No Chance For Women Priests In Catholic Church
Sound of Trumpet
Women Priests — No Chance
JOANNE BOGLE
There is a general assumption, especially in North America and Europe,
that the Catholic Church’s insistence on a male priesthood is an
obscure anomaly, which endures only because a Polish pope has refused
to move with the times.
“But everyone agrees that the Catholic Church will one day ordain
women. Surely it’s just this pope who is holding things back? The next
one is bound to change the rule!”
The point is made frequently and always with the same confidence.
There is a general assumption, at least in Europe and North America,
that the Catholic Church’s insistence on a male priesthood is an
obscure anomaly, which endures only because a Polish pope has, in the
1990s, refused to move with the times.
Yet the times have often favored a female priesthood and never more so
than when Christ ordained His first priests, nearly 2,000 years ago.
Virtually all the pagan religions of His day had priestesses, and it
would have been entirely normal and natural for Him to choose women
for this task. He had, moreover, a number of excellent potential
candidates, from His own Mother, who accompanied Him at His first
miracle and stood with Him as He suffered on the cross, to Mary
Magdalene or the women of Bethany. Instead, He chose only men, and He
remained immovable on this, continuing right to the end to exhort and
train them all, leaving thus a Church which turned out to be safely
founded on a rock. From those twelve men a direct line of apostolic
succession has given the Catholic Church the bishops and priests it
has today.
In the Church’s latest statement on this matter, Pope John Paul II,
using his full authority as the successor of Peter, states
categorically that the Church cannot — not will not, but cannot —
ordain women, now or in the future. The Catechism of the Catholic
Church sets it out clearly, quoting the decree Inter insigniores:
Only a baptized man (vir) receives sacred ordination. The Lord
Jesus chose men (viri) to form the college of the twelve apostles, and
the apostles did the same when they chose collaborators to succeed
them in their ministry. The college of bishops, with whom the priests
are united in the priesthood, makes the college of the twelve an ever-
present and ever-active reality until Christ’s return. The Church
recognizes herself to be bound by this choice made by the Lord
Himself. For this reason the ordination of women is not possible.
We need to understand that Christians believe God to be the essence of
divine omnipotence. To put it crudely, He doesn’t make mistakes. When
He became Incarnate as a human being, He did so at a precise and exact
moment in human history, which has been planned from all eternity.
From the beginning, God had chosen that there would be a Jewish
people, among whom His divine Son would be born. Their own priestly
traditions would form part of the background and culture which would
help them — and others — to see and know Him. Every detail about the
Incarnation was known in the mind of God. He was born into the
fullness of time.
He didn’t say: “Oops, sorry — I made a terrible mistake! I should have
been born into the latter half of the twentieth century, so as to have
benefited from the We are Church movement in Germany, or the feminist
workshop sessions of America, or the Equal Opportunities legislation
in Britain.” On the contrary, He was and remains omnipotent. He knew
exactly what He was doing.
It is worth pointing out that, in choosing His apostles, Christ was
not awarding them the priesthood as a reward for good behavior:
courage, intelligence, or skill. On the contrary. One — the rock on
which the Church was to be founded — denied Him, another doubted His
Resurrection, and one even betrayed Him. The priesthood is not a badge
of good-conduct (although, like eleven out of the first twelve,
millions of Christ’s priests down the centuries have led heroic and
noble lives). Rather, just as bread and wine are the essential
“matter” of the Eucharist, so are men the “matter” of the priesthood.
If we wish to explore fully this question of the Church and the
priesthood, we can start with Christ’s actions when on earth. But in a
sense we must go further back to see the covenant bond that was
established right at the beginning, and the male/female imagery and
nuptial meaning that goes right through salvation history.
At every Catholic wedding you will hear the beautiful, scriptural, and
profound statement that the relationship of a bridegroom and his bride
is like that of Christ and His Church. Of course, we are mostly not
listening. We are looking at the bridesmaids and reflecting that they
look charming in blue, or admiring the graceful way in which the bride
has managed her train, and soon we’ll be enjoying the cake and the
confetti and the champagne.
But the words nevertheless convey a profound truth. Notice the order
of things. Christ and His Church came first. They were an idea in the
mind of God from the very beginning. And we, as human beings, when we
unite together and marry, are an image of the ultimate Bridegroom and
Bride.
Catholics are used to this imagery. The Church is often described as
being the Bride of Christ. We also speak of her as being our Holy
Mother Church. She is indeed a Bride who has become a mother — and we
are all her children, the fruit of that union she has with Christ.
Perhaps because we are so used to this notion, we do not think about
it very deeply. But it is all part of the nuptial imagery that goes
all through Scripture and explains much to us.
Christ began His public ministry at a wedding. Perhaps many of us
think this is not very important. We are intrigued by the story of
water turning into wine, but we think it could have been a birthday
party or just a local harvest supper. But no — the wedding is a
central part of the event. It was a genuine wedding. We don’t know the
names of the young couple getting married, but they had invited Jesus
and Mary, and it was evidently a happy and important occasion with
food and drink and plenty of guests. But it was more. The whole story
was a great significance. When Mary told Jesus that the wine was
running out, He answered, “My time is not yet come.” Whenever Christ
mentions His “time,” He means His passion and death. Already, we can
hear the drumbeats of that event in the distance. And Mary told the
waiting servants, “Do whatever He tells you.” That word “do” also will
be heard again, when Christ’s time indeed has come. At Cana, they do
as He tells them, and water is turned into wine. At the Last Supper,
once again there is a commandment to “do,” and this commandment also
has been obeyed down the centuries, with another transformation — wine
into Christ’s own blood. The nuptial message from Cana is not an
optional extra; it is central to the event. Pope John Paul II echoes
this link between Cana and Calvary when he speaks of the “nuptial
meaning” in the Eucharist.
We see this male/female imagery going right through our redemption
history. It is at the heart of Christ’s being born among us as a man.
When He founded His Church, it was with the love of a bridegroom for a
bride, and when He gave us the Eucharist, it was as a nuptial banquet.
This nuptial imagery was completed on Calvary. We are speaking here of
holy things at the very heart of our faith. Paul speaks of this as
being “a great mystery.” It gives a meaning — and a great dignity — to
the human reality of male and female. It is in this context that we
can see not only the significance of a male priesthood, but also the
importance and beauty that the Church attaches to purity, to fidelity
in marriage, and to the fruitfulness of married love.
There is an important sense in which the current debate about the
ordination of women, even if it is sometimes couched in terms which
Catholics find offensive, is going to be useful in the development of
our understanding these things. Invariably, in the history of the
Church, it is only when a doctrine is seriously challenged that its
truth is proclaimed in greater fullness. Only when a heresy arises
does it become necessary to proclaim truth to end the heresy.
Thus we will not find the word “Trinity” in the New Testament. Yet
Catholics and most Protestants unite in professing that there are
three Persons in one God and that God the Son walked this earth and
was present among us and told us that God the Holy Spirit would
descend upon His Church. It was only when the Arian heresy arose,
effectively denying Christ’s divinity, that it became necessary to
defend and explain the Trinity in authoritative and definitive terms.
The Council of Nicaa gave us the Nicene Creed, which we say Sunday by
Sunday at Mass, proclaiming Christ’s divinity in unmistakable terms:
“God from God, light from light, true God from true God.”
Catholic women have played a central role in the life of the Church,
from Lydia in the Acts of the Apostles, through Margaret of Scotland
and Jadwiga of Poland and other great queens and women of influence,
to the Englishwomen at the Reformation who arranged secret places for
Mass, down to Edith Stein, whose quest for intellectual and spiritual
truth led her to convent life and did not spare her Auschwitz. In no
sense is there any authentic tradition of “If you’re not a priest you
simply don’t matter,” despite fashionable attempts to present this as
a standard part of Catholicism.
We can expect that, as the question “Why can’t Catholic women be
priests?” is further explored, the Church will provide richer
testimony to the unchanging truth of a male-only priesthood. There
will be no change in this teaching — rather, the more it is discussed
and debated, the more its scriptural and theological basis will
emerge. The male-only priesthood of Jesus Christ and the bridal nature
of the Church are spiritual realities of which our two human sexes,
male and female, are profound and deeply important images, made in the
flesh. Ours is an incarnate faith, centered on the great fact that the
Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Nothing has been left to chance.
This debate about the priesthood will shed light on other issues,
especially those surrounding questions of sex and gender, about which
there is so much tortured re-evaluation in our times. In a society
riven with doubt about homosexuality, transvestites, the idea of “same-
sex marriage,” the legitimization of sado-masochism as an “alternative
lifestyle,” and so on and so on, the Church’s affirmation that God has
a meaning and purpose in the way He created us is a voice of reason
and of sanity. It offers for a confused people a compass-point of
truth.
In this, as in so much more, the Church holds the truth for which so
many in these days are aching. We may find debating feminism and the
priesthood tedious at times, but God calls us to do it, and we will
find that presenting His truth will produce multiple blessings.
William December Starr
Sound of Trumpet <sound_of...@gawab.com> plagiarized:
> http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/apologetics/ap0001.html
> Women Priests -- No Chance
> JOANNE BOGLE
>
> There is a general assumption, especially in North America
> and Europe, that the Catholic Church's insistence on a male
> priesthood is an obscure anomaly, which endures only because
> a Polish pope has refused to move with the times.
>
> "But everyone agrees that the Catholic Church will one day
> ordain women. Surely it's just this pope who is holding
> things back? The next one is bound to change the rule!"
>
> The point is made frequently and always
nobody outside the cult really cares.
-- wds
W.T.S.
@s18g2000vbe.googlegroups.com>, stru...@gaga.com says...
>
> http://www.catholicdisinformation.org/lies/apologetics/fk6969.html
>
> Women Priests — No Chance
>
> JOANNE BOGLE
>
Ages, no need to repeat. </snip>
>
If you have brain one in your head, avoid the Church like the plague!
--
http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/print/14481
Zacharias Mulletstein
news:558b771c-6b48-4c53...@s18g2000vbe.googlegroups.com...
> http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/apologetics/ap0001.html
Catholics aren't real Christians so who cares what they say.
Zacharias Mulletstein
news:558b771c-6b48-4c53...@s18g2000vbe.googlegroups.com...
That's because there is no Trinity. There is one God, and his name is the
One lamb virgin it's the cheesiest, Jesus Christ. You need to quit thinking
about the Number Three and get down with the Number One.
panam...@hotmail.com
wrote:
snip
Fixed your subject for ya.
-Panama Floyd, Atlanta.
aa#2015, Member Knights of BAAWA!
"..the prayer cloth of one aeon is the doormat of the next."
-Mark Twain
Religious societies are *less* moral than secular ones:
http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11.html
William Black
> Yet the times have often favored a female priesthood and never more so
> than when Christ ordained His first priests, nearly 2,000 years ago.
> Virtually all the pagan religions of His day had priestesses,
Oh no they didn't
--
William Black
"Any number under six"
The answer given by Englishman Richard Peeke when asked by the Duke of
Medina Sidonia how many Spanish sword and buckler men he could beat
single handed with a quarterstaff.
...
Apostate
wrote:
That's a load of Number Two.
--
Apostate alt.atheist #1931 I've found it!
BAAWA Knife AND SMASHer freelance Minion #'e'
EAC Deputy Director in Charge of Getting Paid,
Department of Redundancy Department
"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure
and the intelligent are full of doubt." -- Bertrand Russell
"Mr. Worf, set phasers on "Fuck You" and fire at will."
-- Doc Smartass
"Nature has a dark sense of humor, but life is certainly
one of the things it laughs at."
-- Rinaldo of Capadoccia
e-mail to %mynick%periodaaperiod%myAA#%@gee!mail!dottedcommie
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arjay
news:f68am6lcbt6p41f09...@4ax.com...
> On Tue, 22 Feb 2011 23:09:25 -0600, "Zacharias Mulletstein"
> <zmulle...@isright.com>
> wrote:
>>"Sound of Trumpet" <sound_of...@gawab.com> wrote in message
>>news:558b771c-6b48-4c53...@s18g2000vbe.googlegroups.com...
>>> Thus we will not find the word "Trinity" in the New Testament
>>
>>That's because there is no Trinity. There is one God, and his name is the
>>One lamb virgin it's the cheesiest, Jesus Christ. You need to quit
>>thinking
>>about the Number Three and get down with the Number One.
>
> That's a load of Number Two.
Neatly done.
Apostate
>"Apostate" <Apos...@yeehaw.org.invalid> wrote in message
>news:f68am6lcbt6p41f09...@4ax.com...
>> On Tue, 22 Feb 2011 23:09:25 -0600, "Zacharias Mulletstein"
>> <zmulle...@isright.com>
>> wrote:
>>>"Sound of Trumpet" <sound_of...@gawab.com> wrote in message
>>>news:558b771c-6b48-4c53...@s18g2000vbe.googlegroups.com...
>>>> Thus we will not find the word "Trinity" in the New Testament
>>>
>>>That's because there is no Trinity. There is one God, and his name is the
>>>One lamb virgin it's the cheesiest, Jesus Christ. You need to quit
>>>thinking
>>>about the Number Three and get down with the Number One.
>>
>> That's a load of Number Two.
>
>Neatly done.
Try the Veal Prince Orlov.
jantero
wrote:
> http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/apologetics/ap0001.html
>
> Women Priests — No Chance
>
> JOANNE BOGLE
>
> There is a general assumption, especially in North America and Europe,
> that the Catholic Church’s insistence on a male priesthood is an
> obscure anomaly,
Weird jebus on women:
Thomas 114: Simon Peter says to them: "Let Mary go out from our midst,
for women are not worthy of life!"
Jesus says: "See, I will draw her so as to make her male so that she
also may become a living spirit like you males.
For every woman who has become male will enter the Kingdom of
heaven."
Matthew 19:12 For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and
there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are
eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom
of heaven. He who is able to receive this, let him receive it.
William December Starr
jantero <jante...@hotmail.com> said:
> Thomas 114: Simon Peter says to them: "Let Mary go out from our
> midst, for women are not worthy of life!"
> Jesus says: "See, I will draw her so as to make her male so that
> she also may become a living spirit like you males.
> For every woman who has become male will enter the Kingdom of
> heaven."
So the whole New Testament thing was actually a comic book that
Jesus was drawing? (While writing himself in as a character...)
-- wds
Yap
<zmulletst...@isright.com> wrote:
> "Sound of Trumpet" <sound_of_trum...@gawab.com> wrote in messagenews:558b771c-6b48-4c53...@s18g2000vbe.googlegroups.com...
>
> > Thus we will not find the word Trinity in the New Testament
>
> That's because there is no Trinity. There is one God, and his name is the
> One lamb virgin it's the cheesiest, Jesus Christ. You need to quit thinking
> about the Number Three and get down with the Number One.
Both him and you are suckers....
The VA hospital is waiting for you, though no medicine is available
for cure.
W.T.S.
@z27g2000prz.googlegroups.com>, hhya...@gmail.com says...> > "Strumpet" <stru...@gaga.com> wrote in messagenews:558b771c-6b48-
4c53-ba8a-f...@s18g2000vbe.googlegroups.com...
> >
> > > Thus we will not find the word Trinity in the New Testament
> >
> > That's because there is no Trinity. There is one God, and his name is the
> > One lamb virgin it's the cheesiest, Jesus Christ. You need to quit thinking
> > about the Number Three and get down with the Number One.
>
> Both him and you are suckers....
> The VA hospital is waiting for you, though no medicine is available
> for cure.
>
--
http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/print/14481
Dom
wrote:
> http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/apologetics/ap0001.html
>
> Women Priests — No Chance
>
> JOANNE BOGLE
> Yet the times have often favored a female priesthood and never more so
> than when Christ ordained His first priests, nearly 2,000 years ago.
[snip]
Jesus never ordained anyone, mush less any priests!
John Briggs
Of course not - priest were a later invention, to act as assistants to
the bishops. It is the bishops who are supposed (in some dim sense) to
be the successors of the disciples.
Rather more alarmingly (and in an ecumenical spirit), I would point out
that Jesus didn't baptise anyone either, and - if you look closely at
the Synoptic Gospel accounts - the Institution of the Eucharist at the
Last Supper is a later interpolation!
What this blinkered woman doesn't realise is that although the Roman
Catholic Church distinguishes between laws of the church (e.g. no
married priests) which can be changed tomorrow and laws of God (e.g. no
women priests, homosexualitty is a sin) which can't, it is the Roman
Catholic Church (whether in a General Council or by the Pope making an
Infallible declaration) which decides what is a law of God!
This is all rather like the dubious miracle cures rquired nowadays for
beatification or canonisation. These have to be not capable of being
explained by medical science. When scientists point out these usually
*can* be explained, the reply comes that it is the Roman Catholic Church
which decides what can't be explained by medical science :-)
--
John Briggs
Walter Bushell
John Briggs <john.b...@ntlworld.com> wrote:
> On 24/02/2011 23:22, Dom wrote:
> > On Feb 22, 6:22 pm, Sound of Trumpet<sound_of_trum...@gawab.com>
> > wrote:
> >> http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/apologetics/ap0001.html
> >>
> >> Women Priests ã No Chance
> >>
> >> JOANNE BOGLE
> > [snip]
> >
> >> Yet the times have often favored a female priesthood and never more so
> >> than when Christ ordained His first priests, nearly 2,000 years ago.
> > [snip]
> >
> > Jesus never ordained anyone, mush less any priests!
>
> Of course not - priest were a later invention, to act as assistants to
> the bishops. It is the bishops who are supposed (in some dim sense) to
> be the successors of the disciples.
>
> Rather more alarmingly (and in an ecumenical spirit), I would point out
> that Jesus didn't baptise anyone either, and - if you look closely at
> the Synoptic Gospel accounts - the Institution of the Eucharist at the
> Last Supper is a later interpolation!
>
> What this blinkered woman doesn't realise is that although the Roman
> Catholic Church distinguishes between laws of the church (e.g. no
> married priests) which can be changed tomorrow and laws of God (e.g. no
> women priests, homosexualitty is a sin) which can't, it is the Roman
> Catholic Church (whether in a General Council or by the Pope making an
> Infallible declaration) which decides what is a law of God!
>
> This is all rather like the dubious miracle cures rquired nowadays for
> beatification or canonisation. These have to be not capable of being
> explained by medical science. When scientists point out these usually
> *can* be explained, the reply comes that it is the Roman Catholic Church
> which decides what can't be explained by medical science :-)
Anyway, the Church decided to legalize usury, so good Catholics can be
bankers or even work in payday loan operations. If usury, why not ordain
women.
--
The Chinese pretend their goods are good and we pretend our money
is good, or is it the reverse?
Rockinghorse Winner
Very beautifully and accurately stated.
--
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John Briggs
> Very beautifully and accurately stated.
What was? It was inaccurate in every important detail.
--
John Briggs
Apostate
He just wants to dress alike and follow around anyone who posts anything
religion-friendly.
--
Apostate alt.atheist #1931 plonktheist #1