Posted on 07/14/2002 7:40:50 AM PDT by heyheyhey
Edited on 07/14/2002 11:32:34 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
The Catholic Church, that claims to learn from the ages through which it has perdured, will learn in time that policies formed when women were considered inferior cannot survive in our day.
Some claim that the pedophile-priest scandal has nothing to do with the mandatory celibacy rule for Roman Catholic priests. But a majority of Catholics agree that "priestly celibacy increases the chances of sexual abuse"--51 percent in a Dallas Morning News poll and 52 percent in a Canadian News poll. This is a matter of common sense. How can anyone doubt that the abuse of minors would not have spread so far in secret if priests' wives or women priests had been part of the church's structure? Recent articles have noted how many of the whistle-blowers in recent business scandals have been women. They were not bound by the boys' club rules of the past.
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
No, though he is.
Will the Church exercise any discipline in this matter?
No.
Should She?
Yes
Garry has come full circle from the 1960s when he defended National Review's and Bill Buckley's attack on the encyclical Mater et Magistra as a socialist document in Catholic garb (thereby rejecting Rerum Novarum and its progeny which are basic to Catholic social teaching) to now attacking the Vatican for not being foolishly liberal on Church matters as is Wills.
There is one consistency that must be noted. Garry Wills, in his long and sorry career of posing as a Catholic, has never been consistent with the teachings of the Church and has never been a practitioner of humble humility before legitimate Church authority. Humility would certainly be warranted on his part as his persistent rebellions are not.
Consider, too:
Theologically, the priesthood must remain male. Consider the words of consecration: 'This is my body'. Now, the priest speaks sacramentally 'in the person of Christ' (in persona Christi). It is Jesus who consecrates the host through the priest who is an instrument only. Thus, since it is Jesus who says, 'This is my body', the priest through whom Christ speaks must also be male otherwise the very meaning of the mass is distorted and perverted. Moreover, the bible talks about human beings made in the 'image and likeness of God' (Cf. Genesis 1:26), and Jesus is said to be the perfect image of the Father (Cf. John 14:9). If the first person of the Trinity is truly a Father, then He must possess the masculine persona as well. So if Jesus is the perfect image of the Father, it follows that He too must be male, and those He chooses to 'channel' His words of consecration must likewise be male.
american colleen I just can't avoid this topic. ;-)
According to Wills, according to Oprah, or according to the Holy Father?
You see, how the authority in the Church works?
When one wants to listen directly to Jesus, His Word is very explicit,
I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. (Mt. 16:19)
Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me. (Lk. 10:16)
Isnt that something?
Even when the massmedia convince you, as they try real hard these days, that the Church is so corrupt that you must reject her authority, the authority is still unaffected.
Ponder this,
all they bid you to observe, that observe and do; but do not imitate their works: for they say, but do not do. (Mt. 23:3)
Sleazy, too ;)
This one is inacurate on many levels. No respectable woman was allowed to perform in public, whether in Church (Protestant or Catholic) or in Opera. It just wasn't done until late in the Baroque period. I know Handel used women in his opera's and Oratorios, but J.S. Bach was not allowed to use women in Church. That was the way it was all over Europe, certainly before 1750. If I remember correctly, the Catholic Church condemned the practice but it was only France whose secular government considered castrating little boys a crime.
BTW, God's plan may well not be yours or mine unassisted but it has to be better than either. It may well be that some popes have been chosen by the Holy Ghost as a necessary chastisement to us in our unbelief and that their prudential blunders have been turned to God's purposes.
May God bless you and yours.
(Sigh) Would it be that it came out of my mouth first (or keyboard as the case may be). Now I'm envious and jealous...
Could someboby ping Andrew Greeley?
Is Gorecki the Polish composer? No, I'm not aware of it. Where do I go to become aware?
Thank God that He did not establish His church to be a democracy!
We'd have a church then that promotes and encourages contraception, abortion, divorce, yada.
"And the gates of Hell shall not prevail ..."
RE: The quotation marks. Bordering on an outright lie, but I'll give him old fashion sloppiness. This point concerning the scholastics, particularly the angelic Doctor, is more complicated than Mr. Wills suggests. See "What Aquinas Never Said About Women" and "What Aquinas Really Said About Women"
I also let him get away with this one: "The Catholic Church, that claims to learn from the ages through which it has perdured,"
Which is of course a lie or at least a distortion. The Catholic Church claims to learn from the unchanging will of God, not from the everchanging example of the ages or even her own experience.
"The word of God is addressed to all people, in every age and in every part of the world; and the human being is by nature a philosopher."
I thought there was a comment in there about everybody being a theologian at heart. Maybe there is. I'll have to read it through again sometime. Close enough for government work!
I remember hearing her say in an interview some time ago that her research concerning feminists in the Church was sort of an accident. She 'stumbled' into the problem while researching nuns in general. Or maybe it was specifically the wiccan influence - I can't remember now. I did note her take on whether or not the title "heretic" was appropriate for them. She said something to the effect that these women were certainly not in schism and that heresy was not accurate either. She felt 'apostasy' best described them since they essentially attacked and threw out the entire core of Christian belief. The Blessed Trinity, the Divinity of Christ, etc.
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