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Women Doing Stuff

 On the one hand, I served and learned alongside women as a Presbyterian in seminary (PCA). I'm highly in favor of them getting any advanced degree a man could get. I personally don't really mind them going to more "liberal" denominations to hold pastoral offices, because the taxonomy from the Anglican bishop J.B. Lightfoot within the essay "On The Christian Ministry" highlights both Protestantism's fatal flaw, and illustrates why female clergy really can only occur in a Protestant context. Many Anglicans are angered at being called "Protestant," but they'll finally get over it when they re-join the one true Church.

Lightfoot said that the conception of the pastoral office is either "sacerdotal" (from the Latin for "priest") or "functional." Very low church Protestants and independent communities that emerged in the aftermath of the Reformation tend--if this is a spectrum--toward the functional end, while communities closer to Rome and the other apostolic Churches tend more toward the sacerdotal. In any case, Lightfoot's treatment of the historical evidence is devastating if the early Church has any bearing on the present. John Henry Newman, historian and former Anglican, wasn't attempting to win apologetic arguments for theology buffs two centuries later; he was merely saying that the faithful God is unlikely to be random and incoherent; that dogma itself is God's way of leading wayward humanity back to himself. If divine revelation has a source that is accessible, we should listen and submit to that source.

Setting all that to one side, the basic Protestant claim is that the pastoral office is not actually priestly, but indeed functional. Not fundamentally sacramental, but declarative. Therefore, if the exercise of the pastoral office is chiefly about acquiring knowledge of the true doctrine of Christ and teaching it to some group of the faithful, of course women can do that, and probably should, on these terms. By contrast, the more "liturgical" a community is, the more "sacerdotal" it is. Because Christ acts in and through the priest, not only in what he says, but in what he does. In point of fact, in the churches founded and governed by apostolic succession, what the priest does is more important than what he says. Is he a true priest? Was he validly ordained by the permission of one consecrated a bishop in apostolic succession? See how different that is? 

I'm not saying I want poor homilies and sermons out of the priests. I'm definitely not saying Pastor Tim Butler says wrong things all the time! I definitely wouldn't help him, if I thought so! But the priestly and sacramental conception of the world is about a direct encounter with Jesus who acts in the present, not only the Scriptural memory of the God who acted. And I should invite you to recall that it is a spectrum concerning these things.

I will say that I believe in obedience to Christ. I also believe in the fundamental equality of men and women. (Galatians 3:28) St. Therese of Lisieux had a bout of desiring to do everything. Missionary, martyr, priest. She finally realized that doing small things--her things--with great love for God was the key to true happiness.

At the risk of snark, one great benefit of enjoying full communion with the Catholic Church is leaving unproductive arguments behind. Manosphere versus feminists? Neither. And while I encourage everyone to mine the Bible for every bit of spiritual wealth possible--we'll all die before we drain that pint, amen--the Bible doesn't answer every possible question we could have. It wasn't meant to! It's a written record of the prophets and apostles, centered eventually upon the Incarnate Word, Jesus Christ, and the Church he founded.

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