Why are there no women priests?
must have seen or heard Sister Joan Chittister on radio and TV. Now an octogenarian, she was a prioress of Mount Saint Benedict Monastery in Erie, Pennsylvania who has been campaigning for integration of women into the Roman Catholic priesthood, but to no avail.
The only time I saw her was on these words in his inaugural address: “Oprah,” the popular TV show of “My real program of governance is Oprah Winfrey where she reiterated not to do my own will, not to pursue her unchanged stand on “priesthood my own ideas, but to listen, together for women.” with the whole Church.”
That reminded me of Pope On the day Pope Benedict XVI said Francis’ words addressed to a that, progressive Catholic women Swedish journalist who had asked were badgering the Church to him to lift the ban on women priests. integrate women into priesthood and He said, “Saint Pope John Paul II had fire homosexual priests, apparently the last clear word on this and it because of the dwindling number of stands,” referring to a 1994 papal manly men entering the seminaries. document stating that women could Did he listen? never join the priesthood. No deal.
Sister Chittister has influenced I remember that forum “Defending younger nuns to toe her l i ne Our Faith” on a forgotten date in critical of a “patriarchal” Church. Antipolo City where speaker Dr. Surprisingly, Vatican has refrained Michael L. Tan, now chancellor of the from disciplining them, probably for University of the Philippines-Diliman, fear of provoking wider dissent. joked, “Fire the homosexuals? Then
Could Sister Chittister have there would only be half of the priests influenced the decision of Pope left.” Francis’ predecessor, Pope Benedict In his lecture, Dr. Tan blamed XVI, to retire after only eight years seven “early church fathers” of reign? for misogyny, handing down to
Let us remember that in the succeeding generations their sexist year 2005 when Pope Benedict XVI treatment of women. ascended the papal throne to succeed Tan cited Tertulian ( 150- 225 the late Pope John Paul II, he uttered AD), a North African theologian, for
calling woman “the devil’s gateway who still bears the curse of God on Eve.”
St. Ambrose ( 339- 397 AD), as Bishop of Milan, imputed second- class status on woman because “she was only a rib taken out of Adam’s body.”
St. John Chrysostom ( 347- 407 AD), Bishop of Constantinople, called woman “an inescapable punishment, a necessary evil for the man.” He urged men not to marry.
St. Augustine ( 354- 450 AD) blamed Eve for the “original sin.” Adam could not have eaten of the forbidden fruit had Eve, the only one who succumbed to the serpent’s deception, not t ransgressed first. Thus, Augustine hyped his conversion to Christianity as “a vocation of celibacy.”
St. Albertus Magus (1200-1280), Dominican theologian, openly despised women in a sermon: “When a woman has relation with a man, she would like, as much as possible, to be lying with another man at the same time. Woman knows nothing about fidelity.”
To St. Thomas Aquinas ( 1225- 1274), “women symbolize decay, deformity and the weakness of the age.”
Pope Gregory I, who reigned from 590 to 604 AD, i s badly remembered for his idea that the woman was fit only for either harlotry or maternity. Despite that, he was later canonized as St. Gregory the Great.
If the aforementioned pillars of the Catholic faith were to resurface today and repeat what they said in their time, today’s women would probably stone them to death.
I ncidentally, i t i s not my intention to offend the Catholic Church. I quoted none but Catholic sources. com/
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