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...
It has been a while since we had a public intellectual with the command of both the culture moment and Reason as Peterson has. He personally, and probably most of his usual guests (not Jonathan obviously) are still 'bottom up' thinkers and "theologians", and he explicitly admits this. This fact places significant limits on his ability to discern that which can not be seen, and thus Faith (the 'end', telos), but his journey and competence is obviously is having real impact with a great many folks - particularly young men.
ReplyDeleteIn his ten minute "Message to the Christian Churches" recorded a few days he prescribes that we "...stop being social justice warriors, and stop trying to save the bloody planet..."