Wow. Well, I have heard some arguments advanced for women's ordination in my time, but I think we can all agree that the matter has now been settled by an astonishing campaign video by the Women's Ordination Conference. There's no doubt in my mind that this video was inspired by the Holy Spirit. It belongs in the Vatican archives and the lead singers should have a cause for their canonizations opened as soon as they have died. Let's hope that isn't soon, because the Church needs these holy women to inspire other women to campaign for something that Christ clearly wants for His Church. He has waited well over 1,900 years to say it, but this is a message that has clearly come straight from the Sacred Heart of Jesus to His Bride. The case that it is the holy will of God that the priesthood be a genderless sacrament in which the intrinsic maleness of the Second Person of the Trinity is forgotten is no longer in doubt. It all reminds me of that song, 'Just when I thought our chance had passed/You go and save the best for last.' Blessed be God forever!
All the theological questions that seemed like obstacles to female ordination have, in my mind at least, been removed by a sugary pop song, the music of which has been ripped off another song by another artist. As readers know, I don't count myself to be the voice of Catholic orthodoxy, what with simply following what the Church's Magisterium says because it has been revealed by God Almighty, who vouchsafes it to be free from error in Faith and Morals, but I believe we'll be hearing a statement from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith reversing all previous statements against women's ordination in the next few weeks. Don't ask me how I know. I just know! Anyway, here was the original song with lyrics before it was radically overhauled and improved by the ladeez in polyester.
I was thinking maybe of doing a spoof version trying to answer some of the arguments advanced in the 'Ordain a Lady' video, since I could doubtless obtain the chords from the internet, rework the words and perform a new radically orthodox version for this blog. Then, however, I thought, there really is no need, because 'Ordain a Lady' is incredibly hard to spoof. All the hard work has been done for me. I don't know about you, but I think that we can all agree that there exists now no logical impediment for the Church to start ordaining ladeez. Certainly, anything the Doctors of the Church had to say on the Priesthood must surely be put to one side.
What's really weird about this video is the lyrics. The lady doesn't want to be a 'priest'. Despite the fact that everyone can see she is a woman she doesn't say she wants to be a 'priest'. She wants to be a 'woman priest' because she's 'baptised' and God is 'calling her'. Ladies, ladies. You are baptised, yes, but if you think God is calling you to the Catholic Priesthood, recall first that He has spoken through His Church, since it was to the Apostles that Our Lord said, 'Whoever hears you, hears Me.' You know something is being destroyed when people try to attach a prefix to words that really mean something to people nowadays. 'Gay'/'Same-Sex' Marriage. 'Women' Priests. Prefixes now are a sure sign that people want to destroy something.
I could be wrong, but while it is true to say that a particular brand of music acted as the soundtrack that egged on the sexual revolution in the 1960s, the Women's Ordination Conference are going to have to come up with something a little better than this - and more refined at that - to curry favour with our beloved Pope. Are there any Bach numbers or Mozart hits through which they could get their message across in order to seduce the Pope? I say this because it is obvious that if the Pope (who is 'in the way') really does have the authority to change nearly 2,000 years of Christian belief about who can be considered to be sacramentally ordained as a Priest and who cannot, some kind of piano concerto may be in order.
This raises questions of terminology. I was in a choir with a female conductor who was once referred to as "conductress". Now female bus conductors were always known as conductresses, and they did a good job of keep lippy youths in check. They still have them on the ex-Soviet railways and no man would mess with them. Probably did the same training as KGB operatives. Come to think of it, they might have been KGB operatives, keeping a check on people's movements under the cover of being train conductresses. But for a choir conductor, the use of "conductress" is wrong.
ReplyDeleteSo is a lady priest a priestess?
Don't they have to have been christened Brenda?
ReplyDeleteSurely the song and dance routine is a spoof by a group of orthodox youngsters at Steubenville or Ave Maria or somewhere. Quite catchy and totally ridicules the womynpriest(ess) movement.... Well done!
ReplyDeleteThank you for the laugh! You are so brilliant - you should have a much greater audience. Hasn't the Catholic Herald or some such headhunted you yet?!!
ReplyDeleteThey don't give up do they! Enjoyed Physiocrat's comment on the 'conductress'. I don't think wymyn priests call themselves 'priestesses' as this is too similar to those in the pagan world.
ReplyDeleteA couple of years ago I was chatting to a lady on the bus who informed me she was about to be ordained. I was a bit lost for words but then remembered that she was a member of the C of E who do allow this sort of thing. Still seems odd to me.
Shall always remember the wonderful cartoon in the DM I think after women were accepted as vicars in the C of E. It showed one of them measuring up the curtains for the stained glass windows in her church!! and of course there is the old joke that Catholics could never have women priests as who would go to Confession to them?
180ยบ turn t the old musichall standbye, as reflected in Donald mcgill:
ReplyDeleteCorrect the misspelling and ordain a laddie.
Nah. They aren't sporting the dingly-dangly earrings which are de rigeur for their, er, calling. So you're absolutely correct: "the matter has now been settled by an astonishing campaign video . . ."
ReplyDeleteHilarious.
Great post. You write: 'You know something is being destroyed when people try to attach a prefix to words that really mean something to people nowadays. 'Gay'/'Same-Sex' Marriage. 'Women' Priests. Prefixes now are a sure sign that people want to destroy something."
ReplyDelete....Sohomasses
Great article! An 8 year old girl in my CCD class asked me why women can't be priests. I've put her off for a couple of months because I'm trying to come up with an answer she'll understand. Saying because the Church says so doesn't cut it. The girl has a right to know "why" the Church says so - there needs to be a reasonable explanation given to her. Bride/Bridegroom explanation would make no sense; because Jesus says so isn't any good because of the counter-arguments (how do you know? - there were women deacons - Jesus was a man of his time, etc.) I've been leaning toward the answer that it's because Jesus has decided, as is His right, that the maleness of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity be revealed in the person of the priest. The feminist movement has turned into a tirade about female identity and thus it seems that a pushback using the MALE identity of Jesus might work - that a man has a right to be portrayed as a man, not a woman. I'm thinking of starting out by asking the girls who they would want to portray them in a film adaptation of their lives. Each of them will certainly pick another girl and not a boy to play their part. Then I'll ask them why they don't pick boys to portray them and they'll giggle and say that would be stupid and gross and I'll do all of this before we even get into the discussion of the priesthood - in other words, get them to think clearly about identity before they start in with the programmed thinking of their feminist mothers/teachers/coaches, etc. along with the media which is in the process of scrubbing out gender entirely. Sometimes I wonder if this is the last generation that will be allowed to distinguish between the sexes as a biological reality.
ReplyDelete