women priests

[simpleas]

It is well known that St. Thérèse of Lisieux ardently desired to be a priest. In her Story of a Soul we hear her make this beautiful prayer to Jesus: “If I were a priest, how lovingly I would carry you in my hands when you came down from heaven at my call; how lovingly I would bestow you upon people’s souls. I want to enlighten people’s minds as the prophets and the doctors did. I feel the call of an Apostle. I would love to travel all over the world, making your name known and planting your cross on a heathen soil”.

Story of a Soul, ed.G.M.DAY, Burns&Oates, London 1951, p. 187. Read also the perceptive analysis of this passage in Monica FURLONG, Thérèse of Lisieux. Virago, London 1987, p. 95.

Also St Joan of Arc, although she did not want to be a priest, she was killed for claiming to hear the voice of God :

*Having made up their minds that the visions and revelations of Joan were from evil spirits, the judges insisted that Joan should agree with them and declare she had been deceived by her Voices. They said the Tribunal was the Church and that every Christian must accept the decisions of the Church: he is otherwise a heretic. To Joan, the visions were so real that she could not doubt them, she was too sincere to deny them; she was so unused to legal subtleties that she could not say, “It seems to me” when she meant, “I am certain”. And therefore, her own unyielding answers allowed the Tribunal to send her to the stake as a schismatic and a heretic. *

catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=7151

Seeing as we know longer burn people at the stake, we are freer to apply our own personal experiences and so people today can act more freely on what they believe is a call from God. They can only be excommunicated from the Church…

 

[Ender]

Hence my persistent desire to become Catholic. But the kind of argument you are making constitutes asking me to kick away the ladder I’m standing on. There is no reason whatever why I would seek to be Catholic, or would be Christian at all, if my experience as an evangelical is simply to be mistrusted and discarded.

Note: I’m not proclaiming fideism or saying that historical and other arguments don’t matter, only that by themselves they would be insufficient.

A lot of us went through a similar period of uncertainty. For myself, what helped was this passage from Augustine:Seek not to understand that you may believe; but believe that you may understand.
Ender

 

[Contarini]

Ah but Edwin, we are not saying that your experience of seeking or even knowing Christ when you were an evangelical is ‘simply to be mistrusted and discarded.’

I was making a specific point in response to the claim that my experience of Christ, specifically in a Protestant Eucharist, is unreliable.

Look at it this way. If the teachings of the Church are true regarding the Eucharist --that it is the True Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ, not a symbol, then all the years that you received it AS a symbol, as an Evangelical Christian, would not be considered wasteful or something you should consider shameful and ‘discard’.

Sure, if I had thought it was just a symbol that might work.

But in fact, pretty much from the time I began receiving the Eucharist regularly (in Plymouth Brethren churches in Romania–and the skeptic in me wonders if some of this had to do with the new experience of sipping alcoholic wine. . . . ), I began to think that there was something more going on than just a symbol. (My family, as I was growing up, not only thought it was a symbol–we really didn’t think it was that important and didn’t partake in it very often, so I had no regularly experience of it at all before my late teens.)

I came to believe in the Real Presence from receiving Protestant communion in Protestant churches (OK, studying church history, which was going on at the same time, had a lot to do with it too–realizing that not only the Church Fathers but in some sense most of the Protestant Reformers believed in the Real Presence).

I’m ignoring the rest of what you say not because I think it is not worth replying to, but because it’s thoughtful and well put and I really have no response except to say that I’ll take it under consideration.

God bless,

Edwin

 

[Ignatius]

It is well known that St. Thérèse of Lisieux ardently desired to be a priest.
.

That does not indicate that she thought she should be a priest. In fact, the Little Flower of Jesus was completely obedient to The Church that Jesus Founded. We should all strive be so obedient and leave disobedience and dissent no place in our lives.

John 3:36 . . . . he that obeyeth not the Son shall not see life, .

 

[WT1]

As far as this particular subject, Pope John Paul II spoke definitively. Jesus, as God, chose men freely and without any restraints based on the time and culture He lived in. The Church has no authority to ordain women.

Peace,
Ed

What the Church decides to bind on earth will be bound in Heaven. Just for the record Christ had women followers and they helped spread the Gospel. The Church has chosen not to ordain women and we should all obey that choice but the Church has the authority it just hasn’t felt it was the will of God and bound it.

 

[Rau]

What the Church decides to bind on earth will be bound in Heaven. Just for the record Christ had women followers and they helped spread the Gospel. The Church has chosen not to ordain women and we should all obey that choice but the Church has the authority it just hasn’t felt it was the will of God and bound it.

The Church does NOT agree that its authority is unfettered. It does not accept that it is free to make “law” independent of its understanding of the Word of God - the actions and model of Christ, and the Scriptures.

Peter’s authority is not unfettered - he has Christ’s teaching and all of Christ’s actions as a model. Christ instituted the Priesthood as he did. AFAIK, he did not explain his rationale for all men - we only have this model, or precedent.

 

[Jerurussia]

This is REALLY easy. It’s called “The Sin of Adam.” So it’s Adam’s sin. Original Sin is “The Sin of Adam.” Original Sin is imputed to Adam. Adam was put in charge, that is, divinely granted ultimate, corporate power and authority as steward of creation before Woman was created. When Woman ate, sin and death did not come into the world because it was Adam’s power and authority to obey or betray on behalf of all humankind. The same corporate authority to get all the people into hot water is seen when King David orders a forbidden census, as this is an insult to God’s promise to Abraham to make his seed uncountable, I presume. The Angel of Death scourges the land until David buys the threshing floor that is now the Temple Mount and buys the threshing oxen to offer as sacrifice. God accepted his sacrifice and the scourge of death was lifted.

When Adam ate the forbidden fruit, sin and death came into the world. Woman did suffer the consequence of personal sin, giving birth would be painful. Adam also suffered the consequences of personal sin, working with the sweat of his brow to provide for his family because…

The Earth was cursed to bring forth thorns and thistles. The other curse? Satan was cursed with the Woman & Seed. Woman, and through her, her Seed, was and is now put in charge of another separate sphere, having been given a divine grant of power and authority. It’s Woman & Seed’s divine mandate to prosecute the war on Satan & Minions and crush the Old Serpent’s head in a death blow. This is Genesis 3:15, so important it is called the pre-Gospel, the PROTO-EVANGELIUM.

That’s it. Throughout all of history, males alone have offered sacrifice to atone for the SIN OF ADAM; and not all males are called to offer sacrifice, as with Cain whose sacrifice was not accepted by God; and Saul who offered incense at the altar against God’s will. Thanks for listening and I hope you read Genesis like a lawyer. It’s very specific and God gives Woman & Seed, not blame and shame, but power and authority to crush the “Father of Lies & Murder.”

 

[Contarini]

This is REALLY easy. It’s called “The Sin of Adam.” So it’s Adam’s sin. Original Sin is “The Sin of Adam.” Original Sin is imputed to Adam. Adam was put in charge, that is, divinely granted ultimate, corporate power and authority as steward of creation before Woman was created. When Woman ate, sin and death did not come into the world because it was Adam’s power and authority to obey or betray on behalf of all humankind. The same corporate authority to get all the people into hot water is seen when King David orders a forbidden census, as this is an insult to God’s promise to Abraham to make his seed uncountable, I presume. The Angel of Death scourges the land until David buys the threshing floor that is now the Temple Mount and buys the threshing oxen to offer as sacrifice. God accepted his sacrifice and the scourge of death was lifted.

When Adam ate the forbidden fruit, sin and death came into the world. Woman did suffer the consequence of personal sin, giving birth would be painful. Adam also suffered the consequences of personal sin, working with the sweat of his brow to provide for his family because…

The Earth was cursed to bring forth thorns and thistles. The other curse? Satan was cursed with the Woman & Seed. Woman, and through her, her Seed, was and is now put in charge of another separate sphere, having been given a divine grant of power and authority. It’s Woman & Seed’s divine mandate to prosecute the war on Satan & Minions and crush the Old Serpent’s head in a death blow. This is Genesis 3:15, so important it is called the pre-Gospel, the PROTO-EVANGELIUM.

That’s it. Throughout all of history, males alone have offered sacrifice to atone for the SIN OF ADAM; and not all males are called to offer sacrifice, as with Cain whose sacrifice was not accepted by God; and Saul who offered incense at the altar against God’s will. Thanks for listening and I hope you read Genesis like a lawyer. It’s very specific and God gives Woman & Seed, not blame and shame, but power and authority to crush the “Father of Lies & Murder.”

I don’t read Genesis like a lawyer.

I think reading Genesis like a lawyer is the root of a lot of the theological problems of the Western world.

Edwin

 

[on_the_hill]

This is REALLY easy. It’s called “The Sin of Adam.” So it’s Adam’s sin. Original Sin is “The Sin of Adam.” Original Sin is imputed to Adam. Adam was put in charge, that is, divinely granted ultimate, corporate power and authority as steward of creation before Woman was created. When Woman ate, sin and death did not come into the world because it was Adam’s power and authority to obey or betray on behalf of all humankind. The same corporate authority to get all the people into hot water is seen when King David orders a forbidden census, as this is an insult to God’s promise to Abraham to make his seed uncountable, I presume. The Angel of Death scourges the land until David buys the threshing floor that is now the Temple Mount and buys the threshing oxen to offer as sacrifice. God accepted his sacrifice and the scourge of death was lifted.

When Adam ate the forbidden fruit, sin and death came into the world. Woman did suffer the consequence of personal sin, giving birth would be painful. Adam also suffered the consequences of personal sin, working with the sweat of his brow to provide for his family because…

The Earth was cursed to bring forth thorns and thistles. The other curse? Satan was cursed with the Woman & Seed. Woman, and through her, her Seed, was and is now put in charge of another separate sphere, having been given a divine grant of power and authority. It’s Woman & Seed’s divine mandate to prosecute the war on Satan & Minions and crush the Old Serpent’s head in a death blow. This is Genesis 3:15, so important it is called the pre-Gospel, the PROTO-EVANGELIUM.

That’s it. Throughout all of history, males alone have offered sacrifice to atone for the SIN OF ADAM; and not all males are called to offer sacrifice, as with Cain whose sacrifice was not accepted by God; and Saul who offered incense at the altar against God’s will. Thanks for listening and I hope you read Genesis like a lawyer. It’s very specific and God gives Woman & Seed, not blame and shame, but power and authority to crush the “Father of Lies & Murder.”

I dunno. This can’t be right, because it can be interpreted to mean that women are without original sin.

And I still dispute the notion that childbirth is painful because Eve ate the apple. To me that sounds like a myth created to explain away questions about painful childbirth.

 

[jbp]

I was making a specific point in response to the claim that my experience of Christ, specifically in a Protestant Eucharist, is unreliable.

Sure, if I had thought it was just a symbol that might work.

But in fact, pretty much from the time I began receiving the Eucharist regularly (in Plymouth Brethren churches in Romania–and the skeptic in me wonders if some of this had to do with the new experience of sipping alcoholic wine. . . . ), I began to think that there was something more going on than just a symbol. (My family, as I was growing up, not only thought it was a symbol–we really didn’t think it was that important and didn’t partake in it very often, so I had no regularly experience of it at all before my late teens.)

I came to believe in the Real Presence from receiving Protestant communion in Protestant churches (OK, studying church history, which was going on at the same time, had a lot to do with it too–realizing that not only the Church Fathers but in some sense most of the Protestant Reformers believed in the Real Presence).

I’m ignoring the rest of what you say not because I think it is not worth replying to, but because it’s thoughtful and well put and I really have no response except to say that I’ll take it under consideration.

God bless,

Edwin

I honestly believe that you are not ready to be received into the Catholic Church. You are not at peace with the fundamental teachings of the Church. And you are not ready to submit to the authority of the Magisterium.

To force yourself in would be intellectual dishonesty on your part. For unless you accept what the Catechism of the Catholic Church asks you to believe. I think you should be perfectly comfortable with the non-Catholic Christians.

 

[Ender]

I honestly believe that you are not ready to be received into the Catholic Church. You are not at peace with the fundamental teachings of the Church. And you are not ready to submit to the authority of the Magisterium.

To force yourself in would be intellectual dishonesty on your part. For unless you accept what the Catechism of the Catholic Church asks you to believe. I think you should be perfectly comfortable with the non-Catholic Christians.

By that criterion I wasn’t ready either. It was only after years of additional struggle that I reached the point where you would have us be in order to be confirmed, but its a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem. If you don’t believe what she teaches you shouldn’t join the church, but if you don’t join the church you may never believe what she teaches. Like marriage, it’s a commitment. If you’re unwilling to commit, don’t join, but if you are willing to make that commitment, c’mon in.

Ender

 

[bjryman]

Touchy subject? I don’t think so. *Infallible *teaching by JP II in Ordinatio Sacerdotalis that it is definitively held the Church has no authority to ordain women? Yes.

vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/apost_letters/1994/documents/hf_jp-ii_apl_19940522_ordinatio-sacerdotalis_en.html

I would question why this subject keeps coming up. I guess some don’t like the original answer which has been consistently upheld throughout the history of the Church.

Wait…there are only two INFALLIBLE teachings of the Church…both about the Virgin Mary. It is my understanding that inside the potentially fallible teachings are dogma, and everything else. To be a believer in the Roman Catholic Church requires compliance with dogma, and also reasonable informed conscious development on the rest.

Am I missing something?

 

[davidv]

Wait…there are only two INFALLIBLE teachings of the Church…both about the Virgin Mary. It is my understanding that inside the potentially fallible teachings are dogma, and everything else. To be a believer in the Roman Catholic Church requires compliance with dogma, and also reasonable informed conscious development on the rest.

Am I missing something?

Yes, you missed the fact that there far more the two infallible teachings of the Church.

 

[Abu]

bjryman #237
Wait…there are only two INFALLIBLE teachings of the Church…both about the Virgin Mary. It is my understanding that inside the potentially fallible teachings are dogma, and everything else. To be a believer in the Roman Catholic Church requires compliance with dogma, and also reasonable informed conscious development on the rest.

Am I missing something?

Yes, most of the teaching of the Church.

Answer by David Gregson of EWTN on Nov-22-2002: **
“You are correct in stating that the Pope exercises his charism of infallibility not only in dogmatic definitions issued, ex cathedra, as divinely revealed (of which there have been only two), but also in doctrines definitively proposed by him, also ex cathedra, which would include canonizations (that they are in fact Saints, enjoying the Beatific Vision in heaven), **moral teachings (such as contained in Humanae vitae), and other doctrines he has taught as necessarily connected with truths divinely revealed, such as that priestly ordination is reserved to men. **Further details on levels of certainty with which the teachings of the Magisterium (either the Pope alone, or in company with his Bishops) may be found in Summary of Categories of Belief.”

The three levels of teaching from Ad Tuendam Fidem are:
1) Dogma – infallible (Canon #750.1) to be believed with the assent of divine and Catholic faith.
2) Doctrine – infallible (Canon #750.2) requires the assent of ecclesial faith, to be “firmly embraced and held”.
3) Doctrine – non-definitive (non-infallible) and require intellectual assent (“loyal submission of the will and intellect”, Vatican II, Lumen Gentium 25), not an assent of faith. See the Explanatory Note on ATF by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith* at ewtn.com/library/CURIA/CDFADTU.HTM

 

[JerryZ]

Wait…there are only two INFALLIBLE teachings of the Church…both about the Virgin Mary. It is my understanding that inside the potentially fallible teachings are dogma, and everything else. To be a believer in the Roman Catholic Church requires compliance with dogma, and also reasonable informed conscious development on the rest.

Am I missing something?

Do you believe that the Pope has the authority to proclaim that someone is a Saint and therefore IS in Heaven?

You see, that IS an infallible teaching, because if he claimed that someone is in Heaven and therefore worthy of our emulation and also perfectly acceptable to pray to for interecession on behalf of us, even to the point of asking GOD for a miracle, and instead this person was in fact in hell.

How would that impact us?

Many other articles of faith ARE infallible teachings of the Church and we are bound to believe them, some were the result of Councils of the Church.

The Trinity, the nature of Christ and many more.
Women priest on the other hand was never allowed, only a man could be ordained a Deacon, then Presbyter (priest) then Bishop.

There have always been women that served in the Church but none ever received the sacraments of Holy Orders.

–

 

[bjryman]

Do you believe that the Pope has the authority to proclaim that someone is a Saint and therefore IS in Heaven?

You see, that IS an infallible teaching, because if he claimed that someone is in Heaven and therefore worthy of our emulation and also perfectly acceptable to pray to for interecession on behalf of us, even to the point of asking GOD for a miracle, and instead this person was in fact in hell.

How would that impact us?

Many other articles of faith ARE infallible teachings of the Church and we are bound to believe them, some were the result of Councils of the Church.

The Trinity, the nature of Christ and many more.
Women priest on the other hand was never allowed, only a man could be ordained a Deacon, then Presbyter (priest) then Bishop.

There have always been women that served in the Church but none ever received the sacraments of Holy Orders.

–

Well I am a trained catechist working in Indianapolis Archdiocese for twenty years. Never, ever, have I been instructed to discuss infalibility as a term with its particular definition other than as its application to the Marian teachings.
What you say about the fact that we Roman Catholics trust in the guidance provided by the Pope is true. We trust and hope that his guidance is via the Holy Spirit. We also trust that the Holy Spirit will see the core Church through any problems that arise in the Papacy…as happened in past with secular leaders attempting to take control of it, even establishing multiple Popes.

The core of our dogma is sound, the rest of the teachings deal with how our particular version of Christianity chooses to practice that faith. Those practices have changed over the years, and no doubt will evolve more in the future. The core teaching of Christ’s salvation and our intstructions to walk down our own pathway to holiness following his teachings are rock solid

 

[Ender]

Well I am a trained catechist working in Indianapolis Archdiocese for twenty years. Never, ever, have I been instructed to discuss infalibility as a term with its particular definition other than as its application to the Marian teachings.

The statement below is from the Responsum ad Propositum Dubium Cardinal Ratzinger wrote in response to the concerns raised about JPII’s comments on the ordination of women. The question raised was: is it infallible?

His answer was …yes, and this was part of the explanation:*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). *
Read the church’s explanation about infallible teaching in Lumen Gentium #25.

Ender

 

[Abu]

The Pope’s ‘ex cathedra’ definitions may be either of revealed dogma, to be believed with divine faith, or of other truths necessary for guarding and expounding revealed truth. Vatican Council II and the post-conciliar Magisterium have explicitly affirmed that both ecclesial and papal infallibility extend to the secondary doctrinal truths necessary for guarding and expounding revelation. Thus *Humanae Vitae *(Encyclical) against contraception, and Ordinatio Sacerdotalis (Apostolic Epistle) on male-only priests, contain infallible definitions, to remove all doubt.

Thus, no dogma has to be affirmed, nor anyone anathematized, nor the word “define” or “definition” be used for an infallible papal teaching – only that the Pope is handing down a certain, decisive judgment that a point of doctrine on faith or morals is true and its contrary false.

The CCC #88 (1997) clearly combines exactly with Pope John Paul’s Motu Proprio (= on his own authority) Apostolic Letter Ad Tuendam Fidem, 1998 (ATF), which requires the assent of divine and Catholic faith to believe (credenda sunt) dogmas (a category one truth) (#750.1); and a category 2 truth requires the assent of ecclesial faith, as a secondary truth, “proposed definitively” (definitive proponuntur) to be “firmly embraced and held” (now Canon 750.2). In fact, the 1983 revision of Canon Law had replaced in #749.3 “dogmatically declared or defined” with “infallibly defined”, thus NOT expressing a limitation of infallibility to dogmas.** ATF better enables Canon Law to apply to the understanding of infallibility with the Profession of Faith covering the two categories of infallible doctrine.

Through Google, you can easily access Vatican documents especially *Pastor Aeternus *of Vatican I, and *Lumen Gentium *of Vatican II.

We assent to dogma and doctrine which the Church teaches through Her Ecumenical Councils and the Popes, and to the Bishops when they teach what the Church teaches.

In the whole Church continence was the Apostolic norm until the Eastern Rite unilaterally chose to change the discipline in the seventh century without authorisation. It still is the norm in the Latin Rite.