Posted on 05/13/2010 5:53:09 AM PDT by markomalley
Italys first woman priest is to be ordained a close to the Vatican later this month.
Maria Vittoria Longhitano, 35, a member of the Italian Old Catholic Church, a breakaway group not recognised by the Vatican, will be ordained at All Saints Church, near the Spanish Steps in Rome, on 22 May.
A spokeswoman for All Saints Church said Ms Longhitano, who is married, was not being ordained as an Anglican. We are offering our church as the venue because the Old Catholics have no venue of their own in Rome, she said. They use our facilities for their regular worship.
The Old Catholics, founded in the early 19th century in an attempt to set up a national Italian denomination separate from Rome, do not accept a number of central Catholic doctrines including papal infallibility and the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
Grow up lady! 35 is too old for play acting.
Foolish woman is desperate for approval....
All you need to know.
Ummmm ...
No. She did not.
I don’t care if this loon group ordains a pile of rocks. It doesn’t make you a priest.
Look at the cross in back of her. Is it going to sing “Give me that fish”?
“some chick wants to play dress-up and play acting.”
Odd that a sexual organ should dictate your eligibility to lead prayer, consecrate a host, marry people, etc.
You are correct. We need to pray for enlightenment and a spirit of repentance for such people.
Well...that is how God has constructed the Body of Christ.
Very telling that you would attempt to distort the fact that Christ Himself dictated who would lead prayer, consecrate a host, marry people, etc.
I didn’t distort anything. What did I distort? I gave my opinion regarding dogma of the Catholic Church. Try making sense next time.
Always ready to play up any incident which sows discord in the Church.
Italy is not ordaining anyone....
A Protestant church not related to the Catholic church ordains a woman priest and that passes for news?
I’m confused....
You realize that anyone who reads this will now have a low opinion of you and your analytical skills, correct? You made a scurrilous charge and couldn’t back it up. You could not point to any distortion (unless woman ARE allowed to be priests now?), said my opinion was like a rectum, and said my head is up my ass. This would place you somewhere between Kindergarten and second grade in maturity and debate skills.
So a non-Catholic church is ordaining a woman. And this is news because .... ?
So dad goes away for a few hours and leaves you in charge of the house. He tells you not to have friends over. It’s not that it’s bad to have friends over. It’s not that it’s immoral to have friends over. Maybe you don’t completely understand *why* he doesn’t want you to. But it doesn’t matter either way. Those are the instructions dad left you, so that’s what you do.
There were plenty of pagan priestesses around in the first century—and after first few years of Christianity the bulk of converts were from paganism. If there were meant to be women priests in the Catholic Church, it would have happened rather easily and seamlessly. But it didn’t. It doesn’t even seem to have been a controversy of any note.
And your “sexual organ” comment falsely implies that the *only* difference between men and women is a genital one. There isn’t a sane person on earth who believes that.
I think the idea of the headline writer was to imply, as strongly as possible, that the Catholic Church was ordaining women. Either for ideological or readership reasons or both.
I said it was “odd”. Based on your analogy in which “maybe you don’t completely understand...”, a lot of Catholics (and I AM one) think it’s odd.
No, I did not falsely imply in any way that the sexual organ was the only difference between men and women. I implied that is was a basic criteria for eligibility, which it is.
At any rate, the world certainly had a backward view of women two thousand years ago (and the Middle East STILL does). It is not unreasonable to assume the frail humans in charge of church structure and assembly of the holy scripture allowed this to color their judgment.
So you did. Well, it's quite alright to think it odd. Sometimes I find it odd. C.S.Lewis, if I remember right, admitted that it struck the modern mind as unfair in a way that it did not strike the ancients or medievals--though he argues against it all the same.
No, I did not falsely imply in any way that the sexual organ was the only difference between men and women. I implied that is was a basic criteria for eligibility, which it is.
Okay, but I don't even think we can say that genital makeup is a basic criteria for eligibility. If you somehow gave a woman working male genitals, could she be a priest? Absolutely not. Even a materialist would say that genital makeup is only an expression of the genome. You are male or female way before the genitalia begin to differentiate. As Catholics, we believe that the distinction in fact goes all the way down to the soul--and here's where, I think, the eligibility criteria lies.
At any rate, the world certainly had a backward view of women two thousand years ago (and the Middle East STILL does). It is not unreasonable to assume the frail humans in charge of church structure and assembly of the holy scripture allowed this to color their judgment.
Ok, so let's grant your premise then that frail churchmen of the early centuries allowed their "backward view" on women (and I reject that characterization by the way) to color the way they read Scripture.
Then it all comes down to ecclesiology, Flightdeck: what do you believe about the Church?
If the Church is a human institution, then yeah, it could have screwed up on this, and it could have screwed up on everything else as well--sacraments, the divinity of Christ, etc. I would respectfully argue that once we have come to this position we become, for all intents and purposes, Protestants in our outlook.
If the Church is a divine institution who cannot err in the essentials, then it is impossible to imagine that God wanted women priests but didn't provide for it since the beginning. He didn't add sacraments. He didn't add members of the Trinity. So why would he now add women to the priesthood? Who would have been more fit to be a priest than the sinless All-Holy Mother of God? Or the women disciples who stood by the cross when the Apostles ran away? There is a reason there. We may think it odd, and we may not understand that reason, but there *is* a reason.
Not to mention, the Church was known in ancient times as opposing the world's views on so many things--it seems odd that a Church that fought the world on so many things would go wrong on this one little point.
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