Women in the priesthood
To those who have suggested that the Church is wrong on this issue:
It is certainly possible for the Church to be wrong. Take issues of politics--no Pope has the ability to infallibly proclaim who we should vote for, for example. But on matters of faith and morals--no. It is not her nature to be wrong about faith and morals any more than it is the nature of a cat to play the fiddle. Paul writes in 1 Timothy 3:15 that the Church is "the pillar and foundation of the truth." That means that it is the inherent
nature of the Church to preach the truth that we may
know the truth--and really, what kind of God would devise any other system? a system where you have to guess, a system where you're never sure--that sort of system is the province of the God of heretics, not the God who has revealed Himself to us.
That being so, when a Pope proclaims something infallibly, it is de facto true, per Christ's promise to Peter: "Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven" (Matthew 16:19). That's rabbinical speech for "whatever laws you make will be ratified in heaven." Disagreeing or "seeing it differently" would be as silly as saying that you disagree that jumping off of a high-rise will turn you into a pancake.
The ineligibility of women to the priesthood is one of these infallibly defined things. Pope John Paul II has infallibly declared that this is so in his
1994 Apostolic Letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, in which he writes:
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. 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.
Thus this is not a matter open for debate for a faithful Catholic. Thus, yes, they are pig-headed.
Now, these women disagree. They think the Church is wrong to have declared this. All right. But then they must ask themselves: If the Church is wrong to have declared that women cannot be priests, then she is not the Church of the Bible, because the Church of the Bible is the bulwark of the truth. And if she is (a)wrong, and (b) "unwelcoming"--what reason do they have to stay? You suggested that it is because it is the Church Jesus saved them in. But neither you nor I stayed in the church that Jesus saved us in (and "saved" is the wrong word, anyway, as neither of us is "saved," but rather we are "working out our salvation with fear and trembling"). Why? Because you felt unwelcome, and because I believed it was wrong. How could I have been intellectually honest and have stayed in a church that I believed misunderstood the Bible?
Likewise, how can these women? Is it too far from the truth to suggest that it is because it is not about intellectual honesty but about an agenda, as Renee pointed out? That agenda is
Make the Church in OUR own image. That's why they don't leave, even though their mission is unwelcome, even though they are more than welcome in the ECUSA. It rankles them that the Church dares to defy contemporary mores. But if they think they can tut-tut the Church into obedience to their demands, they clearly don't appreciate what the Church is.
Labels: dogma, the church, women
Girls playing dress-up
Another really sad article about women claiming they are being ordained as priests. What is so hard for them to understand about this? Are they misunderstanding on purpose, or do they really NOT KNOW that it is theologically impossible for a woman to stand in for Christ as the Groom of His Bride? Further, as has been asked, if they truly want to be priests, why don't they become Episcopal priests, instead of pig-headedly forcing their views on a Church they obviously feel is teaching something wrong? What's the attraction for them of being in a Church they claim mandates discrimination? I don't get it.
Labels: dogma, the church, women
The necessity of the Faith
Since intellectually embracing the logical working-out of history and providence that is the Catholic Church some two and a half years ago now, I've spent time on and off talking about the Church with friends and family. The response has been one extreme ("I don't care if God Himself told me you were right, you'd still be wrong!") to the much more distressing "It's nice that your faith works for you, but we all have our own ways to God." (Distressing because its smacks of agnosticism, the attitude that God did not deign to leave us any sure signs.) Guys, frankly, if you think the Faith is not for you, then you don't know the Faith.
In the year I spent talking about the Church before being confirmed, the year spent waiting to become a full member of the Church, I saw the world as suddenly making sense, suddenly alive with meaning I didn't know it hadn't had before. That is, having been a Christian already, I thought the world
had made sense already. Coming to understand the Church's role in God's design made that prior vision nothing but, in Aquinas' term, straw. Yet
that was nothing compared with the world I see now after just over a year of receiving the Eucharist, going to Confession, and praying the rosary. What grace I have now make me then look like Jean Grey raging outside of Alcatraz, out of control and passions out of proportion. And what more in a year from
now? And in all my years spent as a Protestant trying to get it right I
never fathomed how it might feel to get my nature under control,
never fathomed how the world could look set in balance.
Some people, usually very self-satisfied agnostics, like to air the opinion that religion is a crutch for the weak. How sad that is, and how wrong; it presumes, for one thing, that we even have legs to make those crutches useful. For what we are, when unaided by grace, is amputees trying to run a marathon, and even that is too generous. What religion does is not to provide us with a crutch, a fallback plan--but to grow us new legs entirely in a psychosomatic integration. We are tapeworms where we might be eagles, and the saddest answer of all is not "I don't want to be an eagle," but rather, "I prefer being a tapeworm."
Labels: grace, the church
Baby injured in abortion
An unbelievable story from just south of here--
Woman sues abortion clinic for a botched abortion which damaged the child's health.
Eric Johnston, a Birmingham attorney who has helped write many of the anti-abortion bills considered by the Legislature, said the decision is significant because it holds that a health care provider can be held responsible for injuries caused to a child in the womb.
So . . . it would have been all right to kill the baby, just not all right to FAIL to kill it, in which case suddenly it's a person with rights.
There are no words.
Labels: pro-life
The vote tomorrow
Now, Protestant America, I think you're being a bit hypocritical. By your own doing you transformed marriage from a sacrament which "involves a totality, in which all the elements of the person enter. . . . aim[ing] at a deeply personal unity, a unity that . . . leads to forming one heart and soul . . . demand[ing] indissolubility and faithfulness in definitive mutual giving; and . . . open to fertility" (CCC 1643)--into a civil contract, dissolved at will, with a superficial topping of "blessing from God," though if you were asked you'd be hard-pressed to come up with a theological reason for God to be involved in the marriage.
After all, many gays are Christians who can argue coherently for an interpretation of Scripture that does not condemn homosexuality, and without a Pope to say their interpretation is incompatible with Church teaching, how is your interpretation any more correct? And that being so, with marriage lacking all sacramental dimension and being a civil contract, what grounds DO you have for deciding that the participants in that civil contract must be of one character or another? You really don't, which is why gay activists can make a persuasive argument to many people that it really is about civil rights, and which is why gay marriage will eventually be legalized in this country. Don't get mad at gay activists, however, because after all: Your theology, or lack thereof, is what reduced marriage in the first place. They're only picking up where you left off.
DISCLAIMER: I don't agree with Protestant America. Just in case my irony was overlooked.
Labels: modernism, sacraments
Oh, look, it's priestesses!
Topping off a crummy day, I caught wind of this egregiously ignorant article from the San Jose Mercury News on a bunch of theologically ill-informed women who are calling themselves priests, despite the fact that it is impossible to ordain a woman as a priest even if the Pope himself did it, which he would not. Get these maddening quotes:
Cordero, a former nun, is among 120 women enrolled in the Roman Catholic Womenpriests program, which has been boldly ordaining groups of women as priests and deacons.
They are NOT being ordained. That is theologically impossible. What they are, is heretics trying to manhandle the Church so it looks the way THEY think a church should look. This is also known as the standard operating procedure for a heresy.
The women say they're reforming the church by defying it, hoping to bring about a more inclusive institution that welcomes women, married men and gays in all of its ranks. In addition to a more egalitarian church, they say, the movement fulfills their long-thwarted wishes to become priests.
These women should read
Mulieris Dignitatem, Pope John Paul II's apostolic letter of August 15 1988, in which he writes,
In calling only men as his Apostles, Christ acted in a completely free and sovereign manner. In doing so, he exercised the same freedom with which, in all his behaviour, he emphasized the dignity and the vocation of women, without conforming to the prevailing customs and to the traditions sanctioned by the legislation of the time.
And his apostolic letter of 22 May, 1994,
Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, in which he says,
Furthermore, the fact that the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God and Mother of the Church, received neither the mission proper to the Apostles nor the ministerial priesthood clearly shows that the non-admission of women to priestly ordination cannot mean that women are of lesser dignity, nor can it be construed as discrimination against them. Rather, it is to be seen as the faithful observance of a plan to be ascribed to the wisdom of the Lord of the universe.
The presence and the role of women in the life and mission of the Church, although not linked to the ministerial priesthood, remain absolutely necessary and irreplaceable. . . . By defending the dignity of women and their vocation, the Church has shown honour and gratitude for those women who—faithful to the Gospel—have shared in every age in the apostolic mission of the whole People of God. They are the holy martyrs, virgins, and the mothers of families, who bravely bore witness to their faith and passed on the Church's faith and tradition by bringing up their children in the spirit of the Gospel.
The article also includes this bit of silliness:
Pope Benedict XVI, like his predecessor Pope John Paul II, probably won't allow women's ordination, said the Rev. Thomas Reese, a Vatican expert.
``You got 20 centuries of teaching and practice. You need a pretty good reason to reverse that,'' Reese said. ``They would say you can't reverse that.''
Oh, we "would say that," wouldn't we, as our cover for our medieval misogynistic attitude? No, Pope Benedict will not be allowing women's ordination, and neither will any pope at any point in the future:
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. 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.
I do feel for these women who believe they are being called to be priests, but it is abundantly clear that their interest is primarily in serving their own desires.
Labels: dogma, the church, women
