Quote Originally Posted by Don Corleone View Post
Wow. Doesn't take long before a fairly simple question devolves into a hundred concerning Faith, the bible, Christianity in general and Roman Catholicism in particular.

1) By right of free association, the Catholic Church has the right to set up its own rules regarding office holders and membership. Regardless of my personal views regarding the ordination of women or homosexuals, the Church itself is the final arbiter on whether or not women should be priests.
I don't think anyone is argueing the issue under secular law. The question is whether they are making the right decision before God.

2) The bible is a lot more accurate than most people would have thought. The Dead Sea Scrolls, beyond giving us some wonderful insights into the grammatical constructs of Aramaic, demonstrated that for the most part, the fidelity of transcriptions through the centuries has been astounding.
Fidelity of transcription does not answer the question of the selection of the canon. Though I grant you it is an important point, even so there are errors.

3) The bible itself does not prohibit women from serving as ministers, and it doesn't say concretely that there were no female disciples, just that there were no female apostles. Bishops, not priests, are the modern descendants of the apostles. Priests are descendants of the disciples.
Paul's first letter to Timothy specifically prohibits women from being priests and the Old Testemant makes a number of distinction between men and women.

4) The thread title is misleading. The women in question are NOT Catholic priests, any more than I am the NFL defensive MVP from last year, even though I just publicly declared that I was and a group of guys at work agreed and recognized me as such.
They are heretics against the Church, under Church law. This is, however, the choice of the Church to excomunicate them.

5) Those of you boo-hooing about tradition... I have news for you, there is no such thing as an organized body of Christianity without some tradition of one sort or another.
So we should just keep on with traditions just because we have them? Other branches of Christianity, including Anglicanism, do not create Dogma in the way in which the Roman Church has.