St. Paul Says It Clearly: We Must Not Exclude Women from the Priesthood!

This morning I attended mass at Our Lady of Lourdes Shrine in Euclid. It was a beautiful Sunday morning, Father's Day, outside mass in one of Euclid/Cleveland's most beautiful and holy places. Hundreds of people were present, including lots of children--it was wonderful. During the mass I was deeply struck by the second reading. How do you exclude women from the priesthood if you believe in the truth of St. Paul's epistle:

Reading 2GAL 3:26-29

Brothers and sisters:
Through faith you are all children of God in Christ Jesus.
For all of you who were baptized into Christ
have clothed yourselves with Christ.
There is neither Jew nor Greek,
there is neither slave nor free person,
there is not male and female;
for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
And if you belong to Christ,
then you are Abraham’s children,
heirs according to the promise.

*          *          *

After Mass at Euclid's Lourdes Shrine

Whenever I go to the Shrine, I think of my Dad, who took me there when I was a little kid and throughout my childhood. Thank you, Dad, for this and for all that you gave your children and family!

A New Epiphany: How About Women as Priests, Bishops, Cardinals, Pope!

Today the Roman Catholic Church celebrates the great Feast of the Epiphany. Growing up, we celebrated this feast on January 6th. It was a fairly big deal in my part of Euclid, because, not only did it mark the end of the Christmas season, but it marked Little Christmas for the Byzantine Catholics at St. Stephen's Church on Lloyd Road.

In today's second reading, from St. Paul to the Ephesians, we get this revolutionary proclamation:

It was not made known to people in other generations 
as it has now been revealed
to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit: 
that the Gentiles are coheirs, members of the same body,
and copartners in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.

I imagine in its day these were astonishing and difficult words for the Jews who were also followers of Jesus. It was as if Paul said aliens could also be followers of Jesus.

What we need today is a new epiphany. The word "epiphany" can mean "manifestation" or "sudden insight." The new epiphany is that women are the equal to men (how can those words even be uttered or written without the thought--"Well, duh . . . Of course!"). Of course. How can there be any genuine reason that women cannot be deacons, priests, bishops, and even pope? The old arguments, beginning with Jesus and the apostles being male, carry no weight at all! Of course 2000 years ago the world was not ready to hear that women were the equals of men. Then again, the world of Jewish-Christians or Christian-Jews (however you want to characterize these early communities) might not have been ready to hear that Gentiles could be followers of Jesus.

But this is the moment of kairos! We are ready to hear these prophetic words. We need brave men and women, with stature in the religious community, to stand up and proclaim the truth, just as St. Paul did almost 2000 years ago.

Walt Whitman and St. Paul Agree on Something: Sanctity of the Human Body

Do you not know that you are the temple of God,
and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? . . .

for the temple of God, which you are, is holy.

This is from one of our readings at mass on November 9, 2014. St. Paul, 1 Corinthians, verses 16-17 (with some editing by me--St. Paul can often stand some editing)

The man’s body is sacred and the woman’s body is sacred,

No matter who it is, it is sacred . . . [Walt Whitman, "I Sing the Body Electric"]

Here is Part 9 of Whitman's great poem:

9

O my body! I dare not desert the likes of you in other men and women, nor the likes of the parts of you,

I believe the likes of you are to stand or fall with the likes of the soul, (and that they are the soul,)

I believe the likes of you shall stand or fall with my poems, and that they are my poems,

Man’s, woman’s, child’s, youth’s, wife’s, husband’s, mother’s, father’s, young man’s, young woman’s poems,

Head, neck, hair, ears, drop and tympan of the ears,

Eyes, eye-fringes, iris of the eye, eyebrows, and the waking or sleeping of the lids,

Mouth, tongue, lips, teeth, roof of the mouth, jaws, and the jaw-hinges,

Nose, nostrils of the nose, and the partition,

Cheeks, temples, forehead, chin, throat, back of the neck, neck-slue,

Strong shoulders, manly beard, scapula, hind-shoulders, and the ample side-round of the chest,

Upper-arm, armpit, elbow-socket, lower-arm, arm-sinews, arm-bones,

Wrist and wrist-joints, hand, palm, knuckles, thumb, forefinger, finger-joints, finger-nails,

Broad breast-front, curling hair of the breast, breast-bone, breast-side,

Ribs, belly, backbone, joints of the backbone,

Hips, hip-sockets, hip-strength, inward and outward round, man-balls, man-root,

Strong set of thighs, well carrying the trunk above,

Leg fibres, knee, knee-pan, upper-leg, under-leg,

Ankles, instep, foot-ball, toes, toe-joints, the heel;

All attitudes, all the shapeliness, all the belongings of my or your body or of any one’s body, male or female,

The lung-sponges, the stomach-sac, the bowels sweet and clean,

The brain in its folds inside the skull-frame,

Sympathies, heart-valves, palate-valves, sexuality, maternity,

Womanhood, and all that is a woman, and the man that comes from woman,

The womb, the teats, nipples, breast-milk, tears, laughter, weeping, love-looks, love-perturbations and risings,

The voice, articulation, language, whispering, shouting aloud,

Food, drink, pulse, digestion, sweat, sleep, walking, swimming,

Poise on the hips, leaping, reclining, embracing, arm-curving and tightening,

The continual changes of the flex of the mouth, and around the eyes,

The skin, the sunburnt shade, freckles, hair,

The curious sympathy one feels when feeling with the hand the naked meat of the body,

The circling rivers the breath, and breathing it in and out,

The beauty of the waist, and thence of the hips, and thence downward toward the knees,

The thin red jellies within you or within me, the bones and the marrow in the bones,

The exquisite realization of health;

O I say these are not the parts and poems of the body only, but of the soul,

O I say now these are the soul! #

Walt Whitman truly believed that the human body is the Temple of God. There doesn't seem to be any ambivalence in him. He sings the body in most all his poems.