There are plenty of things that I don't "get" (or as the hairy ossified of my generation still occasionally say, "grok".) Age does indeed bring certain kinds of wisdom, but part of that is the increasing recognition of all the things you don't "get". I suspect that when it comes time for me to die, the world will be even more of a puzzle that it was when I was younger.
Anyway, in my cybering through the realms of religion, I keep running into liberal Catholics who seem to think that the Second Coming of 1968 is just around the corner. While predicting the imminent demise of the patriarchal hierarchal clerical Vatican church, they bemoan (and bemoan and bemoan, "prophetically", mind you) all the signs to the contrary. In a funny way, they are like fundamentalists who expect the Second Coming of Christ any minute now. I suspect that neither Jesus nor 1968 will be returning any time soon, however.
Last week the Vatican announced two sets of changes to canon law: one details crimes and punishments related to clerical sexual misconduct and the other details crimes and punishments related to attempts to ordain women. Of course, the screaming began, that the Vatican finds pedophilia and women's ordination equivalent crimes. How awful and insulting, etc.
I am pretty sure that the smarties in Rome were aware of the effect it would have to publish these simultaneously and in the same document. But they can, of course, deny it. Ha ha.
But I think the feminist Catholics and the liberals, etc. are wrong. I don't think the Vatican finds the idea of diddling the altar boys equal in opprobrium to trying to make priestesses. I think the Vatican finds the latter worse than the former. As they pointed out, priestly sex with minors is a crime against morals and trying to ordain females is a crime against the sacraments. I would say that in almost every instance, the Catholic Church would prefer to deal with moral rather than with sacramental crime. And this is what the 1968 crowd, lacking all Romanita, don't "get."
IMHO, what has held the Roman Church together through 2000 tumultuous years has been doctrine and sacraments: a clear set of beliefs which are not optional, and a priesthood-controlled set of sacred rites. Both saintly and scandalous popes were in agreement on this. The Church saw heretics as a far graver threat than mere sinners --be they drunken wife-beaters or licentious and simoniac clerics--and acted accordingly, like it or not. The Church has always been and always will be rife with human bad behavior of all kinds. The outraged of the moment, moralists all, seem to know nothing of history or of what actually and really holds human communities and traditions together, allows them to survive the savage contingencies of terrestrial life.
Catholicism is about nothing if it is not about the Mass. And essential to the Mass is the priest. Most of what you need to know is right there. It may not be sufficient, but it is crucially necessary. Priests can be good or bad, stupid or smart, but if they are not first of all valid, real, then there is nothing there at all. Whoever commits sexual immorality --or abuses power or steals money, etc-- is doing something which has always been done and always will be done. Human sin is inescapeable. The Church, especially in its Roman form, sighs, occasionally makes a scene, but moves on. But an attack either on dogma or on the sacraments, especially the priesthood or the Mass, is an attack on the Church's very core, its capacity to survive. No one should be surprised that its response to such an attack would be firm and fierce...unless they are awaiting, full of peace and love, not "getting it", the Second Coming of 1968.
7 comments:
I'm not sure about the usual explanation, that a priest must be male in order to represent God to the assembly -- because this means the priest must be female to represent us to God. .,. Maybe accurately representing us to God is comparatively not that important?
If you want the Pope's teaching on the issue, here you go: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/apost_letters/documents/hf_jp-ii_apl_22051994_ordinatio-sacerdotalis_en.html
Well, I lookt. the pastoral letter on the ordination of women seem'd to me evasive, false and corrupting (except maybe for vague reference to "a plan ... ascribed to the wisdom of the Lord of the Universe" which precludes women priests).
a) Claim is to be acting from necessity in restricting women from the priesthood, as if perhaps we might wish to ordain women but are externally prevented by Christ's example and Church tradition.
b) We wish to emphasize that Christ respected women (more than was the norm in his times), and we deny that refusing ordination to women means they have any less dignity than men in the Church.
Sed contra:
1. Exclusion of women from the priesthood always occurs (in Moses, St Paul, in Augustine, in Aquinas, in Luther, in Calvin) with a doctrine of their lesser dignity -- or worse; as resulting from the Fall. Insincere for the pope to imply otherwise, unless he values the Fall differently from Augustine, Aquinas and Luther.
2. Speaking with a view to realness, men have a street-credibility charisma that women do not. In fact, priesthoods have always had to struggle for credibility vis-a-vis warriors. The contemptible buy-in has no doubt always been that war-capable men in their prime should calculate whether they wish to despise priest-weaklings in view of the reality that they will age and decay: throwing their lot in with the priesthood now means that they will be able to have power (Strauss: the "senility" of power and power politics) when they are old, whereas if they continue with their sincere reverence for main strength perhaps a young colonel will displace them when they are old and they don't wish to retire but hang onto decision-making authority at any cost. (Aristotle: priesthood is something a man can do in his retirement years when he's too old for war or philosophy or even government.)
3. Warriors are even less likely to respect a Nergal priesthood set in authority over them if it includes women -- e.g. in decision-making as to when and with whom to fight, e.g. how they must progress slowly across Europe in order to allow Stalin to grab his fair share of Europe; not to bomb the bridges over the Yalu River in order to allow Communism to have half of Korea, etc etc etc. (The "ministry of the word" in the whispering campaigns by Nergal's blades of grass.) Elevating a man to the priesthood -- in ancient Egypt and on up to our own time -- is not an honor to the man, but an honor to the priesthood. (Cf Nietzsche: even Islam depends upon men -- sc Islam doesn't manlify or re-manlify.) ... Presumably Friedrich Barbarossa and Niccolo Machiavelli were amused that the dignity of the Christian priesthood was reserved to "men." Christianity, a religion that includes women, could probably not have supplanted Mithraism, the Nergalian religion for Roman soldiers, if Christianity had had a priesthood inclusive of women.
4. The charisma of woman -- girl, mother -- is ill-served by inclusion into the priesthood of Nergal anyway. (Nergal pronounced aner-gal? ... a fine thing that "imam" derives from indo-european word for mother!) ... Women are more wonderful than men, but they have less street cred. ... I omitted "chrone" re charisma as I would "senex" -- because I'm not sure a charisma inheres in agedness spontaneously (but only by enculturation), except via pity and with some reflection in a kind of awe for enduring the corrosive effects of time. ... A negative charisma is possible, for instance in the aged clergy who preside at 'pagan' mysteries.
Well, I lookt. the pastoral letter on the ordination of women seem'd to me evasive, false and corrupting (except maybe for vague reference to "a plan ... ascribed to the wisdom of the Lord of the Universe" which precludes women priests).
a) Claim is to be acting from necessity in restricting women from the priesthood, as if perhaps we might wish to ordain women but are externally prevented by Christ's example and Church tradition.
b) We wish to emphasize that Christ respected women (more than was the norm in his times), and we deny that refusing ordination to women means they have any less dignity than men in the Church.
Sed contra:
1. Exclusion of women from the priesthood always occurs (in Moses, St Paul, in Augustine, in Aquinas, in Luther, in Calvin) with a doctrine of their lesser dignity -- or worse; as resulting from the Fall. Insincere for the pope to imply otherwise, unless he values the Fall differently from Augustine, Aquinas and Luther.
2. Speaking with a view to realness, men have a street-credibility charisma that women do not. In fact, priesthoods have always had to struggle for credibility vis-a-vis warriors. The contemptible buy-in has no doubt always been that war-capable men in their prime should calculate whether they wish to despise priest-weaklings in view of the reality that they will age and decay: throwing their lot in with the priesthood now means that they will be able to have power (Strauss: the "senility" of power and power politics) when they are old, whereas if they continue with their sincere reverence for main strength perhaps a young colonel will displace them when they are old and they don't wish to retire but hang onto decision-making authority at any cost. (Aristotle: priesthood is something a man can do in his retirement years when he's too old for war or philosophy or even government.)
3. Warriors are even less likely to respect a Nergal priesthood set in authority over them if it includes women -- e.g. in decision-making as to when and with whom to fight, e.g. how they must progress slowly across Europe in order to allow Stalin to grab his fair share of Europe; not to bomb the bridges over the Yalu River in order to allow Communism to have half of Korea, etc etc etc. (The "ministry of the word" in the whispering campaigns by Nergal's blades of grass.) Elevating a man to the priesthood -- in ancient Egypt and on up to our own time -- is not an honor to the man, but an honor to the priesthood. (Cf Nietzsche: even Islam depends upon men -- sc Islam doesn't manlify or re-manlify.) ... Presumably Friedrich Barbarossa and Niccolo Machiavelli were amused that the dignity of the Christian priesthood was reserved to "men." Christianity, a religion that includes women, could probably not have supplanted Mithraism, the Nergalian religion for Roman soldiers, if Christianity had had a priesthood inclusive of women.
4. The charisma of woman -- girl, mother -- is ill-served by inclusion into the priesthood of Nergal anyway. (Nergal pronounced aner-gal? ... a fine thing that "imam" derives from indo-european word for mother!) ... Women are more wonderful than men, but they have less street cred. ... I omitted "chrone" re charisma as I would "senex" -- because I'm not sure a charisma inheres in agedness spontaneously (but only by enculturation), except via pity and with some reflection in a kind of awe for enduring the corrosive effects of time. ... A negative charisma is possible, for instance in the aged clergy who preside at 'pagan' mysteries.
5. A function that isn't gender symbolic and isn't needful of 'street-cred' authority charisma from men could well be fill'd by female personnel, including that of clergy. Contrary to the famous quip about women preaching, some women speak very well publicly. ... If women had enter'd the clergy of Protestant denominations with a concern for doctrine -- interpreted liberally or interpreted existentially -- the argument could not be made that female clergy reduce Christian doctrine to admonitions to altruism etc. If this has happen'd, that is, if female clergy have done more to dissolve mainline Protestant churches than male clergy have, I do not see that that was inevitable: women didn't enter the boardrooms of corporate business with a wish to divert economic enterprise to "workshops" on disarmament or whatnot.
imho
2. Speaking with a view to realness, men have a street-credibility charisma that women do not. In fact, priesthoods have always had to struggle for credibility vis-a-vis warriors. The contemptible buy-in has no doubt always been that war-capable men in their prime should calculate whether they wish to despise priest-weaklings in view of the reality that they will age and decay: throwing their lot in with the priesthood now means that they will be able to have power (Strauss: the "senility" of power and power politics) when they are old, whereas if they continue with their sincere reverence for main strength perhaps a young colonel will displace them when they are old and they don't wish to retire but hang onto decision-making authority at any cost. (Aristotle: priesthood is something a man can do in his retirement years when he's too old for war or philosophy or even government.)
3. Warriors are even less likely to respect a Nergal priesthood set in authority over them if it includes women -- e.g. in decision-making as to when and with whom to fight, e.g. how they must progress slowly across Europe in order to allow Stalin to grab his fair share of Europe; not to bomb the bridges over the Yalu River in order to allow Communism to have half of Korea, etc etc etc. (The "ministry of the word" in the whispering campaigns by Nergal's blades of grass.) Elevating a man to the priesthood -- in ancient Egypt and on up to our own time -- is not an honor to the man, but an honor to the priesthood. (Cf Nietzsche: even Islam depends upon men -- sc Islam doesn't manlify or re-manlify.) ... Presumably Friedrich Barbarossa and Niccolo Machiavelli were amused that the dignity of the Christian priesthood was reserved to "men." Christianity, a religion that includes women, could probably not have supplanted Mithraism, the Nergalian religion for Roman soldiers, if Christianity had had a priesthood inclusive of women.
4. The charisma of woman -- girl, mother -- is ill-served by inclusion into the priesthood of Nergal anyway. (Nergal pronounced aner-gal? ... a fine thing that "imam" derives from indo-european word for mother!) ... Women are more wonderful than men, but they have less street cred. ... I omitted "chrone" re charisma as I would "senex" -- because I'm not sure a charisma inheres in agedness spontaneously (but only by enculturation), except via pity and with some reflection in a kind of awe for enduring the corrosive effects of time. ... A negative charisma is possible, for instance in the aged clergy who preside at 'pagan' mysteries.
5. A function that isn't gender symbolic and isn't needful of 'street-cred' authority charisma from men could well be fill'd by female personnel, including that of clergy. Contrary to the famous quip about women preaching, some women speak very well publicly. ... If women had enter'd the clergy of Protestant denominations with a concern for doctrine -- interpreted liberally or interpreted existentially -- the argument could not be made that female clergy reduce Christian doctrine to admonitions to altruism etc. If this has happen'd, that is, if female clergy have done more to dissolve mainline Protestant churches than male clergy have, I do not see that that was inevitable: women didn't enter the boardrooms of corporate business with a wish to divert economic enterprise to "workshops" on disarmament or whatnot.
imho
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