From Sara Ritchey at the New York Times:
On Sunday, the Vatican announced the creation of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter, a special division of the Roman Catholic Church that former Episcopal congregations and priests — including, notably, married priests — can enter together en masse.Damn! You know, having grown up in the Roman Catholic Church, I knew this, but to see it spelled out again is revoltingly shocking. Remind me about the Incarnation. Did it really happen? Did Jesus really defile himself and become human like us? Did he truly hang around with contaminated women? Did Jesus allow the woman who was a known sinner wash his feet and dry them with her hair?
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Nonetheless, the Roman Catholic Church is prepared to house married priests in numbers perhaps not seen since the years before 1123, when the First Lateran Council adopted canon 21, prohibiting clerical marriage.
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By the time of the First Lateran Council, the priest’s wife had become a symbol of wantonness and defilement. The reason was that during this period the nature of the host consecrated at Mass received greater theological scrutiny. Medieval theologians were in the process of determining that bread and wine, at the moment of consecration in the hands of an ordained priest at the altar, truly became the body and blood of Jesus Christ. The priest who handled the body and blood of Christ should therefore be uncontaminated lest he defile the sacred corpus.
The medieval theologians may have been at the moment of deciding that the bread and wine became the true body and blood of Jesus, but they seemed to have forgotten the Gospel in the process.
The priest’s wife was an obvious danger. Her wanton desire, suggested the 11th-century monk Peter Damian, threatened the efficacy of consecration. He chastised priests’ wives as “furious vipers who out of ardor of impatient lust decapitate Christ, the head of clerics,” with their lovers. According to the historian Dyan Elliott, priests’ wives were perceived as raping the altar, a perpetration not only of the priest but also of the whole Christian community.Whoa! Methinks Peter Damian needed to take a look inside himself. The psychological concept of projection was not known at the time, but Jesus surely gave warning in the Gospel, when he said that we must remove the planks from our own eyes before we judge the peccadilloes of others.
In my lifetime, I remember certain priests recoiling from me during an ordinary conversation. I could see the panic in their expressions, as they thought, "I gotta get away!" Mind you, I was not coming on to them. I promise. But back in the day, the priests were taught in seminary, some of them entering at the tender age of 13, that women were living, breathing, walking, talking occasions of sin. While some priests were clever enough to shed the harmful, nonsensical teachings once they matured, others bought it hook, line, and sinker and hung on.
Pray for the priests and their wives who become part of the RC ordinariate. Pray for all who enter there. The converts may be in for some surprises.
From Wikipedia:
Petrus Cardinal Damiani is a saint and was made a Doctor of the Roman Catholic Church by Pope Leo XII in 1828, with a feast day of February 23. His body has been moved six times, each time to a more splendid resting-place. Since 1898, Damian has rested in a chapel dedicated to the saint in the cathedral of Faenza. No formal canonization ever took place, but his cult has existed since his death at Faenza, at Fonte-Avellana, at Monte Cassino, and at Cluny. His feast has since been moved February 21.
The saint is represented in art as a cardinal bearing a knotted rope (the disciplina) in his hand; also sometimes he is depicted as a pilgrim holding a papal Bull, to signify his many legations.
Image from Wikipedia.
Oh, Mimi, you vexen you! Don't you know that your beauty was a "near occasion of sin for those poor priests. It's all the woman's fault, you know. Because of Eve and The Garden and all that. Women are why Jesus had to suffer and die on the cross. And, we'll never be forgiven. Ever.
ReplyDeleteElizabeth, despite my protests of innocence, deep down, I realize that it was ALL MY FAULT. We are too much for the poor priests.
ReplyDeleteI understand why the Vatican may wish to confine the "Anglican" married priests to their own ordinariate, but with the shortage of priests in the RCC, will they not be tempted to send them out to un-"Anglican" parishes? Then, too, the ratio of laity to priests joining the ordinariates is 14 to 1, so there won't be enough jobs for the priests in the ordinariate.
Thomas Aquinas followed Aristotle in attributing the conception of a woman to a defect of a particular seed. The male semen intends to produce a complete human being, a man, but at times it does not succeed and produces a woman. A woman is, therefore, a mas occasionatus, a failed male. Thomas stresses that this does not imply that women were not part of God's grand scheme of creation. However, a female is not perfect.
ReplyDeleteAnd we wonder why our battle goes on and on and on ... and
This is one of the RCC's main problems, shurely, that it should really admit its concepts of sexuality and gender are rotten at the core and have been so for centuries, but because it insists on the sacredness of its tradition, it can't remotely start to be honest about it.
ReplyDeletewhiteycat, do we assume it's the Y chromosome that makes men perfect, or is it the dangly bits?
ReplyDeleteDid I say that?!!!
Ah, Cathy, yes. What if the RCC became honest about human sexuality? Their entire world would be turned upside down.
So is the RC's avoidance of ordaining women so as to avoid their husbands' becoming occasions of sin?
ReplyDeleteAnd is there some deeper reason that the Omen movies used Damian as the name of the Antichrist?
'Ah, Cathy, yes. What if the RCC became honest about human sexuality?'
ReplyDeleteThey'd have to learn what human sexuality is first.
An a bunch of old (mainly white men) dressed in expensive medieval garb might not quite be up to the effort methinks.
Paul (A.), no matter how you view it, cherchez la femme. Men are perfect. It's women's wanton desires that are at fault every time, from Genesis until now. How much more graphically can you explain the damage women do than "raping the altar, a perpetration not only of the priest but also of the whole Christian community"? Sexual obsession is nothing new.
ReplyDeleteAbout Damian in Omen, you could be on to something.
They'd have to learn what human sexuality is first.
ReplyDeleteYes, indeed, David, but the powers don't want to learn.
Howzbout someone tell all them altar boys about "women's wanton desires"? That'll make them feel better.
ReplyDeleteThat'll make them feel better.
ReplyDeleteI only wish.
David@Montreal, I agree with your general point, but I must say I can't see how dressing in expensive medieval garb would in itself prevent one from learning about sex. It might liven it up no end. You never know.
ReplyDelete