This solution to the ongoing priest shortage has been a long time coming, and is inevitable. I've always said that the Catholic church will have married priests long before they would even remotely consider female priests. As the pope points out, there is already a certain subset of married priests (i.e. Anglican priest converts.)

summer said:
"I've always said that the Catholic church will have married priests long before they would even remotely consider female priests."


Agree. This is disturbing for many reasons. Women, QUIT empowering organizations that exclude you or demean you in any way! Most women defending their religions don't even recognize it because they have been conditioned through tradition for so long.

Whether it is bathing rituals because of your "unclean" time that remain or being subject to a male priesthood or rules about your reproductive decisions....I say stop keeping women down. Most women don't even realize they are keeping themselves subjugated.

I wish women would walk away form those archaic organizations that are dedicated to regression to the past. I wish that instead, they would form or participate in other social organizations that treat all fairly, and have relevant rituals and causes that addrress real issues like population control, education, environment, animal issues, mental illness, self independence in the workplace, health, etc. Religion has traditionally been an obstacle in all these areas.

I do think that if the Church allows married priests, that ~might~ cut down on the haven they have created for men whose sexual preferences have not been viewed as conventional in their religious culure. You know what I'm saying.

Women, stop going to MALE priests for advice and "blessings" until it is in an environment where men equally would go to female priests for the same reasons.

This male priesthood crap needs to die, and women have the power to stop it if they would quit giving it power. Men would be better for it and so will women, IMO.

end/opinion

It is no insult to women that imaginary authorities gravitate towards men, but I am glad the dichotomy makes people think.

We would all be better off without priesthoods.

I agree with you, Dagny, and female empowerment was the primary reason that I left the Catholic church. I was no longer willing to count myself a member of a church that does not see me as being fully equal to men.

I also agree that having a clergy where marriage is an option is a healthy thing. Most people want mates. Very few people are suited to a lifetime of celibacy.

The attempts to ordain women in various religions or cults have failed. And it doesn't make sense to try to change fundamental beliefs because it wouldn't be the same religion. I've always thought the same thing: It might be easier to start something new than to try to overcome entrenched patriarchy.

I wouldn't say that they've failed. The Episcopalians, Lutherans (ELCA,) Presbyterians (PCUSA,) etc. have all ordained women to the ministry or priesthood.

Sorry, should have specified the extreme ones like Catholicism and Mormonism.

I think the same applies for openly gay clergy, which some Protestant denominations now have. Don't know about the eastern religions.

It's easy to get confused! Liberal Protestants often have women and/or gay clergy. I've worshipped with leadership being gay or straight, male or female. Gender and orientation have nothing to do with being a good pastor, spiritual leader, or role model.

Gentle Gentile Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The attempts to ordain women in various religions
> or cults have failed. And it doesn't make sense to
> try to change fundamental beliefs because it
> wouldn't be the same religion. I've always thought
> the same thing: It might be easier to start
> something new than to try to overcome entrenched
> patriarchy.

This certainly has not been true of Judaism!!

Although there have been scattered reports from at least medieval times of women who were given smicha (ordination as Jewish rabbis), in modern times the first known woman rabbi (Regina Jonas, in Germany) was ordained in 1935. (She died in the Holocaust, in 1944.)

Sally Priesand was the first ordained, post-WWII, woman rabbi (1972, in the Reform movement).

The Reconstructionist movement ordained their first woman rabbi in 1974...

...the first Conservative woman rabbi was ordained in 1985...

...women rabbis are very heavily represented in Jewish Renewal (one of the newest Jewish movements)...

...and in the last few years several Orthodox women have received Orthodox smicha.

Rabbinical schools (does not include Orthodox rabbinical schools) are now reporting more female than male applicants... and at least one of the major rabbinical schools here in the US is soon going to graduate a class where the new female rabbis will outnumber the new male rabbis.

This is hardly a "failure"...and Judaism (in all of its various and multi-faceted forms) is still the same religion it has been for the past three thousand or so years.

The "entrenched patriarchy" CAN, most definitely, be evolved!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/14/2017 01:49PM by Tevai.

I refused to join the Catholic Church simply because they didn't allow women to be priests. Period. Enough reason. I was 18.

I don't accept any other step forward because women always allow ourselves to be considered last.

We need to walk away from patriarchal religions.

I completely agree with Dagny

The Catholic Church allowed married clergy for the first 1000 years of its existence anyway: If Francis allows this, he'll just be following historical precedent. I'd rather see female clergy allowed as well, but at least returning to allowing married male priests would be a significant step forward.

Years ago, the Catholic leadership reached out to conservative clergy in the rapidly liberalizing Episcopal church. Conservative, married, Episcopal priests would be welcomed into Catholicism provided they gave their total allegiance to Rome. They would still be married, live with their wives, and could use the wording of the rites they were familiar with. Not too many EP priests took them up on the offer.

Instead, many conservative Episcopal clergy opted to form a North American Anglican community governed by conservative African Anglican bishops rather than join with Rome.

The interesting part of this, to me, was the offer. There is no scriptural requirement for a celibate clergy.

BYU Boner Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The interesting part of this, to me, was the
> offer. There is no scriptural requirement for a
> celibate clergy.

"A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober..."

1 Timothy 3:2

:)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Ordinariate_of_the_Chair_of_Saint_Peter

"In the first decade of the 21st century, a number of bishops from the Church of England and the bishops of the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC), a global "continuing Anglican" body, independently approached the Vatican seeking some manner of corporate reunion that would preserve their autonomy and their ecclesial structure within the Catholic Church. Pope Benedict XVI promulgated the apostolic constitution Anglicanorum coetibus, permitting erection of personal ordinariates equivalent to dioceses, on 4 November 2009. The Vatican subsequently erected three ordinariates: the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham in the territory of the episcopal conference of England and Wales on 15 January 2011, the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter in the territory of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) on 1 January 2012, and the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of the Southern Cross in the territory of Australian Conference of Catholic Bishops on 15 June 2012."



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/14/2017 12:02PM by anybody.