Posted on 07/08/2006 9:23:38 AM PDT by WestTexasWend
By coincidence, a potentially historic speech about women that received little media fanfare was made two weeks before America's Episcopal Church elected Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori as its leader, the first female to head a branch of the international Anglican Communion.
The speaker was Cardinal Walter Kasper, the Vatican's top official on relations with non-Catholic Christians, addressing a private session with the Church of England's bishops and certain women priests.
Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, spiritual leader of the 77 million Anglicans, invited Kasper to discuss the English church's projected move to allow women bishops. To date, only the United States, Canada and New Zealand have female Anglican bishops.
Official Catholic and Anglican negotiators have spent four decades working toward shared Communion and full recognition of each other's clergy and doctrine. Mincing no words, Kasper said that goal of restoring full relations "would realistically no longer exist" if Anglicanism's mother church in England consecrates women bishops.
"The shared partaking of the one Lord's table, which we long for so earnestly, would disappear into the far and ultimately unreachable distance. Instead of moving towards one another, we would coexist alongside one another," Kasper warned, though some cooperation would continue.
In the New Testament and throughout church history, Kasper explained, bishops have been "the sign and the instrument of unity" for local dioceses and Christianity worldwide. Thus, women bishops would be far more damaging than England's women priests.
This centrality of bishops also explains why within world Anglicanism there's far more upset about U.S. Episcopalians' consecration of an openly gay bishop than earlier ordinations of gay priests. But Kasper didn't repeat Rome's equally fervent opposition to gay clergy.
The cardinal said women bishops should be elevated only after "overwhelming consensus" is reached with Catholicism and like-minded Eastern Orthodoxy.
Anglicans cannot assume Catholicism will someday drop objections to female priests and bishops, Kasper said. "The Catholic Church is convinced that she has no right to do so."
Why? Casual Western onlookers might suppose Catholicism's stance is simple gender prejudice, but Kasper cited theological convictions that some Anglicans share.
The Vatican first explained its opposition to women priests in 1975 after then-Archbishop of Canterbury Donald Coggan notified Pope Paul VI that Anglicans overall saw "no fundamental objections in principle" to female clergy. That year, the Anglican Church of Canada authorized women priests, followed by U.S. Episcopalians in 1976.
Pope Paul's 1975 reply to Coggan said the gender ban honors "the example recorded in the Sacred Scriptures of Christ choosing his apostles only from among men; the constant practice of the church, which has imitated Christ in choosing only men; and her living teaching authority which has consistently held" this fits "God's plan for his church."
That established basic points which were elaborated in a 1976 declaration from the Vatican's doctrine office and a 1994 apostolic letter from Pope John Paul II.
Before Paul's 1975 letter, Rome's Pontifical Biblical Commission reportedly voted 12-5 to advise privately, "It does not seem that the New Testament by itself alone will permit us to settle in a clear way" whether to permit female priests.
The commission examined numerous Bible passages. Yes, Jesus' 12 apostles were male, it said, and there's no New Testament evidence of women serving explicit priestly functions. However, women filled leadership posts and enjoyed high status. One was even considered an "apostle" if Junio or Junias (Romans 16:7) was female.
Protestants who forbid women clergy don't usually cite Jesus' choice of male apostles but rather 1 Timothy 2:12 ("I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men; she is to keep silent"). The Pontifical Commission said this scripture perhaps referred "only to certain concrete situations and abuses," not all women anytime and everywhere.
<< (except for the minority of women who are Catholic).
a sizable minority
works for me.
Fair enough. But again my original post stands. Why forbid women to become priests because of scriptural reason, when the church goes against it when it comes to priests being celibate?
yeah... God forbid, I want to follow the word of God or anything like that...
You must be bored.
That's what scary... now its PEOPLE who interpret and teach. Gee, I always thought it was the Word of God who taught via the holy spirit. Silly me?
I don't belong to any organized religion. I just try to worship as God intended, through the holy spirit and the Word of God.
Why? Are you?
Look out. They're doing it in Massachusetts, but no one ever accused the wacky liberals who run that place logical.
Come to think of it, how did Massachusetts end up in such a mess given the predominance of Catholicism in that state?
But the proof is in the practice, in the outworkings of the choice. Christian denominations that ordain women to the clergy are dying.
"Christian denominations that ordain women to the clergy are dying."
Now there's the best qualifier and reason to object from it. Now a measurement should be whether or not denominations are dying from beliefs and practices rather than just doing what the Bible says.
Actually you are asking us to believe what is your interpretation of what St. Paul meant in his First Letter to Timothy. The Catholic understanding is that he is not mandating that bishops be married but that they be the husbands of no more than one wife, i.e., that they have shown that they can control their passions. This makes sense from the context and the other restrictions that he puts on the qualification for bishop.
A faithful saying: if a man desire the office of bishop, he desireth a good work. It behoveth therefore a bishop to be blameless, the husband of one wife, sober, prudent, of good behaviour, chaste, given to hospitality, a teacher, not given to wine, no striker, but modest, not quarrelsome, not covetous, but one that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all chastity. But if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?Here we see that the question of having one wife is included with other virtues that demonstrate self-control. You may argue with this interpretation but your position that St. Paul is actually mandating marriage for bishops is also an interpretation.
(1 Timothy 3:1-5)
It should also be pointed out that the discipline of celibacy in the Latin church (not to start an argument with my Eastern brethren) is based on our understanding that this, or with the priest and his wife refraining from sexual relations after his ordination, was actually the original discipline among the Apostles; it being latter relaxed in the East to allow married priests and their wives to live together. I would refer you to the book The Apostolic Origins of Priestly Celibacy by Fr. Christian Cochini, S.J. Thus we would hold that we are only maintaining the discipline that we have received from the Apostles themselves.
Just like my own interpretation of what First Timothy Chapter four verse one means too... and First Peter chapter one verse 20. Right.
" ... was actually the original discipline among the Apostles...."
Where on earth is this documented?
All I want is a Church who follows the Bible, that's all. Is that too much to ask? I don't think most of them are.
Hence, the question of the priesthood in its relation to sexuality - a question usually posed more simply as "Why can there not be women priests?" - has now been answered in a definitive way. There is no longer any doubt that reserving Holy Orders to males is part of the deposit of faith. While Catholics are not to question the teaching of the Magisterium on this matter, the time is ripe for all interested to come to a deeper understanding and appreciation of the Church's teaching.
The documents themselves are not meant to provide such theological information for us. Although they contain and allude to theological arguments, they are not primarily meant as theological documents. The situation is similar to the role of Humanae Vitae, the 1968 encyclical on the regulation of birth. As Janet Smith has aptly noted, that encyclical was not meant to provide a full philosophical and theological rationale for the Church's position. Rather, it alluded to some of the central arguments, presuming that philosophers and theologians would flush them out.1 Similarly, Inter Insigniores (issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under Pope Paul VI in 1976), the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis and the Responsum ad Dubium exist not primarily as theological explanations, but as teaching documents making clear the Church's position, containing an implicit invitation to theologians to flush out the arguments. In this article I propose to present the argument from Sacred Tradition in favor of the male priesthood.
In considering that argument, we want to examine what Tradition says, the factual or empirical side of the question. This Tradition contains three aspects, as aptly summarized in Ordinatio Sacerdotalis no. 1 when it quotes a 1975 letter of Paul VI to the Archbishop of Canterbury: "the example recorded in the Sacred Scriptures of Christ choosing His Apostles only from among men; the constant practice of the Church, which has imitated Christ in choosing only men; and her living teaching authority [Magisterium] which has consistently held that the exclusion of women from the priesthood is in accordance with God's plan for his Church." Let us consider each of the three points.
Christianity has always beens about a community of believers, not an ad hoc collection of rugged individualists who interpret and reinterpret the faith according ot their own private whimsy and desires. It is a flock of sheep and lambs, not a scattering of self-indulgent cats. But because it is a community, it is essential that its leadership be structured according to biblical principles. The clarion call must be clear, the commitment to withstand the arrows of insult from the enemy unyielding out front, where the shepherds stand.
For whatever reason, women are ill fitted to the role, although they are brilliantly fitted to other roles.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.