Thursday, February 21, 2008

Women and the Church: Is there a women's priesthood?

Merry Meet!!

As many of you who read my blog know, I am a Catholic, and while I write this I will be thinking in terms of the Catholic Church. This should not make any of you feel slighted because I know there are many churches who would not allow female priests. Not in the ordinary, anyway.

Women have a unique and sometimes problematic relationship with the Church. They are like Janus with his two faces; dual sided entities, the two faces of the same sexual coin. Woman is both Whore of the Devil(Eve) and Mother of God(Mary). Some of the apostles loved women, some admittedly did not. But I never thought of women's relationship to God as a popularity race and I never thought Jesus ever said anything to exclude the woman from her own priesthood.

The hearth was the center of the home for many millenia. It was where the family could find warmth, food, a face with softness to see into them and know what they needed. Here, the early Christian, particularly in the early days of the Church under persecution, would find the woman of the house cooking up a little unleavened bread, roasting a little meat and stirring a little soup. Before the meal, she would take the crisp little bread and a cup of wine, or maybe even water and sit it by her husband's place and he would say "This is the body of Christ";"This is his Blood" and the family would remember the Eucharist with each other. But what if she was alone? What if it was just her and her little kids? What if she was all alone?

Then she would take the bread in her hand and give God thanks and praise and break it and give it to her children and tell them to remember Jesus who gave up his life for them and she would do the same with the cup. Any Christian who does not feel empowered to remember Christ in the breaking of bread needs to examine their relationship with Christ. Not the Church. I love my Church, I would die for my Church, but I know that the Church is a human construct.But your relationship with God. Just as I am empowered by my sisterhood with Christ as I am an adopted Child under the contract of blood Jesus shed for me, so I may celebrate in the most profound symbols of Christ's sacrifice. It is not something for women to fight over and screech like scalded cats about. It is something for them to do when the time has come when gathering in houses of worship will be dangerous and the home becomes God's kingdom on earth and the hearth once again becomes the altar. That time has not yet come, but it may be in the future.

Ironic though, the hearth is also the place of worship and Craft for the witch.

Brightest Blessings Be
Aslinn

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