The ordination of women as Catholic priests will come one day

[susannah]

The ordination of women as priests in the Catholic Church will come one day. Already you can see the yearnings of women to be taken seriously in their sense of pastoral calling, to serve as female priests, to express voice that is not filtered by exclusively male primacy, and the pressures that build up on the male-dominated hierarchy. Just observe

Comments

[becoming_rachel]

Actually, according to the Roman Catholic Church (of which I am a member), this matter is a moot point. Even if the Church wanted to ordain women, it cannot, because it doesn't have the power to ordain women. I know this sounds incredibly confusing and perhaps sexist to those outside of our faith, but it isn't. Here is some further explanation

[ginnyjake]

I like this answer.

[susannah]

Okay, thanks for the repeat of the link to this Catholic case for only having male priests

The first reason given is "they [women] could not teach or have authority over a man (1 Tim. 2:11-14)"Why? Paul may have had socio-cultural reasons in his own day and age that somehow explained this assertion with reference to church or cultural situations in specific places in his day, but it seems extraordinary for us to generalise this specific injunction and perpetuate it for all time and all societies, when clearly society now recognises the intellectual, emotional and moral qualities of women, which are quite sufficient to carry out teaching and pastoral leadership in the church (as in many other walks of life

[ginnyjake]

Out of curiousity, what role does the Anglican Church believe its priests play, especially during their services? In the Catholic Church, the priest acts in the person of Christ during Mass. Part of the reason priests are male is because Christ was male.

[susannah]

Christ was a person, and women are people. Otherwise, why stop at 'man'? Why not insist that only a Jewish man should represent Jesus? Jesus came to earth as a human, and women are human.. Christ died for all people, and women are people. Why does the gender of the person who acts in the person of Christ in the Mass remotely matter? What has gender got to do with Jesus dying for our sins, which the Mass celebrates? And since we believe that Jesus is present in the sacraments at Mass anyway, isn't that the important thing? Why does it remotely matter whether the priest acting and representing the personhood of Christ has mnale sex organs or female sex organs. Since both men and women were made in the image of God, there's your answer: either a man OR a woman can represent the divine image. The significance of Jesus was not that he had male sex organs, but that he came to earth as a human being for ALL human beings