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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