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Next Pope Challenges: Ordination of Women
While there is a fable about a female Pope, the Catholic Church’s policy strictly forbids the ordination of women. Could that change when the next Pope takes over the Vatican?
FOX News Radio’s Courtney Kealy has more in our continuing series:
Audio clip:
The fable traced to 13th Century writings tell the tale of Pope Joan, who became Pope briefly around the year 855. Disguised as a man, Pope Joan went into labor and was killed by an angry mob – or so the fable goes that a Holy Father became an Unholy Mother. With the Catholic Church still not allowing female priests, there will be no female Pope.
(Fr. Morris) “The explanation that John Paul II gave to theologians who were asking him the question about female ordination to the priesthood – and then, of course, if that were the case, it could be to a Bishop, or a Cardinal, or a Pope – his answer was this is something that I even, as Pope, do not have authority to change because it’s something that goes back to the example of Jesus himself.”
Father Jonathan Morris, a FOX News contributor, says it would be a reversal of Jesus choosing men as his first disciples. But the story of Pope Joan still fascinates some, and is mentioned in an appendix of the Oxford Dictionary of Popes.
Courtney Kealy, FOX News Radio.
CLICK HERE for more of our special series on Next Pope Challenges.
Milka
March 5, 2013 at 1:25 pm
There is no scriptural support of women being excluded from the priesthood other than the social norms of the time or for a celibate priesthood either. Considering the "fact" that Mary and Mary Magdelene both waited at the cross long after the disciples had left Jesus, and that a woman heralded the news of an empty sepulchre, it seems obvious that women were also disciples and therefore, priests of the gospel. Any religion that is still misogynistic will no longer survive.. Church hierachy must concede that women are equal before God, or the church will die. Shame of these males for denigrating their own mothers and sisters by thinking themselves superior and blaming God for the exclusion. SImply put, the church will either grow and change or, there will no longer be a Vatican. Many European priests are already married. To dishonor the right to marry among its clergy is a travesty, no less than disqualifying women as ministers of faith. True believers of Christ can still worship and believe without the imprimatur of a hierachy that dismisses them.