A Neutered Christianity

On Tuesday, October 22, 2019, a group of feminists protested at the Amazon Synod to allow priestesses. According to The Guardian:
Campaigners have gathered in Rome to call for the lifting of a ban on female priests that would “save the Catholic Church” where it is failing to ordain enough men.

Activists from the Women’s Ordination Worldwide (WOW) group protested outside the Vatican on Tuesday as the church’s hierarchy pondered the idea of allowing married men in the Amazon to become priests in order to plug the shortage in the region. The activists argue that ordaining women priests would solve the issue as effectively and should be prioritized. The revolt at the Vatican shows the church is still failing women. 

‌"Empowering women would save the church,” said Kate McElwee, a Rome-based representative of WOW. “Our church and our Earth are in crisis – and empowering women in roles that they are already serving in their communities is a solution. We’re advocating for equality and that includes ordination.” 
(See www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/22/catholic-church-lift-ban-on-female-priests-activists-say).

These women are no longer part of the"lunatic fringe" in the Vatican II sect. According to Life Site News:

 The final document of the Amazon Synod calls for allowing women’s ministries at Mass, specifically saying that women can “receive the ministries of the Lector and Acolyte, among others to be developed.” While it does not specifically call for a permanent “diaconate” for women, it refers to the Commission set up by Pope Francis to study the question and says Synod Fathers will share their observations with the Commission and await the Commission’s report (para 103).

“It is urgent for the Amazon Church to promote and confer ministries for men and women in an equitable manner,” says the document (para 95). Quoting Pope Francis' exhortation Evangeli Gaudium, the synod document (para 99) calls for the Church “to create still broader opportunities for a more incisive female presence in the Church.” Quoting again from Pope Francis (from a 2013 speech), it says, “Let us not reduce the commitment of women in the Church, but promote their active participation in the ecclesial community.”...

The document asks the Pope to create a specific ministry for women in the Amazon called “woman community leader.”
(See https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/breaking-amazon-synod-final-doc-calls-for-official-womens-ministry-at-mass).

A "woman community leader"---whatever that means---is just the next step to deaconesses, and finally, priestesses.

 The One True Church has always been pro-female, but anti-feminist. God created both male and female, who both have the same calling to reach Heaven. However, men and women have separate functions. Using the same Masonic formula of "liberty, equality, fraternity (sorority?)," the feminists demand that God-given distinctions between male and female be eliminated.  It is interesting to note how the whole feminist movement seems inextricably tied into the pagan worship of nature/ecology, and (ironically) the practice of lesbianism which is unnatural. In this post, I will give a brief introduction to three of the "founding mothers" of the "women's ordination movement," and the Church's teaching on why only men can be validly ordained.

The Mothers of All Heresy

1. Rosemary Radford Ruether (b. 1936) is the daughter of a Protestant father and Catholic mother. Her father died when she was twelve, and her mother raised her as secular humanist with religious overtones. Rather than leave the Church, she stayed to subvert Her and spew her venomous hatred. She attended college and received an MA in classics and Roman history, and later a doctorate in classics and patristics at Claremont School of Theology; Ruether considers herself a "theologian." She was Carpenter Professor of "Feminist Theology" at the Pacific School of Religion and Graduate Theological Union, and retired from her long-term post as Georgia Harkness Professor of Applied Theology at the Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary (a Methodist seminary). 

Ruether is a proponent of murdering children, and since 1985, has served on the Board of Directors of "Catholics (sic) for Choice," which advocates the murder of unborn children by abortion. ("Catholics for Choice" makes about as much sense as "Vegetarians for Meat"---Introibo). Ruether first came to notoriety in 1964, the year the Vatican II sect was spawned from Hell, when she wrote that Church teaching on contraception makes a woman "an unwitting slave of biological fecundity." She refused to have more than three children because it would interfere with her career. Here are just some of her pagan-Satanic beliefs, culled from her writings (See Women-Church, [1986], Sexism and God Talk [1993], Goddesses and the Divine Feminine [2006]):

• There is no immortal soul
• There is no need to worry about moral rules because Vatican II has made Protestantism the theology of the Catholic Church, therefore pluralism is in, and there's no going back
• Women must reject Jesus Christ as Redeemer, and seek a "female substitute"
• The image of God as Father makes women "inferior" and is to be rejected
• Androgyny must be embraced as a way to escape "gender dualism"

2. Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza (b. 1938) was born in Romania and was raised in Germany after her parents fled the incoming Russian Communists in 1944. She subsequently earned the degree of Doctor of Theology from the University of Munster, and also considers herself a "theologian." She supports murdering unborn babies, and in 1984 was one of 97 members of the Vatican II sect who signed the infamous "A Catholic (sic) Statement on Pluralism and Abortion." The statement declared, "A Diversity of Opinions Regarding Abortion Exists Among Committed Catholics." The purpose was to help apostate Catholic Geraldine Ferraro, who was the first female running for Vice-President on a major party ticket, and she supported abortion while claiming to be a "good Catholic." While a few Vatican II sect "bishops" denounced Ferraro (most notably "Cardinal" O'Connor of NYC), she was not excommunicated, nor denied "communion" by "Bishop" Francis Mugavero of the Diocese of Brooklyn.

Fiorenza is a co-founder of the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, and teaches at Harvard Divinity School, where she teaches the equality of all religions, and in 1992, coined the word " kyriarchy," i.e., the alleged suppression of classes of people extending beyond women, to include " sexism, racism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, classism, xenophobia, economic injustice, prison-industrial complex, colonialism, militarism, ethnocentrism, anthropocentrism, and speciesism." (See Kwok Pui-lan (2009). "Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza and Postcolonial Studies". Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion. Indiana University Press. 25 (1): 191–197).

3. Elizabeth A. Johnson (b. 1941) is a nun of the Sisters of St. Joseph. Born and raised in Brooklyn, she refuses to be called "sister" since the end of Vatican II. She earned a doctorate in Sacred Theology from the Catholic University in America in 1981, the first woman to do so, and claims to be a "theologian" (N.B. only clerics can be theologians pre-Vatican II, and her degree is under the Modernist Vatican's non-Catholic theology).

Some teachings of Johnson:

• In her 2007 book, Quest for the Living God: Mapping Frontiers in the Theology of God, Johnson promotes pantheism. The book was enthusiastically received by the Episcopalian sect
• She denigrates Christ as "God walking around in clothes"
• Johnson denies the Blessed Virgin Mary was "humble and obedient" 
• In her 2009 book entitled, Ask the Beasts: Darwin and the God of Love, Johnson writes about God's "relationship with non-human inhabitants of Earth." It came out in honor of the 150th anniversary of the publication of Origin of the Species; Darwin's book promoting evolution

It should be apparent that "feminist theology" and those who support "women's ordination" are far removed from anything even remotely resembling Christianity. However, what are the theological reasons that women are barred by Divine Law from Holy Orders? 

The Teaching of the Church on the Exclusion of Women from Holy Orders

Canon Law. Canon 968, section 1 of the 1917 Code is clear, "Only a person of the male sex who has been baptized can validly receive the Sacrament of Orders." As the eminent canonist Bouscaren comments, "...the constant practice of the Church from the earliest days as well as the unanimous teaching of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church have excluded women from the reception of Orders..." (See Canon Law: A Text and Commentary, [1951], pg. 422). 

It is established that the Church is infallible in Her universal disciplinary laws such as the 1917 Code of Canon Law. 

Proof: According to theologian Van Noort, "The Church's infallibility extends to the general discipline of the Church...By the term "general discipline of the Church" are meant those ecclesiastical laws passed for the direction of Christian worship and Christian living." (See Dogmatic Theology, 2: 114-115; Emphasis mine). 

According to theologian Herrmann:

"The Church is infallible in her general discipline. By the term general discipline is understood the laws and practices which belong to the external ordering of the whole Church. Such things would be those which concern either external worship, such as liturgy and rubrics, or the administration of the sacraments…. If she [the Church] were able to prescribe or command or tolerate in her discipline something against faith and morals, or something which tended to the detriment of the Church or to the harm of the faithful, she would turn away from her divine mission, which would be impossible."

(Institutiones Theologiae Dogmaticae, Vol. 1, p. 258)

Pope Gregory XVI teaches: "[T]he discipline sanctioned by the Church must never be rejected or be branded as contrary to certain principles of natural law. It must never be called crippled, or imperfect or subject to civil authority. In this discipline the administration of sacred rites, standards of morality, and the reckoning of the rights of the Church and her ministers are embraced." (See Mirari Vos, para. #9).

This alone is sufficient to prove a male only hierarchy, but there are reasons from both Scripture and Sacred Tradition. 

2. Sacred Scripture. 

1 Corinthians 14: 34-35 states "Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church." In 1 Timothy 2: 11-12, we read, "A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet." According to theologian Haydock, commenting on the last passage:

It would appear from this regulation..as well as from the writings of the earliest Fathers, that the practice and condemnation of women interfering in spiritual affairs is not new. Tertullian says, "We do not permit a woman to teach, to baptize, or to arrogate to herself any part of the duty that belongs to man." ...The woman has tried once to teach, when she persuaded Adam to eat the forbidden fruit, and has woefully failed. Let her now be content to remain in silence, and subjugation to man. (See New Testament Comprehensive Catholic Commentary, pg. 1567).

3. Sacred Tradition. 

The approved theologians and canonists have always held the ordination of women to be invalid. So too, the eminent Fathers and Doctors of the Church held the same.  Here are just some Church Fathers:

St. Epiphanius, Against Heresies 79. 304 wrote: “If women were ordained to be priests for God or to do anything canonical in the church, it should rather have been given to Mary… . She was not even entrusted with baptizing… Although there is an order of deaconesses in the church, yet they are not appointed to function as priests, or for any administration of this kind, but so that provision may be made for the propriety of the female sex [at nude baptisms]. Whence comes the recent myth? Whence comes the pride of women or rather, the woman’s insanity?” In 49. 2-3 St. Epiphanius tells of the Cataphrygians, a heretical sect related to the Montanists. The Cataphrygians pretended that a woman named Quintillia or Priscilla had seen Christ visiting her in a dream at Pepuza, and sharing her bed. He took the appearance of a woman and was dressed in white.”Among them women are bishops and priests and they say nothing makes a difference’ For in Christ Jesus there is neither male nor female, ” [Gal. 3:28]

St. John Chrysostom, in On the Priesthood 2. 2 points out that Jesus said “Feed my sheep” only to Peter. “Many of the subjects could easily do the things I have mentioned, not only men, but also women. But when there is question of the headship of the church… let the entire female sex retire.” And in 3. 9 St. John wrote: “Divine law has excluded women from the sanctuary, but they try to thrust themselves into it.”

St. Augustine, On heresies 27 also speaks of the Pepuzians mentioned by St. Epiphanius. “They give such principality to women that they even honor them with priesthood.”

As to deaconesses, this was a mere sacramental, not a Sacrament. According to theologian Pohle, "The deaconess gives no blessing, she fulfills no function of priest or deacon...

If ever there was a woman who deserved the honors of the priesthood, it most assuredly was the Most Blessed Virgin Mary. But our Divine Lord Himself debarred her from the altar." (See Dogmatic Theology, [1924], 11: 126). 

4. Theological Reasoning.

From the Sources of Revelation, and the Magisterium, we see that women can never be validly ordained as deacon, priest, or consecrated as bishop. However, we must ask "why?" 

(A) The Different Roles of Men and Women. 

In marriage, women are the heart of the home, while the man is the head of the household. This in no way makes women inferior; the greatest human being was the Blessed Virgin Mary. (Christ was both True God and True Man, Mary was only human).God set up a specific order, and men are not to be subject to the authority of women in the home or in the Church. Yet, Holy Orders would put women in a place of precedence over men, so they cannot assume such a role.

(B) The Image of God. 

Although God is Spirit, He created man in His image and likeness. Woman was created from man. Therefore, men are directly in the image of God, and women are indirectly in the image of God. St. Bonaventure, Doctor of the Church, explains that Orders does not look to the soul alone, but to the soul united to the body, and by this reason the signification [of God's image] is produced which must be a visible sign.  Men are therefore directly in the image of God, Who has called Himself "Father," and Whose Son [masculine reference] took on a male body. Men can therefore signify the Image of God and Christ in a direct manner, which women cannot do. (See theologian Wahl, The Exclusion of Women from Holy Orders, CUA Press, [1959], pgs. 45-55). 

(C) The male sex signifies the Image of God directly and is necessary for valid reception of Holy Orders.

From (A) and (B) above, it is demonstrated that the male sex is a requirement to the validity of the reception of Holy Orders, just as a healthy person cannot validly receive Extreme Unction. 

Conclusion

The feminists who scream for ordination, seek to invert the God-given natural order. Perhaps the reason we have so many broken marriages is that men refuse to take care of their wives and respect them, and women want to have absolute equality; being more interested in a career like a man, and less interested in being the heart of a home and family. The "female theologians" want to be "equal to men," making Holy Orders more about a "power grab," and not about service to Christ. They want power, not service. They do not want to serve God or man. Like Satan in his prideful rebellion, their battle cry is "Non Serviam!" ("I will not serve!), and Bergoglio will help them advance.