Church takes action against Jesuit for celebrating mass with a woman priest

It's not "tangential," Gearoid4. The Creed must be theologically correct and must include the essentials of faith. If Jesus existed with the Father before creation of the world and became incarnate at a specific point in history, the incarnation would be contingently gendered, but by no means essentially gendered, for as divine spirit--essentially-- Jesus has no use for sexuality. Only polytheists insist that gods are gendered. Or to put it another way (Genesis), God has all genders, since "male and female 'he' created them" and "in the image of God" he created both, not just Adam. Gender words ("Father," "Son," "begotten") are no more than metaphors when we speak of God; they falsify the phenomena for the sake of our limited human understanding. So I find a theologically naive blasphemy in this new "argument," that a priest is some kind of "icon" and that male gender is of the essence of Jesus. And your insistence that my ideas are "woman VERSUS man" suggests to me that you cannot get past a medieval male-female-dichotomy. But what "female" means has changed profoundly over the centuries, and perhaps "male" needs to change more for men to realize that a trait as malleable as gender does not divide humanity (anthropos) into two distinct essences.

@Seano, Perhaps I should not have used the "funny" cigarette remark in relation to the comment of a previous poster but the crass stupidity of it made him react so.

The priest is an "Alter Christus" and thus stands as an iconic representative of the Lord and his male gender is intrinsic to this. This is not a simple woman v man argument which is futile anyway in relation to this discussion. It represents a healthy differentiation of the roles that men and women play in the Church. The priest essentially offers himself in the way that a good shepherd takes care of his sheep or the head of a household looks after his family. I am familiar with the Greek word used in the Nicene and other Creeds that are recited during Sunday worship which depicts all of mankind, but this is tangential to the subject of the question of the admission of women to the Catholic priesthood.

@Eiriamach, The Gnostic sect followed heretical beliefs which have been roundly rejected by traditional Christians. These beliefs included dualism(which separated the soul from the body) and the creation of the material earth to the devil and thus the rejection of the sacramental system because of it's use of such material substances as oil and water. So the Gnostics are hardly a sound source to find historical proof of the admission of women to the priesthood.

Fr. Brennan is to be thanked for his years of devoted service in Latin America. His work has surely enriched many lives, and all trust, eventually (he is in no hurry,) he will realize his just rewards. Nevertheless, Fr. Brennan is not to be used by every flaming queen or anarchist who feels like going “in drag” to a RC Church – with or without neon and tinsel – as a devout Catholic, pandering “equality” and shrieking, along with their rabid “sisters,” that all straight men (Catholic or otherwise for that matter) are misogynists. (Patrick, try re-reading your headline until you are embarrassed)

There's an odd self-contradiction in Gearoid4 complaining, on the one hand, that I see this issue in terms of "men vs women" and his insisting, on the other hand, that Jesus' maleness was absolutely essential to his priestly role. When you take an essentialist view of maleness in a role such as priest, objections will focus on your exaggeration of the importance of gender. Gender is not of the essence of "priest" or of Jesus as redeemer. The Nicene Creed, which emerged early in Church history, does not support a gender-imprinting argument for restricting the priesthood to men. Neither in Latin ("et homo factus est") nor in ancient Greek is the relevant word translatable as "a male" or "a man." In both ancient languages, the word is genuinely gender neutral, with "vir," "femina," "ander," and "gynos" (not used in the Creed) designating male and female. In the Creed, the clause translates accurately "and became fully human" (Incarnation doctrine). Gearoid4 should study the Creeds in one of the early Church's languages to break the spell of the sexist sediment in his English version.

When the early church organizers drove out the Gnostics, one unfortunate consequence was the loss of the Gnostics' social organization, along with their largely flawed theology about Christ's divinity. Some Gnostic groups came closest to the imitation of Christ in organizing their congregations. In some groups, women as well as men were Eucharistic ministers, and priestly roles alternated among members. Seanomelb is certainly right that their gatherings were not about control but about following Jesus' example and teaching as far as humanly possible. laine Pagels, in 'The Gnostic Gospels,' explains their writings and their Christian practices; others have written on this era as well. Reform can go wildly astray when it fixates on one era of the institution's history, the Medieval, for example, and ignores conflicts and losses of earlier eras. (I'd be interested in seeing ANY evidence that the papyrus fragment was forged since scientific testing has yielded no evidence of forgery. I suspect that the "reasoning" that leads to calling it a forgery begins "Jesus would never have married or allowed women among his disciples," in other words to a closed mind nothing counts as evidence.

Gearoid4's reply to eiriamach is demeaned by his last sentence."keep smoking those "funny" cigarettes you're on" Graoid is a "keeper" of the church in the middle ages and he will be overtaken by changes which have to happen if the Church is to survive.You are right about the gnostic texts been rejected,but your reasoning is flawed.Gnosticism was not about controlling peoples everyday lives but tending to their spiritual being. Quite the opposite to the Church which was interested in power and creating a subservient population.

Jesus also chose Aramaic speaking,married men w/ children. Tax collectors and fishermen. Don't see many of those in the church hierarchy today.

Good job! No women priests!

@Eiriamach, Jesus was certainly close to some women who were the first to witness the empty tomb, but He chose 12 men as his closest apostles. This did not result from any social convention or custom but was a deliberate act on His part which has been passed down through Holy Orders in the Church ever since. Even the "best" evidence that those who want women to be ordained to the Catholic priesthood can muster is rather scant and does not even suggest that women were admitted to Holy Orders. There are references to "deaconesses" in the early Church, but experts on this period of ecclesiastical history do not give any credence to the belief that these positions had any priestly functions and thus they were not clerical. The papyrus which you make reference has been classified by some scholars as an interesting but obvious forgery made to look like an authentic Coptic biblical text of the 3rd-4th centuries and similar to Gnostic texts of the period which were ultimately rejected for good reason by the Church. You treat this whole question of the admittance of women to the Catholic priesthood as one of men v women in an anti-men screed. It is nothing of the sort and defies the sort of gender and sociological political slant which you give to it. This is theological and has been recognized as such by both the Western and Eastern wings of the Church universal for 2000 years. StevieJoe's contribution really does hit a real "high" in terms of intellectual development. Keep smoking those "funny" cigarettes that you're on.

In taking this action against an elderly priest, the Vatican is trying to protect two interests: 1) the Anglican Ordinariates, ultra-conservative Anglican and Episcopal priests and their few followers who crossed the Tiber on the pope's implicit promise that they would never be subject to women bishops in the Roman Church, and 2) the celibacy and male-exclusivity of the Roman priesthood, which is increasingly under challenge by historical research. The papyrus fragment recently in the news, in which Jesus refers to his "wife," quotes Jesus as saying "she will be able to be my disciple." The Vatican peremptorily rejected it as a "forgery" even though experts have found no evidence of forgery. Why? Because it threatens papal teaching that priests must be celibate (allegedly because Jesus was celibate), and that women must not be priests (because Jesus and, allegedly again, all the apostles were male).

Gearoid4, many scholars, including Catholic priests, have researched the roles of women in the early churches. Dr. Arthur Frederick Ide posts often on this issue, for example: Nowhere ... did Jesus of the New Testament ignore nor forbid women to minister --to him or to others. Nowhere is misogynism or gynephobia expressed or implied. In the early communities that followed the teachings of Jesus, there were women priests and bishops. We find in historical papers as late as the sixteenth century references to women bishops in Spain. Even in the letter of John we read "Salute the Electress" (Electress was another name for a woman who was declared a bishop). Christianity has lost all meaning and all value as Cardinal Martini of Milan noted, as the RC Church is more than 200 years behind the times when men dominated everywhere. Even in the Letters ascribed to Paul, there is a reference 'there is neither male nor female in the kingdom of God' but that kingdom was not only a reference to an afterlife but the word itself refers to a community of believers 'where two or three are gathered'... Only an ignorant fool would attend any church that did not have women as equal workers in the field.'"

Duh, anyone surprised? the richest corporation in the world,according to Forbes, the roman Catholic church, comprised of 75% homosexuals, and 25% pedophiles, does not want women as priests? Get real.

This is not just a world of and for men. In fact men are less intelligent and capable of doing 2 or 3 jobs at one time. Get over it you old white men, you're antiquated over the hill.