sodaseller said:
Don't be so sure about that
I guess the books and lists containing all the women that have been validly ordained into the Catholic Church is somewhere in a "hidden vault" located inside the Vatican? Or better yet inside a safety deposit box inside the Vatican Bank?
Well, anyway - like I said before the issue is moot in regards to the ordination of women.
Excerpted from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordination_of_women
[edit] Roman Catholic Church
[edit] Doctrinal Position
The official position of the Roman Catholic Church, as expressed in the current canon law and the Catechism of the Catholic Church, is that: Only a baptized man (vir) validly receives sacred ordination.[1] Insofar as priestly and episcopal ordination are concerned, the Church teaches that this requirement is a matter of divine law, and thus doctrinal.[2] The requirement that only males can receive ordination to the permanent diaconate has not yet been promulgated as doctrinal by the Church's magisterium.[3][4] In asserting this position, the Church cites her own doctrinal tradition, and scriptural texts.[5] In recent years, responding to questions about the matter, the Church has issued a number of documents repeating the same position.[6] In 1994, Pope John Paul II definitively declared the question closed in his letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, stating: Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance
I declare 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.[7]
In 1995, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a clarification explaining that Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, though "itself not infallible, witnesses to the infallibility of the teaching of a doctrine already possessed by the Church.... This doctrine belongs to the deposit of the faith of the Church. It should be emphasized that the definitive and infallible nature of this teaching of the Church did not arise with the publication of the Letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis."[8] Instead, it was "founded on the written Word of God, and from the beginning constantly preserved and applied in the tradition of the Church, it has been set forth infallibly by the ordinary and universal magisterium," and for these reasons it "requires definitive assent."[9]
The Church teaching on the ordination of only men holds that maleness was integral to the personhood of both Jesus and the men he called as apostles.[10] The Roman Catholic Church sees maleness and femaleness as two different ways of expressing common humanity.[11] Contrary to the common phrase "gender roles", which implies that the phenomenon of the sexes is a mere surface phenomenon, an accident, the Roman Catholic Church teaches that there is an ontological (essential) difference between humanity expressed as male humanity and humanity expressed as female humanity.[12] While many functions are interchangeable between men and women, some are not, because maleness and femaleness are not interchangeable. Just as water is necessary for a valid baptism, and wheaten bread and grape wine are necessary for a valid Eucharist (not because of their superiority over other materials, but because they are what Jesus used or authorized), only men can be validly ordained, regardless of any issues of equality.[13]
Pope John Paul II, in Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, explained the Roman Catholic understanding that the priesthood is a special role specially set out by Jesus when he chose twelve men out of his group of male and female followers. John Paul notes that Jesus chose the Twelve (cf. Mk 3:13-14; Jn 6:70) after a night in prayer (cf. Lk 6:12) and that the Apostles themselves were careful in the choice of their successors. The priesthood is specifically and intimately associated in the mission of the Incarnate Word himself (cf. Mt 10:1, 7-8; 28:16-20; Mk 3:13-16; 16:14-15).
