That's the line that sums it all up.
Whenever I see a news story about women being "ordained" I find it funny that the media usually accepts that these people are a legitimate part of the Catholic Church and though "the Vatican", a sinister force that hates women, disagrees, it is all well and good. You may notice that another place where "the Vatican" is referred to as such is the best-selling work of garbage, The DaVinci Code.
This story is a brilliant example of what I'm talking about:
Here are some highlights ...
Reynolds is a 58-year-old wife and mother, a volunteer chaplain for Hospice of the Central Coast, a self-proclaimed “spiritual mentor” who works with mostly women and performs weddings, and perhaps most importantly, is a member of the Roman Catholic Church.
It is a complicated relationship that she has with her church. Reynolds wants recognition from the church for a concept that it does not condone: women as priests. She wants the church to shift and stretch and bend in ways it, or at least the Vatican, has said it will not do. But she does not want to leave it. She, and other women who are working to become deacons and priests in the Catholic Church, say it is their calling to test the church, and yet not give up on it.
and
Both Reynolds and Rue demur at first when asked directly for positions on topics like birth control and abortion.
“I guess my stance is there is a lot that has to happen between individuals and God and it is not my place to judge. I don’t have immediate answers for that,” Reynolds says. “I believe the first step is to allow women into the church and to begin these conversations. Women need to be allowed to have a voice and with that the celibacy law needs to go. People need to be able to be fully human. Definitely we should allow birth control. Other things need to change.”
Rue says that adding women into the church naturally creates change.
“You can’t just ordain women into priesthood and stir in like a recipe,” she says. “When you begin to ordain women, the theology will change. We can become inclusive so we don’t only refer to God as he or father, but she or mother, or we say wind, or we say river of love. We start to use many different names for God."
Please, whether you are Catholic or not, recoginze this: the Catholic Church does not hate women. The Church does not have the power to ordain women. Deciding to do that would go against what it means to be Catholic. The Faith is not something that we can change as we see fit, it is revealed to us by God. Whenever you read a story like this, please do not assume that they are telling the truth about what the Church teaches.River of love? Are you serious?
2 comments:
As you are well aware, tradition and the Bible are two sources for our Catholic faith. Taking Newman's idea of the Development of Doctrine - and aware of the last Pope's insistence on making the issue of women priests a closed matter - we need to assess a few key items, none of which are new and none of which, I am sure, you have not heard.
First, Biblically - especially if we take Mark's Gospel, the women are Jesus' main supporters who follow him from the beginning. It goes witout saying if this gospel was read in a vacuum (which I know it is not) a neutral outsider would never deem the apostles a preeminent role whereas the role of the women would stand out. Were any of these women followers disciples? The evidence is scant, but there are certainly enough bits and pieces to make a case that they were not simply servers of meals.
Secondly, one should never say "The Church doesn't have the power" - never handcuff the power of the Holy Spirit in a matter, that ultimately is quite banal from an outsider's vantagepoint, but which has caused undue harm and feelings of alienation among women - feelings of alienation that a man in our our patriarchal tradition and culture can never fully grasp.
In short, recall Jesus' response to the Syrophoenecian woman in Mark's gospel - her audacity at making Jesus listen to her pleas -and at the very least, it should make you wonder why he praised her faith and changed his attitude so suddenly.
I wish you the best in your training and pray for your discernment. God bless.
Thanks for commenting!
The point I was trying to make is that these women don't want to make the status of women in the Curch better, they want to form the Church to their own beliefs which are, coincidentally, not very Catholic.
This is a very western/American idea - that is I believe something that Church is against, the Church should change to fit me.
"Secondly, one should never say "The Church doesn't have the power" - never handcuff the power of the Holy Spirit in a matter, that ultimately is quite banal from an outsider's vantagepoint, but which has caused undue harm and feelings of alienation among women - feelings of alienation that a man in our our patriarchal tradition and culture can never fully grasp."
I just mean to say that what the women in this story are professing is not what the Catholic Church teaches. Even if there are ways in which the Church can better represent women, and I'm sure there are as in any group of people, that does not mean that the Church should allow everything they demand because they are oppressed.
I agree that Jesus showed a respect for women never shown before. I also believe that the Church now is one of the few things in the world that has a true respect for women.
God bless!
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