7. False Relationship Between Gospel of Life Issues & Vocations

An Argument Against Priestesses

"The Church's barriers to the 'conception' and 'gestation" of women's priestly vocations is a more serious evil than contraception between couples."

You are very presumptuous of the will of God. I put all pet ideas aside in favor of the Church which is guided and inspired by the Holy Spirit. Personal interpretation, when wielded against the Magisterium, can only lead to further fracturing in the Mystical Body. I would not want such a sin upon my soul. I will pray for you. For most of the Catholic world, the matter of women's ordination is a non-issue. Such talk in North America can only lead to schism.

"Since the hierarchal Church contracepts and aborts female vocations to holy orders, how can the pro-life message be effectively advanced?"

First of all, moving to an aside, I am glad to see that you are a brother-in-arms regarding the right to life of the unborn. God will bless you many times over for this. And yes, spiritual life, not as frequently discussed, is also crucial. The minister Pat Robertson said as much before the Right to Life March in January. We need to pray for the murdered unborn; but, we also need to pray for those who take human life so casually. The prospect that even one human being might be damned to the eternal fires of hell should fill us all with an urgent concern. Given the title of your post, not recorded here, I take it that you also view contraception as a moral evil. Again, I must congratulate you. It strikes me odd though, that you can see to the quick upon these issues and then so muddle up this matter of women priests. As in my last correspondence, I do not believe you have gotten the analogy right between the wrongness of these moral issues and the refusal of the Church to ordain women. Indeed, I do perceive a thread to the contrary from the thinking of one of my old professors, Fr. Charles Curran. In many of his arguments, he seemed to make a distinction between the physical and the spiritual. Thus, in contraception, the YOU could not be tied down to the manipulation of the BODY. I disagreed. This does not make me a "physicalist," but rather, an "integralist". He is clearly a "separatist". We can make distinctions between body and soul, but there are no human persons without one and the other . There are no people without gender. There is never any Jesus without his manhood. There is no hierarchial church as such, only a Church with interdependent roles and responsibilities that includes the hierarchy. The expression, "We are the Church," so often used by dissidents against the Magisterium, must, if it is to be genuine, also include the shepherds of our faith. You borrow divisive language about the ecclesial nature of the Church from those who would subvert her teachings and mission. Be careful.

Second, moving to your concern proper, your question does not follow and your basic hypothesis is still unproven. The burden of proof is upon those suggesting a change, not upon the adherents of the status-quo. As in abortion, if there is any DOUBT, you would be compelled to err on the side of no or less harm. Thus, taking for granted that the unborn are human beings, you allow them to come to term. Similarly, while we know for certain that Christ called men to priesthood, there is, even for honest proponents, some UNCERTAINTY about women priests. Thus, in the face of massive traditional data and revelation to the contrary, women could not ethically be ordained since it would jeopardize Apostolic succession and the Eucharist.

"Denial of a person's legitimate vocation is a kind of death worse that physical death; it implies a sacrilege against the divine Person of Jesus, himself. It is a violation of his will to call whomever he chooses."

Actually, are we not really talking about a dissenter's will masquerading as that of Christ's? Why is it we are more willing to posit the will of Christ with ourselves than with his shepherds appointed for that purpose regarding matters of the universal Church? What was the sin of Satan? Ah, yes, "I will not serve." What was Adam's temptation? "You will be as gods." Even the name of Satan, Lucifer means light-bearer, not overly different from the title of Christ as the Light of the World. Sometimes the devil pretends even to himself to be a god. We should not be led astray by his false luminosity. If the bishop calls a man to priesthood, he then knows for sure, objectively, with this confirmation of the Church, that it is the will of God. Before that all is seen through a haze and is subjective. I will not grant women an assurance in their calling to priesthood (which I contend is an illusion) that I will not grant to men until there has been a public call from the leaders of the Church. For women, this call will never come. Many men are called to study and to seminary who are actually not called to be priests, but perhaps just good laymen. They thought for awhile God was calling them to priesthood, but around the bend there were surprises. I suspect that some women mistake the call to holiness or consecrated life with holy orders. Others might be under the influence of a demonic spirit that lies to them. Still others might be drunk with a desire for power. As one woman desiring priesthood said on CBS's Sixty Minutes, "I'm too good now to be a priest, I want to be a bishop!" These are the kind of people who even turn those sympathetic to women priests against them.

Why is it that the Mother Teresa's of the world do not want to be priests and even fight against the notion? They do so because it is a deceit, neither the will of Christ nor of his Church-- and there is no credible objective evidence to the contrary. By the way, a sacrilege is a violation of a person, place, or thing publicly dedicated to the worship or service of God. If a woman was formally consecrated to the religious life and ill treated, that would be sacrilege. The same would go for an ordained priest. If even the dismissal of a male seminarian is not considered such then this categorization would definitely not apply to female "wannabe" priests.

The exclusion of women from holy orders does not handicap them from being "fully alive". Was Mary alive? Was the Little Flower alive? Was Theresa of Ovalle alive? Claire? Catherine of Siena? Sure they were! Women need not be priests to know that God loves them and has given them the opportunity to live out this love in the single life, marriage, or in the consecrated life. The real point should not be the exclusion of women in priesthood. What we really ought to be delving into is the wonder of God calling men to serve in this capacity for the sake of us all. You may consider me 'an intolerant traditionalist' with attachments 'to fossilized mental attitudes,' but I see myself safe in the ancient and yet ever-new witness of our saving heritage. For one such as myself to surrender it, believing these ageless truths to be true, would force me to act against my conscience. I would have no doubt that I would be cutting myself off from Christ's true Church and damning myself to eternal perdition. There is no danger in my stance; all the uncertainty is on your side, and the consequences for error are too horrible to imagine.

"Nevertheless, I hold that the Church is rendering vocational contraception and abortion; a worldwide holocaust is going on and the hierarchy is responsible."

Where is your syllogism? There is no logical middle-term between your connection of biological contraception and abortion with what you consider such for female vocations! And, I and others are convinced that these women have mistaken a call to holiness with that for orders. There is no spiritual fetus or embryo for priesthood. Ordination immediately makes one a sharer in holy orders. A calling is not a vocation in miniature. It does not develop or evolve.

Now you go too far and make me angry. Despite your hollow words to the contrary, you show no respect whatsoever to the Holy Father. You defame one of the saintliest men who walk the earth, and along with him, the good bishops who are steadfast with the Lord against the fads and fashion of a faithless world. Indeed, your statement condeming the hierarchy for a vocational holocaust is a violation of the decalogue. YOU BEAR FALSE WITNESS. If you do so in your right mind then your are convicted of a most serious transgression against the moral order. Some might even suggest that you have defacto ruptured your ties to the Catholic Church, planting yourself firmly in the camp of heretics. Yes, it may be a nasty word, but in this tragic case it seems to be descriptive. I will pray for you soul, that you may yet be rescued from your folly. Returning to your text, the sensus fidelium is an externalized and constant fidelity to the truth.

A shrink might suspect that you project your own insecurity upon others by inventing a "collective" but really, narcissistic, "subconscious" of Catholic believers that, in actuality, extends no further then your own soul. You have moved from something empirically provable to that which is purely subjective. Sorry for the roughness, but your attempts at originality have transgressed from trite to offensive.