Priestly Celibacy and Female Ordination

This topic comes up over and over again and I have to admit that at one point in my life, I also had not thought critically about this before suggesting that we allow priests to marry.

I obvioulsy did not understand marriage. I obviously did not have the ability to think critically; I was just spouting the same trash as groups like Call to Action and Voice of the Faithful. They don't understand Catholic theology and they don't seem to care. Too many people are wrapped up in what they believe and what they want to bother paying attention to what makes sense.

I, for one, am sick and tired of the rampaging minority. They're making American Catholics look like a bunch of fools, and only a few of us are really fools.

Let's think critically. What does a priest do? He celebrates Mass, and he's the only one among us with the authority to do so. That's why he's a spiritual leader, and that's why we call him Father. But his title is so much more than symbolism; it is Biblical and it is real. When a priest is ordained, it is a marriage ceremony between the Church and him; and each parish is his family.

What does a Marriage do? A marriage creates children, and in the case of a priest, we, the laity as a whole, are his spouse and the children are the progeny of the work of the Holy Spirit. The priest does not run the Church; he heads it and he leads us spiritually, as a good father should. We are family and we also work to keep the parish up in running; we provide money, we provide work, we provide society and even food. We clothe the poor and feed the hungry. And all the time, new converts come into the Church and infants are baptized into God's family.

Now we have to discuss again what a priest does: he administers the sacraments; Baptism, Reconciliation (Confession), Communion, Confirmation, Matrimony, Annointing of the sick, and if he has the authority, Holy Orders. What does all this entail? His entire life. The priest, when he is ordained, (meaning: sent), gives his life for his flock. He renounces the world in favor of helping the world find eternal life. He shepherds his flock. The teachings of the Church are the pastures and define the boundaries of the pasture land, and it is his job to protect us. Just as a father defines the parameters of where he will allow his children to go, so does a priest. A priest has a full time job; he has nary an hour to himself and if he does, he must be praying. He cannot do his job without the Lord at his side. He is on call at all hours for he cannot predict when one of his children/sheep may need his authority at their bedside to send them on their way if they need to go and meet Jesus in the next world. He constantly has people in need of his attention.

The world would have us all believe that Marriage is only about sex and lust and the convenience of tax breaks, but to follow that philosophy is death. The world that seeks to teach this also calls as a solution the idea of the renunciation of priestly celibacy. Big surprise. As though sex is going to change anything.

The reality is that those religious orders and lay orders that call out for married priests are graying and thinning out. They may heartfully believe they are encouraging vocations, however the Holy Spirit is speaking to many and the true measure is in the real vocations; for both men and women religious and for priests, there is an upwards trend in late vocations, and for orthodoxy. Now that the outcry of the dissidents is dying out along with the fading of their hair color and health, the true voice of our Shepherd, our Triune God, is being heard, even by those late in life. My theory is that if so many had bothered to think critically, we would never have had a shortage in priests. The very dissonance between culture and real faith is the cause of the vocations shortage; crying out for non-celibate priests has prevented young men from aspiring to the seminary.

A priest is married to the Church. Let's explore this idea. Step back for a moment and consider what you know about the Church; consider her trappings. The Church is a living Church, and therefore is referred to by a personal pronoun: she, not "he". The Church is feminine in nature; consider the statues, the classic architecture throughout history; consider the music, the reverence in prayer. Isn't all of this very feminine? The contemplation, the meditation, these are classicly feminine atributes and practices women take up far more easily than most men. And yet, this does not exclude men, for the Church is both male and female in practice, but in presentation, very feminine.

Just as a zygote in biology is always feminine, that is "X", in order to become a male embryo, a "Y" is needed. All men are partially female at the foundation of their very personhood, just as the Church, as X, needs the priest to add the Y in order to come to fruition. This cycle is completed at ordination, just as it is completed in marriage.

God has ordered the world in such a way that male and female cannot exist without each other, and the union brings life at all levels of being, including spiritually.

It does not make sense to have married priests; for to have them would be akin to polygamy. Speaking as a woman, if I am married, I want to come first in my husband's life. I want him home to help me raise our children, not off at all hours blessing people annointing people, etc. I need him, too. I have a friend who was "ordained" a Protestant Pastor, and he left his full time ministry. Why? Because he could not devote himself to his family and he correctly surmised that his family came first. I will leave you to figure this out for yourself, or are you too enlightened to read between the lines?

It absolutely slays me that those who cry loudest for priests to be allowed to marry are women; the very women who would have to embrace the self-sacrifice needed in order to be a wife of a priest. I really have to question if any of them have any idea what self-sacrifice means. Furthermore, if they did become the priest's woman, they would be the woman left behind; they would always play second fiddle. Do they really want this? No, probably not. It goes against their entire enlightened being. But that doesn't stop these people from spewing rhetoric they clearly do not really understand.

I would never want to be the wife of a priest. If I was to give that level of sacrifice, I'd prefer to be the spouse of Christ himself.

Oh, WAIT! The Church provides religious communities! Nuns! Sisters! Brides of Christ!

Again, I'll leave you to consider this.

The next step for the Loud Obnoxious Minority is to cry out in a tantrum for female priests. Never mind celibacy, because most of them are also advocates for murder of unborn children and disobediece to true authority so what is a little sex on the side? For illicit sacraments of someone who does not understand their true origin?

It makes no sense for priests to be female. Go back and read what I already wrote. Female and female do not beget children. An XX gene and an XX gene cannot reproduce. An XY and an XY cannot reproduce. The Church is female, and the priest is male, and though his sacrifice and through the sacrifices of the Church, "children" of a sort are born.

A female priest cannot bear these children for there is no power in the world to beget life to a disobedient woman. The only progeny there cannot be of God.

A female priest in the Catholic Church is a lesbian relationship. It makes no sense and the parts do not match.

If you can really think critically and if you are truly enlightened, you will see that those who are calling for the end of celibacy and the beginning of priestesses are not speaking for and of the Lord. They are thinking of themselves; they are advancing their own personal agenda. They have not taken time to listen to God, to be open to the Holy Spirit and they are at outright war against Jesus Christ himself, no matter how much they throw his name around.

Stop. Think. Pray. Open your eyes and take the time to really listen to Jesus, and no matter how far away you are, Jesus will speak to you, and he will not ever contradict himself or the true teachings of the Catholic Church.