On tolerance & love

A fantastic quote from Dominican legend, Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P. . .

"The Church is intolerant in principle because she believes; she is tolerant in practice because she loves. The enemies of the Church are tolerant in principle because they do not believe; they are intolerant in practice because they do not love."

H/T:  Mark "The Gravitationally Enhanced" Shea

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Tea Mug Browsing

Yes!  Because going on strike creates money!  No doubt after today's "worker action" gov't budgets all over the E.U. will magically balance.  Geez.  Someone put the adults back in charge, please.

Catholic dinosaurs in the U.K. are thwarted in their ridiculous attempts to foist a Spirit of Vatican II liturgical agenda onto the Holy Father's visit.

OK then. . .Time Magazine is no longer simply hinting at its barely disguised antisemitism.

The Eternal Shrug of Rome. . .wow, she nails it perfectly!  Trust me on this:  orthodox Catholics do not want the Vatican to be in any city other than Rome and we want no one else to be running things but the Italians.  God is in charge and the Italians in the Vatican seem to understand this.

Ouch!  Priest slaps young man for desecrating the Blessed Sacrament.  Not sure I could do that, but I have often wanted to smack some people for wearing halter tops and hunting gear to Mass.

On burning the Koran in FL. . .remember:  just because you have the right to do something doesn't make doing it right.

The definition of insanity:  doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.  This is what happens when you don't or won't understand history.  I repeat:  someone please put the adults back in charge!

The definition of irony:  school named after Pope Gore I built on toxic soil.

Finally!  Universities are teaching something our citizen-students can use:  Zombies 101.  I hope there is a lab on the use and care of machetes.

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Why does Jesus flee?

23rd Week OT (T)

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP

Blackfriars, Oxford

Sometimes, he grabs a boat and rows out to sea. Other times, he heads out into the desert, fasting and praying. He usually goes alone, but occasionally he takes along a select group of disciples. This time, with a largish gang of students trailing behind, Jesus goes out into the hills. There, among the rocks and sage brush, he spends the whole night in pray to God. We might wonder what's so special about the sea, the desert, and the hills when it comes time for Jesus to pray. Surely, he could just as easily find a quiet coffee shop or nice bookstore. Maybe a side chapel or park bench. What do seas, deserts, and hills have going for them that a serviceable college library carrel doesn't? Setting aside the anachronisms loaded into this question, let's take seriously the idea that prayer needs a location, a location specific to listening. If, as Aquinas teaches, “Christ's actions are our instructions,” what do we make of Jesus' tendency to flee to remote places in order to listen to God?

First, there's the obvious advantage of silence. Being in a quiet place is a kind of fasting, a sacrifice of music and noise. Whether your preferred noise is Mozart or Moby, Johnny Cash or Johnny Rotten, filling your ears symphonically or cacophonously can push out the Word you need to hear. Patterns become familiar. Rhythms become predictable. Lyrics repeat what you already know. Silence has no pattern, no rhythm, and its lyrics never repeat. It is the surprising strangeness of no-sound-at-all that smacks us awake to the long, novel reach of every possible sound.

When it comes time to pray, the second advantage that deserts and hills have over parks and malls is solitude. Like silence, chosen solitude is a form of fasting, sacrificing the company of family and friends in order to clear a time and space to entertain the presence of God. Filling every space in our days with someone else, with just anyone else, edges God out, leaving Him aside like an unfashionable handbag or a particularly ugly hat. The presence of people in our lives, however well-meaning and precious, can become too predictable, patterned and repetitious. Their familiarity and our comfort with them can distract and disarm, leaving us unable or unwilling to risk the dangers of being alone with God. What might He ask us to do? What truth might He reveal? Without family and friends to normalize these potentially bizarre revelations, we are left to wrestle single-handedly whichever angel God chooses to send. 

Time alone with God in silence demands responsibility. Not just the moral kind, the kind where we are held morally accountable, but the kind where we are compelled to respond, seduced into answering Him. Without noise and companions to distract, disarm, normalize, and comfort, we have nothing and no one to fall back on when the weight of a decision presses in. What we say is ours alone to say. What we do is ours alone. Note well, however, Jesus always returns to the crowd; he always goes back to his disciples. He never just abandons the people he loves. He takes the silence and solitude of the deserts and hills and seas back to the madness of the crowds and to his questioning students. He shares out the fruits of his prayer, knowing that every mountain good for contemplation comes complete with level ground for preaching. Christ's actions are our instructions; therefore, pray alone in silence and then tell the Church what God has revealed to you. It just might be that the rest of us, noisy and busy, haven't been listening.

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On Catholic charities and cockroaches

Q:  Father, it seems like all the major Catholic charities are giving our money to groups that promote various sins.  Is it possible to give money to these charities and justify the donation by saying that the good they do outweighs the evil?

A:  Let me answer your question with a question.  You discover a large cockroach in your bowl of soup.  Do you just eat around the cockroach?  Or do you believe that the cockroach swimming in your soup has tainted all the soup in the bowl?  Unless and until you can conclusively prove that the cockroach's diseased presence has inflected only a small, removable portion of the soup, I say:  throw the whole thing out and start over.

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More on our new Master

In case you are one of the three Catholics in the US who do not read Whispers in the Loggia, I've reposted below Rocco's post on the new Master of the Order of Preachers, Fr. Bruno Cadore.  I'm reposting the whole thing b/c I can't figure out how to link to the post from WITL!

For the OP's, an MD

For the 290th time, one of the church's most storied religious communities convened in General Chapter last week in Rome… and early this morning saw the highlight of the Dominicans' signal gathering: the election of a new Master of the Order, the ballot going to the French provincial, Fr Bruno Cadoré, who now becomes the 86th successor of St Dominic.

A medical doctor by (secular) profession, the 56 year-old friar (shown above left after his election) succeeds the Argentinian Carlos Azpiroz Costa, who maintained the order's longstanding tradition of handing over the reins after one nine-year term [The Master's term used to be 12 yrs.]. Warmly hailed among his fans as a "stellar leader," Azpiroz's tenure was arguably overshadowed on the wider scene by the profile of his predecessor, the celebrated Englishman Timothy Radcliffe, who memorably declared on departing the post that "after nine years as a Jack of all trades and Master of the Dominican Order, I have no expertise on anything except airports and exotic foods." [Back in 2003, I once bumped into Fr. Radcliffe at 4am leaving his room here at Blackfriars with a couple of suitcases.  He was off--again!--on some whirlwind international lecture tour.  I said to him, "Remind me to never become a former Master of the Order!"]

The new Master inherits a community of some 7,000 men in 88 countries, who work in apostolates ranging from parishes to the Papal Palaces and, of course, the classroom -- its hallmark mission-field -- with the order either providing campus ministry at or operating hundreds of universities worldwide. Held every three years, the current Chapter has outlined its work in four questions on its mission, with an eye to the 800th anniversary of the order's confirmation by Pope Honorius III come 2016.

This year likewise marks the 500th anniversary of the Dominican presence in the Americas… and appropriately enough, the community's East Coast province recently made a splash by welcoming its largest novice class in almost a half-century.

Back at the Chapter, meanwhile, it's been nearly three decades since a Master of the Order hailed from French roots.

NB.  That's the Rev. Br. Lawerence Lew, OP with the new Master.  Br. Lawrence is in Rome, serving as one of the Chapter's chroniclers.

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Tea Mug Browsing

Running hard from B.O. Care:  ". . .it appears that no Democratic incumbent — in the House or in the Senate — has run a [pro-ObamaCare] TV ad since April. . ."  Heh.  I wonder why?  

Racist, sexist GOP gubernatorial candidate with Tea Party ties chooses a black woman as a running mate.  Well, she's a conservative black woman with a military background. . .so she doesn't really count, does she?

More on the Discovery Channel's Warmabomber's violent eco-terrorist rhetoric.  (Aside:  "Warmabomber"!  You gotta love the creativity of the internet's denizens).

On the rise of antisemitism in Europe. . .

Hey, they may be Zombies but they gotta follow the law just like the rest of us living, non-brain eating folks.

Is the Grand Design [i.e. The Theory of Everything] Within Our Grasp?  Probably not.  Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit quotes philosopher, J.B.S. Haldane: “Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.”  Sounds about right to me.

John Allen (from the execrable NCReporter) answers four common media questions about the Holy Father's visit to the UK.  

A video of me learning French

"Her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair after a sneeze". . .really bad analogies.

T-shirt quotes:  "Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana."
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Habemus Magister!

The Capitulars of the General Chapter of the Order of Preachers have elected the 

86th Successor of Saint Dominic: Fr. Bruno CADORÉ, OP!

Fr. Cadore is a bio-ethicist.  He has served as student master and prior provincial of the Province of France.  

Please pray for him as he begins a nine-year term as our Master.

Here's a great Youtube vid on the Chapter.  My friend and OP brother, Fr. Alejando Croswaithe is interviewed.  He says one very funny thing. . .when describing how the Master is chosen, Fr. Croswaithe says that the friars gather and name brothers that they think should be considered.  He says that the friars "offer a short sentence" on why the brother should be chosen as Master.  Dominicans offering a short sentence?  BAWAHAHA!!! 

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Radical dispossession?

23rd Sunday OT

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP

Blackfriars, Oxford

Jesus is preaching on the Mount of Olives. The crowd is huge. The wind is high. It's difficult to hear him clearly. He says, “Blessed are the peacemakers.” A man in the crowd shouts out, “What did he say?” Another man, Gregory by name, responds, “I think it was 'Blessed are the cheesemakers.'” His wife asks, “Aha, what's so special about the cheesemakers?” Gregory explains, “Well, obviously it's not meant to be taken literally; it refers to any manufacturers of dairy products.” Thus do we have—from Monty Python no less—one of the first instances of Jesus' teachings being read through a hermeneutics of inclusion! Of course, this is meant to be funny; it is also meant to point out our very human tendency to take something we've heard and give it the most benign, the least personally demanding interpretation possible. Today's gospel offers us this opportunity as well. Jesus says, “If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” To add insult to this familial injury, Jesus adds, “. . .anyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple.” So, in order to follow Christ, we're to become homeless, destitute haters of our family. Unless we are willing to “mishear” this difficult teaching, and give it some milquetoast interpretation, we have to deal with it head-on. What are we to make of Jesus' rather unambiguous demand for our radical dispossession?

The first point to be made here is that hating one's family and surrendering all one's possessions are not conditions for discipleship; that is, there are no prerequisites for enrolling in the university of the Lord. There are, however, consequences. And these consequences, Jesus warns, can be and most likely will be dire. To walk willingly into the tomb with him and to rise with him on the last day entails following him on the way of sorrow, carrying one's cross, and dying on that cross when the time comes. Though there will be glories and graces along the Way, a life lived as a disciple is a life lived in self-denial, sacrificial service, and persistent witness. As one who has lost it all, Jesus knows that if we have nothing left to lose, there is everything to gain. In more contemporary terms, we might say, “No Pain, No Gain; No Guts, No Glory.” What Jesus is doing here is making it perfectly clear to those who would follow him that his Way is not about growing in self-esteem, or “being One with the universe,” or just being a nice person, or even living a quietly pious life. There is a cost to discipleship, a potentially heavy even deadly cost, a cost beyond convenience, reputations, and friendships. The cost—ultimately—is your life. Be ready to pay that bill.

To prepare us, Jesus asks, “Which of you wishing to construct a tower does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if there is enough for its completion?” There are really two questions here. First, “Have you thought about the costs of discipleship?” and second, “Are you prepared to complete the course given the costs?” The disciples already know that the Lord came not to bring peace but a sword. His life and ministry among them will cleave families apart, setting father against son and mother against daughter. The Way is not a tranquil meditative practice leading to a blissful serenity, but a radical commitment to a tumultuous love that puts Christ first, puts Christ squarely in front of any other attachment, any other promise. To hate one's family and surrender all possessions is to set the sacrificial love of Christ on the cross as one's only frame of reference, as one's singular focus and goal. Everything else—mom, dad, kids, house, job, reputation, wealth, health, politics, religious practice—everything else is to be seen, understood, and lived out relative only to Christ and our vows to follow him. Have you thought about these costs? Are you prepared to pay this bill?

If not, have you thought about what it might mean to fail, what it might mean to pit yourself against the King of kings? Jesus asks his disciples, “. . .what king marching into battle would not first sit down and decide whether with ten thousand troops he can successfully oppose another king advancing upon him with twenty thousand troops?” A king outnumbered 2:1 on the battlefield would be foolish not to consider suing for peace! Jesus' point here is as straightforward as it is frightening: don't play the fool by siding with the Enemy and fighting against your Creator. You will lose and lose catastrophically. Isn't it more prudent, more practicable to ally yourself with the strongest and flourish whatever the costs? Besides, God's terms for our surrender are infinitely gracious and though we must submit our pride to defeat, we gain eternal life. And that bill has already been paid in full.

What will it take for you to complete the course? Jesus tells us what we must be prepared to surrender, surrender everyone we love and everything we own. Nothing and no one we love can be loved apart from or before Love Himself. We might ask the question this way: who or what are you unwilling to sacrifice for Christ's sake? Name it. Name him or her and you will know who and what stands between you and your discipleship. Is this too harsh? Too difficult? We could do our best Monty Python imitation and pretend that Jesus says that we must renounce all our obsessions or all our professions. Or that we must come to him rating or baiting our family members. We could say something like, “Oh, he doesn't mean that literally. . .what he really means is that we shouldn't be greedy; we shouldn't let our parents control us.” What he says is that we must choose him over all those we love now, over all the things we love now. This is the cost of our tuition on the Way. Why? Because one likely consequence of following him is the loss of all we love. 

Therefore, it is better to surrender to God now than to fall in defeat to the Enemy later on.

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On hating the wallet that pays you

In many conversations with Europeans in the last year or so, I've discovered that the NYT, CNN, MSNCB, ad nau have done an excellent job convincing folks over here that the Tea Party is some sort of Hillbilly Uprising or Redneck Revolution.  Mention the T.P. or Sarah Palin or Glenn Beck and you get (in order) a cringe, a purpled face, a pair of rolling eyes, and then a rant on horrors of American democracy and the need for better education, i.e. a better re-education in cultural Marxism. 

What's most exasperating to me is the unwillingness of these cultural relativists to concede that there is a cultural difference btw the US and Europe that defines the Tea Party movement as a grassroots democratic push to preserve basic natural and civil rights.  It seems that for most Europeans government is a natural good and more government is naturally better.  They simply cannot imagine what it means to have a form of government that is constitutionally prohibited from growing and growing and growing.

Ultimately, the reactions I get from my European friends and some of my brothers here are rooted in a deep misunderstanding of American culture and a fear of the bourgeoisie.  Loathing the hard-working middle class is a sacred tradition among Europe's elite, a tradition recently imported into the US.  Hating the hand that feeds you seems to me to be an odd way to live your life.

An excerpt rom Rich Lowry in NRO:

The much-analyzed speeches at the Glenn Beck Lincoln Memorial rally weren’t as notable as what the estimated 300,000 attendees did: follow instructions, listen quietly to hours of speeches, and throw out their trash. [Have you seen the vids comparing the condition of the Mall after the Beck Rally and after B.O.'s inauguration?]

Just as stunning as the tableaux of the massive throngs lining the reflecting pool were the images of the spotless grounds afterward. If someone had told attendees they were expected to mow the grass before they left, surely some of them would have hitched flatbed trailers to their vehicles for the trip to Washington and gladly brought mowers along with them.

This was the revolt of the bourgeois, of the responsible, of the orderly, of people profoundly at peace with the traditional mores of American society. The spark that lit the tea-party movement was the rant by CNBC commentator Rick Santelli, who inveighed in early 2009 against an Obama-administration program to subsidize “the losers’ mortgages.” He was speaking for people who hadn’t borrowed beyond their means or tried to get rich quick by flipping houses, for the people who, in their thrift and enterprise, “carry the water instead of drink the water.”

The tea party’s detractors want to paint it as radical, when at bottom it represents the self-reliant, industrious heart of American life. New York Times columnist David Brooks compares the tea partiers to the New Left. But there weren’t any orgiastic displays at the Beck rally, nor any attempts to levitate the Lincoln Memorial — just speeches on God and country. It was as radical as a Lee Greenwood song.

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Does Jesus save?

I want one of these!

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Tea Mug Browsing

"The humans? The planet does not need humans."  The "manifesto" of the terrorist who took hostages at the offices of the Discovery Channel.  Must have been a Tea Partier.  Save the Planet?  Check.  Stop birthing "parasitic humans"?  Check.  Human sterilization?  Check.  Religion is at the root of civilization's filth?  Check.  Mandatory education on evolution?  Check.  US economy is dangerous for the world?  Check.  Yup, he's one of those right-wing nutjobs who hates freedom. 

The terrorist killed by police while holding hostages was "enlightened" by Pope Gore I's encyclical, "An Inconvenient Truth."

Mark Hemingway discovers that this eco-terrorist shares the scholarly opinions of B.O.'s science czar, John Holdren. 

Here's another Catholic charity you should probably stop donating to:  Caritas International.

Before working in three different psych hospitals, I worked in a battered women's shelter.  I also worked as the ER-trauma chaplain in an inner-city hospital.  I've seen real domestic violence.  Using domestic violence laws to push an ideological agenda is beyond inhuman.

Fr. Z. overdoes the Mystic Monk coffee and produces a New Conspiracy Theory!

Interview with soon-to-be Archbishop Joseph Tobin. . .Fr. Tobin, a Redemptorist, was tapped by the Holy Father to serve as the secretary for the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life in Rome.  Fr. Tobin was on sabbatical here at Blackfriars and we had the privilege of having dinner with him before he headed off to Rome.  He is a remarkably humble, down-to-earth kinda guy.  He told us that he got The Call from the Vatican while painting his mom's house.

A detailed plan for repealing ObamaCare. 

Satanists plan ritual to exorcise God. . .let's be frank here:  atheists and Satanists would look rather more ridiculous than they already do if it weren't for Christianity.  Both groups are constituted solely by their opposition to Christ.

A Magnificent Manifesto for the Massively Enhanced. . .I prefer the term "gravitationally enhanced."

My efforts to learn French in poster form

Ooooooooo. . .The Knife to have for the Zombie Apocalypse. . .I'll add it to the Wish List.

Funny poem about the weirdnesses of English spelling

I've only wrecked one car. . .my wreck looked nothing like these.

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Pope to beatify Newman on the bridge of the Enterprise

Folks, this is what the Holy Father will be confronted with when he beatifies John Cardinal Newman here in the U.K. . .

Fortunately, I have the perfect solution:  dynamite it, plow the site under, and salt the earth. 

Easy.

Comment from kab63 on Fr. Z's site:  "It’s a horrible mix of bouncy castle and airplane hangar."  LOL!

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On the impossibility of women's ordination in the RCC

Given that a tiny group of ecclesial dinosaurs here in the U.K. are plastering London buses with pro-WO ads, I thought it might be time to revisit the issue in some detail.

Below is a piece I posted back in 2008 at the request of a young Dominican friar who was asked about the Church's teaching on the impossibility of women's ordination to the Catholic priesthood.

It's long, but I promised detail, right?!

________________________________________________________________


First, notice the origin and ground of the objections. All of them are based on one or more of the following mistakes:

a) Priesthood is about power
b) "Access" to the priesthood is about rights and justice
c) The "exclusion" of women from the priesthood denies humanity of women. . .
d) . . .and it denies their proper place as potential "Christs for others"
e) All exercises of Church authority are excluding
f) Tradition is always about male privilege
g) Women would make better priests because of their natural empathy and compassion
h) Jesus' exclusion of women from the priesthood was culturally based and therefore reformable
i) Scripture is silent on the nature of the priesthood b/c it is a third century invention of males
j). Women report feeling called to the ordained priesthood, therefore the Church ought to ordain them.

Let's answer (briefly) each in turn.

Priesthood is about power. No, it's not. Priesthood in the Catholic Church is about service. Do priests often mistake their office of service as a privilege in the use of power? Yup. But that's an abuse of the office and in no way changes the actual nature of the office. Men are ordered to Christ, Head of the Church, to serve his people as he did: sacrificially in leadership. When supporters of women's ordination (WO) claim that women must be allowed to share in the governance of the Church as priests, they mistake the office for a political one.

"Access" to the priesthood is about rights and justice. Wrong again. The only right a Catholic has as a Catholic in the Church is the right and duty to serve others. Justice is getting what one deserves. No one--not even men--"deserve" to be ordained, to serve as ordained priests. To claim that ordination is a right is bizarre given that men are called by God and confirmed by the Church to be priests. This use of democratic rhetoric is attractive but misplaced. You cannot be the subject of an injustice if you have no right to that which you have been denied. I am not being treated unjustly b/c I cannot vote for the next Italian presidential election. 

The "exclusion" of women from the priesthood denies their humanity. In fact, the Church's teaching on ordination reaffirms the humanity of women by clearly laying out what it means to be human, male and female. To be fully human as a creature is to submit one's will to the will of our Creator and cooperate with His grace to achieve our perfection AS men and women; that is, I am perfected as a male creature. My mother is perfected as a female creature. Often this objection is rooted in a modernist notion that one's sex is socially constructed. We are MADE male and female by our Creator and not pieced together sexually by social forces.

The "exclusion of women from the priesthood denies their proper place as potential "Christs for others." This would be true if the only means of being Christs for others was to be a priest. Fortunately, our Lord had to foresight to make sure that there were other means of becoming the sons and daughters of the Father in His service for others. Ordination is one way that some men are called by God and confirmed by the Church to "work out" their salvation. No one is denied their perfection in Christ b/c they are not priests. All the baptized serve the Father by being priests, offering themselves in sacrifice for others.

All exercises of Church authority are excluding. Wrong. If an exercise of Church authority excludes, it does so in order to liberate through a declaration of the truth of the faith., thus including everyone in the knowledge of truth. To be excluded is not in and of itself an injustice or a violation of human dignity. There are many perfectly beautiful options open to all Christians to which I am excluded in virtue of my ordination, e.g. marriage and biological fatherhood. In the case of WO, the Church has used her authority to recognize a limit of her own power. In effect, the Church has recognized that she is excluded from considering the ordination of women.

Tradition is always about male privilege. Tradition has certainly been misused to prop up abusive practices that privilege males. That we have seen these abuses in no way changes the fact that Tradition is the handing on of a living faith, the "living faith of the dead." The faith of the Church never changes. It cannot change. Our understanding of the faith can and does change. However, WO is not a change in understanding but a radical revision of some of the most basic threads of the Christian narrative. To alter these threads does more than "open the priesthood," it unravels the faith whole clothe.

Women would make better priests. I concede this readily. But we have to be clear about what we mean by "better priests." The objection assumes that the vocation of the priest is simply about empathy and compassion. It's not. Sometimes what the priest must do is show firmness, rectitude, and unwavering direction. . .even if empathy and compassion seem to be set aside in doing so. If the only vocation of the priest were to be empathetic or compassionate, then women should be ordained. However, as we have seen in the Episcopal Church and the Church of England, women priests and bishops (at least for now) seem to be more inclined to the destruction of the living faith than its preservation. Each time a stone in the catholic faith has been removed by female clergy and their male supporters in these ecclesial communities, it has been removed on the grounds of justice, rights, empathy, and compassion--all understood in strictly secular terms. The results have been disastrous.

Jesus' "exclusion" of women from the priest was culturally based and therefore reformable. This objection assumes as true a number of false premises. First, it assumes that Jesus was not who he clearly said he was and is: God. God is not constrained by cultural prejudices. Second, it assumes that Jesus was disinclined to break social taboos. In fact, he broke any number of cultural taboos in teaching and preaching the Good News, causing a great deal of scandal. Why not break the taboo against women as priests/rabbis? Third, this objection also assumes that cultural change should guide Church teaching. Cultural change should and often does guide our understanding and application of the faith in the world, but the world is irrelevant when it comes to determining the content of our faith. A danger for WO supporters here is that the way they understand many of the Church's cherished social justice positions are undermined by this objection to the Church's teaching. If we can alter the faith to follow cultural change and ordain women, why can't we examine many of Jesus' legitimate justice teachings in the same light and alter them as well? Maybe our modern culture and social norms should be used to override the historical Christian concern for the poor. Surely, the recent collapse of the economy can be blamed in part on a misplaced concern for the poor and homeless.

Scripture is silent on the nature of the priesthood. This is a particularly odd objection for faithful Catholics to be making. It is largely a Reformation objection and ignores volumes of Patristic teaching on the origins and development of Christian priesthood. It is simply false to say that the Catholic priesthood is an third or fourth century invention. There are elements of the priesthood as it is enacted in the world that came about in later centuries, but the core nature of the priesthood was infallibly established at the Last Supper when Christ commissioned his apostles and friends as those who would lead the community in prayer and the breaking of the bread, to "do this in memory of me." He had every opportunity to include women in this moment, but he didn't. The key here is to understand that the Last Supper was a Passover meal, a family meal, one that reinforced the bonds of paternal authority in the ancient Jewish tradition. of liberation from slavery. Even with women present at a Jewish Passover, the men are commissioned to perform the rite. Does this mean that women are excluded from the liberation Moses brought and the Passover celebrates? Hardly.

Women feel called to the priesthood. In the paragraph directly below this one I note that all of the objections to the Church's teaching on WO are rooted in modernist, feminist ideology. This objection is a perfect example. What this objection assumes is that the call to priesthood is a subjective experience immediately deserving a positive response from the Church. What can be more modernist than the triumph of personal experience over objective truth. The truth of the matter is that the call to priesthood comes from God through the Church, who is the Body of Christ. To say that a particular person (male or female) receives a call outside the Church assumes that Christ speaks to a member of his Body from outside his Body. However, all calls to serve the Body come through the Church and are therefore verifiable by the Church. Most of us believe we are called to all sorts of vocations for which we do not have the requisite gifts or authentic vocation. I feel called to be a regularly published poet, yet my poetry is regularly rejected. The poetry community (i.e., the Church of Verse) regularly rejects my claims to being a poet. Years of personal experience, strong conviction, earnest effort, and multiple academic degrees cannot make up for the lack of consent by the poetry community to my alleged call. I can call myself a poet. I can rail against the perceived injustice of not being regularly published. I can even accuse my tormenters of bias, hatred, and lack of taste. I'm still not a poet. Think for a moment of the implications if the Church bowed to the "I feel called to priesthood" objection and answered these claims positively. On what grounds could we reject anyone from the ordained ministry? My application to be made a postulant for ordination in the Episcopal Church was rejected. Had the vestry of my parish not done their job of proper discernment and oversight, I would be an Episcopalian priest right now. Thank God they listened to the Holy Spirit!

It is important for faithful Catholics to understand how many of these objections are based on modernist, feminist theories of justice, gender, the social construction of reality, and postmodern identity politics. None of which have a place in the faith of good Catholics. All are deeply rooted in 19th and 20th century liberal democratic ideas about freedom, liberty, and rights. None of them pull from the tradition of the Church or her ancient philosophy and theology. None of them are scriptural or magisterial. I have yet to read a single objection to the Church's infallible teaching against WO that does not rely exclusively on ideas and argument entirely alien to our faith. The canonical objections I've read are little more than legalistic sophistry and grounded in a "hermeneutic of suspicion" that starts with an antagonistic attitude toward truth and quickly devolves into relativism and subjectivism--little more than minute loopholes.

Probably the best book on this subject was written by Sr. Sara Butler, MSBT, The Catholic Priesthood and Women: A Guide to the Teaching of the Church, Sr. Sara started her life as a religious as a supporter of WO and has since looked carefully at the scriptural, tradition, magisterial, and archeological evidence for that position and changed her mind. This book does a much better job of defending the Church's teaching than I ever could, and I highly recommend it.

It is vitally important that women understand that the Church's lack of authority to ordain them to the priesthood is not based on the notion that they are inferior or damaged or in any way "less than men." Yes, some medieval theologians, including Thomas Aquinas, put forward certain metaphysical explanations for an all-male priesthood that few of us will applaud now. But these are merely explanations of any already existing teaching and their dubious nature in no way detracts from the truth of the faith. In other words, Aquinas, et al did not invent the all-male priesthood based on medieval notions of biology and metaphysics. They took up the question in light of the sacaramental theology then current and the already existing reality of the all-malle priesthood and attempted to explain the truth of the priesthood in the light they had. Demolishing Aquinas' argument for the all-male priesthood does not demolish the Church's infallible teaching against WO.

A note on the question of the infalliablity of Pope John Paul II's document, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis. This 1994 document was issued by the Holy Father in order to settle forever the question of whether or not the Church has the authority to ordain women. Drawing on scripture, tradition, and centuries of papal magisterial teaching, he concluded that the Church does not have the power to ordain women. It is very important to understand that the Pope did not say that the Church will not ordain women or that the Church does not feel like ordaining women. He wrote: "I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women. . ." The Church CANNOT ordain women. The Church also cannot declare that Jesus is not the Savior. The Church cannot declare that Mary was not the mother of Jesus, etc. In other words, the failure of the Church to ordain women is not based on a lack of will or inclination or patriarchal prejudice. If every bishop in the Church, including the Pope, laid hands on a woman, performing the entire sacrament of ordination on her in St Peter's Bascilica in front of the College of Cardinal with their wild applauses, she would still be a laywoman. And she would be a laywoman if every Catholic in the world believed that she was a priest.


Is this teaching infallible? Yes, it is. The Pope wrote in full: "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. Luke 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."


Now, some theologians claim that this teaching is not infallible. They want to make a fine distinction between the content of the teaching and this declaration of the teaching. They want to say that OS itself is not infallible; in other words, they want us to believe that the Pope's declaration that the teaching is infallible is not itself infallible. This is typical modernist sophistry and a confusion of terms. All the Pope did in this document is repeat an ancient truth: women cannot be ordained. This is not new. Imagine the Pope issuing a document tomorrow declaring that Jesus is the Messiah. Such a document would be pointless because the Church has always believed this. There is no need for an infallible teaching on the question. How odd would it be then for some theologians to assert that the document is not infallible when it asserts that the teaching that Jesus is the Messiah is infallible. Simply bizarre.


Reread the highlighted phrases above. Those are the words required for an infallible teaching. Period. OS as a document, OS per se does not have to be infallible, just as a document declaring Jesus as the Messiah would not have to be infallible. The content of the teaching is without error regardless of the magisterial/canonical status of the document. What the supporters of WO want us to believe is that the Pope is not interpreting the ancient teaching correctly. That he is merely repeating what has always been the case in the Church seems to be irrelevant to them. It seems odd to me that the Pope would issue this document "so that all doubt might be removed" and then have some claim that he did so in order to set the stage for future women's ordinations! We had a professor in my seminary who taught exactly that. Fortunately, none of us fell for the deception.


Fr. Joseph Fitzmeyer, quoting a supporter of WO, Rev. Herman Pottmeyer, "According to Pottmeyer, 'O.S. is an instance of ordinary (i.e., non-infallible) magisterium, declaring that the church’s unbroken tradition with regard to ordination is irreformable.' In saying this, he may be right, even though the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith subsequently explained that the doctrine about women’s ordination belongs to the deposit of faith and has been constantly held in the church’s tradition and infallibly set forth by the ordinary and universal magisterium." Fr. Fitzmeyer concludes his critique of Rev. Pottmeyer, "Pope John Paul II stated in O.S. that 'the church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women' (No. 4). He did not mean that 'he could not himself change tradition in this matter.' He spoke rather of Ecclesiam facultatem nullatenus habere. If it is so, that the church has no ability to change it, then the Pope cannot invite everyone to prayer and dialogue as he would summon 'a council to make a final decision.' If 'the church' cannot do it, then a council cannot do it, no matter what 'signs of the times' may be or what 'faithfulness to Jesus' might seem to call for in Pottmeyer’s estimation."


Best book on the history and theology of the Church's teaching authority: Magisterium: Teacher and Guardian of the Faith, Cardinal Avery Dulles, SJ.

This link from the USCCB helps to clarify a number of issues.

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Comment on commenting

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2).  If I don't comment on your post, please don't think that I'm ignoring you. . .sometimes I approve comments on the run and simply don't have time to respond.

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At what expense?

Excellent Berkowitz article in the WSJ on the alleged death of political conservativism . . .

An excerpt:

It is always the task for conservatives to insist that money does not grow on trees, that government programs must be paid for, and that promising unaffordable benefits is reckless, unjust and a long-term threat to maintaining free institutions.

But conservatives also combat government expansion and centralization because it can undermine the virtues upon which a free society depends. Big government tends to crowd out self-government—producing sluggish, selfish and small-minded citizens, depriving individuals of opportunities to manage their private lives and discouraging them from cooperating with fellow citizens to govern their neighborhoods, towns, cities and states. [Think here of the Catholic social justice notion of subsidiarity]

And lest we think that Berkowitz is simply being partisan, he concludes:

The Gingrich revolution fizzled, in part because congressional Republicans mistook a popular mandate for moderation as a license to undertake radical change, and in part because they grew complacent and corrupt in the corridors of power.

Perhaps this time will be different. Our holiday from history is over. The country faces threats—crippling government expansion at home and transnational Islamic extremism—that arouse conservative instincts and concentrate the conservative mind.

 

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