Is the male-only priesthood a discipline or essential to the nature of being a priest? Sr. Vassa (again unflinchingly taking up a contentious topic by climbing up the ladder to the highest platform and then jumping into the deep end head first) dives right in and says there is no reason beyond personal preference to not have female clergy. You know, when people ask me about women in priesthood, they say, 'Sister, why can't women be priests?' And I say, 'Women CAN be priests. We don't WANT them to be priests.' Because you see, God can do anything, and the Church, by divine authority, uh, can do anything, but, the Church doesn't want to - and that's a legitimate reason. What I don't like is when we TRY to pretend that there are other reasons for this, because it's legitimate not to want something, and there are reasons not to want this - right? - but, we shouldn't pretent that there's some... reason, that, for example, the maleness...
I will not comment on whether blessing toilet paper in a church is appropriate or not, but for what it's worth, I'll simply recount something I was told. A close friend of mine, during a period of time before I met her, spent years addicted to drugs, and even prostituted herself to get money for drugs. I thank God that with His mercy she has been able to rise above that life, and is now healthy, happy, and very much a contributing member of society. I don't ask her questions about her previous way of life, but once she told me, sort of "out of the blue," that one of the worst degradations she remembers from that time was the fact that she almost never had toilet paper available for use. When visiting other drug addicts who had housing (of whatever type), those folks never seemed to have toilet paper, either. It really surprised me that despite everything she had gone through (mostly because of her own poor choices) the lack of toilet paper was one of her most painful memories. Even though we may laugh at what this minister is planning to do by "Blessing the Toilet Paper," I agree with him that this is an important item for parishes to be collecting and giving away to people in need.
ReplyDeleteMy mom grew up in utter poverty. The would tear pages out of the phone book when they ran out of TP. Pro tip: rub the pages together to soften them up!
ReplyDeleteIt definitely left an impression: my uncle had to explain to his fiance why there was an entire closet in his apartment filled with nothing but toilet paper.