Comments on: A Female Pastor on the Male Priesthood

By: Zen

Zen — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 05:10:10 +0000

This does bring up the very good question of why men have the priesthood. God himself has not felt worried about answering this, but I notice that when only the Levites had the priesthood, it was because at the sin of the Golden Calf, it was the Levites who were (relatively) obedient.

Likewise, while it has been pointed out, that men and women have the same average intelligence, as well as other traits, the distribution is certainly not the same. Men tend towards the ends of the spectrum, being either very good, or very bad with less in between than women.

Of course, if a woman challenges you on this, point out that there are more men in jail, homeless, mentally retarded, etc than women. Then point out, they can have either average equality, or differing distributions, but it will have to be one of those.

By: Agellius

Agellius — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 16:39:19 +0000

I agree that it’s very, very important to keep men engaged. One of the problems that arose out of Vatican II in the Catholic Church was the “feminization” of liturgical worship (speaking of the character and style of the worship itself, not, obviously, the priesthood, which remains exclusively male).

One result has been that the vast majority of people playing supportive roles in the liturgy (lectors, Eucharistic ministers, altar servers) are now women and girls. This in turn, I suspect, is one factor in the decline in vocations to the priesthood: Being a priest is now seen, by teenage boys, as almost an effeminate role; if not necessarily a role for the effeminate, at least a job in which one will have to work mostly with and among women, and therefore not a manly profession, as indeed the priesthood used to be perceived a mere 50 years ago or so.

By: Bookslinger

Bookslinger — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 14:00:38 +0000

“… they aren’t as good as men at ignoring the siren song of trendiness.”

Careful. One might use that line of thinking to deny women the vote and the right to hold political office.

As an aside, according to one study/survey, if you subtract out the votes by women in the 1992 presidential election, Clinton would not have won.

I don’t know if the survey/study was also done on Carter and Obama, though I imagine the same would hold true.

By: MC

MC — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 23:21:12 +0000

I used to hold the common (in the Church) belief that men had the priesthood because they need it to be more righteous or feel needed. But in my short lifetime, I’ve seen so many previously solid institutions jumping ship from their formerly rock-solid values. I’ve come to believe, based on observation, that an all-male priesthood is probably a pre-requisite for any church that doesn’t want to be carried away by every wind of doctrine or lame NBC sitcom. What some might deride as male stubbornness was once known as steadfastness. I love women. I even married one. But as a group, they aren’t as good as men at ignoring the siren song of trendiness.

With all that being said, the elevated importance of men in a Church with male priesthood undoubtedly helps retention of men. “Mandatory” missions for young men almost certainly play a huge role.

In fact, I wonder if we would see more young men fall away if every worthy young woman were told to go on a mission as well. Once it ceased to be identified with manly duty, it could lose some of its appeal. Not that it should, but we are talking about teenagers here.