This is all very sad, and Fr. Bourgeois is in need of our prayers for true repentance and adherence to the clear teachings of the Catholic Church. In his public dissent, Bourgeois claims:
The current Catholic Church doctrine on the ordination of women implies our loving and all-powerful God, Creator of heaven and earth, somehow cannot empower a woman to be a priest.
It is appropriate to point out firstly that a dogma is a revealed and/or defined truth, not a discipline or custom subject to change,
[A] dogma is now understood to be a truth appertaining to faith or morals, revealed by God, transmitted from the Apostles in the Scriptures or by tradition, and proposed by the Church for the acceptance of the faithful. ... A dogma therefore implies a twofold relation: to Divine revelation and to the authoritative teaching of the Church.and secondly, Pope John Paul II's Apostolic Letter, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, definitively addresses the subject.
-- Catholic Encylopedia: New Advent
Pope John Paul II says in this letter that, in granting admission to the ministerial priesthood, the church has always acknowledged as a perennial norm her Lord’s way of acting in choosing the 12 men whom he made the foundation of his church.
Because “in some places” women’s ordination is thought to be still open to debate or that the “Church’s judgment” on the matter has merely a “disciplinary force,” Pope John Paul declares “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.”
Pope John Paul says that “the fact the Blessed Virgin Mary... received neither the mission proper to the apostles nor the ministerial priesthood clearly shows that the nonadmission of women to priestly ordination cannot mean that women are of lesser dignity, nor can it be construed as discrimination against them.”
2 comments:
We, NOT YOU, will decide what is lesser dignity and what is not.
The Pope will lose the Vatican over this, because women don't have to put up with this and won't.
The Church is now bleeding itself of its own women, and it is getting nothing but what it deserves.
This is doctrine, not the Word of God. And what the Pope is doing is a sin.
Thank you anonymous for your comment.
I must respectfully draw your attention to the above where it states that "a dogma is a revealed and/or defined truth, not a discipline or custom subject to change". So in this case dogma does equal the Word of God.
Your second comment does not make sense to me, since the Vatican is not like a political election that can be won or lost. The Church is the guardian of the deposit of faith -- that truth is the same yesterday, today, and forever since it reveals God.
As to the fact that I do not decide the dignity of women, I will agree, since the dignity of women is not dependent on what any one human person thinks.
As to your offense, that I cannot control, but I can pray for your peace.
Post a Comment