Friday, April 13, 2007

Women Seek Ordination Outside the Catholic Church

Women are leaving the Catholic Church in order to become priests in other denominations, according to this story from California Catholic Daily. To me, that's the same as leaving the Catholic Church because you don't agree with such teachings as living together before marriage, abortion, and homosexuality. When your will becomes more important than God's will, are you really doing God's work?

Twenty-five years ago, Donohoe joined the Episcopal Church because it has, since 1977, allowed women to be ordained. Even as an Episcopalian, she, a television producer, was not interested in ordination. But her “call” became more apparent. “It was a call I could no longer refuse,” she told the Tribune. She was ordained in November 2005. “I asked God to drop the two-by-four, and she did. Being able to help people celebrate their most holy and sacred moments within the ritual of the church is very much what I felt called to do by God and by people.”

The number of female clergy in the U.S. is steadily growing. The U.S. Department of Labor’s Women’s Bureau counted 53,000 female clergy nationwide. They make up 15 percent of the clergy in San Mateo County, according to the Tribune.

Some have said a disproportionate number of Protestant female clergy are made up of former Catholics. Do they leave because the Catholic Church forbids women’s ordination? Examining this question, Paul Perl, writing in the Dec. 22, 2005 edition of the journal Sociology of Religion, said, based on the statistics (and the latest were from 1994), it is impossible to judge why, but a significantly larger percentage of female than male converts from the Catholic Church entered the Protestant ministry -- 5.1% as opposed to 2.5 percent.


If the pull to get ordained is stronger for a woman that it is to remain a faithful Catholic, true to the Magisterium of the Church, I have to wonder: Where is the pull coming from?

7 comments:

VidiAquam said...

I think you have hit the nail on the head.

Such 'calls' are from the Evil one.

Anonymous said...

My priest always tells me to look to our Blessed Mother for my role model. Mary wasn't always trying to be in the spotlight but was humble and did more for the salvation of the human race than any other person in history. "Do as my Son tells you". Women who wish to be priests probably think they are called by God but would do well to examine their motives. And any woman who calls God "she" doesn't know her theology well enough to qualify to teach Bible class, let alone be a priest!

Odysseus said...

-If the pull to get ordained is stronger for a woman that it is to remain a faithful Catholic, true to the Magisterium of the Church, I have to wonder: Where is the pull coming from?-

Wow, you just gave me the best argument against women's ordination I have ever heard. Thank you. The same form of a reply could be used to counter many of the absurd, modernist propositions made today by "progressives".

Anita Moore said...

Ever notice how people who want something they aren't supposed to have nearly always want it for the wrong reasons? Do gays, for instance, want to get "married" for the same reason that a man and a woman marry? Is marriage about love and starting a family, or about the mere exchange of sex and property and getting on each other's insurance? Do women who want to be priests want it for the same reason that a man wants it? Is ordination about power, or about service?

There is this notion that there is a "right" to be ordained. This is demonstrably false: not every man who enters the seminary ends up being ordained. For you women who feel you should be ordained, consider this: even if women could be ordained, it doesn't automatically follow that YOU would be ordained.

And thank God you can't be!

steve said...

Interesting...these women leave the Catholic Church ~20 years ago to become mainline Protestant pastors.

In the past ~20 years, the mainline Protestant denominations have been hemorrhaging members (including me).

Coincidence?

paramedicgirl said...

That's a good point you make, Steve. It's too bad the women who think they feel called to become priests can't recognize that the call is not from God.

Michael Leggett said...

Mohammed claimed that The Archangel Gabriel came to him in a dream:

Why would Gabriel come to Mohammed to disrupt The True Church?

Then, again, Mohammed admitted that he also received Satanic Messages & confused the Two.