Louisville Catholic protests men only priesthood at service

[47of74]

Glad to see a Catholic taking a stand in favor of ordaining women, saying that the refusal of the church to do so is a "gross injustice"...

courier-journal.com/story/news/religion/2016/03/28/louisville-cathedral-protester-ordain-women/82336602/

Quote

As a practicing Catholic, Bob Eiden of Valley Station decided not to let Holy Week pass without staging a protest about an issue that he believes is critically important: The church hierarchy's stand against ordaining women.

On the Thursday before Easter Sunday,  Eiden walked to the front of the Cathedral of the Assumption on South Fifth Street downtown during an evening service attended by Archbishop Joseph Kurtz and briefly held up a sign that read: "Ordain Women," by his account.

At the Cathedral, he then turned around and starting walking back down the aisle to leave the church -- receiving some help at the end from a woman and man who took hold of his arms and escorted him out, he said.

"I just think that women have waited 2,000 years," he said.  "It's long overdue.  Who are we to say God does not call women to the priesthood?"

 

[Cleopatra7]

Although polls indicate that most Catholics in the Wes approve of women priests, and even large numbers in Latin America believe the same (see this Univision poll, which seems to be the biggest survey ever done on what Catholics around the wold think about church issues http://univision.data4.mx/resultados_catolicos/eng/ENG_catholic-survey.pdf) I don't see the Vatican changing course. First, the demographics are skewing in favor of more conservative Catholics in Africa and Asia, and I think some bishops in Africa and Asia believe that Catholicism in the West is a lost cause. Assuming this opinion is common in the Vatican (and I think it is), then making women priests would simply be too little, too late.

Second, the philosophical-theological basis for the all-male priesthood is rooted in the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, which is in turn based on Aristotelian science, a body of knowledge which has largely been discredited. Aquinas took Aristotle's view that women are "misbegotten men" and from that said that women can't become "other Christs" during the mass, as only men posses the fullness of humanity needed to be priests. Of course, you can't say out loud that women can't be priests because they are "misbegotten men" but neither can you say Aquinas was wrong about this matter; the problem is that Thomism has been crowned as "the perennial philosophy" by the Catholic Church and you can't really say Aquinas was wrong without causing the entire theological edifice of post-medieval Catholicism to collapse (yes, I know Aquinas denied the Immaculate Conception, but that's relatively minor and doesn't pose a threat to the Catholic hierarchy or its culture war against "gender theory"). Perhaps women will become priests in the Catholic Church one day, but it will probably be 200 years in the future when we're all dead, and I'm sure the Church will claim it was always in favor of women priests.

[violynn]

This is totally OT, but I read in the news today about a Louisville priest who was sentenced to just 3 years for having child porn on his diocese computer, and the myriad parent complaints about him photographing children in inappropriate positions clothed and not.  How strange, on the same day to find two such different news items about the Louisville area Catholic churches.

I wonder if OP news topic was pushed forward to distract from the item I brought up.

[47of74]

2 hours ago, Cleopatra7 said:

Perhaps women will become priests in the Catholic Church one day, but it will probably be 200 years in the future when we're all dead, and I'm sure the Church will claim it was always in favor of women priests.

Yeah you're probably right.  Unfortunately.  Probably about the same time they allow married people to be priests too.  And yes they'll probably claim there were always in favor of it too.