Re. canon1024, I haven't seen the new list yet, but as a RC, I welcome it.
It's good to know that public discussion is still going on about this
somewhere. Over the last few years, the silence imposed on us over this
subject has been hard to bear (to put it mildly) and has been one of the
factors which has served to further undermine respect for the teaching
authority in many parts of the world. Discussion still goes on of course,
but in private. RCs who depend on the church for their livelihood are
understandably unwilling to take the risk of speaking or writing about
women's ordination in public. It's perhaps a measure of the frustration and
anger generated by this imposed silence that the new list is the volatile
place it is.
I'm dismayed to see so many non-RCs lining up respectfully behind the
pronouncements of the teaching authority in Rome, as if it alone was the
(RC) church. Even pre-Vat2, the bishop of Rome was supposed to consult with
the other bishops before making such definitive pronouncements. So it's not
just supporters of women's ordination who unhappy with the authoritarian
style of the present administration. Since Vat2, there's also the
acknowledgement that the church is the whole the people of God and that lay
people can also be guided by the Holy Spirit and have a sense of what is
right. It's odd to find people who acknowledge this in their own churches,
apparently taking the opposite view or at least, standing back from the
discussion.
Somebody mentioned the futility of pursuing an argument which has been
officially declared closed, but such arguments have been overturned in the
past, sometimes quite quickly, as in the case of the vernacular liturgy.
The arguments for women's ordination have not gone way, nor have they ever
been convincingly answered in the RC church, either from tradition or from
scripture.
Mary
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