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Ok. Let's talk about religion.
Nine women "ordained as priests" on a boat in the St. Lawrence River. One said she does "not fear an excommunication because I don't feel excommunicated".
I feel the need to offer a minor clarification here. In 1994, Pope John Paul II wrote "Ordinatio Sacerdotalis" (Priestly Ordination). It contained this statement:
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. Luke 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.
Summary: "I know you still think this is a disciplinary thing like priestly celibacy or meat on Fridays, but it's not. Let me clarify. We can not ordain you. Not that we will not, we can not."
These poor women on the St. Lawrence River are, like so many other sadly confused people, laboring under the misapprehension that the Catholic Church is like a club whose beliefs and practices should change to suit the membership. That's not what religion is -- religion is not something you ascribe to because it agrees with you, you ascribe to it because you agree with it. Religion is a belief system regarding the nature of existence and everything possessing it. In its fullest context and depth, Catholic teaching possesses insights, complexities, subtleties, wisdoms, and clarities that boggle the mind of scholars who really take the time to learn about it. If you delve into the centuries of philosophy and thought and postulation and conclusion of brilliant minds that has fed the elucidation of many core teachings, the "Why" behind the doctrine really does emerge. "Catholics" without that educated "Ohhhh" who do nothing to achieve it exhibit one of my only true pet peeves -- like anything else with the human mind, ignorance and misunderstanding wreaks havoc when you persist in them and spread them.
This is not about feeling. This is not about whether or not you feel "called to be a priest." And for heaven's sake, this is not about whether or not you "feel excommunicated"! "I'm not worried about being arrested, because I don't feel arrested." Does that make sense? No. In the end, does it matter if you feel arrested? No. Because you do not create your own reality, you create your own perception of reality. And, sadly, your perception only has so much impact. When I was a little girl, I had a period of about a year in which I was absolutely positive I was inches away from the power of flight. I could feel everything there, just one piece missing, and I'd be able to take off. I felt it, I was sure of it. And no matter what I felt or did to actualize that, I never actually flew. Because my perceptions and actions did not change the fact that the capability was not there.
Similarly, the capability for female ordination is not there. It isn't like there are a handful of illicit female priests running around fighting the system -- it's that there are a handful of misinformed, impassioned, nominally "Catholic" women running around who think they're priests. They mean well, in their minds, I'm sure. But they're missing HUGE chunks of understanding, and they're allowing those gaps in knowledge to mix with their emotions and their sense of social inequality, and they're misfiring. Here, as in real life, "equal" does not mean "same". And here, as in real life, explosive angst directed at a lack of "sameness" does not actually help to promote "equality".
And really, it doesn't matter if they're excommunicated, because they aren't really Catholic. They don't actually believe the infallible teachings of the Church, and that really is a huge criteria for actually belonging to it. You can go around saying you're a Bryn Mawr student all you want, but if you matriculated and then just stopped enrolling in classes and went about your day, then you don't have to be expelled for it to be true that you aren't actually a student there anymore. Students are enrolled people who take classes (ignoring leaves of absence). Catholics are baptized people who believe/follow the teachings. If you matriculated and stopped showing up, you've dropped out. If you believe some of it but not all of it, you're Protestant. That's the definition.
If you say you're Catholic, figure out what that really means. If you find that you can/will not believe what must be believed in order for the term to apply, stop trying to apply the term. This is not a social set, a family culture, or a strange method of group therapy, it's a belief system. Come on now.
And yes, I do realize that though I extoll the logic of the doctrines, I'm not exactly setting it forth here. I can point you in directions if you want to go down that path. But right now I'm not so much interested in full and broad catechesis as I am a rant. So there ya go, a rant.
End of rant.
Nine women "ordained as priests" on a boat in the St. Lawrence River. One said she does "not fear an excommunication because I don't feel excommunicated".
I feel the need to offer a minor clarification here. In 1994, Pope John Paul II wrote "Ordinatio Sacerdotalis" (Priestly Ordination). It contained this statement:
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. Luke 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.
Summary: "I know you still think this is a disciplinary thing like priestly celibacy or meat on Fridays, but it's not. Let me clarify. We can not ordain you. Not that we will not, we can not."
These poor women on the St. Lawrence River are, like so many other sadly confused people, laboring under the misapprehension that the Catholic Church is like a club whose beliefs and practices should change to suit the membership. That's not what religion is -- religion is not something you ascribe to because it agrees with you, you ascribe to it because you agree with it. Religion is a belief system regarding the nature of existence and everything possessing it. In its fullest context and depth, Catholic teaching possesses insights, complexities, subtleties, wisdoms, and clarities that boggle the mind of scholars who really take the time to learn about it. If you delve into the centuries of philosophy and thought and postulation and conclusion of brilliant minds that has fed the elucidation of many core teachings, the "Why" behind the doctrine really does emerge. "Catholics" without that educated "Ohhhh" who do nothing to achieve it exhibit one of my only true pet peeves -- like anything else with the human mind, ignorance and misunderstanding wreaks havoc when you persist in them and spread them.
This is not about feeling. This is not about whether or not you feel "called to be a priest." And for heaven's sake, this is not about whether or not you "feel excommunicated"! "I'm not worried about being arrested, because I don't feel arrested." Does that make sense? No. In the end, does it matter if you feel arrested? No. Because you do not create your own reality, you create your own perception of reality. And, sadly, your perception only has so much impact. When I was a little girl, I had a period of about a year in which I was absolutely positive I was inches away from the power of flight. I could feel everything there, just one piece missing, and I'd be able to take off. I felt it, I was sure of it. And no matter what I felt or did to actualize that, I never actually flew. Because my perceptions and actions did not change the fact that the capability was not there.
Similarly, the capability for female ordination is not there. It isn't like there are a handful of illicit female priests running around fighting the system -- it's that there are a handful of misinformed, impassioned, nominally "Catholic" women running around who think they're priests. They mean well, in their minds, I'm sure. But they're missing HUGE chunks of understanding, and they're allowing those gaps in knowledge to mix with their emotions and their sense of social inequality, and they're misfiring. Here, as in real life, "equal" does not mean "same". And here, as in real life, explosive angst directed at a lack of "sameness" does not actually help to promote "equality".
And really, it doesn't matter if they're excommunicated, because they aren't really Catholic. They don't actually believe the infallible teachings of the Church, and that really is a huge criteria for actually belonging to it. You can go around saying you're a Bryn Mawr student all you want, but if you matriculated and then just stopped enrolling in classes and went about your day, then you don't have to be expelled for it to be true that you aren't actually a student there anymore. Students are enrolled people who take classes (ignoring leaves of absence). Catholics are baptized people who believe/follow the teachings. If you matriculated and stopped showing up, you've dropped out. If you believe some of it but not all of it, you're Protestant. That's the definition.
If you say you're Catholic, figure out what that really means. If you find that you can/will not believe what must be believed in order for the term to apply, stop trying to apply the term. This is not a social set, a family culture, or a strange method of group therapy, it's a belief system. Come on now.
And yes, I do realize that though I extoll the logic of the doctrines, I'm not exactly setting it forth here. I can point you in directions if you want to go down that path. But right now I'm not so much interested in full and broad catechesis as I am a rant. So there ya go, a rant.
End of rant.