Posted on 04/08/2005 7:20:08 AM PDT by Clint N. Suhks
There are good reasons, both theological and practical.
Just this morning on EWTN's morning mass the priest (I wish I knew his name) gave an excellent homily on this subject.
I am glad to hear you will be attending Mass.
The only answer I can provide for your question is that "Tradition" is not merely a manmade way of preserving that which has always been done. Instead, it is the fundamental way in which Catholic doctrine is passed along through the ages. It is the very essence of the Church. Scripture itself is part of Tradition - in fact, it was in part because the writings that constitute the New Testament reflected the teachings of Tradition that they were considered canonical in the first place. Other books that claimed to have been written by apostles but did not match the teachings of Church Tradition were thrown out. Tradition is that important.
Thus, we must hesistate when asked to consider changes that conflict with Tradition, not out of a mere desire to stay "loyal to the past" but rather out of a need to remain faithful to the institutions created by Christ. The Church does not merely hold that it is "wrong" to consecrate a woman, but rather that it is incapable of doing so in the first place.
Every sacrament requires proper matter, form, and intent. Matter is the physical aspect of a sacrament, such as bread and wine for the Eucharist, water for Baptism, and oil for the Annointing of the Sick. Form is the rituals and actions connected to the matter. Intent is the will in the minister of the sacrament to do what the Church does.
The matter for the Sacrament of Holy Orders (consecration) is a baptised male. The matter of any sacrament is defined in a precise way. According to Catholic theology, a female is not proper matter for the sacrament. To allow the ordination of women involves a fundamental change in Catholic theology as it has been defined throughout the centuries, and basically presumes an error in a matter where the Church is presumed infallible. Thus, Catholics such as myself oppose the ordination of women because it is in contradiction to the defined doctrine of our Church.
I hope this answers your question to some degree.
I should also add that it is for much of the same reason that we cannot accept homosexual marriage, as the matter of that sacrament is one man and one woman. The theology underlying the sacraments is not subject to change, as it is understood to be part of the infallible teaching of the Church.
He's a very private person.
I don't think I've ever heard him personally refer to it.
Homosexuals like this "expert" are able to argue that they can force change because the public has been propagandaed to the permanence of the homosexual behavior.
The cause of homosexuality is rooted in behavioral psychology not genetics. That is what needs to be emphasised.
The more we can educate the public the more we can have effective treatments to the fetish.
After all how are other sexual fetishes treated in adults?
Being gay, just as liberalism, is a mental illness.
When I attended Confirmation classes with my husband, the class of 16 had 12 former Roman Catholics in it. My husband was raised Presbyterian but took the classes and converted after we married.
The ex Roman Catholics in the class saw the Episcopal church as liberal on the social issues but still with a familiar worship style. Those of us who were conservative had enough of a fight on our hands without the influx of more libs. My mother's Episcopalian parish in FL is populated with a large number of ex Roman Catholics. My family gave up and found a Continuing church 16 years ago.
"I never have been able to see how a gay person can reconcile their lifestyle with the Catholic religion"
Catholics "Love the sinner. Hate the Sin" If you refrain from homosexual activity (in thought, word and deed) you can be catholic. It is not much different than a divorced man. He may not engage in sexual activity as long as his original wife is alive. That would be adultery. As grave a sin as homosexuality.
Happy to trade you our lib catholics for conservative episcopalians. Good trade in my book.
If someone leaves the priesthood after 28 years there is a problem with HIM, not the church.
For those interested -some links to documents and some excerpts:
Catholic documents and teaching on subject of homosexuality:
- The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality - Guidelines for Education within the Family
104. A particular problem that can appear during the process of sexual maturation is homosexuality, which is also spreading more and more in urbanized societies. This phenomenon must be presented with balanced judgement, in the light of the documents of the Church. Young people need to be helped to distinguish between the concepts of what is normal and abnormal, between subjective guilt and objective disorder, avoiding what would arouse hostility. On the other hand, the structural and complementary orientation of sexuality must be well clarified in relation to marriage, procreation and Christian chastity. "Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained". A distinction must be made between a tendency that can be innate and acts of homosexuality that "are intrinsically disordered" and contrary to Natural Law.Especially when the practice of homosexual acts has not become a habit, many cases can benefit from appropriate therapy. In any case, persons in this situation must be accepted with respect, dignity and delicacy, and all forms of unjust discrimination must be avoided. If parents notice the appearance of this tendency or of related behaviour in their children, during childhood or adolescence, they should seek help from expert qualified persons in order to obtain all possible assistance.
For most homosexual persons, this condition constitutes a trial. "They must be accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfil God's will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord's Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition". "Homosexual persons are called to chastity".
- Persona Humana - Declaration on Certain Questions Concerning Sexual Ethics
VIII At the present time there are those who, basing themselves on observations in the psychological order, have begun to judge indulgently, and even to excuse completely, homosexual relations between certain people. This they do in opposition to the constant teaching of the Magisterium and to the moral sense of the Christian people.A distinction is drawn, and it seems with some reason, between homosexuals whose tendency comes from a false education, from a lack of normal sexual development, from habit, from bad example, or from other similar causes, and is transitory or at least not incurable; and homosexuals who are definitively such because of some kind of innate instinct or a pathological constitution judged to be incurable.
In regard to this second category of subjects, some people conclude that their tendency is so natural that it justifies in their case homosexual relations within a sincere communion of life and love analogous to marriage, in so far as such homosexuals feel incapable of enduring a solitary life.
In the pastoral field, these homosexuals must certainly be treated with understanding and sustained in the hope of overcoming their personal difficulties and their inability to fit into society. Their culpability will be judged with prudence. But no pastoral method can be employed which would give moral justification to these acts on the grounds that they would be consonant with the condition of such people. For according to the objective moral order, homosexual relations are acts which lack an essential and indispensable finality. In Sacred Scripture they are condemned as a serious depravity and even presented as the sad consequence of rejecting God. This judgment of Scripture does not of course permit us to conclude that all those who suffer from this anomaly are personally responsible for it, but it does attest to the fact that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered and can in no case be approved of.
- Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons
10. It is deplorable that homosexual persons have been and are the object of violent malice in speech or in action. Such treatment deserves condemnation from the Church's pastors wherever it occurs. It reveals a kind of disregard for others which endangers the most fundamental principles of a healthy society. The intrinsic dignity of each person must always be respected in word, in action and in law.But the proper reaction to crimes committed against homosexual persons should not be to claim that the homosexual condition is not disordered. When such a claim is made and when homosexual activity is consequently condoned, or when civil legislation is introduced to protect behavior to which no one has any conceivable right, neither the Church nor society at large should be surprised when other distorted notions and practices gain ground, and irrational and violent reactions increase.
11. It has been argued that the homosexual orientation in certain cases is not the result of deliberate choice; and so the homosexual person would then have no choice but to behave in a homosexual fashion. Lacking freedom, such a person, even if engaged in homosexual activity, would not be culpable.
Here, the Church's wise moral tradition is necessary since it warns against generalizations in judging individual cases. In fact, circumstances may exist, or may have existed in the past, which would reduce or remove the culpability of the individual in a given instance; or other circumstances may increase it. What is at all costs to be avoided is the unfounded and demeaning assumption that the sexual behaviour of homosexual persons is always and totally compulsive and therefore inculpable. What is essential is that the fundamental liberty which characterizes the human person and gives him his dignity be recognized as belonging to the homosexual person as well. As in every conversion from evil, the abandonment of homosexual activity will require a profound collaboration of the individual with God's liberating grace.
- Some Considerations Concerning the Response to Legislative Proposals on Non-discrimination of Homosexual Persons
II. Applications10. "Sexual orientation" does not constitute a quality comparable to race, ethnic background, etc. in respect to non-discrimination. Unlike these, homosexual orientation is an objective disorder (cf. "Letter," No. 3) and evokes moral concern.
11. There are areas in which it is not unjust discrimination to take sexual orientation into account, for example, in the placement of children for adoption or foster care, in employment of teachers or athletic coaches, and in military recruitment.
13. Including "homosexual orientation" among the considerations on the basis of which it is illegal to discriminate can easily lead to regarding homosexuality as a positive source of human rights, for example, in respect to so-called affirmative action or preferential treatment in hiring practices. This is all the more deleterious since there is no right to homosexuality (cf. No. 10) which therefore should not form the basis for judicial claims. The passage from the recognition of homosexuality as a factor on which basis it is illegal to discriminate can easily lead, if not automatically, to the legislative protection and promotion of homosexuality. A person's homosexuality would be invoked in opposition to alleged discrimination, and thus the exercise of rights would be defended precisely via the affirmation of the homosexual condition instead of in terms of a violation of basic human rights.
- Considerations Regarding Proposals To Give Legal Recognition To Unions Between Homosexual Persons
4. There are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God's plan for marriage and family. Marriage is holy, while homosexual acts go against the natural moral law. Homosexual acts “close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved”.7. Homosexual unions are totally lacking in the biological and anthropological elements of marriage and family which would be the basis, on the level of reason, for granting them legal recognition. Such unions are not able to contribute in a proper way to the procreation and survival of the human race. The possibility of using recently discovered methods of artificial reproduction, beyond involving a grave lack of respect for human dignity, does nothing to alter this inadequacy.
Homosexual unions are also totally lacking in the conjugal dimension, which represents the human and ordered form of sexuality. Sexual relations are human when and insofar as they express and promote the mutual assistance of the sexes in marriage and are open to the transmission of new life.
As experience has shown, the absence of sexual complementarity in these unions creates obstacles in the normal development of children who would be placed in the care of such persons. They would be deprived of the experience of either fatherhood or motherhood. Allowing children to be adopted by persons living in such unions would actually mean doing violence to these children, in the sense that their condition of dependency would be used to place them in an environment that is not conducive to their full human development. This is gravely immoral and in open contradiction to the principle, recognized also in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, that the best interests of the child, as the weaker and more vulnerable party, are to be the paramount consideration in every case.
- Religiosorum Institutio
30. Those To Be Excluded; Practical DirectivesAdvantage to religious vows and ordination should be barred to those who are afflicted with evil tendencies to homosexuality or pederasty, since for them the common life and the priestly ministry would constitute serious dangers.
“institutionalized all of the restrictions very solidly. They can be changed but it’ll take some doing,” Helminiak said. “And eventually they will be changed, I’m absolutely convinced, because they’re totally foolish, totally off base. But he’s set the process back decades.”
So let us get this straight (no pun intended!) Pope John Paul voiced the true word of God, so this person is saying God is foolish?? and off base??? Better run to a Bible study group fast, his position needs lessons badly! It's not nice to critisize ones creator!!!!!
I tried that for awhile after my divorce, twenty years ago, but I dropped it after six months. I guess I was in no mood for "Catholic lite", either.
I suppose that the gays who still pine for the Catholic church to change just can't accept the fact that it will never happen, and they just need to make a clean break with it.
That's a good thing, Danny.
"Advancement to religious vows and ordination should be barred to those who are afflicted with evil tendencies to homosexuality or pederasty, since for them the common life and the priestly ministry would constitute serious dangers."
| ORDINATIO SACERDOTALIS |
| Pope John Paul II |
| Apostolic Letter On Reserving Priestly Ordination To Men Alone 1. Priestly Ordination, which hands on the office entrusted by Christ to his Apostles of teaching, sanctifying, and governing the faithful, has in the Catholic Church from the beginning always been reserved to men alone. This tradition has also been faithfully maintained by the Oriental Churches. When the question of the ordination of women arose in the Anglican Communion, Pope Paul VI, out of fidelity to his office of safeguarding the Apostolic Tradition, and also with a view to removing a new obstacle placed in the way of Christian unity, reminded Anglicans of the position of the Catholic Church: "She holds that it is not admissible to ordain women to the priesthood, for very fundamental reasons. These reasons include: 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 that the exclusion of women from the priesthood is in accordance with God's plan for his Church."[1] But since the question had also become the subject of debate among theologians and in certain Catholic circles, Paul VI directed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to set forth and expound the teaching of the Church on this matter. This was done through the Declaration <Inter Insigniores>, which the Supreme Pontiff approved and ordered to be published.[2] 2. The Declaration recalls and explains the fundamental reasons for this teaching, reasons expounded by Paul VI, and concludes that the Church "does not consider herself authorized to admit women to priestly ordination."[3] To these fundamental reasons the document adds other theological reasons which illustrate the appropriateness of the divine provision, and it also shows clearly that Christ's way of acting did not proceed from sociological or cultural motives peculiar to his time. As Paul VI later explained: "The real reason is that, in giving the Church her fundamental constitution, her theological anthropology—thereafter always followed by the Church's Tradition—Christ established things in this way."[4] In the Apostolic Letter <Mulieris Dignitatem>, I myself wrote in this regard: "In calling only men as his Apostles, Christ acted in a completely free and sovereign manner. In doing so, he exercised the same freedom with which, in all his behaviour, he emphasized the dignity and the vocation of women, without conforming to the prevailing customs and to the traditions sanctioned by the legislation of the time."[5] In fact, the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles attest that this call was made in accordance with God's eternal plan: Christ chose those whom he willed (cf. <Mk> 3:13-14; <Jn> 6:70), and he did so in union with the Father, "through the Holy Spirit" (<Acts> 1:2), after having spent the night in prayer (cf. <Lk> 6:12). Therefore, in granting admission to the ministerial priesthood,[6] the Church has always acknowledged as a perennial norm her Lord's way of acting in choosing twelve men whom he made the foundation of his Church (cf. <Rev> 21:14). These men did not in fact receive only a function which could thereafter be exercised by any member of the Church; rather they were specifically and intimately associated in the mission of the Incarnate Word himself (cf. <Mt> 10:1, 7-8; 28:16-20; <Mk> 3:13- 16; 16:14-15). The Apostles did the same when they chose fellow workers[7] who would succeed them in their ministry.[8] Also included in this choice were those who, throughout the time of the Church, would carry on the Apostles' mission of representing Christ the Lord and Redeemer.[9] 3. Furthermore, the fact that the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God and Mother of the Church, received neither the mission proper to the Apostles nor the ministerial priesthood clearly shows that the non-admission of women to priestly ordination cannot mean that women are of lesser dignity, nor can it be construed as discrimination against them. Rather, it is to be seen as the faithful observance of a plan to be ascribed to the wisdom of the Lord of the universe. The presence and the role of women in the life and mission of the Church, although not linked to the ministerial priesthood, remain absolutely necessary and irreplaceable. As the Declaration <Inter Insigniores> points out, "the Church desires that Christian women should become fully aware of the greatness of their mission; today their role is of capital importance both for the renewal and humanization of society and for the rediscovery by believers of the true face of the Church".[10] The New Testament and the whole history of the Church give ample evidence of the presence in the Church of women, true disciples, witnesses to Christ in the family and in society, as well as to total consecration to the service of God and of the Gospel. "By defending the dignity of women and their vocation, the Church has shown honour and gratitude for those women who—faithful to the Gospel—have shared in every age in the apostolic mission of the whole People of God. They are the holy martyrs, virgins, and the mothers of families, who bravely bore witness to their faith and passed on the Church's faith and tradition by bringing up their children in the spirit of the Gospel".[11] Moreover, it is to the holiness of the faithful that the hierarchical structure of the Church is totally ordered. For this reason, the Declaration <Inter Insigniores> recalls: "the only better gift, which can and must be desired, is love (cf. <1 Cor> 12 and 13). The greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven are not the ministers but the saints".[12] 4. Although the teaching that priestly ordination is to be reserved to men alone has been preserved by the constant and universal Tradition of the Church and firmly taught by the Magisterium in its more recent documents, at the present time in some places it is nonetheless considered still open to debate, or the Church's judgment that women are not to be admitted to ordination is considered to have a merely disciplinary force. Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church's divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. <Lk> 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful. Invoking an abundance of divine assistance upon you, venerable Brothers, and upon all the faithful, I impart my Apostolic Blessing. From the Vatican, on 22 May, the Solemnity of Pentecost, in the year 1994, the sixteenth of my Pontificate. NOTES 1. Paul VI, <Response to the Letter of His Grace the Most Reverend Dr. F. D. Coggan, Archbishop of Canterbury, concerning the Ordination of Women to the Priesthood> (30 November 1975): <AAS> 68 (1976), 599. 2. Cf. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Declaration <Inter Insigniores> on the Question of the Admission of Women to the Ministerial Priesthood (15 October 1976): <AAS> 69 (1977), 98-116. 3. <Ibid.>, 100. 4. Paul VI, <Address on the Role of Women in the Plan of Salvation (30 January 1977): <Insegnamenti>, XV (1977), 111. Cf. also John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation <Christifideles Laici> (30 December 1988), 31: <AAS> 81 (1989), 393-521; <Catechism of the Catholic Church>, No. 1577. 5. Apostolic Letter <Mulieris Dignitatem> (15 August 1988), 26; <AAS> 80 (1988), 1715. 6. Cf. Dogmatic Constitution <Lumen Gentium>, 28; Decree <Presbyterorum Ordinis>, 2b. 7 Cf. <1 Tim> 3:1-13; <2 Tim> 1:6; <Tit> 1:5-9. 8 Cf. <Catechism of the Catholic Church>, No. 1577. 9 Cf. Dogmatic Constitution on the Church <Lumen Gentium>, 20, 21. 10 Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Declaration <Inter Insigniores>, 6: <AAS> 69 (1977), 115-116. 11 Apostolic Letter <Mulieris Dignitatem>, 27: <AAS> 80 (1988), 1719. 12 Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Declaration <Inter Insigniores>, 6: <AAS> 69 (1977), 115. |
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I don't disagree with your post - but I often wonder why catholics feel so comfortable pointing their fingers at homosexuals - but I don't see them pointing their fingers so much at heterosexuals living together?
Or married couples who practice artificial birth control, or who have been sterilized?
The pope has also described these acts as intrinically evil too.
I don't think we've given the homosexuals a very good example.
They see heterosexuals thumbing their noses at Church teaching - why shouldn't they?
RIGHT ON!
I'm tried of liberals telling me who i have to marry. Um, excuse me but both the bible AND the constitution say that you cant marry another person who's the same sex. im quiet happy with my wife thank you and if your'e going to make it ilegal for me to marry her than your not doing it without a fight.
LOL - this entire thing is just insane ain't it?
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