Punditry

Toni Tortorilla [Source]
I am shocked at this picture! Doesn’t this women “priest” know that glass chalices are not allowed. Surely she has read Redemptionis Sacramentum. After all women priests are just like male priests and they only differ with the Church on the issue of women’s ordination and just want to be obedient to Jesus and his Church.

It always seems to me that the real reason these women don’t become Episcopalians instead is that they would get no attention if they did so. This way they can be “brave” in opposing that male dominant church they so hate and want to be part of. That when it comes down to it, it is not only one issue they disagree on — but a whole agenda comes along with it. Show me a women “priest” who defends the Church’s sexual teachings and has an orthodox theological view and I will show you that the bearded Spock must live in that same universe. These women would be a much closer fit with Episcopalians since their theology and antics would fit right in

As I have quipped before, where are the women who feel a call to the priesthood that want to celebrate the Extraordinary form of the Mass. Where are the traddy women priests and why is it predominately women with butch haircuts that feel this call?

From the article the picture was taken from:

Q: Is there a biblical basis for ordaining women?

A: In 1976, a report of the Pontifical Biblical Commission looked at Scripture and found no justification in the New Testament for excluding women from the priesthood.

I guess I am shocked again by this lie. I have a copy of this report and it says not such thing.

“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 statement from the commission is nowhere close to how it is often portrayed by the women’s ordination movement. The reason I have the commissions report is because I had seen this claim before. The report goes on to say:

The masculine character of the hierarchical order which has structured the church since its beginning thus seems attested to by scripture in an undeniable way. Must we conclude that this rule must be valid forever in the church?

…In fact there is no proof that these ministries were entrusted to women at the time of the New Testament.

And of course this preistette does not mention that the Pontifical Biblical Commission did not found any evidence for ordaining women in the Bible either. It is Jesus’ example that shows this to be his will and of course the constant teaching of the Church from the beginning on this. The only women priests in the early church were heretical groups like Collyridianism. And of course as then-Cardinal Ratzinger replied in his Responsum ad Dubium “This teaching requires definitive assent, since, founded on the written Word of God, and from the beginning constantly preserved and applied in the Tradition of the Church, it has been set forth infallibly by the ordinary and universal Magisterium.”

I was looking through Florida statutes and I discovered that those who impersonate police officers, sheriffs, government officials, etc have committed a felony and the circumstances determines if it is first, second, or third degree.  Sentencing for this can be 30, 15, or 5 years with longer sentencing for a life felony.  These crimes are covered under statues 775.082, s. 775.083, here in Florida.

Looking over some other offenses I was shocked to find that unlawful sexual activity with minors while also a felony came under the exact same statues in regard to punishment!  Or the fact that aggravated assault or battery is also a felony along with child sexual abuse and rape.

I tell you I am totally shocked that Florida law equates child sexual abuse with impersonation of a government official.   Unbelievable.  How dare they equate these two crimes as both felonies.  I urge everybody who is a resident of the state of Florida to write their state senate and state congress to have this changed.  Even more disturbing is that it seems that this is not just a fluke for the State of Florida, but seems to have infected all states in that they see this impersonation a felony just like child sexual abuse.

The conclusion to think that each state considers impersonation of a government official to be equated with child sexual abuse is a reasonable conclusion if you have the same mindset of those who freaked out over the revised norms (Normae de Gravioribus Delictis) issued by the Holy See that codify seven modifications originally made by Pope John Paul II and confirmed by Pope Benedict in 2005.  The conclusion of so many bigoted and uninformed pundits is that the Holy See is deliberating equating child sexual abuse with the attempted ordination of women.  No other conclusion is possible for them.

The case can be made that including women’s ordination in this document was not a prudent thing to do.  Though the only reason that it was not prudent was that people would willfully misinterpret it and approach it from an adversarial view.  It does not matter to them that the gravity of the items listed did not change at all and only restates these offenses and their application to the law.  The simple fact is that they don’t understand why women can’t be ordained and so are mad about this in the first place and will use any opportunity to rant about this regardless of the conclusions they must force to come to.  If you say that it reasonable to infer that the intent of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to directly  equate women’s ordination as being exactly equal in every way with priestly abuse of children than you in fact are not being reasonable.

Plus of course they do not understand why women attempting to be ordained constitute such a serious crime in Church law.  If somebody decides that they are called to be a doctor or a county sheriff and then have some group declare them to be of such a profession and to start doing these jobs of their own volition, pretty much anybody can see why they are not in fact a doctor or government official regardless of their desire.  Both the government and doctors have stringent procedures regarding these professions and control them.  The Catholic Church also has rules and procedures concerning the priesthood and have the faculty to determine the theology of the priesthood and who can be a priest.  But of course secularists seem to think they can dictate this to us and make no attempt to understand the theology of the priesthood and instead head straight for a false view of equality.

These women who are faux priests do serious damage to those who follow them and of course to themselves.  Where there are women “priests” there is no Eucharist, confession, sacrament of the sick, or valid marriage.  To support women priests is to rob the faithful of these sacraments and to create a spirituality anchored in disobedience.

Funny how the same people who would go postal if a white actor played Othello can think of no reasons whatsoever why women can’t image Christ In Persona Christi.  They would reduce Christ to a genderless being and his being a man meaning nothing at all.  This as always is the path of heresies that grow from see Jesus as something other than fully God and fully man (as a human person) and as a man.

Though the bigots will just not get passed that their can be a theology of the priesthood that is not just simply sexism imposed by a an all male hierarchy.

For those who seriously want to know why the Church teaches what was Christ’s will.

Catholic Priesthood and Women: A Guide To The Teaching Of The Church by Sr. Sara Butler, MSBT which I previously reviewed. In 1978, Sr. Butler headed a task force of the Catholic Theological Society of America that came out in support of female priests. Later though she realized the error of the arguments made and wrote this book that rebuts them and totally supports the Church’s teaching.

Since the atheist de-batism using a hairdryer marked reason is making the news again – here are my comments from almost a year ago today.

In a type of mock ceremony that’s now been performed in at least four states, a robed “priest” used a hairdryer marked “reason” in an apparent bid to blow away the waters of baptism once and for all. Several dozen participants then fed on a “de-sacrament” (crackers with peanut butter) and received certificates assuring they had “freely renounced a previous mistake, and accepted Reason over Superstition.”

For Gray, the lighthearted spirit of last summer’s Atheist Coming Out Party and De-Baptism Bash in suburban Westerville, Ohio, served a higher purpose than merely spoofing a Christian rite.

“It was very therapeutic,” Gray said in an interview. “It was a chance to laugh at the silly things I used to believe as a child. It helped me admit that it was OK to think the way I think and to not have any religious beliefs.”

…Atheist Gary Mueller recently mailed his de-baptism certificate to St. Bonaventure Catholic Church in Concord, Calif., and asked to be dropped from its baptismal record. The church told him, in effect, that he was all wet.

“While we do not remove a name/person from a Baptism register, we can note alongside your name that ‘you have left the Roman Catholic Church,’ ” the Rev. Richard Mangini replied in an e-mail. “I hope that God surprises you one day and lets you know that He is quite well.” [reference]

As a former atheist I would like to debunk what they are saying, but since I can only rely on superstition and not reason I am unable to. When I became Catholic I had to sign one of those documents about promising to abstain from reason and other bad habits I had picked up in a lifetime of atheism. In the last ten years I have been much happier now that religion is a crutch and life is easier now also since I don’t have to think anymore and can just blindly follow some foreign guy in a robe! I embrace my sheepleness.

Besides reason is not what it is cracked up to be. Just what had it done for St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas. Pascal, or even our present Pope? Remember that encyclical Pope John Paul II wrote “Faith and Superstition”? Oh wait.

Now if these people were serious about giving up Christianity and the fruits of Christendom, they should also denounce hospitals, universities, and even modern science, and of course acts of charity. They want to denounce Christianity while at the same time enjoying the fruits of it.

I am so glad that this man showed us how to use reason! Forming judgments by a process of logic always leads you to sticking a piece of paper with REASON on it to a hair dryer. Mocking Christians with phony rituals that have not ability to cancel out an ontological change screams reason. Though ‘Reason itself is a matter of faith,” G. K. Chesterton wrote. ”It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all.”

Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth–in a word, to know himself–so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves. – Pope John Paul II Fides et Ratio.

The Catholic Key blog titled the post on this “Atheists Need Better liturgists” Actually a stunt as silly as this sounds just like something a liturgist would recommend. Rocks in baptismal fonts and blow-dryers marked reason kind of go together.

Listened to Al Kresta interviewing Dr. Kenneth Howell and his attorney Jordan Lawrence from the Alliance Defense Fund today. One of the things Mr. Howell said was that it was explained to him he was being fired because he violated the policy on inclusiveness. As the old joke goes you have to be really well educated to be able to say something that stupid. So I guess inclusiveness means there can only be one opinion about the morality of homosexual acts. So inclusive has now had the same turnaround as the word bad experienced where being bad could mean really good and cool. To be inclusive now means to be exclusive of an opinion. The school to support its policy on inclusiveness obviously had to fire and exude Dr. Howell. It all makes sense in academic land where everyday is opposite day.

So I urge parents to be inclusive by excluding the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to exclude their children from going there.

“People want to live in democracy, under the rule of law, with a real participation of all citizens, in a climate of justice and freedom,” the bishops said. “Therefore, the imposition of a socialist state inspired by the Cuban communist regime that has been enforced through laws and facts that ignore the popular will and the Constitution is absolutely unacceptable.”

This is part of a statement from the Venezuela’s Bishop’s Conference in regards to Hugo Chavez. Though I think the USCCB could release a similar statement and I am not talking about in regards to Hugo Chavez.

Via Catholic Culture

In a parody post once on women’s ordination I had quipped how unfair it was that men can’t become nuns.  Well there goes another avenue of parody as it become reality.

I thought this was a spoof at first, but it seems not: a General Synod working party is exploring whether the Church of England’s male bishops can join religious orders previously reserved for women. In other words, become Anglican nuns.

As usual, the Synod’s topsy-turvy ecclesiology is a mystery to me, but I gather that the idea is that bishops would be entitled to take vows in orders of nuns so that they can provide special episcopal oversight to the sisters. It’s a typically ingenious Anglican response to the forthcoming ordination of women bishops. “There will be jokes about bishops in wimples, but having bishop-nuns would introduce a degree of mutual cooperation that could make the introduction of women bishops much smoother,” says my Synod source.

And just when I thought things couldn’t get any weirder, I learn the identity of the bishop who is rumoured to have volunteered to take nun’s vows: the Rt Rev Nick Baines, Bishop of Croydon, often spoken of as a successor to Rowan Williams as Archbishop of Canterbury. Says my informant: “Nick is a big fan of Sister Act, and we knew he was keen to ‘get ahead,’ as it were, so he was the obvious person to ask. And apparently he was delighted, because he’s all about challenging gender stereotypes.”

Tip to Damian Thompson

When you drop Apostolic Tradition, Scripture, and frankly plain common sense you get the Anglican Communion.  The vote for women bishop’s was inevitable after women priests since once you theological swallowed the first you might as well drink in the rest of the camel.  And of course the term Anglican Communion gets even more oxymoronic every day.

I followed with interest last week about the story of Dr. Ken Howell firing from the University of Illinois for a discussion on Natural Law and how it relates to homosexual acts. When Thomas Peters published an email address for the University, I like many others wrote them about this. Of course the punchline to this story was that he was teaching a course on “Catholicism 101.”

The university took this action after a student who was not in this class wrote in regards to student who had attended the class and called this teaching “Hate Speech.”  Unfortunately this episode it not at all surprising and just more evidence about how Political Correctness will trump so-called tolerance.  Just another attempt to closet Catholics and to try to force them to not say anything that disagrees  with secular dogmas. Or maybe it is just a cowardly action taken by bureaucrats afraid to stand up against homosexual activism.  Academic freedom so espoused by the academic system is use to defend almost anything I guess except having students think about how Natural Law Theory applies in relation to homosexual acts.

Then of course there can be no debate about this without the terms “homophobia” and “hate crime” launched repeatedly at you.  That they use these terms without even attempting to determine your motives shows both phobia and hate – you are simply condemned or fired as in Dr. Howell’s case.  Thomas Peters also posted the schools pledge to be “inclusive”:

[Inclusive Illinois] encourages the exploration of how perceptions, ideas, and experiences influence conduct and behavior. The University’s goal is to heighten awareness and engagement about issues of identity andimportance of examining and respecting differences based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and gender identity, age, physical ability,religion, as well as the multiple and intersecting ways we see ourselves and others. [Unless you’re Catholic.]

American Papist further reports that the Alliance Defense Fund is now representing Dr. Howell and are seeking to have him rehired.

You can also help out by emailing the school.

Good to see that NASA Administrator Charles Bolder has his priorities in order.

Bolden created a firestorm after telling Al Jazeera last month that President Obama told him before he took the job that he wanted him to do three things: inspire children to learn math and science, expand international relationships and “perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science … and math and engineering.”

When you have to go back at least 600 years and primarily to the period between the 7th and 13th centuries for self-esteem you know something is wrong. Yeah self-esteem outreach will really work to overcome the fact that a country like Israel releases more patents in a year than all of the Arab world. Though the Islamic world could return to their heyday. All they have to do is copy the past and conquer countries with more scientific advancement and then take advantage of that until Islamic philosophy causes the same stagnation as before. Not surprising that some of the great figures of that so-called golden age were not exactly what you would call great Muslims believers. The late Fr. Jaki in his great book “Science & Creation, from eternal cycles to an oscillating universe.” goes into depth why science did not develop outside of Western Civilization and included a chapter on why Islamic philosophy itself prevented the scientific method from developing in Islamic culture. Pope Benedict’s famous Regensburg address included one of these reasons is the belief that God’s absolute transcendence understood in an extreme way leads to an idea that the laws of science could change because God is not bound to them.

But then again look how well concentrating on self-esteem worked out in our public educational system – oh wait. Yeah reminding the Arab world that they haven’t contributed hardly anything to science in 600 years is a great idea and one I am sure they will take well.

In other news:

Suspected Islamic militants have chopped off a Catholic professor’s hand in Kerala for allegedly insulting Islam in an exam question paper.

Professor T.J. Joseph was attacked on July 4 in while returning home from Sunday mass with his mother and sister, a Catholic nun.

Kochi inspector-general of police, B. Sandya, told ucanews.com that an Islamic extremist group is suspected of the crime and have arrested four people and impounded a vehicle. [Via Jay Anderson]

We need to get those suspected Islamic Terrorists some self-esteem stat!

Joseph was arrested in April last after the question paper set by him for the B Com II year internal exams sparked protests by Muslim outfits, which claimed it had hurt their religious sentiments. He was later suspended from the college and was out on bail when attacked.