Loading ...Vatican: No women priests
flockwoodVATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican is slamming the door on attempts by women to become priests in the Roman Catholic Church. It has strongly reiterated in a decree that anyone involved in ordination ceremonies is automatically excommunicated.
A top Vatican official said in a statement Friday that the church acted following what it called “so-called ordinations” in various parts of the world.
Monsignor Angelo Amato of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith says the Vatican also wants to provide bishops with a clear response on the issue.
The church has always banned the ordination of women, stating that the priesthood is reserved for males. The new decree is explicit in its reference to women.
[One minor quibble: saying that the church is "slamming the door" suggests that it's closing a door that had previously been open...]
May 31st, 2008 at 3:34 pm
Wonder why priests’ marrying wasn’t included in this round, just a little affirmation on this subject would have been nice.
May 31st, 2008 at 4:53 pm
Most Baptists that I’m a part of don’t allow women preachers, course most also don’t allow divorced men either to preach behind the pulpit.
May 31st, 2008 at 5:04 pm
Both the Baptists and the Catholics are operating contrary to the practice of the early church.
That church had women leaders–some moreso than men–who occupied a multiplicity of leadership roles in the Christian communities. A careful reading of the gospels, Acts, the epistles makes that absolutely clear.
During the second century the males, with their Jewish and Roman patriarchal traditions, kicked over the winning practices of the early church and the teachings of Paul on equality of sexes, races, etc. in Christ, and took over the leadership roles. They they wrote up pseudo-Pauline letters to rationalize their opportunism. Much of Christianity has suffered from their nonsense to this day.
May 31st, 2008 at 7:30 pm
What should be the main task of any church? Personally, the church should reach lost souls to Christ, and for the redeemed, the church should feed as well as develop the spirit by the word. I believe Christ died and resurrected for all people, I believe salvation is totally by and through God’s grace, through Jesus Christ, to me, this is the gospel in a nutshell.
June 1st, 2008 at 9:14 am
I struggle with the mega churches. When I was a child our church had 5 masses, 4 on Sunday, 1 on Saturday night. Then when the shortage of priests began, the philosophy of bigger churches came into play. The other denominations had begun addressing their ability to say fewer masses, services in the same way. The operation costs for these huge buildings continue to grow thus taking less opportunity to serve the poor and putting more of a burden on the parishioners financially and as they age it becomes their burden taking from their families. You could argue that God’s work comes first but then you could argue that God is comfortable in a small church that helps the poor more than a big church that puts a burden on its members. That’s my 2 cents, its up to the community that does it or has done it, to deal with the aftermath of a “vision” of its leaders. When you leave this earth, do you want to be in the graces of God or in the memory of what you feel the need to share with society in order to justify your existence.
June 2nd, 2008 at 10:49 am
Mr. Gravis,
Please cite some scriptures that give us the information about women and specific leadership roles. I would like to study them. Thanks.
June 3rd, 2008 at 4:39 am
I’m not Mr. Gravis, but for starters, how about the fact that the women at the tomb, according to the Gospels, especially Mary Magdalene, were the first to testify of the resurrection? After that, peruse Romans 16. I think the Greek word for “servant” is “diakonos”…
June 3rd, 2008 at 4:39 am
Acts 2:18 And on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my Spirit; and they shall prophesy:
The only way for handmaidens to prophesy is to speak. Other verses on women in the New Testament include: Acts 18:26, 1 Corinthians 16:19 and Romans 16.
June 3rd, 2008 at 4:55 am
1 Corinthians 14:34 Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience as also saith the law.
35 And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.
36 What? came the word of God out from you? or came it unto you only?
These are the verses generally held as being added at a later date-mainly due to the style that it was written.
Galatians 3:28 states that we are all one in Christ.
1 Thessalonians 5:19 says not to quench the spirit.
June 3rd, 2008 at 8:39 am
Thanks for the responses, but what I’m asking is for specific scriptures that show women holding priesthood offices. In our church we have women who hold leadership positions and sit in councils with men. I sit in them every week, but the women do not hold the priesthood. That is what I’m trying referring to; women holding priesthood office.
Obviously there were women who the Savior loved dearly and who were held in high esteem by those of the early church, but I can find no biblical reference as to them holding office in the church.
Personally, I think the influence of a good woman is far greater reaching than that of any holder of priesthood office; I know that is the case in my own family.
June 3rd, 2008 at 10:49 am
One wonders how long the Catholic Church can keep up this charade. They don’t allow priests to marry, which knocks out most heterosexual men right there. I don’t doubt that there are saints who can go a lifetime of celibacy, but they’re the saints, not the average. Then they don’t let women be priests. And now, after we’ve figured out the hard way that a good chunk of the priests are gay, they say they don’t allow gay men as priests, either.
The priest shortage is real, and the only way that it will be filled is to import more priests from third world countries. In a way, I suppose this is consistent with the immigrant history of the church in America; that’s where all those Irish and Italian priests of yesterday came from.
The Episcopal Church allows priests to marry, allows women priests, and in many instances ordains gay men and lesbians as priests and deacons. The result is that we have plenty of priests. My home parish in Lexington is probably a quarter the size of the average Catholic mega-church here, and we have twice as many priests. When I was growing up, there were two Catholic churches in my county even though there probably weren’t twenty Catholics in the county, and the larger of the two churches had a rectory which often housed three priests, who worked in the surrounding area. Now no priest lives in the rectory, one of the churches has closed, and most of the area parishes are primarily operated by nuns, with a priest occasionally appearing for mass.
This is no way to run a railroad. The Catholics have a marvelous opportunity here. They have an endless supply of Hispanic Catholics, who are not troubled by the priest abuse scandal, and who swell the masses in many cities (including Lexington). But if they persist in these silly ideas about not allowing priests to marry and not allowing women to be priests, they will have full churches with no priests.
June 3rd, 2008 at 5:27 pm
Whoa, whoa, whoa, just because you choose a life of celibacy , your not heterosexual. Why kinda statement is that? In the quest for the knowledge of God, part of the trip is to deny the body of its natural instinct, food and sex included. That’s a bold statement, I know some nuns in Nazareth that could truly educate you on eliminating a portion of life that consumes a tremendous amount of time for some people. In the catholic priesthood, its a calling, it like many other things that man controls gets abused by the few, but the overall concept is still sacred and worth pursuing, if you get the call.
June 4th, 2008 at 10:40 am
Perplexed, I said that some people are holy enough to live a lifetime of celibacy. I just don’t think there’s enough saints to go around, and we’ve seen what happens when the Church tries to put non-saints in positions requiring saintliness. To date, over 10,000 sexual molestations. That might make a reasonable person take a look at whether making celibacy a requirement rather than an option for the truly saintly is a good idea. But then one doesn’t expect a lot of rationality from an organization that still issues its proclamations in Latin.
June 4th, 2008 at 11:23 am
I guess my questions is how the whole celibacy thing got started in the first place. It is quite obvious that Peter himself was married, as it mentions his mother-in-law in the scriptures. While I obviously don’t agree with the assessment that women need to be priests (that goes back to the whole argument that the priesthood is God’s to give, not mens…), the whole idea of someone needing to be celibate to be a priest has always sort of baffled me. I’m not an expert on Catholic history, but I would guess it has something to do with the whole guilt about sex thing that seems to permeate the church. Is it the idea that sex, even with one to whom you have been legally and lawfully wed, somehow makes you less “saintly” (to use Caleb’s word)? I mean, does this go all the way back to
Adam and Eve and the idea that somehow the way we bring children into this world is somehow less than perfect? somehow impure? How does one justify this scripturally? I’m not knocking the Catholic church, I’d really like to know the reasoning behind it.
Having said that however, and people can agree or disagree, but we’ve never had one problem with priesthood leadership in our church in regards to having enough to go around, although heaven knows we’ve had enough “human beings” that have made mistakes in their priesthood callings, large and small. As to the number issue maybe that is because we don’t have a professional clergy, which the early church didn’t have either mind you. Maybe the answer is not ordaining women, or making up rules that never existed in the time of Christ. Maybe the answer is following the scriptures themselves when forming the organization of a church?
June 4th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
David, the whole “celibacy” thing has nothing to do with sex or holiness. It is a man-made rule that was initiated in the late 12th century. Up to that time (that is, the first thousand years of the church), both priests and bishops were free to marry and have children. And that was the problem. In the medieval world, nearly everything passed by inheritance, including church offices. The Vatican wanted to control the appointments of bishops (and the property that went with the bishoprics) rather than having their offices passed on by inheritance. Every modern Pope has recognized that the doctrine could be changed with the stroke of a pen, but being bogged down in useless tradition, none has been willing to make the stroke.
As far as using the scriptures as a guide, which set to you use? Do you use the earlier writings in the New Testament, which call for a socialist society in which a person with two coats is supposed to give one to his brother? Or do you go by the rules in all those little books at the end of the New Testament, which provide all sorts of rules and regulations not contained in the gospels or the works of Paul?
These later books were written after the Church began to be an institution, and needed clear rules as opposed to the almost Zen-like anarchy of, say, the Gospel of Thomas. I think the bottom line is that, whatever worked in 100 AD, we have to use what works today. And, by my lights, that includes jetisoning the doctrines of celibacy for priests and the ban on women priests. When the Episcopal Church began ordaining women in the 1970s, conservatives thought the world would end, and some of them broke away from the church. Now that we’ve begun ordaining gays and lesbians, the conservatives think the sky will fall again. It didn’t fall the first time and it won’t fall now. The conservatives who left in the ’70s look petty and silly today, just as today’s conservatives will look 30 years from now.
The biggest factor in church polity is that no one ever wants to change anything, and there are always things that need changing. Though the Mormons always go through the flummery of claiming divine intervention when they change things, at least they change them occasionally; if the Mormons were the Catholics, we’d still have polygamy and an all-white priesthood.
June 4th, 2008 at 4:19 pm
Priests don’t marry in the church simply because they seek to please the wife with material needs instead seeking the knowledge of God. Jesus asks men to leave their lives for the sake of the church. I beleive in Corinthians you can find info on women in the church David. Caleb, when all else fails, you go back to square one, back to the traditions of the early church.
June 4th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
Catholic priests do not have a higher rate of pedophilia than married clergymen, with the married clergy, it just moves in the home.
Math 18:6 But he that scandalize one of these little ones that believes in me, it would be better for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be drowned in the depth of the sea.
June 4th, 2008 at 4:50 pm
Everyone wants to go back to “the early church.” We can’t. We don’t know what their traditions and worship services were like in many respects because we don’t have any records from the earliest Christians. And, even if we did, what’s so special about going back there? I’d think the thing to do would be to find a system that actually works, whether it’s ancient or modern.
One thing is certain, though, and that is that no church today is anything like what we do know about the early churches, which didn’t have professional clergy, their own buildings, popes, prayer books, or the New Testament. If we really want to go back to “early Christianity,” we would tear down all of our churches, fire all of our priests, and meet together in little groups in people’s homes, fearful that the Roman authorities would find us.
And that would be silly. So, the next alternative is to do the best we can to spread the love of God in a society that may be just as hostile to it as the Romans were, but expresses that hostility in a different manner.
June 5th, 2008 at 12:55 pm
First of all, let me clarify things. When I talk about the organization of the church I’m talking about priesthood offices and those are clearly spelled out in the New Testament. I’m not talking about whether or not you should give someone your coat, Caleb, I’m speaking about the organization that Christ himself started when he called apostles and the seventy and ordination of bishops, etc.
And no, the sky didn’t fall when women were ordained priests in some churches, but what does that prove? The sky didn’t fall when the first murder was committed or the first people committed adultry either (well I guess it did if you count the flood!) but that didn’t make them right or correct, did it? That isn’t even an argument as to whether or not it should be done, speaking of women or gays and lesbians.
How do you suppose, Caleb, that the churches justify making changes if none claim to be able to communicate with God? I always hear that the Bible is the end-all, be-all of communication from God, yet in this instance you claim that we need to jettison what it says and use “what works today.”
As for the “flummery of claiming divine intervention” it’s actually called divine “revelation” and yes, Caleb, it does exist. You claim you want changes, but in the same argument want to poke fun at the only way that anyone could possibly claim to have the authority to make those changes? To me that’s akin to saying, “you know, I like to worship God, but I just don’t want Him to get so close that he actually speaks to man. That would be too weird….” Seems to me like we want to worship God as if He were no more than the mute idols of which Paul spoke on Mars Hill.
How can anyone claim to believe in the Bible, a book that was written by inspiriation and divine revelation, yet deny the very existence of the manner it was given to us? Sounds a little inconsistent to me. If the members of the early church had the same position on “divine revelation” and an expanded cannon then they would have rejected the New Testament all together.
And yes, Caleb, there would be a lot of things that would be different if all the Catholics were Mormons, but the world’s population probably wouldn’t be too different!
As for how they worshipped “back then,” of course they didn’t have chapels (don’t see where that has anything to do with it…where they met has much less importance than how and by what authority they met), and they certainly didn’t have professional clergy, but they did have apostles, prophets, pastors, teachers, evangelists, etc. Only one church that has all of those, or even claims to have them all today….
June 5th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
Perplexed,
I’ve read the scriptures and I know what they say about women. Like I said before, I’m not trying to learn about what it says about women, but what people claim it says about women and priesthood office. Also, just because someone has a wife doesn’t mean they will be “material” any more than they would be if they were single. Your statement is sort of an indictment on women as a whole. And nowhere in scripture does it say that a man has to leave his wife (I’m assuming “leave their ‘lives’ is either a typo, or if not then you’re saying that leaving their ‘lives’ would be the same as leaving their ‘wife.’) to be a priest. In fact, many times it refers to the wives of those who held the priesthood of God anciently. I agree with Caleb on this one (surprise!); the celibacy policy of the Catholic church cannot be justified scripturally and is totallly a “man-made” policy.
June 5th, 2008 at 1:47 pm
David, as for what church has what, either they all have everything or none of them have anything. You say that “only one church” has or claims to have “apostles, prophets, pastors, teachers, evangelists, etc.”
Let’s analyze that. As to the “pastors, teachers, and evangelists,” I suspect that all churches have these. So you must mean that only the Mormons have apostles and prophets. The technical definition of an apostle is an early follower of Christ. The Bible suggests that there were twelve of them (thirteen after the replacement of Judas, or fourteen if you count Paul, as he suggested), and as far as I know, none claimed to be Mormon. If you’re referring to modern people, anyone can claim any title. Prester John wrote a good post not long ago about various modern apostles, and I quipped that President Eisenhower referred to Norman Vincent Peale as America’s Apostle.
As to prophets, the technical definition of a prophet is not a seer of the future, but one who points out the problems and inequities in society, in an attempt to reform the society. Frankly, I don’t see any Mormon prophets. To me, a prophet is someone like Martin Luther King or Nelson Mandela, who tries to correct injustices in society. With its persistent problems with race and its generally conservative social standards, I don’t see the Mormon church doing this. I don’t doubt that they have people they call prophets, but as noted above, anyone can call himself anything, and usually get some church to agree.
As to your final point, as to what standards to use, as an Episcopalian, I go back to the Anglican three legged stool of theology that I’ve described in this space many times: We believe that the three hallmarks one looks to in theology are the Bible, church tradition, and reason (or experience). This system, adopted by the Methodists as well, and perhaps other churches, gives the flexibility one needs while providing a touchstone for a historic evaluation of one’s faith.
I know that tough intellectual analysis is harder than playing word games, but 500 years into this, we think it works better.
June 5th, 2008 at 5:41 pm
Caleb,
As for what church does have what, it’s interesting to me that no other church even claims to have those particular priesthood offices, and they are part of the priesthood. They are mentioned in the bible. Read Ephesians 4:11-14,
“And he (Jesus) gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers;
12 For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ:
13 Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ:
14 That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive…”
You “suspect that all churches have these,” regarding to three particular offices. Really? Where are they? And you give a “technical definition” of an apostle, but give nothing to back it up. They only were part of the early church. Really? How do you prove that? And by the way, the replacement of Judas (Mathias) would have been number 12, since Judas was no longer an apostle. You’re right, anyone can call themselves an apostle, but from where does his authority come? From a divinity school? Not many of those around anciently and I’m pretty sure that Peter never attended one, except the one he attended on the hills and valleys surrounding Jerusalem. An apostle is one who is a special witness of Christ, called as were those of ancient times.
I agree with your definition of prophet. It doesn’t necessarily mean someone who is a seer, but one who is a “forth-teller” or one who speak forth boldly regarding society and it’s ills. If you think that doesn’t happen from the pulpit in Salt Lake City then I’d invite you to actually read or listen to it, because it happens at least every six months at our general conference, so your definition is met.
Persistent problems with race? Really? The bishop is the local congregration next to mine is a Brazilian of African descent and he doesn’t seem to have any problems, even here in Utah. Another ward in our local “stake” had a black bishop until he moved because of job transfer. Two chairs down from me on our stake high council sits a man of Polynesian descent, as dark as many black men. No one seems to have a problem with him. Maybe you should stop living in the 70s in regards to our “race problems.”
And as long as the “conservative social standards” can be backed up by scripture, I have no problem with them. Why do you?
The other thing I would take issue with is your line about “anyone can call himself anything, and usually get slome church to agree.” There’s a major flaw with your argument. None of the men we revere as prophets or apostles ever asked for the position. One might argue the point with Joseph Smith, since he was the first, but from Brigham Young on, not one ever asked for the call. They didn’t go to school for it, they simply accepted the call when they were asked by high church authorities to serve. So there goes that argument out the window.
Caleb, your “tough intellectual analysis,” as you call it, is hardly that tough. And 500 years of arguments among churches about the simplest of doctrines is hardly proof that it “works better.” You can think I’m an intellectual lightweight if you choose and think I’m “playing word games” (funny how I can quote scripture about the organization of the church as written in the New Testament and you call it “word games…) and that’s fine, but you’d be incorrect on both accounts. The three legged stool of the Anglican church may be what you look to, and I can respect that as your tradition and right, but doesn’t the Bible itself teach us to follow scripture and revelation? As spoken in the Book of Amos, “Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets.”
June 5th, 2008 at 8:37 pm
David, Caleb, Ordained ministry began with the 12 Apostles, 12 male Apostles picked by Christ. History shows that early Christians intended a male only priesthood. Even the oriental or eastern church have never question this tradition.
The Protestant Church abandoned the priesthood in favor of pastoral duties. Although the Bible doesn’t say the priesthood is reserved only for men, it does imply just that. Women in the Catholic are treated equally except for the priesthood.
June 6th, 2008 at 5:41 am
It is not the Bible itself, but the interpretation of it that leads many to question it’s validity. It is the interpretation of the Bible that has led to the diversity of religions. All religions have deviated from the truth.
Deborah in Judges 4, is probably the closest to a priest in ancient times, however she sat under a palm tree to preach-teach or whatever terminology you may want to use.
A prophet/prophetess is a person who speaks for God, or in Jezebel’s case, a deity. Another term for prophet is one who speaks by divine inspiration.
a prophesy likewise can mean to make predictions or teach religious subjects.
So, in Joel 2:28 when it says that your sons and daughters shall prophesy it is saying they will teach the word of God, God does not care whether it is in a building that one calls a church, or under a palm tree.
A prophecy on the other hand is simply a prediction. According to Ezekiel 12:21-28 the predictions of a prophet must come true within a short period of time for the prophet to be of God.
An Apostle was always considered one who originally saw the resurrected Jesus, this is why Paul considered himself an apostle (by the other 11′s point of view) for he saw Jesus on the road to Damascus after his resurrection.
Paul mainly states that an apostle is an ambassador of Christ (2 Corinthians 5:20) and in 2 Corinthians 6:1-10 gives his qualifications. Notice in verse 10–they are poor: that would omit many who call themselves apostles or Evangelists by today’s standards.
June 6th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
The Bible is very plain, women aren’t to preach to men, qualifications for a bishop, the ‘husband’ of one wife!
June 7th, 2008 at 4:33 am
Mike: In ancient times the women in temples were prostitutes with shaved heads. The reason Paul told women of his time not to cut their hair or open their mouths was mainly due to this fact. The people were to be the exact opposite so as not to the ‘inkling’ of an impression as belonging to any other sect. In other words, when you looked at a Christian, you would know instantly they were Christian.
June 7th, 2008 at 4:37 am
BTW that one wife thing; would knock out all the divorced ministers of today, as well as the polygimists, which is in several religions-islam included.
June 7th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
In the catholic church divorce is excused on the condition of 2 things, abandonment and infidelity. That applies if you were married in the church to begin with. If not, the marriage isn’t recognized by the church.
June 8th, 2008 at 6:08 am
Divorce is recognized by the Bible in the case of a believer and non-believer (this is the true meaning of a mixed marriage 1 Corinthians 7:12-16) however, ministers who divorced was not allowed to run a church because if they could not run their homes appropriately then it was assumed they could not run a church adequately.
June 8th, 2008 at 10:09 am
Once again, questions arise from these statements we make. How can factor in expectations in intellect that God expects from us? How can we determine our error curve, because we are human? I’m perplexed on the direction we all take and which one is right. How humbling it is to try and understand what direction to take, yet, not taking a direction is as bad or worse than taking the wrong direction. Then to try and lead with all of this to consider. Its a little more complicated than we expected, Blessed be the simple, for life is theirs.
June 8th, 2008 at 11:46 am
David, I must admire your guilelessness. You apparently have swallowed, hook, line and sinker, everything your church has ever taught. The idea that no one “runs for” or seeks a position as an apostle in your church is laughable on its face. People like Spencer Kimball worked all their lives hoping for a chance at the big time, and others are doing so right now. No organization in the world is run by people with no ambition.
And your argument about looking to scripture because scripture says to look to scripture is invalid because it is a tautology, that is, it is an argument that folds back in on itself. You’re effectively saying: “The newspaper is accurate.” “How do you know?” “Because there’s a front page article in the newspaper that says it’s accurate.”
This doesn’t work in the real world. The only reason any of us think the Bible is canonical is because some church has said so. The Mormons ought to know this better than anyone else, because they’ve decided to canonize not one book, but two. The early church, after all, was deeply divided as to what books were considered to be canonical; as late as the second century, there were as many Christians who didn’t accept the Old Testament as canonical as there were who did. But ultimately the re-judaizers won, and we got an Old Testament and a New Testament. The content of the New Testament changed over time, too. Canonization is a conscious decision of a church, not an accident.
Which shows that, no matter what terms are used to sugar coat the fact, each church decides what it believes and justifies it in any manner it likes, but the ultimate authority is exercised by the church. This concept also applies to perplexed’s comment that the professional male clergy dates back to the apostles. This is certainly not reflected anywhere in scripture or in the early church fathers. The earliest mention in the church fathers that I know of to a “priesthood” and a laity is in the first epistle of Clement, written sometime around 100 AD. I suspect that the business about the apostles was used later to justify what the church began to do as a matter of course.
History is not as simple as it’s made out to be when you actually look at the facts.
June 9th, 2008 at 8:56 am
Caleb, when Jesus picked the 12 Apostles, that was considered by us (Catholics) to be the beginning of Catholicism.
June 9th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
Yes, perplexed, I know that is how Catholics consider it NOW. But that’s not how anyone considered it THEN; the whole idea of a professional priesthood didn’t come until well after the death of the apostles and anyone who knew them. Often, we use historical events later to justify policies or rules. That’s what happened here. But if you had asked anyone alive during the time of the apostles whether they were to be considered the beginning of an ordained, exclusively male, priesthood, they would have laughed. The idea of an exclusive priesthood is a later idea that someone grafted on to the idea of apostolic succession.
June 9th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
So, Caleb, if I’m so gullible (although I like the word you chose better, to be honest…
), and the Bible is as unreliable as you seem to ay, then why do you have religious beliefs in the first place? If we can’t look to scripture to guide us, which I believe was one of the three Anglican “hallmarks,” correct, then why do we even have the scriptures and how do they fit into your beliefs? You seem to reject the authority of the Bible itself, calling it “tautology” (and yes, I knew that word before), yet also reject the ability of God to speak to man. So what is it? You can’t reject both (or either one in my opinion) and still believe in a Christian God, can you? If you reject the ways He has given to speak to us, then you reject Him. Maybe I could have worded my sentence about the Bible but I’m sure you knew what I meant.
I’m not as “hook, line and sinker” as you might believe. I’ve had my questions and I’ve looked at both history, scripture and the works of those who have lead our church. My beliefs have come with honest searching of the scriptures (all of them; Old Testament, New Testament, Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants) and prayerful consideration.
And, to be correct, we have four canonized books, the four mentioned above.
As far as Spencer W. Kimball, give me some proof. I would doubt you have any other than third party references and hearsay. Give me some proof of the “others” that are now doing it. I know plenty of them, which I doubt you do, and none of them have done any “politicking for office” as you claim. In fact, I know of no local officers of our church who have done it either. The last “leader” (if you can call it that)that I saw “applying” for a position was a young missionary down in Ecuador who called in to the mission office incessantly when we received a new mission president because he wanted to be the new president’s assistant. He got the position, and he was very effective at it, but it only lasted six months and then he was replaced.
I enjoy your responses, Caleb. They make me think, but after reading them I find many inconsistent arguments and accusations without any proof to back them up.
By the way, you never responded to any of my remarks regarding our race relations, the call of apostles, my response to you saying that our leaders don’t speak out against the ills of society. Just some more responses about how I just don’t understand…
Belief in God, or in a religion, is never a matter of just human logic. We can start there, but eventually you’re going to find that it comes down to a matter of faith. The human mind, even one as intelligent as yours, is not going to comprehend all things of God. The things of the Spirit must be comprehended by the Spirit. Take out faith and the spiritual aspects of belief in God and you might as well just forget the whole thing and I would wonder why someone would engage in such as exercise in futility as belief in God without faith in the Spirit and what can be revealed to the human spirit by Deity.
June 10th, 2008 at 5:38 am
David Duke: I don’t know any of the things you have spoken about, I do know that the LDS church is collecting a massive amount of information on dead people under the guise of family search– http://www.familysearch.org
The only way they could have obtained information about my grandfather or father was through the ss death index. At first glance I thought it pretty cool, but they knew more info than I did, I began to wonder why–btw just so you know this is on the up and up this was at the bottom of the page:
Form submitted by a member of the LDS Church
June 10th, 2008 at 7:57 am
Caleb, all knowledge that we have today came to us from the past in one way or another. The beginning of all scientific formulas, the beginning of medicine, the beginning of religion. If I’m understanding what your writing and your interpretation is that we should start now with the building blocks of the church, I would have to argue with you on that one. If you consider history, the length and the accomplishments, I would say over the course of time we are stagnant. The basis for all philosophical arguments date back to the roman times as does architect and engineering. Medicine can be traced back to then, although alternative medicines existed in less documented civilizations. Religion is about the same, its origins are with God and then Christ on earth, but the record does not show any more activity of interaction. I just don’t see how you could start today, where would your basic belief come from? Who would you worship? Would your religion personally taylored to your present needs? How could you considered it a religion?
June 10th, 2008 at 11:06 am
Perplexed, all I ask is that people be honest, a quality the Catholics seem to have little of these days. When the Catholics today say, “We get our ideas about an all-male clergy from the example of the twelve apostles,” all I’m saying is “Oh, really? Because no one at the time thought that.”
You can go back and make up historical connections all day, and that’s exactly what most denominations, including the Catholics, do. And they’re generally not honest about the nature of those connections. I’m not suggesting that we begin from scratch, merely that we be honest with what we’re changing and what we’re not. The origin of an all-male priesthood and the discrimination against women that the organized church, Catholic and protestant, has perpetrated for almost two thousand years now, was probably a reaction against various gnostic sects which allowed women wide latitude in their worship and society. To differentiate themselves from these groups, the “orthodox” church began early on to exclude women from its rituals.
So, perplexed, no, I’m not suggesting throwing everything away and starting over, but I am suggesting that we be honest in our assessments of church history and theology. While I personally believe that the Anglican three-legged stool provides the most flexible and logical means of developing dogma without being dishonest. If anyone has a better method, I’m all ears.
June 10th, 2008 at 11:38 am
David, as to why I have religious beliefs, it is because I have been given the gift of faith by God. However, that gift doesn’t mean that I have to check my brain at the door. The Anglican communion has always stood for the proposition that logic and faith are not mutually exclusive and that, by our witness in the world, we can preach the love of God, the right use of his creation, and the just treatment of all people. And, we believe we can do it honestly.
You challenge me to respond to your comments about race. I’m not sure what you want, but here’s my take on it. I think the LDS Church was made up during the 1800s by people who were no doubt, as most people of the day were, racist. They are hardly the only denomination to impose racial restrictions on either membership or the priesthood; the Southern Baptists were rigidly all-white until the 1960s. A retired judge told me that when he was a student at Georgetown College (in Georgetown, Kentucky, near Lexington) in the early ’60s, the college recruited its first black student, the son of an African chieftain, who had been converted to Christianity by missionaries. Most of the faculty and students attended a particular Baptist church in Georgetown, and naturally he wanted to attend, too. But the church didn’t permit blacks to attend. So, the church entered into the same type of gutless compromise that allowed segregation to hold on so long by ruling that the student could attend services, but must wear his tribal robes, to separate him, one must suppose, from the normal black rabble.
And this was the 1960s. Imagine the atmosphere in the 1860s when the Mormons were taking over Utah. Naturally they excluded blacks from their priesthood, as most other protestant churches did. And, naturally, they came up with some type of mumbo jumbo to support their decision, just as the Baptists did. There are biblical passages that were used well into the ’60s to support segregation by people as prominent as Jerry Falwell.
So, it’s not unnatural that the Mormons would adopt a racist position. What is unnatural is that they would hold on to it long after everyone else had given up their racist views. You have scoffed in the past at the idea that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 could have motivated the change in doctrine. And you were right; you seem to love to knock down straw men. As you must know, the reason the LDS Church changed its racist doctrines in the late ’70s was because the church was in the midst of a big missionary effort in Brazil, whose population is primarily black. I guess the revelation from God came in the form of feedback from Brazil, where a segregated priesthood didn’t hold water. And, just as the apostles of the church saw the handwriting on the wall with polygamy when the federal marshalls were trying to sell their temple, they also saw the handwriting on racism when they needed black converts worse than they needed to mollify white racists. I have often scoffed at the timeliness of the messages God gave to the Mormon hierarchy, and I continue to scoff.
As to the tautology part, I didn’t say the bible itself was a tautology. I said that the idea that the bible was believable in any form because it says that it’s believable is a tautology. The only reason that any of use believe that the Bible has any validity is because the early church said it did. But this puts the primacy on the church, not on the book. Churches produce books; books don’t produce churches.
You see, the Anglican communion and the LDS Church are fundamentally different in origin. Our church, unlike most churches, was not formed by someone who thought he or she had received the true revelation of God. It was formed as part of a political compromise, and has been a compromise church ever since. We are, and proudly, a church that is not doctrinally based. We love the fact that we are a church, as they used to say, with a lot of room in it. We have evangelicals, pentecostals, liberals, and skeptics. And, perhaps because we don’t claim some divine provenance, we feel free to tell the truth. For example, when we wrote our own book, The Book of Common Prayer, to which we don’t ascribe the authority of scripture, but which provides the texts for use in our public worship, we didn’t make up a story. We didn’t say that seventy wise men had worked for seventy days and produced seventy versions of the same text, the way the Jews did about the translation of their scriptures into the Greek Septuagint. And we didn’t say the book came on gold tablets (which are, of course, not available for viewing today) the way the Mormons did about their book. We formed a committee, drafted the book, and printed it. And many scholars credit the Book of Common Prayer as the second most influential book in the English language, the first being the King James Version of the Bible, which we also translated, also by committee.
As to Spencer Kimball, you’re right. I never met the man. Therefore, anything I might ever know about him would be by definition second or third hand, things like books, magazine articles, and the like. And these make clear that he was a hard worker, an ambitious man who feared early in life, because of his own medical problems, that he might not follow in the chronological succession to whatever they call the Mormon Pope. There’s nothing wrong with ambition. I imagine the Archbishop of Canterbury was ambitious, too. But one doesn’t need to deny it.
David, I must say that you are a faithful believer in your church. that’s fine, but you might want to temper that guilelessness with a little logic and intellectual discipline.
June 10th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
Caleb, I see your point and acknowledge that it isn’t fair for women. On the other side I see the fear of including women into the priesthood not because they are women but because man has made the decision to override Christs’ authority. The question would be is man smart enough to do that? So far what I have seen doesn’t lead me to believe we are smart enough to come in out of the rain. That explains your breaks in the church. I’m not saying its wrong, or right, but a solution, that for now, works.
June 10th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
Perplexed, your problem is in suggesting that “Christ,” in whatever manner, made the first cut. There’s no evidence that he did. As I pointed out, many groups of early Christians allowed much substantive participation by women; the New Testament itself is full of stories of women participating in the early church. If anyone changed the rules, it was those who limited the priesthood to males. So, if your question is whether man was “smart enough” to make that cut, you decide. I can only say that my own church, the Episcopal Church, was very slow to ordain women, beginning to do so only in the ’70s. The reason it took so long was because the idea of an all-male priesthood was as entrenched in the Episcopal Church as it was in the Catholic.
Before the church hierarchy formally approved the ordination of women, a number of bishops around the country ordained some women to the priesthood anyway, a practice known as unauthorized ordinations. The then-bishop of Lexington, William Moody, who was a notorious conservative and opponent of women’s ordination, was quoted in Time Magazine as saying that if any more unauthorized ordinations occurred, he would ordain Secretariat, who was, at the time, both male and canonically resident in his Diocese (being a resident of Claiborne Farm, in neighboring Bourbon County).
As I look at the split in the current Episcopal Church over the recognition of the rights of gays and lesbians to participate fully in the Church, I see parallels between their plight and that of women during the bad old days. People don’t remember this now, but in the ’70s, a few Episcopal congregations left the church because of the issue, and are still out there somewhere as independent Anglicans. However, during the last 30 years, the rest of us have gotten used to women as priests, and I don’t think anyone would want to go back to the old ways. I suspect the Catholics would have the same experience. After all, every church I’ve ever known anything about, protestant or Catholic, had most of the useful work done in it by women anyway.
June 10th, 2008 at 3:21 pm
Caleb, I do agree with you , but I still feel God made the first cut in the old testament and Jesus picked the initial team. The real question here would be the accuracy of the Bible, which we know is subject to scrutiny. I personally feel that there are scrolls and manuscripts that could in fact have women as equals to men. How to have all this information packaged so that a new Bible that could be viewed as a gender accurate Bible would be the “miracle” that women would need in the catholic church.
June 10th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
You’re certainly right about that, perplexed. The primary purpose of the production of the New Revised Standard Version was to try to remove the gender biases from the KJV and the original RSV texts. Whether it’s a miracle for women, of course, is in the eye of the beholder. Though I agree with the theory of the NSRV, I don’t find its style nearly as good as the RSV. The other thing more people are looking at today are the early scrolls, perhaps the ones to which you refer, that were produced by the gnostics and other non-orthodox christian groups, containing far different accounts than those in the canonical Bible.
Scholarship is a wonderful thing, and despite my criticism of the Catholic Church, I have to say that the Catholics have come full circle on biblical scholarship. Despite getting off to a slow start under some of the more conservative popes, during the last fifty years or so, since Pius XII opened up the field of Catholic biblical scholarship, the Catholics have produced some of the greatest biblical scholars out there, such as Raymond Brown, whose NT introduction is probably the best on the market, and George McRae, my old professor. I’m currently reading Jaroslav Pelikan’s history of dogma in the church, and it’s an excellent treatise, too. If you look at the Anchor Bible series by Doubleday, most of the NT titles are written by Catholic scholars, including both McRae and Brown.
My theory is that if a church can produce scholars like these, it will eventually re-unite with its earliest traditions and re-open the priesthood to women.
June 11th, 2008 at 4:38 am
When God created man he gave him a soul. He is the only “creation” given a soul. This is the true meaning behind scripture that says “let us man man in our image”. Man has been delusioned about the physical aspect long enough.