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...
And I expect some reduction in metropolitan's power. Will they still be ruling hierarchs of auxiliaries with august titles. TBD.
ReplyDeleteThere's definitely a need for dioceses not to be gigantic, far-flung things with precious little relevance to the life of the parishes. How it can be cheaper to have more bishops who also do more I do not know, but it's surely better for the life of the Church (anywhere) in the long run.
ReplyDeleteI think the key to the logic is that each be of these diocese have a full time auxiliary Bishop and Ierokyrix (Bishop in training) not to mention staff that maybe could be divided among a smaller diocese
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