Well, my hair (in need of washing) is bound up snugly, an old tomboy always has lots of plaid flannel shirts and it’s even the right season, but it’s too late at night to drive out to Walgreen’s and buy up every 12″ spandex bandage they have. I guess I’ll just have some more of that leftover generously spiked eggnog…

A bunch of Episcopalians-only-they-don’t-know-it-yet recently did this.

I believe that I will skip the video — it probably would not play on this old PDA anyhow — but I do note that the video was made in an Episcopal franchise.

Ordination of women is a bit like gay marriage: to make it mean something one has to redefine the very fundamentals of the institution concerned to the extent that institution no longer exists and a completely new one emerge. Yes by all means ordain women if you want to but it will no longer be the Catholic Church founded by Jesus Christ Plenty of them around already. In the same way, s/s marriage requires the redefinition of the natural law concepts of what “male” and “female” mean and and what the fundamental purposes of marriage are).

For me this is an issue I don’t feel should be argued. There are too many issues that aren’t covered before you get to be this stupidity that really need to be dealt with.

Two points from the film though:

They want THEIR church back.
Are they really saying that it isn’t God’s church?

ALL the other churches.
Most Baptist, and at least the PCUSA do not ordain women. (Honesty).

It’s all about THEM, not about God, my (our) failure, his sacrifice and offer to redeem us from a fiery pit.

Two things to note:

(1) They will regret invoking Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face in this context. The Little Flower is not to be trifled with. Example: In the course of a discussion on another blog about consent in sex and what true consent would look like, in response to another commenter I left a comment which included a plaint about how some people never even got a Valentine’s Day card in their life (that would be me included in that number, by the way). Fifteen minutes later, I go to collect the post and find a mailing from the Society of the Little Flower which included St. Valentine’s Day cards. That girl is HARD CORE, I tell you! Do NOT mess with Doctor of the Church Saint Thérèse of Lisieux!

(2) This part made me laugh:

“Where did you get your priestly attire?

“The priest vestments were actually from a costume company down the street from the WOC office and were originally created for a production of Becket. They were created for men and much too long for any of us. We shorted them by knotting the backs with ponytail holders. Just two weeks after we borrowed the costumes, the store randomly closed down.”

Ladies, you are so sold on calls from God and words from the Holy Spirit, you think maybe God is trying to tell you something here? Store lends (fake) vestments to you – store closes down. Any idea what that might be saying?

So, that’s why St. Thérèse of Lisieux died so young. God took her home before she could go off the rails. Elizabeth Cady Stanton is one of the “Saints” of TEC. The problem with this is that she was an atheist.
http://sanjoaquinsoundings.blogspot.com/2012/12/feminism-and-church.html
the biggest threat to the church is the feminist attack on orthodox Christology.
http://sanjoaquinsoundings.blogspot.com/2012/12/jesus-was-male.html

What strikes me is that most of the time in the Catholic Church, this issue just doesn’t come up. So sideshows like this video don’t bend me out of shape. Just a minority living in a Protestant country, dying out like the mainliners.

Political correctness, the religion that’s replaced the churches for many Americans, is a logical evolution of the mainline and Catholic liberals, so you have the irony of their views becoming mainstream and enforced while the denominational brands such as the Episcopalians fade away. Most kids cut out the middleman and the God-talk and stay home or do social work, since there’s almost no social pressure anymore to join a church (unless you want to be president, a reason Obama joined one once). The religious minority goes for real religion, conservative Catholic or evangelical.

The PCUSA are the liberal mainline Presbyterians; they ordain women. The PCA, the successful conservative breakaway (in the ’70s?), doesn’t.

J. Stuart Little:

“… and at least the PCUSA do not ordain women.”

http://www.christianpost.com/news/presbyterian-church-usa-votes-to-allow-openly-gay-clergy-50176/

I meant to add that a friend of ours is a woman pastor at a PCUSA parish in southern Indiana, and her parish has voted to leave PCUSA over the gay clergy issue.

It’s a parody of progressive Piskies! I’ve been baptized!

OK, for those of you who need a palate cleanser after that – “Call Me Maybe” has also been made into a Rosh Hashanah/Happy New Year song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gj8nUAdgMw

Personally, I smile every time I see it.

Enjoy.

Actually, I don’t know of anyone who could have come up with a better parody than this if they tried. It was a joke, and sad.

And I should probably expand my point, because this has been an issue with me for years, since my conversion (and I wrote, back in 2002, a nasty letter to USA Today about Catholicism & the Eucharist, so I was no fan of Catholicism at one point):

The purpose of women’s ordination is NOT “equality” or “justice”…it’s meant to destroy Catholic doctrine. With the introduction of women “priests” we’d also get abortion, contraception, gay marriage and feminism.

Because I’ve never met an advocate of women “priests” who didn’t want all those other things introduced to the Church, too. I guarantee you that a conservative woman like me who (if I had a stroke and suddenly supported ordination simultaneously with pro-life, anti-contraception, traditional marriage)…the women’s ordination crowd wouldn’t want me.

These are the same people who argue that we’re all entitled to our own beliefs, that there are “many paths to God,” yadda yadda yadda…

But the second your beliefs aren’t met with their approval, you no longer have the right to believe what you want.

And I left the WELS Lutheran Church because I disagreed with its doctrines and teachings. Yeah, I could have stayed and caused trouble. But WHY? What purpose did that serve? The people of the WELS are free to worship as they see fit (and they’d never have women clergy, either). I did the intellectually honest thing and LEFT. I didn’t try to remake the WELS in my own image. Because that’s what mature people do…

/rant

*Catches breath*

Can you tell women’s ordination sticks in my craw in a special way?

don’t listen to Saint Paul

Is a collar so necessary to these women to spread the Gospel? Saint Thérèse wasn’t ordained.

And if you won’t listen to St. Paul, what else will you ignore? Come over to the remains of the Episcopal Church they will take anyone.

Amy P., I was a young MBA-grad Episcopalian when they began ordaining women. Opponents then argued, among other things, that same-sex marriage would be next. “Silly old fogeys,” I mumbled. They were right, and you are, too; doctrinally Nicene pro-life ordained women are few and far between. The problem is category confusion, I believe. The NT writers were led by the Holy Spirit to understand that pagan sex and fertility worship is the logical end of forgetting that men and women are created equally beloved by God but different. We don’t honor God by trying to escape our created beings.

I grow weary of all the womyn’s arguments about ordination of women as “priests.” It is just ontologically impossible, but they don’t want to hear that, so they chatter on endlessly about “rights” and “callings” and other such irrelevant nonsense.

I do not even argue the points any more. They refuse to listen.

Is a collar so necessary to these women?

Doctrinally Nicene pro-life ordained women are few and far between.

Exactly.

They’re the biggest clericalists. It’s not that the Catholic liberals love Catholic teaching on the Mass; they don’t! They want power.

The Pilgrim
I should know better than to be posting at 2:32 am I meant the PCA not the PCUSA. Thanks much for catching it and I apologize.

There is an argument that can be made from Scripture for woman “speaking” in church. I made it to my father many years ago and after careful consideration he agreed. I have shared it with no one else until this time and …
it is going to stay that way, I am not going to give non-Christians another tool to destroy the Church.

What you need is:
Belief that Scripture is directly inspired by God. (God Breathed if you prefer).
Belief that God is not as myopic as we are.
Have read the Bible from one end to the other – and back again.
There are a couple of other things needed but if a liberal gets to this point they probably will drop their other quest.

Well, Amy P, you’re just now meeting a supporter of women’s ordination who does not also support abortion and gay marriage. Pleased to meet you.

Chris, when I read the descriptive “Episcopalians-only-they-don’t-know-it-yet, I had to laugh, but the group seems very hard core and determined to agitate from within the Roman Catholic Church. Reminds me of the joke circulating here in Minnesota during the last election concerning the one-man-one-woman Marriage Amendment strongly advocated by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese here:
Q: What do you call a Roman Catholic voting “No” on the one-man-one-woman Marriage Amendment?
A: An Episcopalian.

I have come to the conclusion that the best argument against women’s ordination is the women who want to be ordained.

Anglicat, did the FCD you work with originate as EFM, out of Sewanee?

the group seems very hard core and determined to agitate from within the Roman Catholic Church.

My understanding is that any woman who simulates ordination, and anyone who materially participates in that simulation, is excommunicated latae sententiae, so good luck to them with that “within” business.

They are also not very ecumenical; when they sing about other churches “shmoozing” them but they won’t go because they’re Catholic –

- well, doesn’t that mean they don’t accept that the Anglican church is a branch of the Church Catholic? That Lutherans are not both Reformed and Catholic? Or other liturgical churches?

I’m sorry, ladies, do you mean that the Roman Catholic church is the only Catholic church (how positively pre-Vatican II of you!), or did you mean to say “I’m Latin Rite Catholic”?

And yeah, I’m torn: on the one hand, I wish they would move to a more welcoming environment, but on the other hand, you guys have done nothing to me worth wishing that kind of misfortune on you.

Why wouldn’t these females want to go to St Thomas for this?

St Thomas, Dupont Circle (known in DC as the Fruit Loop) — dipping into the endowment to keep the lights on since at least 2002.

Also a shining example of the vacuity of TEo’s claim that the hordes that would storm the doors after Vicki’s “consecration,” and home to some of the largest AA and NA groups in the city.

And one of those parishes that won’t marry anyone until they can “marry” everyone.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton is one of the “Saints” of TEC. The problem with this is that she was an atheist.

You don’t see the synchronicity in this Mr. Matson?

Katherine, thanks for asking about Foundations for Christian Discernment (FCD). It has NO connection with Sewanee or EFM, although the short and fairly-accurate description of FCD would be to say that it is an Orthodox program SIMILAR to EFM. IN FCD, EVERY word of scripture is read, not just short selections, and the history and theology texts are those actually used in colleges and seminaries, not watered-down “special” texts. Traditional spiritual disciplines are taught, such as setting a personal rule of life and exploring various forms of personal prayer. The theological reflection exercises integrate the reading, and always circle back to scripture. Email with any more specific questions, if you like.
http://www.fochdi.org ; http://www.Christsummons.blogspot.com

This kind of Catholic Modernist has crossed the line from what I call Bad Catholics, people who don’t practice the religion and even disagree with the church but know the church won’t change for them, and that there’s only one church. Lots of them in Catholic countries/immigrant-based cultures. (Cab driver in one Latin country: ‘I left the one true church; why should I join yours?’) There are degrees of that, from the sporadic churchgoer to Christmas-and-Easter to only rites of passage (hatch-match-dispatch), baptisms, First Communions, confirmations, weddings and funerals (part tribal custom, part fire insurance like the devout).

The Modernists think they can change the church’s essentials. Just like mainline Protestants.

This crew may well still believe Catholicism’s the true church. Which isn’t just pre-Vatican II (though pre-V2′s better). V2 didn’t define doctrine, and defined doctrine can’t go against earlier definitions of doctrine. So V2 maintained the one-true-church claim (it couldn’t do otherwise) while trying to be as nice to non-Catholics as possible. Nothing wrong with that, but in this case it sent out the wrong messages of relativism, what Catholics call indifferentism, the belief that there is no one true religion (if all faiths are true then none of them are), and universalism (sounds merciful but violates man’s free will to be evil).

Anyway, Bad Catholics and these folks don’t all just join the Episcopalians partly for that reason, related emotional/family/ethnic reasons (if your grandparents were from Armagh or Calabria you’re not going to join the Queen of England’s Ur-WASP church), and as the great Thomas Day explained to Anglo-Catholic alumni in the Catholic Church, for historical reasons nothing to do with theology, English-speaking (Irish) Catholics are less attached to elaborate ceremonies than other Catholics, so, left, right and center, they welcomed the changes after the council. Episcopalians, despite their liberalism, don’t have that aversion to high churchmanship. So, ironically, these (ex-)Catholic heretics don’t join because the Episcopalians often worship too much like us trads do! Seriously, can you imagine these people using birettas, maniples or the altar rail? Me neither.

So they try hard to turn the church into their cultures’ version of mainline Protestantism. Back in the ’70s and ’80s it looked like they were winning in America (some predicting they’d go into schism and form an ‘American Catholic Church’, something the old Protestant majority long wanted; why the Episcopalians backed Polish and Italian parish schisms for example, and do ‘Hispanic outreach’ now), but they’re dying off for the reason I said earlier. Sensible people don’t see liberal religion’s point and drop out.

Their invocation of Therese de Lisieux is laughable. After all, she is a canonized saint and a Doctor of the Church. Most priests don’t get that far. And she prayed daily for priests.

Have any of these women ever thought about the responsibilities of priests, of what they’ll be answerable for in Eternity?

WTF,
“You don’t see the synchronicity in this Mr. Matson?”
It’s not synchronicity. It’s the fact that being a feminist in TEC is more important than being a Christian.

1.) That what I mean. Sorry if it’s poorly stated.

2.) I thing I agree with you 100% Fuinseoig, but I would add that at least some of this group realize that they attract a certain amount of publicity if they proclaim themselves to be Caholic. If they become honest and join a Protestant denomination, their “15 minutes of fame” disappears.

3.) I notice that one of the lines repeated in this ditty says something about if you baptize them you have to ordain them. The gays use this line too. It’s so shallow, not even deep enough for “bumper-sticker” theology. Yet it still sells to the “educated class.”

Yes, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, ironically in all their declamations of equality, they’re actually exhibiting the worst kind of clericalism.

Heck, if being baptised means we should all be ordained, then we should emulate the Orthodox and not alone baptise but chrismate and communicate the infant, then go one further with the imposition of hands! About the only sacraments left are Penance (and who needs it since we are all as God intended us to be?), Anointing of the Sick, and Matrimony.

That last might be tricky in the case of babies, but hey – if you have a group of families with babies being baptised all together, they could all be simultaneously married! Strike a blow for both same-sex marriage equality and polyamory!

Meanwhile, in more heartening news, the coat of arms of the newly-consecrated Archbishop Ganswein:

“His personal arms dominated by the dragon that heraldically symbolizes his patron, St George – and, in this instance, has been viewed as a symbol of the secretary’s determination to protect the pontiff – Gänswein has taken “Testimonium Perhibere Veritati” (“To bear witness to the truth”) as his motto.”

St. George the Dragon-Slayer – inspiring choice!

Anglicat, thank you for your response. I looked over materials for the Foundation for Christian Discernment and saw the words “theological reflection” which raised unpleasant memories from my attempt many years ago to do my adult Christian education with EFM. That program seemed to me to be far more reflection and revision than it was study of the Scripture and traditional theology. I am glad to learn there is a theologically orthodox alternative.

My opposition to women’s ordination is entirely experiential. I have never met a woman clergyperson (with the exception of one) that was a follower of Jesus. They are all doing it because of feminism, or gender equality, or hatred of patriarchy.

And every church I have seen pastored by a woman has collapsed in terms of attendance, belief and support. The men are usually first to go, followed by young families. They aren’t replaced by anyone else.

Read all the stories of churches closing you now see in the news. You will find that the majority of those stories refer to a woman pastor, who, if she is quoted, is totally clueless about pastoring, ministry, evangelism, or anything else.

I wouldn’t dispute that it is possible for a woman to be inspired by God and be called to go into the ministry. It’s just I have never met one (with the exception I have mentioned).

I have met one, Jim the Puritan, and based on her efforts at orthodox scriptural training, Anglicat, above, is another. There are a few impressive women among the more “evangelical” parishes of the ACNA. In the newly-formed Diocese of the Carolinas (ACNA), the bishop is required by constitution to be male, and all rectors are to be male. I looked over the clergy list and found only one woman. What I hope is that more and more women in the conservative churches will translate calls they may feel into being teachers, counselors, or scholars, rather than insisting on ordination to the presbyterate. The priest is by no means the only servant of Christ in the parish or diocese.

Incidentally, they’re lying by omission with the Terese of Liseux quote.

Also, I’ve yet to hear Catholics invoke St. Paul as support for male-only priesthood. It’s more of a fundamentalist objection in my experience. The main argument is that Our Lord chose only male disciples. Much like he only used bread and wine for his body and blood. It is how He handed the Sacraments to us and we don’t have the authority to change them to say, pizza and beer.

Jim the Puritan: “And every church I have seen pastored by a woman has collapsed in terms of attendance, belief and support. The men usually go first.”

Having been harangued by women from birth throughout all their lives by women and pretty well told they are worthless and responsible for everything that is wrong with the world, they are not going to choose to go and be harangued by more women when they go to church. Whenever/wherever churches have been feminised they have become women’s business.(see below) On the other hand, no woman would not take kindly to be preached at by another woman when every woman knows that she knows better than any other woman about everything.

Incidentally witness what has happened to the “altar boy” ministry in the Catholic Church since girls have been allowed to become “altar servers”. It has become almost totally dominated by girls. The traditional dictum in the Catholic tradition has always been that “service as an altar boy is the first step towards the priesthood”. So the “altar girl” phenomenon is a a two edged sword both edges undermining the traditional view of the priesthood itself: Reducing the aspiration of boys by the reduction in the sowing of “the seed of vocation” and at the same time rousing false expectation for girls,

I think the group hires out as liturgical dancers should any one have a need for some.

1) If the chasuble is the outermost liturgical vestment, which they note in their FAQ, why do they wear stoles over it?

2) notice that right away she doesn’t say that the priesthood is her call, she says “woman priest is my call”. Is this lyrical slip-up an admission they know they’re not really priests?

3) if this crowd is so inclusive and sensitive to others, what’s with the choreography that mocks American Sign Language?

Quoth Labarum: “I have come to the conclusion that the best argument against women’s ordination is the women who want to be ordained.”

Too true. Of all the women i have ever talked to who expressed support for women’s ordination in the Catholic Church, or expressed a desire to be ordained, only one of them has ever said anything about desiring to serve God’s people.

The rest of them talk about equality and such like.

The impression i have formed of these people is not that they want to be priests, exactly; it’s more like they want to be priests so that they might become bishops, because that’s where the power is…or so they believe.

The whole plot of St. Therese’s life is:

1. She wants to do bunches of things as a kid. (One of many of them is being a priest. Or a hermit. Or a missionary. Or….)

2. She grows up spiritually and figures out that God actually wants her to pray and suffer for the people doing bunches of things. (And especially for priests and missionaries.)

3. She doggedly perseveres until she’s allowed to join up with the Carmelites to pray and suffer.

4. She prays and suffers and smiles through it, she dies, she goes to Jesus, and she still keeps praying for everybody.

So if these people really wanted to imitate St. Therese, they’d be praying and discerning. (Or they’d be busy offering up their dying of TB, but God forbid they should be thrown such a loop unprepared.)

Interesting video. Not fond of the song but I will give them credit for choosing someone who actually can sing to some extent. I gather this was done outside an Episcopal parish. Heck couldn’t they just asked that parish to borrow some vestments. What was the point? Dance in the streets and the RC church will change its mind? Don’t think so.