REAL debate thread for RELIGION

[Guillaume le Maréchal]

On a similar note, I feel that the whole priestly celibacy thing should be abolished. Living in a time where the priest shortage is getting worse, I feel that ordaining married men would help to a point. I know several married men who are very religious and would possibly join the priesthood.

A lot of people who know me expect me to be against priestly celibacy. I was only three months away from deaconate ordination (the step toward the priesthood wherein the promise of celibacy is made) when I left the seminary. People think that I left because of celibacy. Actually, this was not the case at all. When I left the seminary it was because of anything but celibacy, which I consider a great gift to Roman Catholic priests. The problem, after all, isn’t celibacy, but chastity. Most young men don’t seem to have a problem with the celibacy part... remaining unmarried seems to fit nicely with the jet set lifestyle. On the other hand, most young men definitely seem to have a problem with the chastity part... waiting until they are married to have sexual intercourse. If you think about it, everyone is or has practiced celibacy, just some better than others.

Celibacy is a great spiritual and pastoral benefit:
1. By creating such a great void in one’s personal spiritual life, celibacy allows more room for grace. Priests are called to fill this void with the love of God, so that they can become greater beacons for His light.

2. This void in a priest’s personal spiritual life gives him greater freedom for acts of charity, prayer and meditation, and the pastoral care of his parish. The greater freedom to practice virtue in a true spirit of poverty (not having to worry about supporting wife and children) has the potential to make the priest into a conduit of Christ’s ministry.

3. Celibacy conforms the life of the priest to the life of Christ, who placed His own priestly ministry before the ministry of a husband and father. The discipline of celibacy draws the priest closer to the life of Jesus, especially important because the priest acts in persona Christi in the administration of the sacraments. While the sacraments do not depend on the priest, but on the power of God, the priest is by his lofty duty called to a life that resembles to a higher degree the life of Jesus.

4. The void created by celibacy causes real pain for the priest, and in this voluntary suffering, the priest is even further conformed to the ministry of Jesus. The priest shares by this particular suffering in the redemptive act of Christ on the cross. The priest can use celibacy “to store up in himself what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ� to use Paul’s terminology (Col 2: ... hmm... I must be Catholic because I don’t know off hand the chapter and verse).

5. Celibacy is at once a voluntary denial and an attestation to the scared character of matrimony. By the priest’s commitment to chastity while living a celibate life, he can be an example to those of us who are married to suffer through our own sufferings and challenges that marriage brings the individual. In fact, the Church insists on speaking of celibacy, not as opposed to marriage or its opposite, but, as a compliment to marriage, as existing to strengthen others’ marriages.

Of course, all of these benefits require, first grace, and secondly the full co-operation with grace on the part of individual priests. The void created by celibacy doesn’t do the priest or his parish any good if he fills it with something other than grace. I’ve known priests who have had too many hobbies and pastimes... too bad prayer and pastoral care were being neglected for remote control cars and poker night. Celibacy in the wrong hands can be very dangerous, but I don’t think this danger over-rides the potential benefits, and the vast majority of Catholic priests out there do a fine job demonstrating this.

As far as the priest shortage is concerned, I think it is important to point out that there is apparently a very similar kind of shortage among Greek Orthodox priests in the United States, and they ordain married men. There has also been a general decline in student populations at established Protestant seminaries over the past 20 years. The priest shortage has more to do with present culture and social mores than celibacy. This is not to say that a married clergy can not be part of the solution. I think the American bishops really need to take a closer look at the potential pastoral and liturgical roles that can be played by the permanent deaconate; permanent deacons can be married when they are ordained.

Regards,
Dave

[Rían]

[whisper]Guillaume, read the first sentence of #5 and see if you see anything wrong ... [/whisper]

[Ruinel]

Interesting. On the one hand, if you allow priests to marry, it may alleviate the declining number of men entering the priesthood.

On the other hand, a priest that is married divides his devotion and love between his god and his wife/children.

1 Corinthians 7:32-35

32 ... The unmarried cares for the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord;

33 But he who has married cares for the things of the world, how he may please his wife,

34 And is distracted. Both the unmarried woman and the virgin care for the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit; but she who has married cares for the things of the world, how she may please her husband.

35 But this I say for your own profit, not that I may put a noose upon you but that you may be comely and may wait on the Lord without distraction.

So, Paul is trying to tell people that when you are single (celibate: one who abstains from sex, or is unmarried, or both) you can devote yourself to your god, and when you are married, you are concerned (legitimatly so) with pleasing your spouse. He didn't want people not to marry, he only says this so that you can be aware of it.

So... what about female priests?

[Arien the Maia]

Actually if I remeber correctly, Paul thought that being single and celibate was better than getting married b/c one could devote oneself entirely to the Lord. I think that the Roman Church has followed paul's teaching regarding celibacy in the priesthood b/c Paul was single, whereas the Eastern Churches have followed Peter b/c Peter was married.

regarding female priests...well, I wouldn't say that I'm a feminist or anything like that but I'm not completely dominated my men either! At any rate, I like tradition and I believe that since Jesus called men to follow Him, then that is how it should remain.

[Rían]

Originally posted by Ruinel
So, Paul is trying to tell people that when you are single (celibate: one who abstains from sex, or is unmarried, or both) you can devote yourself to your god, and when you are married, you are concerned (legitimatly so) with pleasing your spouse. He didn't want people not to marry, he only says this so that you can be aware of it.

I think this is right.

Marriage is always presented as a very good thing (of course, the people involved can foul it up, tho). Not being married is presented as a better thing, in the sense of there's less to be legitimately, as Ruinel says, be concerned about, and you can concentrate more on pleasing God directly (thru taking care of widows and orphans, as well as other aspects of living out your faith), but is also presented as something you have to be "called" to. But I'm rusty on this, as it doesn't concern me much.

[Gwaimir Windgem]

Rian: Nope, a bit late for that!

Ruinel: I think that there should not be female priests. Understand, I don't think that women are inferior in anyway; heck, they are probably capable of fulfilling many parts of the priesthood better than men; however, I believe that there is an innate spiritual difference between the two. Not that one is inferior, or the other superior, but that they are very much different. I think that there is a spiritual difference between men and women that makes it impossible for women to perform in the role of ministerial priesthood; not that women cannot preach effectively, by any means, nor that they cannot provide pastoral guidance, but the (to me, at least) intangible something else. I'm sure that Guillame will probably give a much better post than me on this at a later time.

Until then, here's something to tide over: an article by C. S. Lewis entitled "Priestesses in the Church". He puts it much better than I do.

I have other, rather drier articles, but I won't bore you with those unless asked.

[Gwaimir Windgem]

Priestesses In The Church?
by C.S. Lewis
"I would like Balls infinitely better" said Caroline Bingley, "if they were carried on in a different manner... It would surely be much more rational if conversation instead of dancing made the order of the day." "Much more rational I dare say," replied her brother, "but it would not be near so much like a Ball." We are told that the lady was silenced: yet it could be maintained that Jane Austen has not allowed Bingley to put forward the full strength of his position. He ought to have replied with a distinguo. In one sense conversation is more rational for conversation may exercise the reason alone, dancing does not. But there is nothing irrational in exercising other powers than our reason. On certain occasions and for certain purposes the real irrationality is with those who will not do so. The man who would try to break a horse or write a poem or beget a child by pure syllogizing would be an irrational man; though at the same time syllogizing is in itself a more rational activity than the activities demanded by these achievements. It is rational not to reason, or not to limit oneself to reason, in the wrong place; and the more rational a man is the better he knows this.

These remarks are not intended as a contribution to the criticism of Pride and Prejudice.1 They came into my head when I heard that the Church of England2 was being advised to declare women capable of Priests' Orders. I am, indeed, informed that such a proposal is very unlikely to be seriously considered by the authorities. To take such a revolutionary step at the present moment, to cut ourselves off from the Christian past and to widen the divisions between ourselves and other Churches by establishing an order of priestesses in our midst, would be an almost wanton degree of imprudence. And the Church of England herself would be torn in shreds by the operation. My concern with the proposal is of a more theoretical kind. The question involves something even deeper than a revolution in order.

I have every respect for those who wish women to be priestesses. I think they are sincere and pious and sensible people. Indeed, in a way they are too sensible. That is where my dissent from them resembles Bingley's dissent from his sister. I am tempted to say that the proposed arrangement would make us much more rational "but not near so much like a Church."

For at first sight all the rationality (in Caroline Bingley's sense) is on the side of the innovators. We are short of priests. We have discovered in one profession after another that women can do very well all sorts of things which were once supposed to be in the power of men alone. No one among those who dislike the proposal is maintaining that women are less capable than men of piety, zeal, learning and whatever else seems necessary for the pastoral office. What, then, except prejudice begotten by tradition, forbids us to draw on the huge reserves which could pour into the priesthood if women were here, as in so many other professions, put on the same footing as men? And against this flood of common sense, the opposers (many of them women) can produce at first nothing but an inarticulate distaste, a sense of discomfort which they themselves find it hard to analyze.

That this reaction does not spring from any contempt for women is, I think, plain from history. The Middle Ages carried their reverence for one Woman to a point at which the charge could be plausibly made that the Blessed Virgin became in their eyes almost a fourth Person of the Trinity. But never, so far as I know, in all those ages was anything remotely resembling a sacerdotal office attributed to her. All salvation depends on the decision which she made in the words Ecce ancilla,3 she is united in nine months; inconceivable intimacy with the eternal Word; she stands at the foot of the cross.4 But she is absent both from the Last Supper5 and from the descent of the Spirit at Pentecost.6 Such is the record of Scripture. Nor can you doff it aside by saying that local and temporary conditions condemned women to Silence and private life. There were female preachers. One man had four daughters who all "prophesied", i.e. preached.7 There were prophetesses even in Old Testament times. Prophetesses, not priestesses.

[Gwaimir Windgem]

At this point the common sensible reformer is apt to ask why, if women can preach, they cannot do all the rest of a priest's work. This question deepens the discomfort of my side. We begin to feel that what really divides us from our opponents is a difference between the meaning which they and we give to the word "priest". The more they speak (and speak truly) about the competence of women in administration, their tact and sympathy as advisers, their national talent for "visiting", the more we feel that the central thing is being forgotten. To us a priest is primarily a representative, a double representative, who represents us to God and God to us. Our very eyes teach us this in church. Sometimes the priest turns his back on us and faces the East--he speaks to God for us: sometimes he faces us and speaks to us for God. We have no objection to a woman doing the first: the whole difficulty is about the second. But why? Why should a woman not in this sense represent God? Certainly not because she is necessarily, or even probably, less holy or less charitable or stupider than a man. In that sense she may be as "God-like" as a man; and a given women much more so than a given man. The sense in which she cannot represent God will perhaps be plainer if we look at the thing the other way round.

Suppose the reformer stops saying that a good woman may be like God and begins saying that God is like a good woman. Suppose he says that we might just as well pray to "Our Mother which art in heaven" as to "Our Father". Suppose he suggests that the Incarnation might just as well have taken a female as a male form, and the Second Person of the Trinity be as well called the Daughter as the Son. Suppose, finally, that the mystical marriage were reversed, that the Church were the Bridegroom and Christ the Bride. All this, as it seems to me, is involved in the claim that a woman can represent God as a priest does.

Now it is surely the case that if all these supposals were ever carried into effect we should be embarked on a different religion. Goddesses have, of course, been worshipped: many religions have had priestesses. But they are religions quite different in character from Christianity. Common sense, disregarding the discomfort, or even the horror, which the idea of turning all our theological language into the feminine gender arouses in most Christians, will ask "Why not? Since God is in fact not a biological being and has no sex, what can it matter whether we say He or She, Father or Mother, Son or Daughter?"

But Christians think that God Himself has taught us how to speak of Him. To say that it does not matter is to say either that all the masculine imagery is not inspired, is merely human in origin, or else that, though inspired, it is quite arbitrary and unessential. And this is surely intolerable: or, if tolerable, it is an argument not in favour of Christian priestesses but against Christianity. It is also surely based on a shallow view of imagery. Without drawing upon religion, we know from our poetical experience that image and apprehension cleave closer together than common sense is here prepared to admit; that a child who has been taught to pray to a Mother in Heaven would have a religious life radically different from that of a Christian child. And as image and apprehension are in an organic unity, so, for a Christian, are human body and soul.

The innovators are really implying that sex is something superficial, irrelevant to the spiritual life. To say that men and women are equally eligible for a certain profession is to say that for the purposes of that profession their sex is irrelevant. We are, within that context, treating both as neuters. As the State grows more like a hive or an ant hill it needs an increasing number of workers who can be treated as neuters. This may be inevitable for our secular life. But in our Christian life we must return to reality. There we are not homogeneous units, but different and complementary organs of a mystical body. Lady Nunburnholme8 has claimed that the equality of men and women is a Christian principle. I do not remember the text in scripture nor the Fathers, nor the Prayer Book which asserts it; but that is not here my point. The point is that unless "equal" means "inter-changeable", equality makes nothing for the priesthood of women. And the kind of equality which implies that the equals are interchangeable (like counters or identical machines) is, among humans, a legal fiction. It may be a useful legal fiction. But in church we turn our back on fictions. One of the ends for which sex was created was to symbolize to us the hidden things of God. One of the functions of human marriage is to express the nature of total union between Christ and the Church. We have no authority to take the living and semitive figures which God has painted on the canvas of our nature and shift them about as if they were mere geometrical figures.

[Gwaimir Windgem]

This is what common sense will call "mystical". Exactly. The Church claims to be the bearer of a revelation. If that claim is false then we want not to make priestesses but to abolish priests. If it is true, then we should expect to find in the Church an element which unbelievers will call irrational and which believers will call supra-rational. There ought to be something in it opaque to our reason though not contrary to it -as the facts of sex and sense on the natural level are opaque. And that is the real issue. The Church of England can remain a church only if she retains this opaque element. If we abandon that, if we retain only what can be justified by standards of prudence and convenience at the bar of enlightened common sense, then we exchange revelation for that old wraith Natural Religion.

It is painful to have to assert the privilege, or the burden, which Christianity lays upon my own sex. I am crushingly aware how inadequate most of us are, in our actual and historical individualities, to fill the place prepared for us. But it is an old saying in the army that you salute the uniform not the wearer. Only one wearing the masculine uniform can (provisionally, and till the Parousia9) represent the Lord to the Church: for we are all, corporately and individually, feminine to Him. We men may often make very bad priests. That is because we are insufficiently masculine. It is no cure to call in those who are not masculine at all. A given man may make a very bad husband; you cannot mend matters by trying to reverse title roles. He may make a bad male partner in a dance. The cure for that is that men should more diligently attend dancing classes; not that the ballroom should henceforward ignore distinctions of sex and treat all dancers as neuter. That would, of course, be eminently sensible, civilized, and enlightened, but, once more, "not near so much like a Ball".

And this parallel between the Church and the Ball is not so fanciful as some would think. The Church ought to be more like a Ball than it is like a factory or a political party. Or, to speak more strictly, they are at the circumference and the Church at the Centre and the Ball comes ill between. The factory and the political party are artificial creations - "a breath can make them as a breath has made". In them we are not dealing with human beings in their concrete entirety-only with "hands" or voters, I am not of course using "artificial" in any derogatory sense. Such artifices are necessary: but because they are our artifices we are free to shuffle, scrap and experiment as we please. But the Ball exists to stylize something which is natural and which concerns human beings in their entirety - namely, courtship. We cannot shuffle or tamper so much. With the Church, we are farther in: for there we are dealing with male and female not merely as facts of nature but as the live and awful shadows of realities utterly beyond our control and largely beyond our direct knowledge. Or rather, we are not dealing with them but (as we shall soon learn if we meddle) they are dealing with us.

1 Pride and Prejudice, ch. xi.

2 Called the Episcopal Church in the United States

3 After being told by the angel Gabriel that she has found favour with God and that she should bear the Christ Child, the Virgin exclaims "Behold the handmaid of the Lord" (Luke i. 38). The magnificat follows in verses 46.55. -

4 Matthew xxvii. 55.6; Mark xv. 40.1 ; Luke xxiii. 49; John xix. 25.

5 Matthew xxvi. 26; Mark xiv. 22; Luke xxii. 19.

6 Acts ii. I et seq.

7 Acts xxi. 9.

8 Lady Marjorie Nunburnholms, "A Petition to the Lambeth Conference", Time and Tide, vol. XXIX, No.28 (10 July 1948), p.720.

9 The future return of Christ in glory to judge the living and the dead.

[Rían]

Quite an interesting article, Gwai - I've never come across it. And v. relevant to the Gay/Les. thread - esp. this: "The point is that unless "equal" means "inter-changeable" ... " That was my point when I was saying you can't just pull out a wife and insert a second husband, like they were just interchangeable units. They are both equally valuable, but they do not fit in the same slot.

And I LOVE that line by Charles Bingley! Caroline was a total snob.

[brownjenkins]

wow GW... i guess one can justify just about any belief... i can't say i agree with very much of it, but it is well put in it's own way...

This is what common sense will call "mystical". Exactly. The Church claims to be the bearer of a revelation. If that claim is false then we want not to make priestesses but to abolish priests. ... If we abandon that, if we retain only what can be justified by standards of prudence and convenience at the bar of enlightened common sense, then we exchange revelation for that old wraith Natural Religion.

hmm, not the worst idea, in my POV of course...

[Gwaimir Windgem]

Originally posted by RÃ*an
Quite an interesting article, Gwai - I've never come across it.

Not surprising; I doubt it would be very applicable to your church. Your right, it would be applicable; another article spoke of female priests being due to Gnostic tendencies in Protestantism (that would certainly make sense, since originally in Christianity there was the Catholic-Orthodox Church, and the Gnostics); namely, a disregard for the material world. I think they tied that to homosexuality, too.

i guess one can justify just about any belief...

Then you think that that view is blatant bigotry? Thanks for giving Lewis his due.

[brownjenkins]

i find it disturbing... but i find that about many orthodox faiths... ultimately it is up to each one of us to choose what we follow... it just seems to me that with that kind of logic, there is very little that can not be justified... that's dangerous grounds in my eyes

[Ruinel]

Gwai, C.S. Lewis didn't explain it any better than you did. It's all pish-posh.

[Gwaimir Windgem]

Well, then, with your Catholic background, it shouldn't be too hard to refute it. (<----please note wink)

Seriously, Ru, I would advise caution. Generally if someone replies with something like that, it leads people to believe (not that it's necessarily true) that that is the only way they can. I don't believe that it is (the only way), but all the same, I think it's best to be careful about that sort of thing.

To pro-female-priest-persons: I'm a bit confused, in that you seem to be more appalled by this than by "hating gays". Am I reading you wrong? If not, then why is that?

[Insidious Rex]

Im less appalled myself. I see this as an internal christian issue. And gay hating as an external one. Theres a difference between arguing about rules of religion among others of your religion and trying to impose your relgions rules on those outside your religion.

[Ruinel]

Originally posted by Gwaimir Windgem
Well, then, with your Catholic background, it shouldn't be too hard to refute it. (<----please note wink)

Yep, but I'm busy right now debating how the US is the sole reason why Ethiopian farmers can't sell their crops. *rolleyes*

Seriously, Ru, I would advise caution. Generally if someone replies with something like that, it leads people to believe (not that it's necessarily true) that that is the only way they can. I don't believe that it is (the only way), but all the same, I think it's best to be careful about that sort of thing.

yeah yeah... I'll get with ya in a bit. Like I said... see above.

To pro-female-priest-persons: I'm a bit confused, in that you seem to be more appalled by this than by "hating gays". Am I reading you wrong? If not, then why is that? [/B]

I'm going to say something about leaders, and women, weird freakish statements you made about spiritual differences, and your pish-posh statements... just give me some time.

IRex has a good point.

[brownjenkins]

i care little about a priest's sex... i was more leaning towards the abolish the whole lot of 'em thing

statements like this

We have no authority to take the living and semitive figures which God has painted on the canvas of our nature and shift them about as if they were mere geometrical figures.

leads one to give up the idea of formulating ones own beliefs... better to bow to some ultimate authority... in fact, it almost implies that we are incapable of deciding these kind of issues

to me it's the difference between a dictatorship and democracy... some would argue that the best form of government is a benevolant dictatorship, you would have a leader who always made the right choices and things would be much less messy... the problem is, you can never be assured that the next dictator, or his underlings, will be as benevolant as the last... teaching people to make decisions for themselves, especially the tough ones, is a more difficult route, but a much more positive one in my view

[Guillaume le Maréchal]

It seems so easy for others to accuse a religion of being dictatorial, bigoted, etc., just because a given religion has teachings. Any teaching seems to be regarded by certain people as necessarily tyrannical. Well... not any teaching... only those teachings they don’t agree with. That’s the seed bed of tyranny, not religious doctrine!

Two thousand years of sacramental theology and dogma is summed up as “pish-posh� on a Tolkien forum... [sarcasm]The very ground is shaking with the thunderous roar of reform![/sarcasm]

[Guillaume le Maréchal]

Thanks for providing the article by C.S. Lewis. It was interesting reading an Anglican version of the argument. Catholic dogma regarding sacrament and ordination differs somewhat from Lewis’ formulation, though.

Regards,
Dave