08 August 2006

A call to the priesthood?

Given that I am writing a book on authority, I find this story especially interesting for the issues it raises: Female priest has first Mass. Has Eileen DiFranco really received a call to the Catholic priesthood? In his followup analysis, Richard K. Taylor asks: Is church's code just or unjust? Whatever one thinks of the rightness of ordaining women to the presbyterate, I cannot help but conclude that both DiFranco and Taylor misunderstand the nature of the claimed teaching authority of the Roman Catholic Church, which holds that it lacks the authority to ordain women.

Therefore, if DiFranco believes that she has genuinely been called to be a Catholic priest in the face of Rome's assertion otherwise, the burden is on her to demonstrate the authenticity of her call, which must be based on more than subjective feeling. It seems to me that the honest route for her would be to seek ordination in a denomination willing to extend such a call, such as the Episcopal or Presbyterian churches. If she protests that she is not a protestant and cannot bring herself to abandon her Catholic faith, then she needs further to explain why she so willingly holds on to some of her Church's teachings while rejecting others.

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