Will God change His mind on

[2BobTanner]

“God don’t make no mistakes. That’s how he got to be God.” (Archie Bunker)

All joking aside, if I’m not mistaken, God is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. In fact God is without time; it is only man which counts time.

:twocents:

 

[jimmy]

Strider:

women’s ordination?
I snuck a peek at the “women only” thread on women’s ordination. I, not being a woman, am not eligible to respond on that thread, but I saw a few posts that crystallized for me the reason this is STILL such a hotly debated issue within the Church, so I started this thread.
One poster said that she had no problems with the all-male priesthood. She understood that that was the way Jesus set it up and that was fine.
Then she added that at some time in the future GOD MIGHT CHANGE HIS MIND ON WOMEN PRIESTS, and let us know if He did so.
The lack of understanding here is that God is immutable - he does not change.
One of the myriad ways to approach this truth is that time is change and God, being outside time, does not change. He could more easily change the value of pi (3.14159…) and have all airplanes fall from the sky as he could change ANY Church dogma, including ordaining women.
Some Catholics understand this and some Catholics don’t. Almost all non-Catholics don’t, which was the reason for all the blather in the MSM about the new pope allowing women’s ordination before Benedict was elected.
If any Church dogma were to change, the Catholic Church would cease to be, and Jesus promised that would not happen.
There will never be women ordained as priests in the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church. Pi will always be 3.14159…

God can’t change it because he is immutable. Also, as you said, God lives outside time, s he could not change his mind in the future because there is no future for God. Everything is present to God. He “is”. What he says “is”. To try to say he will change his mind is false. You can read Augustines Confessions to see a more in depth writing on Eternity and time. It is in Book 11.

 

[jimmy]

Fidei Defensor:

No, it’s not ex cathedra. It’s a matter of discipline/practice, not faith/morals. No pope has made an ex cathedra statement since Pius XII in 1950, when he defined the dogma of the Assumption.

But if it isn’t or is ex cathedra doesn’t change the fact that in the Catholic Church women will never be priests. That’s the way it should be.

No, it is not a discipline. It falls right under faith and morals. Read Ordinatus Sacerdotalis.

 

[TobyLue]

Strider - No, our culture teaches that everything is reative and there are no differences between the roles of the sexes. That’s why there is so little understanding of infaliible Church teaching…your infallibility isn’t my infallibility. The church needs catechesis, serious catechesis, desperately. Hopefully His Holiness Benedict XVI can move us in that direction.

Fidei Defensor

Quote:

        Originally Posted by **Dr. Colossus**

Not only will God not change His mind, it is now officially impossible that the Church will ever change her mind. The male-only priesthood was infallibly defined ex cathedra by Pope John Paul the Great in 1994:

No, it’s not ex cathedra. It’s a matter of discipline/practice, not faith/morals. No pope has made an ex cathedra statement since Pius XII in 1950, when he defined the dogma of the Assumption.

But if it isn’t or is ex cathedra doesn’t change the fact that in the Catholic Church women will never be priests. That’s the way it should be.

Church teachings can be declared infallible in three ways
· by an ex cathedra proclamation of the Pope
**· **by an proclamation made by the Council of Bishops in union with the Pope
· by the ordinary magisterium of a doctrine continually affirmed and taught by the Church over the centuries.

And in order for it to be eligible for infallibility it must be

· an issue of faith and morals
· **an issue that applies to the WHOLE Church, the universal Church, and not just a portion of the Church **
· intended by the legislator to be infallible when it is defined and proclaimed. The legislator being either the Pope speaking ex cathedra or the Council of Bishops making an infallible proclamation. In the case of infallibility by the ordinary magisterium, the doctrine must have been taught from the beginning and affirmed through the ages as a part of the deposit of faith

*Ordinatio Sacerdotalis* says in part:

1.Priestly ordination, which hands on the office entrusted by Christ to his Apostles of teaching, sanctifying and governing the faithful, has **in the Catholic Church from the beginning always been reserved to men alone. **This tradition has also been faithfully maintained by the Oriental Churches.

When the question of the ordination of women arose in the Anglican Communion**, Pope Paul VI, out of fidelity to his office of safeguarding the Apostolic Tradition, **and also with a view to removing a new obstacle placed in the way of Christian unity, reminded Anglicans of the position of the Catholic Church: "She holds that it is not admissible to ordain women to the priesthood, for very fundamental reasons. These reasons include: the example recorded in the Sacred Scriptures of Christ choosing his Apostles only from among men; the constant practice of the Church, which has imitated Christ in choosing only men; and her living teaching authority which has consistently held that the exclusion of women from the priesthood is in accordance with God's plan for his Church."(1)

1. The Declaration recalls and explains the fundamental reasons for this teaching, reasons expounded by Paul VI, and concludes that the Church "does not consider herself authorized to admit women to priestly ordination."
   1. **Although the teaching that priestly ordination is to be reserved to men alone has been preserved by the constant and universal Tradition of the Church and firmly taught by the Magisterium in its more recent documents, **at the present time in some places it is nonetheless considered still open to debate, or the Church’s judgment that women are not to be admitted to ordination is considered to have a merely disciplinary force.
   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.

No need for an ex cathedra statement statement by the Pope. The teaching of no women priests cannot be more infallible than has already been proclaimed …………and cannot be changed……