Feminism and the ordination of women as priestesses and ministers.

[°Leprechaun]

What is your opinion of religion vis a vis the idea of equality for women?

Do you have a problem with denominations that refuse to ordain women?

Do you think certain religions have a problem with feminism in general?

etc. etc.

Do certain religions fail to provide women with equal rights?

Should women have full equal opportunities in religion and in other aspects of society?

How much is the United States (as one example) a patriarchal society, and is that good or bad and do you think it will improve?

The Roman Catholic Church is certainly patriarchal but so are a lot of religions.

[Alben Barkley]

What is your opinion of religion vis a vis the idea of equality for women?

I disapprove of religions that treat women as inferior/do not practice gender equality.

Do you have a problem with denominations that refuse to ordain women?

Yes.

Do you think certain religions have a problem with feminism in general?

Do certain religions fail to provide women with equal rights?

Yes. Generally it has more to do with how fundamentalist/conservative a particular denomination/church is than anything else though. So while I would say that on the whole Islam is probably the religion that has the biggest problem with misogyny these days, there are fundamentalist Christians and even orthodox Jews that are much worse than more moderate Muslims.

Should women have full equal opportunities in religion and in other aspects of society?

Yes.

How much is the United States (as one example) a patriarchal society, and is that good or bad and do you think it will improve?

I think it has improved a lot. Women objectively have a lot more opportunities and a lot fewer barriers today in the US than any time in the past. Obviously sexism isn’t gone completely by any means: for one thing, we still haven’t had a woman president, and it’s pretty embarrassing that the most qualified female candidate lost to the least qualified male candidate in 2016. But still, things are definitely changing and I have no doubt they will continue to improve.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I refuse under any circumstances whatsoever to belong to any church that does not permit the ordination of women.

[Farmlands]

It is somewhat surprising to me that the Pope nods at same-sex civil unions, all while being intransigent on gender equality in the Church, on paper much less divisive. And surely enough, no Catholic woman I know disapproves, they accept it as part of the package. In any case, I echo the above posters' thoughts.

[Chunk Yogurt for President!]

I refuse under any circumstances whatsoever to belong to any church that does not permit the ordination of women.

How do you square that with the Bible?

[Kingpoleon]

How do you square that with the Bible?

There is a higher law than even Scripture, and those who proclaim that Scripture is the universal, literal, whole, and highest law make a claim about the Bible that it does not make about itself.

I square it the same way I do when Paul forbids women from wearing jewelry - certainly applicable to the specific group in the specific time he was writing to. However, Paul himself also speaks of several ordained women. Furthermore, my conscience not only neutrally dissents from those who forbid the ordination of women - it outright demands such ordination. I would view myself as being guilty before my mother, my female pastor, my grandmother, and many other women if I told them that I was more qualified for the priesthood than they are. Indeed, if I told my mother that, I would expect to get slapped.

Sexism is a sin, and to partake in it on God’s behalf is the highest form of blasphemy.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I refuse under any circumstances whatsoever to belong to any church that does not permit the ordination of women.

How do you square that with the Bible?

Any writings on this in the Bible were written very specifically to certain cases in certain churches and the main concern was that women at the time were not as educated. It's obsolete today.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

The prohibition on women priests is one of several reasons I am not a Roman Catholic. I am not more qualified to lead a flock or counsel to people simply because I have a penis. As Eve was created from the rib of Adam, and not from his head or his feet, women are equal to men before God.

And at least with women priests, I mean, how often do you hear about women messing around with choir boys? [/snark]

[afleitch]

If what god 'ordains' for male and female roles happens to dovetail with societal rules and traditions of the time in which it was written then you can be assured there's nothing ordained about them. Except by men.

[Chunk Yogurt for President!]

How do you square that with the Bible?

There is a higher law than even Scripture, and those who proclaim that Scripture is the universal, literal, whole, and highest law make a claim about the Bible that it does not make about itself.

What is the higher law?  And how can we know it?

I square it the same way I do when Paul forbids women from wearing jewelry - certainly applicable to the specific group in the specific time he was writing to.

That was written in the context of modesty.

However, Paul himself also speaks of several ordained women.

When?  Because afaik there's no evidence of female priests or pastors in the early church.  Female deacons did exist, on the other hand.

Furthermore, my conscience not only neutrally dissents from those who forbid the ordination of women - it outright demands such ordination. I would view myself as being guilty before my mother, my female pastor, my grandmother, and many other women if I told them that I was more qualified for the priesthood than they are. Indeed, if I told my mother that, I would expect to get slapped.

I'm certainly not saying I'm more qualified than women.  I'm equally unqualified as very few men are qualified to be ordained.

Sexism is a sin, and to partake in it on God’s behalf is the highest form of blasphemy.

I'm not partaking in sexism.  The Bible is clear that men and women are equal, but it is also clear that the two sexes are not interchangeable.

[Chunk Yogurt for President!]

I refuse under any circumstances whatsoever to belong to any church that does not permit the ordination of women.

How do you square that with the Bible?

Any writings on this in the Bible were written very specifically to certain cases in certain churches and the main concern was that women at the time were not as educated. It's obsolete today.

That seems like a very convenient way to explain away uncomfortable doctrine.

[Xeuma]

The ordination of women is a theological impossibility as most recently infallibility declared by St. John Paul II. I do think it is odd to use this as the canon to determine the the truth of any particular religion. It would seem to me that a religion is proved or disproved long before we get into the social fault lines du jour.

[Associate Justice PiT]

How do you square that with the Bible?

There is a higher law than even Scripture, and those who proclaim that Scripture is the universal, literal, whole, and highest law make a claim about the Bible that it does not make about itself.

     The irony of using sola scriptura to disparage the authority of the scriptures because they never directly claim to be infallible (which is highly debatable) is highly amusing to me. It is a concept unknown to the Sacred Tradition of the Orthodox Church, and I am thankful for that. If we do not have an infallible source of truth to rely upon, then we are in darkness and our beliefs about God and His will are ultimately arbitrary. At that point we are little better off than the atheists who claim no source of revelation.

[afleitch]

How do you square that with the Bible?

There is a higher law than even Scripture, and those who proclaim that Scripture is the universal, literal, whole, and highest law make a claim about the Bible that it does not make about itself.

     The irony of using sola scriptura to disparage the authority of the scriptures because they never directly claim to be infallible (which is highly debatable) is highly amusing to me. It is a concept unknown to the Sacred Tradition of the Orthodox Church, and I am thankful for that. If we do not have an infallible source of truth to rely upon, then we are in darkness and our beliefs about God and His will are ultimately arbitrary. At that point we are little better off than the atheists who claim no source of revelation.

We're doing fine.

[Associate Justice PiT]

How do you square that with the Bible?

There is a higher law than even Scripture, and those who proclaim that Scripture is the universal, literal, whole, and highest law make a claim about the Bible that it does not make about itself.

     The irony of using sola scriptura to disparage the authority of the scriptures because they never directly claim to be infallible (which is highly debatable) is highly amusing to me. It is a concept unknown to the Sacred Tradition of the Orthodox Church, and I am thankful for that. If we do not have an infallible source of truth to rely upon, then we are in darkness and our beliefs about God and His will are ultimately arbitrary. At that point we are little better off than the atheists who claim no source of revelation.

We're doing fine.

     Obviously you would think that.

[afleitch]

How do you square that with the Bible?

There is a higher law than even Scripture, and those who proclaim that Scripture is the universal, literal, whole, and highest law make a claim about the Bible that it does not make about itself.

     The irony of using sola scriptura to disparage the authority of the scriptures because they never directly claim to be infallible (which is highly debatable) is highly amusing to me. It is a concept unknown to the Sacred Tradition of the Orthodox Church, and I am thankful for that. If we do not have an infallible source of truth to rely upon, then we are in darkness and our beliefs about God and His will are ultimately arbitrary. At that point we are little better off than the atheists who claim no source of revelation.

We're doing fine.

     Obviously you would think that.

That's because I'm not judgemental.

[Associate Justice PiT]

How do you square that with the Bible?

There is a higher law than even Scripture, and those who proclaim that Scripture is the universal, literal, whole, and highest law make a claim about the Bible that it does not make about itself.

     The irony of using sola scriptura to disparage the authority of the scriptures because they never directly claim to be infallible (which is highly debatable) is highly amusing to me. It is a concept unknown to the Sacred Tradition of the Orthodox Church, and I am thankful for that. If we do not have an infallible source of truth to rely upon, then we are in darkness and our beliefs about God and His will are ultimately arbitrary. At that point we are little better off than the atheists who claim no source of revelation.

We're doing fine.

     Obviously you would think that.

That's because I'm not judgemental.

     Neither am I. Looks like we have something in common.

[afleitch]

How do you square that with the Bible?

There is a higher law than even Scripture, and those who proclaim that Scripture is the universal, literal, whole, and highest law make a claim about the Bible that it does not make about itself.

     The irony of using sola scriptura to disparage the authority of the scriptures because they never directly claim to be infallible (which is highly debatable) is highly amusing to me. It is a concept unknown to the Sacred Tradition of the Orthodox Church, and I am thankful for that. If we do not have an infallible source of truth to rely upon, then we are in darkness and our beliefs about God and His will are ultimately arbitrary. At that point we are little better off than the atheists who claim no source of revelation.

We're doing fine.

     Obviously you would think that.

That's because I'm not judgemental.

     Neither am I. Looks like we have something in common.

Obviously you would think that

[Associate Justice PiT]

How do you square that with the Bible?

There is a higher law than even Scripture, and those who proclaim that Scripture is the universal, literal, whole, and highest law make a claim about the Bible that it does not make about itself.

     The irony of using sola scriptura to disparage the authority of the scriptures because they never directly claim to be infallible (which is highly debatable) is highly amusing to me. It is a concept unknown to the Sacred Tradition of the Orthodox Church, and I am thankful for that. If we do not have an infallible source of truth to rely upon, then we are in darkness and our beliefs about God and His will are ultimately arbitrary. At that point we are little better off than the atheists who claim no source of revelation.

We're doing fine.

     Obviously you would think that.

That's because I'm not judgemental.

     Neither am I. Looks like we have something in common.

Obviously you would think that

     Indeed

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

This is something I privately disagree with my Church on but it's not a key issue for me, mostly because it's, for whatever reason, not a key issue for most of the Christian women I know. If they were more up in arms about it I probably would be too, and if I were more up in arms about it I probably wouldn't be an observant Catholic.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

How do you square that with the Bible?

There is a higher law than even Scripture, and those who proclaim that Scripture is the universal, literal, whole, and highest law make a claim about the Bible that it does not make about itself.

What is the higher law?  And how can we know it?

The three sources of authority within Anglicanism (and since everybody else is, without any hint of irony, asserting what their church states as the infallible doctrine, I'm doing so too) are Scripture, Tradition, and Reason, as a "three-legged stool" which falls if any of those legs is not upright. Reason includes the human capacity to discern the truth in both rational and intuitive ways, and that most certainly includes Scripture, which came literally billions of years after Creation and Reason had been divinely established - and was only accessible to a minority of the world's population.

However, Paul himself also speaks of several ordained women.

When?  Because afaik there's no evidence of female priests or pastors in the early church.  Female deacons did exist, on the other hand.

Female deacons did indeed exist (although it was controversial among some church fathers and theologians whether women could also be priests), but it was only until the 12th century that the church started saying "Don't ordain women as priests" (without implying that women never were ordained), but prior to that, theologians argued that whenever the words of consecration are recited, the consecration happens regardless of whether a man or a woman says them. (The right to consecrate the bread and the wine, however, is the sacrament of orders for priests, according to Alexander of Hales.)

Theologically you could argue that women who were ordained and served in priestly roles and consecrated the bread and the wine weren't "actually priests", but that would be a theological argument and not a historical one.

In the 13th century, we see the rise of Aristotelian philosophy in the church, and Aristotelian biology does not take a very favorable view of women. But that, contrary to what conservative Christians might suspect, is when the debate begins to take place. Some said, "Women used to be ordained but we don't do it anymore." Some said, "Yes, we still do. Abbesses are still ordained." And some said, "Not only do we do not ordain women, but we never did." And by the end of the 13th century the latter becomes the dominant opinion.

And this is where the authors/censors of history come in: you have examples of laws that say, "Women have to stop serving at the altar." Many older laws make reference to the presbytera (feminine word for priest) and the diacona (feminine word for deacon). So then the church had to explain those references away, because it was never supposed to have happened.

Furthermore, my conscience not only neutrally dissents from those who forbid the ordination of women - it outright demands such ordination. I would view myself as being guilty before my mother, my female pastor, my grandmother, and many other women if I told them that I was more qualified for the priesthood than they are. Indeed, if I told my mother that, I would expect to get slapped.

I'm certainly not saying I'm more qualified than women.  I'm equally unqualified as very few men are qualified to be ordained.

You are saying that, actually, as you are taking the position that women by default are wholly unqualified to be ordained. You would inherently be more qualified for ordination based on the fact that you are male, if the complementarian view is correct.

Sexism is a sin, and to partake in it on God’s behalf is the highest form of blasphemy.

I'm not partaking in sexism.  The Bible is clear that men and women are equal, but it is also clear that the two sexes are not interchangeable.

Nature's pretty clear about that too. But as to whether men or women may be called to serve as priests, I think history shows that the pre-13th century church's position on that was ambiguous at best. And it's perfectly valid to question if women's exclusion from leadership roles was in fact divinely inspired in a society where men already had more rights and authority over virtually anything and everything.

[Mopsus]

Isn’t there something to be said for having one place in society that does things the way they’ve done them since time immemorial? Traditionalists understand that there are things they can’t control - will the modernists really not be satisfied until they have everything?

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

Isn’t there something to be said for having one place in society that does things the way they’ve done them since time immemorial? Traditionalists understand that there are things they can’t control - will the modernists really not be satisfied until they have everything?

Well, I can't speak for all modernists, but I personally won't be satisfied until I'm God Himself. What's your life's ambition, to raise a family in a quaint Tuscan villa somewhere? That's cute.

[Associate Justice PiT]

Isn’t there something to be said for having one place in society that does things the way they’ve done them since time immemorial? Traditionalists understand that there are things they can’t control - will the modernists really not be satisfied until they have everything?

     The idea that there are things we cannot have is generally rejected by modernist thought. Their goal will be to try and modernize all spaces, but the beauty of religious pluralism is that traditionalists can have traditional churches and modernists can have modern churches. As long as we are vigilant, we can safeguard our faith and practice.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

Isn’t there something to be said for having one place in society that does things the way they’ve done them since time immemorial? Traditionalists understand that there are things they can’t control - will the modernists really not be satisfied until they have everything?

Well, I can't speak for all modernists, but I personally won't be satisfied until I'm God Himself. What's your life's ambition, to raise a family in a quaint Tuscan villa somewhere? That's cute.

Actually, it is.

Well, a Ligurian villa might make more sense, but I'd like to be closer to Florence.