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"Pope Francis again rules out women ever serving as priests in the Roman Catholic church. .
While flying home to Rome on Tuesday 1st November, Francis affirmed the Catholic church's refusal to ordain women. He noted the matter was clearly decided under Pope John Paul II, who categorically rejected the idea of women priests in 1994. Vatican says this teaching is an infallible part of Catholic tradition.
Is this true? Can this ban on women priests be considered infallible as taught by the ordinary magisterium? This claim was put forward in the Responsum ad dubium of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith dated October 28, 1995 and published November 18, 1995, which followed the publication of the Apostolic Letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis (OS) by Pope John Paul II in 1994.
There are only 3 ways a doctrine can be infallibly taught in the Church:
- by a solemn ex cathedra teaching act of the pope’s infallible extraordinary magisterium, as defined at Vatican I and further explained at Vatican II;
- by a solemn dogmatic definition by a valid ecumenical council; and
- by a teaching of the ‘ordinary and universal magisterium’ (see Vatican II, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen gentium, section 25, for an explanation of all three ‘modes’ of infallibility).
To see the full article on whether this teaching can be claimed to be infallible see this article by Peter Burns SJ
The church has always responded to criticism of the ban on women by pointing out that Jesus only chose men as his apostles. But consider this : “All who are baptised in Christ, have put on Christ.There is no longer any discrimination between Jew and non-Jew, slave and free, male and female.” Galatians 3,28 Thus every baptised woman shares fully in Christ’s priesthood, kingship and prophetic mission. Baptism implies a fundamental openness to all the sacraments, including the ministerial priesthood.
Conclusion: there are no valid arguments against women priests, and many truly Catholic arguments in favour!
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