Friday, May 07, 2010

Degrading women at Saint Michael's Parish in East Longmeadow, Massachusetts

"What St. Paul's profound insights teach us is that sex is not an accidental characteristic of man and woman. A human person without sex is a strange abstraction. Sex entails the very identity of each person; sex plunges to the deepest mystery of each human person. St. Paul indicates this reality when he affirms that sexual sins involve persons up to the depth of their beings. He makes a sharp distinction between sins committed outside the body, i.e., outside the depths of one's being, and those committed against one's body, i.e., against what is destined for union with God as his temple and for resurrection and glorification with Christ. Hence the sexes, and the vocations pertaining thereto, are not interchangeable. Each person is called to serve God and his fellowman, accepting gladly the sex with which one is endowed and the vocation attached to that sex.

The Dutch scholar Buijlendijk has expertly unmasked a modern error concerning the sexes. In his book Woman he says that it is only at an embryonic state of modern 'feminism' that it is naively supposed that equality of women to men means women must do all things men usually do. This error fails to honor women for it neglects their positive, unique contribution to human society. Indeed, under the guise of advancing women to equality with men, this false principle makes a final attempt to subject women completely to the tyranny of purely masculine criteria.

Women cannot be made 'copy-cat' men without degrading them by unnaturally robbing them of their femininity. A bogus masculinity does not honor or liberate women. Woman is honored and left free when she is genuinely accepted as an integral woman with all the characteristic charms of femininity. For woman contributes to human society what she alone can contribute with consummate excellence - the mothering, nurturing and training of the human family through tender love. It is the sin of sham modernity to subject women to the imperialism of the egalitarians. This would destroy the identity, the very humanity, of woman, both of which are linked mysteriously to her femininity." (Father Vincent P. Miceli, S.J., The Antichrist).

A bogus masculinity does not honor or liberate women. Bearing this in mind, examine the photos taken at Saint Michael's Parish in East Longmeadow, Massachusetts during the Easter Season. See here.

Does Father James Scahill accept the Church's teaching as expressed in the Catechism of the Catholic Church and Pope John Paul II's Apostolic Letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, No. 4, that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful?

What do you think?


Related reading here.

2 comments:

asia said...

God has made women and men to be different and when it comes to church ministry God calls men to leadership roles. Men should lead and teach the church. Priestly ordination is for men alone or was reserved for men alone. The basis is written in the New Testament. While women could publicly pray and prophesy in church (1 Cor. 11:1–16), they could not teach or have authority over a man (1 Tim. 2:11–14), since these were two essential functions of the clergy. Nor could women publicly question or challenge the teaching of the clergy (1 Cor. 14:34–38).Fr. Scahill should not erase the truth he should accept and recognize the truth.

Paul Anthony Melanson said...

No Catholic is free to reject the Church's teaching in Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, No. 4. This teaching has been proposed in a definitive way by the Magisterium of the Church.

In his Apostolic Letter Motu Proprio Ad Tuendam Fidem, Pope John Paul II wrote:

"To protect the faith of the Catholic Church against errors arising from certain members of the Christian faithful, especially from among those dedicated to the various disciplines of sacred theology, we, whose principal duty is to confirm the brethren in the faith (Lk 22:32), consider it absolutely necessary to add to the existing texts of the Code of Canon Law and the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches, new norms which expressly impose the obligation of upholding truths proposed in a definitive way by the Magisterium of the Church, and which also establish related canonical sanctions....

Canon 750 of the Code of Canon Law will now consist of two paragraphs; the first will present the text of the existing canon; the second will contain a new text. Thus, canon 750, in its complete form, will read:

Canon 750 – § 1. Those things are to be believed by divine and catholic faith which are contained in the word of God as it has been written or handed down by tradition, that is, in the single deposit of faith entrusted to the Church, and which are at the same time proposed as divinely revealed either by the solemn Magisterium of the Church, or by its ordinary and universal Magisterium, which in fact is manifested by the common adherence of Christ’s faithful under the guidance of the sacred Magisterium. All are therefore bound to avoid any contrary doctrines.

§ 2. Furthermore, each and everything set forth definitively by the Magisterium of the Church regarding teaching on faith and morals must be firmly accepted and held; namely, those things required for the holy keeping and faithful exposition of the deposit of faith; therefore, anyone who rejects propositions which are to be held definitively sets himself against the teaching of the Catholic Church."

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