorted” somehow.

It is a painful thing when you watch what happens when they realize the reality of it all.

I agree that it is painful to see so many young people rejecting the Church Jesus founded.

I am going to remove myself from posting on this particular thread any longer, because I believe the people who are responding really are not coming from a place of wanting to put themselves in the shoes of others.

I think you are right. For most of us, it is not about being in the shoes of those who are driven by their own ego, needs and desires, but about setting all that aside to become disciples.

 

[AlNg]

God could have come to earth as a woman, or a horse, or a potato.

I don’t see how God could have come to earth as a potato. Would that be an ordinary potato or would that have special powers?

 

[Gorgias]

I don’t see how God could have come to earth as a potato. Would that be an ordinary potato or would that have special powers?

Who knows… but it probably means we’d be having potato chips at Mass…

 

[BlackFriar]

Of course God had to make a choice. But because there are only two choices how on earth can you logically assert that simply by masculinity alone that God clearly didn’t want female priests.

Your “logic” means that if God wanted both male and female priests he would have had to come as a hermaphrodite. Its a risible argument.

Further, if your “logic” holds how do you explain non Jews being priests.
Jesus never ordained any did he?

 

[simpleas]

I guess Christ wasn’t a man since He wasn’t married. smh

I think (just a personal observation) since Fr Longenecker is a married Catholic priest with his own biological children his perception of what it means to be fully male or female is his own.

 

[simpleas]

Instead, in the Incarnation of Christ as a man, born of a woman, who knew no man, we have a representation of both. Christ received His flesh from a woman, Our Blessed Mother.

THIS.

Both are represented in Christ.

 

[Elizabeth3]

THIS.

Both are represented in Christ.

Right. Both are represented in Christ in the Incarnation. But Christ is still ontologically male. So were the Apostles. So was the O.T. priesthood. So is the priesthood of today. They are visible signs of Christ the Head, the Bridegroom in relation to Christ’s Body, the Bride.

 

[Sugabee43]

I don’t see how God could have come to earth as a potato. Would that be an ordinary potato or would that have special powers?

Come on, man.

 

[Sugabee43]

Of course God had to make a choice. But because there are only two choices how on earth can you logically assert that simply by masculinity alone that God clearly didn’t want female priests.

Your “logic” means that if God wanted both male and female priests he would have had to come as a hermaphrodite. Its a risible argument.

Further, if your “logic” holds how do you explain non Jews being priests.

Jesus never ordained any did he?

I’m not. That’s only ONE of the reasons. You are completely missing the theology of the Bridegroom (Christ) and His Bride (the Church). You’re missing that sacramental marriage is an ICON of the marriage of Christ to the Church - His people; and that union is the ultimate union for all of us.
Jesus is the fulfillment of the order of Melchizedek - which were all male.
Jesus had the perfect opportunity to confer the power to loose and bind to a woman…His Mother. But He chose not to. Instead, she is the Ark of the New Covenant; the New Eve, who is mother to us all in salvation history and the Queen of Heaven.

I defer to Christopher West: “This Sunday is Palm Sunday, also known as Passion Sunday because we read one of the Gospel accounts of Christ’s Passion. It is here, in the agony of the Cross, that the “nuptial mystery” of Christ’s love for the Church is consummated and creation is renewed. “Who is our Lord on the cross?” asks Bishop Fulton Sheen. “He’s the new Adam. Where’s the new Eve? At the foot of the cross. … How did the old humanity begin? With the nuptials. How will the new humanity begin? With the nuptials. If Eve became the mother of the living in the natural order, is not this woman at the foot of the cross to become another mother? And so the bridegroom looks down at the bride. He looks at his beloved. Christ looks at his Church. There is here the birth of the Church.” All of us are born of the union of the first Adam and Eve. All of us, if we are to enter the Kingdom, must be “born again” of the union of the New Adam and Eve. This union was consummated mystically and eternally at the “marriage bed” of the Cross.”

None of this is possible if Christ incarnated Himself as a woman. And so therefore, the sacrifice of the Mass would be a farce; and THAT is why a woman cannot and the Church cannot allow women to be priests.

 

[Elizabeth3]

None of this is possible if Christ incarnated Himself as a woman. And so therefore, the sacrifice of the Mass would be a farce; and THAT is why a woman cannot and the Church cannot allow women to be priests.

This is correct. In the liturgy especially, where we offer proper worship to God, these theological truths should be upheld. If they are not, we have no Eucharist. The signs of male and female - Head and Body point to greater spiritual realities. Anything else is a lie.

 

[goout]

Because race and ethnicity are not ontological qualities.

This.
if nothing else, I hope people reading this thread are scratching their heads to understand this.

In Genesis, when Moses asks “who are you?..” God identifies himself as the essence of being.
It all sounds very mysterious to us. He calls himself “I Am That I Am”. What does that mean?
He doesn’t say “I’m the guy who did this and that”, he says basically " I am the very ground of being".

Christ claims this same identity a few different times in the Gospels.
Our identity as human beings is not founded in what we are capable of doing, or in various tangential traits like race. It is founded in our being, in which we share in God’s image.

Why is sexual differentiation different from race?
Because it is only through sexual complementarity that we participate in being.
Because it is only through sexual complementarity that we participate in being.

No other human characteristic has this profound ontological meaning.

Please note, the Catholic Church did not force this reality on the world, it’s simply a fact of life that any sane person can observe.

 

[Elizabeth3]

Because it is only through sexual complementarity that we participate in being.

No other human characteristic has this profound ontological meaning.

Right. The CCC tells us

369 Man and woman have been created, which is to say, willed by God: on the one hand, in perfect equality as human persons; on the other, in their respective beings as man and woman. “Being man” or “being woman” is a reality which is good and willed by God: man and woman possess an inalienable dignity which comes to them immediately from God their Creator.240 Man and woman are both with one and the same dignity “in the image of God”. In their “being-man” and “being-woman”, they reflect the Creator’s wisdom and goodness.

370 In no way is God in man’s image. He is neither man nor woman. God is pure spirit in which there is no place for the difference between the sexes. But the respective “perfections” of man and woman reflect something of the infinite perfection of God: those of a mother and those of a father and husband.

Why do some women seem to disdain their own being which “reflects something of the infinite perfection of God” by not being content to be visible and living signs of the Body of Christ? Eternal souls are born from women like the Church was born from the side of Christ. Mothers (physical and spiritual) bathe with both water and/or word, feed, counsel, educate, and forgive. Priests, as visible and living signs of Christ the Head, confer spiritual life through the Sacraments - Baptism (being born of and washed in the water and spirit), Eucharist (giving Christ’s Body and Blood for nourishment), Reconciliation (extending Christ’s counsel and forgiveness.)

Both ways of “being” tend to others and to Christ. “What you do for the least of these, you do for me.” Both are necessary in order to reveal the “whole Christ.” However, it’s not necessary that women and most men be priests. It’s only necessary that those who are called, answer and serve the Body, in this work of Christ.

 

[Spyridon]

1. Utilitarianism 2. Sentimentalism 3. Civil Rights.

I would add 4. Power.

Most women who want to be Priests are obsessed with temporal power and the idea of being in a position of power and authority. In fact, I’d reckon that power seeking is the main driving force behind womens ordination.

And of course, this power seeking is a direct result of pride.

 

[Spyridon]

when she is a wife and mother.

What a bizarre statement

What’s bizarre about the truth?

A woman isn’t most fully a woman when she’s going around with a green and pink buzzcut and “married” to another woman.

Which of these two women is more womanly and feminine?

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I’ll never understand the mindset of third wave “feminists” who hate men and masculinity, yet despise traditional ideas of feminity, while simultaneously trying to act like and imitate men to prove their “feminism…” Such women are severely confused, to say the least.

 

[Elizabeth3]

Most women who want to be Priests are obsessed with temporal power and the idea of being in a position of power and authority

Many also fail to see that in Christianity it’s the power to serve and an authority that’s at the service of those in their care. It’s not a power and authority of tyranny and domination by force which some obviously think it is when they mention oppression and “blind” obedience. If that’s what some think it is, it’s best they aren’t called to the priesthood.

 

[Spyridon]

Amen sister.

My wife’s middle name is Elizabeth And she’d agree 100% with everything both you and I wrote.

 

[goout]

goodcatholic:

1. Utilitarianism 2. Sentimentalism 3. Civil Rights.

I would add 4. Power.

Most women who want to be Priests are obsessed with temporal power and the idea of being in a position of power and authority. In fact, I’d reckon that power seeking is the main driving force behind womens ordination.

And of course, this power seeking is a direct result of pride.

Maybe not obsessed with power necessarily, but misunderstanding power in the Christian context.
The Christian concepts of power and authority are radically at odds with the world’s. The cross is evidence of that.
The Pope is “Servus Servorum Dei”. The servant of the servants of God.

 

[Spyridon]

The Christian idea of power is also tied in with the Biblical maxim of “my strength is made perfect in weakness.”

The Cross is a sign of contradiction to the world, but the Power of God to those of us who believe.