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Apostasy - Women Priests

What it comes down to is in the spiritual world, are baptisms, communion and last rites valid—-if a woman priest performed them? Will someone who thinks they are married before God by a woman priest find out they are living in sin? How certain can one be that a God who created all by His Word only--will be amused when we deliberately disregard His Word regarding His priests?

It is not a matter of being against women priests. It's a matter of it being impossible for a woman to become one.

We rely on what Jesus instructed us to do by written and oral teaching. If the Church were to try to make a woman a priest, she still would not be one. It is not like a job, that all you need is the right talents for. It's a Sacrament. And Sacraments, the outward signs of God’s grace, have a Spiritual effect in both this world and the next. Are you willing to take that chance?

As hard as it is to take, the fact of the matter is that early Church Fathers rejected female ordination, not because it wasn’t compatible with Christian culture, but because they knew it was incompatible with Christian faith. This was believed by the apostles, and the early apostolic church without question. It was also believed in medieval times, and all the way up to the apostasy of churches breaking from this teaching in recent years.

The Church Fathers based this not only on the earliest Jewish and Christian traditions, but also by scriptural dictates.

The prohibition against women preaching can be found in 1 Timothy 2:12 (KJV):

"But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence”.

This prohibition is also found in 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 (KJV):

34:
"Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law.

35:
“And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church”.

While women could publicly pray and prophesy in church (1 Cor. 11:1–16), they could not teach or have authority over a man (1 Tim. 2:11–14), since these were two essential functions of the clergy. Nor could women publicly question or challenge the teaching of the clergy (1 Cor. 14:34–38).

During the days that the Lord taught in Israel, women were not allowed to speak in the synagogue. It is important to remember that Jesus was one who was not afraid to correct any impropriety in God's eyes. And Jesus was not afraid to establish something new. Remember, Jesus thoroughly trashed the hypocrisies of the Jewish religious establishment. Yet Jesus never spoke against this male only priesthood. Even though Mary Magdalene and other women were great followers of Jesus, He chose only men as his apostles. Nowhere in the Gospel do we find evidence of Jesus giving "orders" to women to baptize, to anoint the sick, to confect the holy Eucharist, or to forgive sins as He did to the Apostles.

There have never been woman priests in the Church founded by Christ until recent times because all Christians understood the scriptural prohibitions clearly.

There were priestesses in the pagan religions which abounded at the time of Christ. A few heretical sects in the first centuries, especially Gnostic ones, entrusted the exercise of the priestly ministry to women. This innovation was immediately noted and condemned by the Fathers who considered it as unacceptable in the Church. Of these Tertullian writes:

"And the heretical women themselves, how shameless are they! They make bold to teach, to debate, to work exorcisms, to undertake cures, and perhaps even to baptize. Their ordinations are casual, capricious, and changeable." (Demurrer Against the Heretics, 41,5-6, A.D. 200)

It is not a matter of women being equal to a man or not. We all know that in the eyes of God, all are equal. The Apostle Paul knew better then anybody in antiquity that male and female were equal in Christ Jesus. It was he, after all, who said, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3:28). Paul saw nothing inferior about women's dignity.

There is a place for women in the Church, but no matter what she calls herself, it cannot be a priest of Jesus Christ. Anybody can do pastoral, teaching, preaching, or administrative work. But that is not the essence of the priesthood.

The issue really is the nature of the Sacrament, just as it is the nature of following God's Word; no matter how mystical it may be.

What is a Sacrament? It is a thing that not only does what it symbolizes but symbolizes what it does.

In baptism the obvious symbol of cleansing, drowning, and new life is water, not wine. And so wine, for all its admirable qualities, is not the right "matter" for the Sacrament of baptism. Likewise water can never be the correct matter for communion, where wine symbolizes and actually becomes in a mystical way, the blood of Christ.

Remember, Christ is, as He himself teaches, the Bridegroom to the Church (the Bride) in the great eschatological marriage feast of the Kingdom. Gender has, in Christ's teaching, a real meaning and is not simply an accident of nature. And he ought to know, since he designed the human person and made it a participant in the mystery of male and femaleness.

Should we dishonor the teachings of Jesus in the name of civil rights or political correctness. Will Jesus honor us if we allow His Words to be ignored?

Once God’s stated desire for male priests only is ignored, will it be very long before a transsexual in drag honors us with its presence on the alter of Jesus?