Tuesday, January 1, 2013

"Ordain a Lady" video

Happy New Year!

Some friends of mine created this video.  It's a parody of Carly Rae Jepsen's popular song, "Call Me Maybe" called, "Ordain a Lady."  Carly Rae's signature lyric of "Hey, I just met you and this is crazy, but here's my number so call me maybe." is changed to, "Hey, I was baptized and this is crazy.  God just called me, so ordain a lady."  That lyric alone showcases the very concerning point that though God calls people directly, the church's patriarchy tries to control what God says.  Yet, in reality, the bishops have not, do not and will not control what God asks anyone to do.

I thought this blog's followers might enjoy the video so I share the link.  I've already sent the link to my bishop as well as posted on Facebook.  If you feel so inspired, please do likewise.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0S2WlvNTU8

I hope your 2013 is off to a joyous start.

10 comments:

  1. Oh Hell NO....WOW, is this real or a joke?

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  2. @Anonymous, you violated 1 or possibly both of the 2 rules for publishing comments on this blog but I decided to publish your comment anyway.

    The rules:
    1) You must in some way identify yourself - which you did not.
    2. You must be respectful and not make personal attacks. I don't think your tone is very respectful but perhaps you were trying to be funny.

    To answer your question as to whether or not the video was a joke, I'm not sure what aspect you wonder is a joke or not. The video is real in that it is something produced and you watched it. It was not a mirage.

    It is a parody of a pop song. If you are unfamiliar with the concept of parody, it is, "An imitation of the style of a particular writer, artist, or genre with deliberate exaggeration for comic effect." Thus, it is intended as a joke versus a hymn or theological treatise. The creators are using humor to convey some points.

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  3. It would be brilliant satire, if it was satire. A shame that instead its an entirely misguided appeal/demand.

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  4. It is satire. Whether or not it's "brilliant" or "misguided" is a matter of opinion.

    I personally know some of the women in the video. None claim they are ordained and as far as I know, none of them feel called to be ordained. Rather, they are affirming the callings of other women. They see priestly vocations in others and are confirming that. This is actually a part of how our church operates. You might not share their experience seeing these priestly vocations in women but your lack of experience doesn't invalidate theirs. Kind of like you might think someone is called to teach (has a teaching charism) while others feel that same person absolutely is not called to teach. Both opinions are valid.

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    1. But objectively speaking, especially when this is in regard to whether God has called someone, both opinions cannot be valid. Otherwise one would be saying that it is both true that God has called the person and that God has not called the person. In the long run, either it is true that God is calling women to be ordained, or it is false.

      One could argue that those who see priestly vocations in women are correctly discerning a call by God to be active in the apostolate but incorrectly equating activity in the apostolate with a call to ordination.

      It could also be argued that those who are calling for women to be ordained are not experiencing the anthropology of the church, but rather are projecting onto the church cultural attitudes, which though affecting some members of the church and their attitude toward women, were by no means necessarily the backdrop to the church's rule of ordaining of only men.

      Notice no one is clamoring to have men become mothers. It is a great inequality in life that only women can be mothers. But why is there no outcry? I'd say it is because of the misogynist culture of ours that disdains motherhood, hates it in fact and promotes turning the womb into a killing field. Not all women are called to motherhood. But only women, by virtue of their gender, can be mothers.

      What greater honor could be bestowed upon the female gender except that the author of creation, in order to come in our nature, took flesh in the womb of a woman? We men should have a holy jealousy at the motherhood of Mary and the motherhood of all women - tabernacles of life that they are!

      God had pity on us men, I think, in making us capable, by virtue of our gender, of giving life in a different though complimentary way, a spiritual way, in the service of the priesthood. Not all men are called to be priests, but only men, by virtue of their gender, can be priests.

      Women have the honor of motherhood and men the honor of priesthood. To say these are not of equal value would be to forget the sacramentality of the material and the gift of human procreation, its goodness, its place in God's plan, its necessity for the salvation of souls.

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    2. You are answering an argument that I did not make. Seeing the vocation to priesthood in women is not, to me, a matter of equality. You give a lengthy response assuming that "equality" is the argument. It's not.

      Objectively speaking it could be that people are incorrectly interpreting vocations - that could be on the part of the hierarchy as well.

      Inter Insigniores states, “It is true that in the writings of the Fathers, one will find the undeniable influence of prejudices unfavorable to woman, but nevertheless, it should be noted that these prejudices had hardly any influences on their pastoral activity, and still less on their spiritual direction.”

      One cannot prove that statement is true. Indeed, human nature tells us that it is probably false. How does one separate one’s actions from their unfavorable prejudices? How does a person entrapped in their prejudices give a valid appraisal of the impact of their prejudices upon their actions? So, indeed, the patriarch's prejudices could very easily have turned into a "tradition" of misinterpreting women's vocations.

      I believe in a God with powers greater than the minds of the hierarchy who can call people to what humans believe "impossible." "For nothing is impossible with God" the angel Gabriel tells us.

      Scripture also tells us that denial of the Spirit is the only unforgivable sin. Thus, it is very, very, very dangerous for anyone to deny the Spirit in someone else.

      As to the "anthropology of the church", that is based upon the notion that Jesus married the church. Jesus never called the faithful his bride. Never. He called the faithful bridemaids and wedding guests but never his bride. Yes, other writers in the Scripture used that analogy but Jesus did not. And other parts of Scripture also refer to God as female which would make the church male in a wedding analogy.

      The "church anthropology" argument continues that since marriage is between one man and one woman, and since the church is a female and Jesus is a man, a man must take Jesus’ place to “marry” the female church. The hierarchy’s argument accepts that men and women comprise this female church. It explicitly states that male priests are both the male of Jesus and the female of the church. Conversely, for some reason, they refuse to permit men and women to play the role of Jesus in this marriage that they manufactured.

      The argument asserts that through Jesus metaphorically copulating with the female church, creation continues. This is all tied back to the complementary nature of men and women in procreation. However, the hierarchy states, because male priests can play both roles, laypeople aren’t actually needed for this metaphorical copulation. Again, it is an inconsistent rule insisting upon literal physical on one side of the "marriage" but not on the other.

      The hierarchy also believes that it is the sole authoritative voice of the female church. Thus, they set an example of many men marrying many men in a gender-bender same sex polygamous union. Somehow men acting as Jesus metaphorically copulate with the same group of men who play the role of the female church, and creation arises from this? This, they accept and even call “obvious”, but not so for a female representing Jesus.

      Jesus, they say, must be physically represented through sacramental symbol. Jesus is considered present in the Word, priest, Eucharist and people. But, his is considered most perfectly present in the Eucharist. Therefore the most perfect presence of his physical maleness should be through the Eucharist not the priest.

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  5. I also disagree with your assertion that society hates motherhood. Yes, there are many abortions. There are also something like 6 million children under the age of 5 who died last year due to starvation. The people who clamor about abortion often tend to be some of the harshest critics of extending public assistance to the poor. Do they give from their personal coffers to the poor following Jesus' command to sell everything and give it to the poor or do they give token amounts at the holidays so assuage their guilt.

    You are a priest, and perhaps one I know very well, but look at your budget at your parishes (3 if you're the Fr. Chris that I know in Illinois.) What percent goes to the poor versus to the parish administration and subsidizing school tuition? Most parishes have 1/3 to 1/2 of their budget paying for the school, which are increasingly become like madrasa - centers of indoctrination versus centers of education (from Latin educare meaning to draw or lead out).

    Questions are increasingly not tolerated amongst the neo-conservative crowd yet questions are the way we learn. Catholic schools today are more into pouring ideas in the mind and then sealing the mind shut. Though I sent my kids to Catholic schools for their early years, you could not pay me to send them to Catholic school now.

    In many parishes, indeed it is the case in mine, that almost $0 goes to the poor. Rather, the poor are sent to a totally separate organization, of which I am an officer, St. Vincent de Paul. I believe at my parish the total is precisely $0 from parish coffers goes to the poor. So instead, the pastor has forced himself as a signatory on our accounts. That's illegal and very wrong, but now he can "claim" that parish coffers support the poor, but that is a violation of the 8th commandment - a falsehood.

    One might argue that the poor are aided by Catholic school subsidies. However, in the case of many families such as with my parents, the truly poor can't afford to send their kids to Catholic school even with subsidies. People like that donate to parish coffers which in turn are used to subsidize the Catholic school tuition of people wealthier than them.

    What I think society hates is being generous. Until we care for the seen children created by God, it is difficult to imagine that we will care more for the unseen children.

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  6. Saying it is a great inequality that men can't bear children raises what's called the "Venus envy" of men.

    God had a very clear way of indicating men can't bear children. The physical equipment package is absent.

    There is no physical equipment package needed for being a priest so those with "Venus envy" created one with the "church anthropology" notion. But as mentioned above, that is an argument that does not hold water using the hierarchy's own logic.

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  7. Oh, a correction and a comment:

    1. If Fr. Chris is the one I think it is, you only have 1 parish in Illinois now. I forgot that he moved last June from having 3 to having 1 parish.

    2. Thank you for illustrating a point I made in an email to my bishop just last night about the "new evangelizers" - that with them all topics are a tangential avenue to abortion. I will send him this to highlight as an example.

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  8. So, help me here. I am just a regular sort of human with no special Catholic education other than what I learned as a child and from homilies at mass. This is my interpretation of Fr. Chris' argument. Fr. Chris is saying that women shouldn't be priests because they can grow a baby in their body and men cannot. Therefore in order for it to be "fair", God says that we can only ordain men because they cannot grow babies inside their bodies. So if a woman feels called to serve they cannot possibly be a priest since that would be unfair. They are really being called to do something else. Also, is one human able to determine what another human is being called by God to do? Would this be mind reading?

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