Sr. Vassa: There's no ontological impediment to priestesses
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...
The degree to which the Antiochian Orthodox misread Vatican II was cause for some tragicomic moments- In 1974, Elias IV sent Georges Khodr on a (at the time) secret mission Rome to ask Paul VI to voluntarily suspend communion with the Melkite Catholics so that they could reunite with their Mother Church (as Melkite leaders were then starting to refer to the Antiochian Orthodox). In Khodr's account of the hour-long meeting years later, "Paul VI kept silent and I understood that he was not prepared for such an opening..."
ReplyDeleteI don't think it's appropriate to condemn the Council in toto. I think there are many strong parts of the Council and even Abp. Marcel Lefebvre said there were many parts of the Council that can and should be meditated on. It's possible to only partially condemn the Council.
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