a friend of mine said the same to me once,
yes, but if you truly belive that philosophy then there would be no purpose to any birth control measures as they’d all just be placebos - still negating the validity of taking them…
If I may ask, why do you feel this way? I am genuinely interested in your thought.
I posted in one thread today some of the reasoning that has nothing to do with sexism. those are the “ideals” in the quote that JP2 was talking standing by.
There are many things that may offend our modern sense of “fairness” and “democracy,” but such things have no place in the realm of theological absolutes. JP2 once said, “you can’t vote on ‘truth’.” It isn’t a question of “fairness” any more than women being the only humans who can bear children being a question of “fairness.” It is the way it is because it needs to be that way to work.
You can, if you wish, look more into the representitive paradigm necessary for a valid Mass. if you don’t have that paradigm, you don’t have a valid Mass. I don’t know if your Catholic, protestant or none of the above, but for Catholics, the Mass and consecration are not simply symbolic acts. There’s something very concrete and real that takes place there, and for it to work it requires certain things to be done certain ways.
Religion can, and should, call people to change. change the way they act, change the way they think. We as humans have the choice of rising to the occasion or rejecting it.
Women bearing children (and men not) is a matter of biology, not theology. If you just want to boil humanity down to biology, then you can pretty well argue that men are nothing but walking sperm banks who, like male lions, are essentially parasites on the female core of the society. I don’t think most people, male or female, would care much for that scenario.
If somebody could explain to me why women are by definition unsuitable to lead and point out which part of the bible explains this, I’d appreciate it.
And if you think the church has EVER been totally free of a male-contrived (AKA not God’s doing) bias against women, you’re deluding yourself. The try body of Christ and the earthly church don’t always completely overlap, I don’t care what you tell yourself.
Perhaps you ought to stand back and look at things for yourself instead of blindly swallowing what your priest has told you.
[/quote]
Religion can, and should, call people to change. change the way they act, change the way they think. We as humans have the choice of rising to the occasion or rejecting it.[/quote]
From an outsider’s perspective, it appears that people have changed (for the better, in case of women’s rights) - and religion has not.
now now now, this isn’t the UP forum 
no, I definitely think that the Church, as with all human institutions were affected with the sexism endemic in europe and most of the rest of the world.
In order to understand the Church’s position on women priests, one must first understand Sacred Tradition. If you are Catholic you may be familiar with this idea, if not (or even if so) there is an excellent chance you’ve not heard of it. In an oversimplified nutshell, Sacred Tradition is this:
Jesus didn’t write anything down. He taught orally. He passed his message along to his main students, the apostles. After the resurrection, for a long time even the apostles didn’t write anything down. They were travelling the Empire founding churches and became in effect the first bishops. They set these churches up on an oral-teaching basis. This makes sense as the church was an underground, persecuted movement. Written records would not only be dangerous but short lived in light of the local official’s torch.
Now, when those ordained by the apostles to take care of the infant communities (in effect, the first priests) began to have trouble with some of the teachings of the founding apostle that were either vague or rare, letters were on occasion used to “fix” these issues. But the issues that didn’t become problems never became the subjects of letters. You will not find them written as they were simply passed orally from Jesus to apostle, apostle to priest and priest to the community from one generation to the next. By the time the gospels were being written 30-100 years later or a first “Bible” was being compiled, much of those non-problematic teachings were “common knowledge” or “second nature.” When the protestant movement came along 15 centuries later, they rejected many of the teachings that they couldn’t find written down, but given the Church’s start, not only the written is authentic.
Therefore, you will not find a passage that says, “And Jesus said, ‘don’t ordain women priests.’” but neither will you find Him indicating anything in the way of the formation of local communities or clergy in writing, just a general description of a code of conduct for a universe-wide “Kingdom of God”
Two websites that seem to describe Sacred Tradition and this issue more eloquently than I could paraphrase are here:
http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/apologetics/ap0001.html
http://www.catholic.net/RCC/Periodicals/Faith/0506-96/article4.html
this catechism passage
http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/para/1577.htm
is cited in one of the articles (vir and viri are Latin for “man” and “men” and are included in parenthesis due to the multiple meaning “man” has in English that does not carry over to Latin)
It is not an abrogation of “rights” as nobody has a “right” to be a priest, man or woman.
my mention of a biological example had to do with the whole “sacrificial paradigm” that requires a man to be the sacrifice-er. Not having an essential element of the paradigm and trying to do a working consecration is like not having a uterus and trying to make a baby - it isn’t a question of “fair” or “unfair” it’s a question of “possible” and “impossible”
My priest(Episcopalian) is female. Having been raised in the Baptist church I had misgivings about this and at first it seemed strange. But I can say that I like her just fine and have no problem with it. I will add that she is single and has no family so has no conflict with her time and energies.
but a family was never the complaint. neither baptists nor episcopalians believe in transubstantiation. for Catholics, the Eucharist isn’t a symbolic thing, it’s an “actual” thing. The priest, through the prayers of the consecration asks God to transform the bread and the wine into the Body and Blood of Christ (as Jesus did at the last supper), not something representitative of the Body and Blood.
As you would imagine, that is not the sort of thing that can simply be done haphazardly. A very specific set of criteria needs to be in place (eg, there must be a minimum of wheat and gluten in the bread for it to actually be “bread,” likewise there are requirements for the wine to actually be “wine” (can’t use grape juice or dandelion wine).
also there are requirements as defined in Sacred Tradition described above on just what constitutes a “priest.” As part of the consecration rite the priest must receive both the Body and Blood, and so men incapable of ingesting bread and/or wine due to allergies cannot be priests.
“priest” is not a job you can apply for, or just decide you want. you must be called to it, and if you were created with circumstances that preclude you from fulfilling the duties there (including being able to make a valid consecration) then that is not what you are being called to do, no matter how badly your human heart may desire it. God has a purpose in mind for all of us, and he doesn’t ask us ahead of time what we would like.
the gender of he who represents Christ at the sacrifice of the Mass (the priest, by imitating Christ at the Last Supper) is another requirement, as established through Sacred Tradition.
Yet another requirement would be that the priest must be ordained by a bishop (or higher) in good standing who was ordained by a cardinal in good standing who was elevated by a pope who was validly elected pope by the conclave and therefore is the sole rightful successor of Peter until he dies. For that reason, protestant ministers, no matter how good and holy the individual person may be cannot perform a valid consecration (by valid consecration I mean one in which transubstantiation takes place). Which actually is fine with them as they don’t believe in it anyway.
and since they are not concerned with most or any of the above criteria for a valid consecration, which they don’t believe in anyway so don’t feel they’re missing anything, women are just fine for that role.
now, performing almost all the jobs of a priest would be a deacon, these people assist the priest at the Mass, preach the Gospel and homilies and are an ever-increasingly important part of parish life as new vocations to the priesthood go down…I wonder if we will see women deacons…
well, for starters, you have the paradigm where the Church is the Bride of Christ, and the priest represents Christ in the Mass, performing the same role as He did in the Last Supper, etc. In that, you have a bride/bridegroom paradigm to what’s going on, and so the priest must be standing in for the bridegroom.
secondly, you have the priesthood as established through Sacred Tradition. Jesus chose his apostles (who filled the role we would today call “bishop”) and they carried out what they understood his teachings to be, establishing the male-only priesthood.
now an argument could be made that the apostles simply misunderstood Jesus’ private teachings, but before one goes there, one must consider that if it is acknowledged that they could be wrong on one of Jesus’ teachings, they could be wrong on any or all of Jesus’ teachings. And one can’t even revert to the Bible for answers as these same men (in theory) wrote every stitch of the New Testament, which would then not be free from the errors attributed to them earlier in this paragraph. Likewise, if such fallability of theology can be attributed to the Church at any point in her history (as opposed to faith in Divine guidance of the Church) the same thing happens and the whole of Christian belief falls apart.
If the apostles got it wrong, then their institution, which was the only game in town, so to speak, for about 1000 years, steered the faith wrong, yet forms the basis of modern Christian belief. If, as was claimed by the protestant movement, the Church had somehow been wrong for 1500 years, then the entire basis of Christian belief (which had been developed and transmitted by that same Church for a millenia and a half) must be called into question.
It’s rather an all-or-nothing deal, either the Church faithfully transmitted Jesus teachings throughout the generations, or the whole Christian movement was derailed somewhere along the line.
Once you negate the Church’s doctrinal authority, who can say whether Luther was right and Calvin was wrong, or Calvin was right and Luther was wrong, or both of them were wrong and someone else entirely was right. If the Church doesn’t have doctrinal authority, it is impossible to tell for certain who does - in effect, they all could be wrong. Whether He wrote down the intent or not, it appears clear from the ensuing history that Jesus’ intent was to have a body of teachers on earth to guide the faithful because He knew that as the ages passed and those who actually heard Him teach died off there would be those who would seek to use His teaching for their own gain, or those who would simply get it wrong and lead thousands of people astray, intentionally or unintentionally.
God always left a person to be His central authority on earth…a Moses, if you will…there is plenty of precident for a human under divine guidance being given authority by God in the Judeo-Christian tradition. The pope is one such person, and, rather than prophets coming out of the woodwork, competing with each other to be able to convince the masses that they have the proper message, an institution was set up, beginning with the Twelve, to make that authority easy to locate and identify.
-EDIT- the question i was answering disappeared, prolly because I added a line to my above post while they were typing, but this one gets more at the “why” aspect, which I know will pop up as soon as I delete this, so I’m leaving it up 
Thanks for these erudite and intelligent posts. I confess I
find these arguments weak. I don’t see why a woman can’t
represent or be a stand in for Christ in the mass and the church be the bride anyhow–unless one has a sort of dirty mind (not implying that
you do). Lesbianism! If the priest isn’t Christ, then, as someone who isn’t Christ can do the transubstantiation (or be the conduit through
which God acts), why not a woman? If the priest actually is miraculously
for a moment, Christ, then so can a woman be. I agree that
a man fits the metaphors somewhat better, looks more like
Christ did, but it’s hard to see this
as decisive. ‘Paradigms’ can shift; typically they really
boil down to what we’re used to and once the change is
made, nobody thinks twice about it again. The Church
will still be the bride of Christ.
The ‘sacred tradition’
sort of thing comes up in one form or another whenever
one tries to change a traditional practice–we got a lot
of this when we confronted segregation (‘These practices
are old and they have served us well, there is an unwritten
wisdom embedded in them…’) Alluding to the ‘sacred tradition’ here
really seems to me to be handwaving. One doesn’t
know what’s in it, really. Just a blanket warrant for the
status quo. Jesus must have taught this, after all, we have it.
The ‘all or nothing’ argument also strikes me
as weak–if we question or change the tradition here, the whole
authority of the Church may slide away…Sort of
the domino theory.
Unless we are willing to live with what we’ve got forever,
no matter how unfortunate, there need to be more
solid arguments, IMO. Conservativism is good, and
certainly one wants to look before one leaps,
but sooner or later the conservative needs to
produce something more cogent and specific than the sort of
standard responses offered routinely against any real
change.
By the way, I think the Pope was a great and inspiring man.
As to what will happen in fact, I believe there will
be no change. The Pope was in office for a long time
and has largely shaped the Church, which will elect
somebody with his views. I’m not a Catholic and don’t
have to live with birth control doctrine; on most
social issues, I think the Church has got the matter
right. So I hope things stay the same.
Officially the C of E is Catholic (the small c was just sloppy typing on my part), it just doesn’t recognise the Pope as its head. The historical reasons behind this perhaps had more to do with pragmatic politics than theology in the century after its creation.
The Roman and Anglican versions both have the Mass/Communion at their centre and both have confession (Romans on an individual basis and Anglicans en masse). Their services have a lot more similarities than differences.
A lot of Anglicans are surprised if you point this out to them which is a shame really as it means they can’t be listening to, or thinking about, what they are saying each Sunday.
I pretty much agree with what Jim Stone said, especially his first paragraph.
Also, I was under the impression that transubstantiation was more or less abandoned in the Vatican II papers a few decades ago, but I could be wrong.
I was always under the impression that metaphors likening the church to a bride were made to aid in human understanding (a difficult thing to achieve under the best circumstances), not meant to be taken as a strict literal thing.
Well, you’re welcome to believe whatever you want to, but I still don’t see why women can’t be priests.
Oh and as far as purely oral tradition goes, have you ever played a little game called “telephone”? Try it, and then multiply your results by about 2000 years. I wouldn’t trust them either.
Nope - that’s a defining element of Cathloic theology and will proably never be altered.
I was always under the impression that metaphors likening the church to a bride were made to aid in human understanding (a difficult thing to achieve under the best circumstances), not meant to be taken as a strict literal thing.
Well, you’re welcome to believe whatever you want to, but I still don’t see why women can’t be priests.
Oh and as far as purely oral tradition goes, have you ever played a little game called “telephone”? Try it, and then multiply your results by about 2000 years. I wouldn’t trust them either.
Not to mention the fact that, with “oral tradition,” a religion could justify nearly any cultural practice, whether it has a theological basis or not.
Sorry about that - my original question had been already answered, as I was not a careful reader. Doh! thanks for leaving up your response though.
true, however, that assumes one is dealing with a purely human institution like a government or a university. The idea behind a “Church” with a capital C is that without a central doctrinal authority to settle disputes over teachings, it would be inevitible that within a few generations the religion will have gone off in a hundred different directions. If you believe that there is anything to the teachings in the first place, then any deviation from “truth” is bad and extremely detrimental to the faithful who have no guidance. Look at what has happened in the 500 years since Luther opened the door to breaking away - there are thousands of denominations with belief systems ranging from High Church Anglicans to Mormons and Jehova’s Witnesses. How is a believer to choose which has the right message, or if the believer himself is the sole possessor of the “right” message like David Koresh?
It is notable that the first thing the larger and more cohesive movements did was to develop a hierarchy and consolidate authority, but now there was precident for anyone who disagreed with a point of that authority to simply go off and start their own church.
The idea is that the Church is God’s “mouthpiece” so to speak, to avoid just that confusing situation, and so is guided by God to make the right decisions on those things. If the Church has not had divine guidance for her teachings all along, then it and every Christian movement that came from it is dubious.
one mustn’t confuse Tradition (Sacred Tradition, capital T) with tradition (human tradition). an example of human tradition would be what language the Mass is in. It was Latin when Latin was the vernacular, it remained Latin as a lingua franca in the new barbarian kingdoms that followed the Roman Empire, and was changed away from the language of the Mass when Latin ceased to be needed for that purpose. The Church makes no claim on being infallible on matters of human tradition, politics, science or anything other than theology.
Sacred Tradition is that which we’ve gotten from Jesus through the apostles. if that Tradition-with-a-capital-T is faulty then the whole basis for all of Christianity goes with it.
Even the “Bible” only exists because the Church put it together that way. Luther later removed things that were used in arguments against some of the things he was looking to change (the first version of the Bible he printed contained all the books), and the Orthodox churches added things.
Part of the thing that ensures consistency is the Conclave that we will see if a few days. Can a heretical pope be chosen? In theory, yes, but because he needs to be elected by the College of Cardinals that is extremely unlikely (if one takes into accound Divine guidance it is impossible). These Cardinals, who even at the worst of times will be more traditional than not, who were chosen by the previous pope or popes and therefore heretical Cardinals will be extremely rare or nonexistant. This ensures one traditional generation passes along the teachings accurately and chooses another non-radical generation to follow.
The NT is replete with cautions about seeking new preachers because we like their stances better, and examples of people like the pharisees (rabbis), saducees (temple priests) and other gentiles who simply found Jesus’ message too hard or too incongruous with the way they believed the world should be. Jesus made it very clear that feeling that way didn’t make it okay to reject the message - that He would tell the world many things it wouldn’t like to hear.
It is hard as Americans, and citizens of the modern Western tradition as a whole, to accept theological things we don’t necessarily like as our societies are (even in Italy) mostly secular and distrustful of religion. The thing to keep in mind is that we have changed in the last 2000 years, but God hasn’t. He doesn’t change as He was always perfect, no? So some things we may look upon as quaint now but bedrock back then simply mean that we have changed our perception, and just because we have, or even though we have done some really wonderful things with that change in perception, doesn’t mean it is always right…
You put a lot more faith in humanity than I do, that’s for damn sure.
And as far as corrupt popes go, there have been several. I could type up the laundry list, but I’m sure you’re familiar with the myriad political shenanigans and mistresses and such of history.
You’re one of those folks who thinks only Roman Catholics go to heaven, aren’t you? Well, the discussion stops here for me.
One last bit from me: No you shouldn’t be so open-minded that your brain falls out and there’s something to be said for standing firm in your beliefs, but if you’re too rigid, you’ll just break come the first good storm. It’s one thing to be a sheep; another to be a complete lemming. And if you think God hasn’t changed His policies on a few things, just compare the Old Testament to the New. Complete paradigm shift in regard to His dealings with humanity–I think that little stint as a mortal man was more profound than you may think. Yes, He is always perfect, but that’s a given when you’re the one writing the definition of it.
Well, it’s been fun, but I’ve had it with the banging-of-head-against-brick-wall.
Oh and just an FYI: Luther NEVER set out with the intention of starting a new church. He merely wanted to fix what was wrong (and there was plenty wrong) with the old one. He was forced out the door and rather vehemently. If you don’t like the million schisms, you can blame your own for that one.
Funny thing is, that a lot of what he was pushing to change did get changed, albiet long after he was dead and gone.
very true (and neither I nor the Church says only Catholics go to heaven).
He didn’t want to start his own church, but due to the diplomacy on both sides, relations between him and the Church went the way of the UP forum.
I would say pretty much all of what he was originally pushing for got changed. a reading of the 95 theses shows his main complaint to be low-level (in hierarchy, not in scale) corruption with the selling of indulgences, but multiple affirmations of the concept of indulgences themselves (and thus purgatory), as well as the pope’s authority, the title “Mother of God” and a number of other things that went by the wayside once the Church vs Luther/Luther vs Church propaganda war set in that has lasted, basically into the mid-twentieth century.
my take, and not due to any religious education telling me this but due to my own independent research on the history and formation of the Christian movement as well as various schisms. I’ve come to the conclusion that the Church’s claim to authority is legit. Personally, I cannot reconcile Christianity being true and the Church being a faulty perpetuator of the religion for 1500 years. I know many people can and that is their prerogative in their own personal lifelong quest for truth. We all undertake the journey from different backgrounds and with different methods.
and I’ve never denied that there were ‘bad’ popes coughcough…Boniface VIII…coughcough…but there is a difference between having a corrupt pope and a heretic pope. a corrupt pope does bad things but doesn’t touch the Church teachings (save through bad example). a heretic pope perpetuates false official dogma. That was the distinction I was trying to make.
One of the biggest sticking points for me is the whole transubstantiation business. I feel through hisorical evidence that it has been a belief of the movement from the start. Now, looking at what is supposed to be taking place, that is a BIG thing, and it is not to be found in the beliefs of groups outside the Church. So, one would be missing out on something reaaaly important by going elsewhere. If it isn’t true, then Church teaching about something BIG was wrong for 1500 years and then nothing we know about Christianity, big or small, can be relied upon. One can’t even go back to the written as the composition of the Bible itself is one of those “big” things, and all gnostic texts would therefore have to be taken into account including ones like the Gospel of Eve that would have everybody eating fetuses and the like.
For me, the implications of undermining the claimed authority of the Church is throwing the baby out with the bathwater, but everbody is certainly entitled to their opinion.
All I’ve done here is respond to direct statements and questions asked about my beliefs. I haven’t told anybody they’re going to hell or that they have to agree with me, nor have I called names. can’t quite figure what’s so headbanging about all of it…
there are thousands of denominations with belief systems ranging from High Church Anglicans
…
I consider myself an “Anglican”.
I am not aware of any difference between “high church” and " low church" beliefs, only differences in the services. I only mention this because of late, I’ve seen “high church” mentioned more than once in several threads… ( I’m partial to "high church " myself 
, oh, and Rite I as opposed to Rite II)
a protestant friend of mine led me to think that was the conservative end of the protestant spectrum, in many ways closer to pre-vaticanII Catholicism than modern Catholicism.
but she’s primarily a presbyterian so she doesn’t have to be right about it 