I don’t think any of my readers will be surprised at what a branch of Voice of the "Faithful" thinks of the CDF’s recent decree that those who attempt to confer or women who receive ordination are automatically excommunicated. In fact when it comes to VOTF and other dissident groups it reminds me of Groucho Marx song in Horse Feathers. Though their version is “Whatever the CDF says, I against it”
I don’t know what they have to say,
It makes no difference anyway,
Whatever it is, I’m against it.
No matter what it is or who commenced it,
I’m against it.
The New Jersey branch of VOTF recently sent out a email saying they agree with a statement by CORPUS, National Association for an Inclusive Ministry. You can read the full statement over at The Deacon’s Bench.
The statement starts of with the usual nonsense and how shameful this "absolutist leadership" is. I really think invoking due process in the case of latae sententiae excommunication perfectly shows their mind set and lack of understanding. They then give a list of their reasons for women’s ordination.
1. The Papal Commission on the ordination of women found no biblical justification for the exclusion of women from Holy Orders.
I read that bullet and "Drudge Report
" red sirens started flashing in my head. I had never head of the "The Papal Commission on the ordination of women" and figured there was something wrong with what they were saying. It turns out is that they are referring to is the Pontifical Biblical Commission report in 1976 on the question. What the report actually says is "It does not seem that the New Testament by itself alone will permit us to settle in a clear way and once and for all the problem of the possible accession of women to the presbyterate,". This is a far cry from what is asserted here and is quite disingenuous. They also said "In fact there is no proof that these ministries were entrusted to women at the time of the New Testament." The Catholic Faith is not a Sola Scriptura faith in the first place and so while New Testament studies don’t settle the question, the Magisterium did.
This bullet point that CORPUS used originally came from the Catholic Theological Society of America a year after the report came out from the Pontifical Biblical Commission. The Secretariat for Doctrine and Pastoral Practices of what was then the
National Conference of Catholic Bishops responded to CTSA’s assertion and responded on the weakness of CTSA’s report and analysis. CTSA’s task force on this issue was headed by Sister Sarah Butler who readers of my blog will know later changed her mind an wrote an excellent book defending the Magisterium on this issue.
So what we have here is an assertion that is in fact a lie and has just been passed down without any check of its veracity.
3. History informs us that ordained women ministered to their faith communities in the early Church and throughout the first millennium.
Another lie that has no historical justification. Often they refer to the inscription of the image at the Church of St Praxedei that reads Theodora Episcopa. She was the widowed mother of Paschal the Bishop of Rome at the time. Titles such as this for a mother of a Bishop were not unusual and a similar practice is used today for a wife of a Greek Orthodox priest. They try to argue that a picture of her wearing a coif proves that she wasn’t married. This is a false assertion. Regardless you would think that if women priestesses were common in the first thousand years we would have more than just one example to go by. Instead we had early councils specifically condemning the practice of some heretical groups to have women priests and the Councils of Nicaea and Loadicea even saying that women deaconesses were not in fact ordained.
4. As the faithful we have a responsibility in Church law to express our needs to our pastors. The Holy Spirit has spoken to women among us. They have courageously responded.
And if you happen to be a woman who supports the truth that the Church teaches that it has no authority to ordain women? I guess some laity are more equal than others.
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I noted in a post on this subject some time ago that whereas St Paschal is portrayed wearing clerical garb in the painting of him, his mother is not.
Theodora:
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/871/217/1600/Theodora.0.jpg
Pope St Paschal:
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/871/217/1600/Paschal1.jpg
Commenting on this insight Father Stephanos responded:
Yes. Pope Paschal is wearing a yellow or gold chasuble for Mass (under which he would be wearing the stole). Over the chasuble he is wearing the pallium (the white bands) that signifies an archbishop….Plus: none of the women in the mosaics is vested as deacon, none as a priest, none as a bishop, none as an archbishop, none as a pope.
Source: Me Monk Me Meander
http://monkallover.blogspot.com/2006/08/romancatholicwomenpriestsorg-greets.html
Thank you for your timing, Jeff. THAT was the author and the book I have been seeking!
Thank you for your timing, Jeff. THAT was the author and the book I have been seeking!
Check out Tom Bradley’s damning-with-three-stars review at Jeff’s link to Amazon. It’s a textbook example of submarine dissent:
What if Sr. Sara Butler is really a man disguised as a woman? Or, what if Sr. Sara is really a man with the body of a woman? Or, what if Sr. Sara is both a man and a woman with the dual anatomy of a man and a woman? Or, what if Sr. Sara has an indistinguishable anatomy where identifying her sexual organs is scientifically impossible? Or what if Sr. Sara had female organs, but only male chromosomes? Or, what if Sr. Sara was a man at birth and had a sex re-assignment to a woman that she never knew occurred? As for me, I personally believe that Sr. Sara is a woman with a woman’s anatomy. I further believe that her anatomy has been unaltered. It is a belief. No speculation about the anatomy of Sr. Sara is worthy of discussion.
For believers in an all male clergy the “discussion” of the possibility of woman’s ordination is not necessary. Sr. Sara is a remarkable apologist for the non-discussion. Her book does a superb job of validating the reasons and necessity for an all male clergy. In a heated debate where everyone who disagrees with Sr. Sara is silenced, she is clearly the articulate winner. It helps that Sr. Sara is a woman. Otherwise silenced critics might quietly mumble that she is merely a sexist male. That would be unfair.
Yet, in spite of a marvelous affirmation of the Sacramentality of a male clergy, there is still room for suspicion. Sr. Sara agrees that very little information exists about the historical Jesus. What if the Sitz im Leben of the historical Jesus were different? Would some of the apostles have been women? Perhaps some historical apostles were women? What about the women who were popes? What about those women in history who were ordained through renegade apostolic succession? Believers would be certain to label those ordinations as invalid, but is there room to think of the historical ordinations of women as merely illicit by the standard of misunderstood biology? Is our understanding of the biology of what makes a “woman” a “woman” and a “man” a “man” in need revision? My suspicion is that there is biologically more there than meets the eye. It is in redefinition that room exists for discussion.
For example, apologists for the long-line of ordained male priests who are celibate and gay quickly point-out that many gay men have female characteristics which make them more pastorally sensitive as priests than their heterosexual counter-parts.
Perhaps the reverse is true for certain women? There are women with biologically male characteristics. Why shouldn’t a woman who acts like a man be considered for ordination if she also has certain biological markers and characteristics which are also male?
Take comfort that my challenge is hardly a threat to defined dogma. In spite of irrefutable scientific evidence that the earth was not the center of the universe, it took the Church hundreds and hundreds of years to re-interpret that defined dogma. The evidence that human anatomy is dynamic is hardly as conclusive as the world not being in the center of the universe. Even after the evidence is overwealming, it will take hundreds if not thousands of years for the Church to open investigation.
In the end, the current environment is not ready to invite authentic dialogue and Sr. Sara is at the right place at the right time to feed those who hunger for the justification of a non-dialogue.
Did you get that? No one really knows what a man or males is. Least of all the Church or perhaps even Our Lord. The sane among us might recognize this as the famous “Depends on what your definition of is is.” So he is suggesting it seems that until the Church produces an ex cathedra statement on maleness, it is still an open question. Pray for this man. It is like the guy in A Beautiful Mind in his tool shed with strings going this way and that between magazine clippings.
Bah! My italics should have ended after the sentence, “In the end, the current environment is not ready to invite authentic dialogue and Sr. Sara is at the right place at the right time to feed those who hunger for the justification of a non-dialogue.”
“In spite of irrefutable scientific evidence that the earth was not the center of the universe, it took the Church hundreds and hundreds of years to re-interpret that defined dogma.”
When did the Church ever proclaim the dogma that the earth is the center of the universe? Not that it really matters, who needs facts when you’ve got heresy?
When did the Church ever proclaim the dogma that the earth is the center of the universe? Not that it really matters, who needs facts when you’ve got heresy?
Welcome to dissident Disneyland. You will often encounter their list of Church doctrines that have supposedly been overturned later: slavery, usury and, as you mentioned, Geocentrism, are the usual favs. They are merely more desperate attempts to keeep alive a hopeless position. And nothing the Church ever teaches will get them to stop because it is a matter of a recalcitrant will rather than an honest intellectual dilemma.
“There are women with biologically male characteristics. Why shouldn’t a woman who acts like a man be considered for ordination if she also has certain biological markers and characteristics which are also male? “
Let’s keep Hillary Clinton out of this.
“Why do dissidents lie? “
Because they are serving the Prince of Lies.
I read that review, Scott. Ohhhhh dear.
As to VOTF’s sympathy, why sympathize with these women?
They ask; the Church says “No.” They demand; the Church says “No.” They do it anyway, thereby separating themselves from the Church. Now they are shocked because they are separated from the Church?
Were they never taught the meaning of the word, ‘no’? Ah, but what if no really means yes? Is that the illogic?
In the Eastern Orthodox churches we still have presbytera, something dissidents claim was a female “priest” when they see it on ancient graves but what we have always known as a priest’s wife.
In the Eastern Orthodox churches we still have presbytera, something dissidents claim was a female “priest” when they see it on ancient graves but what we have always known as a priest’s wife. We have no current title, that I know of, of “episcopa” as a Bishop’s mother but it could have been so or a Bishop’s wife. In the earliest years of the church there were wives of Bishops and in later years it was not unheard of for married men and women to choose celibacy within marriage when the man received holy orders. In the Eastern Church a more recent example of this was St. John of Kronstadt who was a married priest but both he and his wife lived together in celibacy.
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