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The Church: Christ’s bride
By Jan Kalinowski, Assagay, KZN:
The letter “Crime against faith” (August 4) by Ivor Bailey refers. In the 21st century our understanding of theology is still evolving but God’s revelation remains constant — Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever.
Can the teaching of the Venerable Pope John Paul II in his Theology of the Body shed light on why the priesthood is for men only? The late pope proposed that from the begining, marriage has been the primordial sacrament, that the nuptual union and resulting children are a visible sign of an invisible reality — the love of the Trinity.
Being made male and female, a woman’s body is designed for receptivity and man’s for donation; in this complimentary, not sameness, lies the answer to an all male priesthood.
In the fifth chapter of St Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, human marriage is compared to Christ’s marriage with the Church, Christ is the bridegroom — the donor and the Church is the bride — the receiver. Mystically the priest being in persona Christi marries his bride the Church, he is the bridegroom, you can’t have a female groom. It’s a case of the invisible made visible by the physical.
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5 Responses to “The Church: Christ’s bride”
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We know that the exclusively male priesthood was ordained by Our Lord as a deliberate choice and that it was not culture-constrained. This is the fundamental reason why it is impossible for the Church to ordain women.
Theological inquiry seeks always to try to understand the reasons for our faith and to give a coherent account of it, and further and other explanations for and justifications of the practice (beyond those already given by the magisterium) may still be forthcoming.
Wishful thinking, Martin?!!… or another Non sequitur?
Nothing coherent in Rosemary’s reply. Why she continues with her inane remarks is a mystery.
Thank you Jan for a wonderful explanation of why the priesthood is for men only! I would have said the same thing. It is so logical that if the priest represents Christ, and Christ is the bridegroom of the Church, that only men can be priests. We women represent the Bride of Christ, not the bridegroom, so being a nun, a virgin, or a married woman is more in line with what we signify. I love Pope JPII’s teachings about the Theology of the Body. God’s Order just makes so much sense!
On Ordinatio Sacerdotalis
Responsum ad Dubium
Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
October 28, 1995
Dubium: Whether the teaching that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women, which is presented in the Apostolic Letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis to be held definitively, is to be understood as belonging to the deposit of faith.
Responsum: In the affirmative.
This teaching requires definitive assent, since, 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 (cf. Second Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium 25, 2). Thus, in the present circumstances, the Roman Pontiff, exercising his proper office of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32), has handed on this same teaching by a formal declaration, explicitly stating what is to be held always, everywhere, and by all, as belonging to the deposit of the faith.
The Sovereign Pontiff John Paul II, at the Audience granted to the undersigned Cardinal Prefect, approved this Reply, adopted in the ordinary session of this Congregation, and ordered it to be published.
Rome, from the offices of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, on the Feast of the Apostles SS. Simon and Jude, October 28, 1995.
+ Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
Prefect
+ Tarcisio Bertone
Archbishop Emeritus of Vercelli
Secretary