To Be Reasonable

Alright, it’s finally time to get back into this series. So far, we’ve established a few characteristics of that being that we’re calling God.

God is One

God is Simple (as in having no parts)

God is Omnipresent (everywhere)

God is unchanging

God is existence itself.

Let’s explore a few more characteristics of God before we try to move forward in the conversation, just to see how far pure thought will get us.

I seem to recall a disclaimer from the beginning of the series- there will only be one assumption used in this entire series- that something (namely the Universe) exists. Looking back, that’s not entirely true. There is a second underlying assumption, but this one is critical to understanding anything. That assumption is that we are able to trust our capacity to think reasonably. Let’s take a minute and examine that assumption.

Can we trust our reason? That’s a pretty big question. If we can’t, well… There goes everything you ever thought you understood, because your mind could be deceiving you. This is something that the French philosopher and father of the Enlightenment René Descartes understood quite well. Unfortunately for the future of philosophy, Descartes was unable to answer the question very well. Why? Because he insisted that already existing structures of thought could provide no answers. Let’s take some time and examine the question, then.

It most certainly seems as though we can trust our reason. For example, if I give you this: 2+2=?, most people can usually see the answer is 4. How? Through reason, that the quantity of two, added to itself, always equals four. There’s a beautiful philosophical question hiding in there, but we’ll deal with that later. You can also say that because the ball is falling, you know it had been off the ground previously.

If, for some reason, we think we can’t trust our reason, then we have a problem. What’s that problem? Well, that we can’t trust the conclusion, that our reason is unreliable. Why? Because we can’t trust the path to get there. It’s a proof that there is no such thing as a proof. It’s a bit of a problem.

So we must be able to trust our reason. That’s the presupposition that shapes the very foundation of everything we produce, do, and are. But we must be careful with trusting our reason. Can it be trusted? Yes. Can it be deceived? This is also true.

So how can we know for sure that our reason is actually being trustworthy? How do we know that our reason isn’t being deceived? How can we tell fact from fiction? If our reason is being deceived, what can we do about it? And, above all, we still haven’t actually answered the most important question, why do we trust our reason?

These questions are all very important. But first, I’m going to deal with one tiny, but very critical, question- why does it matter?

There are some who will say that philosophy has no place anymore, because science is capable of answering any questions that humanity can answer. What they don’t realize is that by saying that, they are making a philosophical statement. How are scientific conclusions made? Experiments are conducted, data is measured, and suddenly, the experimenters are left with a large table of numbers. Those numbers by themselves mean absolutely nothing. So what happens to them?

This is where philosophy appears in science. The scientists must look at the numbers and draw conclusions from them. They must be able to say whether or not variable x has any effect upon the result, and whether or not the effect, if there is one, is significant. Conclusions must be drawn from the numbers, those numbers don’t speak for themselves.

Even in the realm of science, the necessity of trusting the human capacity to reason is absolutely critical. But it’s something that’s often overlooked. Next time, we’re going to start actually breaking the question down.

And this is where the very philosophical part of the journey begins.

The Man of the Church

Last time, we discussed why only men can be priests. We only got as far as the decisions of Jesus and the original 12 apostles. This time, we’ll discuss more of the history as well as the theological reasoning.

There are a number of things that changed in the time since the time of the apostles. For example, women wearing veils was something that was actually a discipline and has since been changed. Why should the prescription on priests be different? Well, there’s a slight difference between a discipline and the priesthood. See, the ministerial priesthood (the ordained priesthood) is started by a sacrament, Holy Orders. The problem with a sacrament is that it is an outward sign of grace. They were instituted by Christ, and we don’t have the authority to change them.'

We can’t make the Eucharist coffee and donuts instead of bread and wine, just because the culture thinks it’s a better idea. We can’t change that, because the bread and wine thing was instituted by Christ, and the outward sign is actually a part of the sacrament. It actually does make a difference that it be men, and this has been recognized for essentially the entirety of the Church. In the Council of Nicaea in 325, twelve, out of twenty, of the canons dealt with ordination. These canons are official, definitive, authoritative statements from the Church. The most obvious, though, would be canon 19. It deals with the ordination of women as deacons, and explicitly says that there are many females who are called deacons, but they should be counted among the laity.

The very nature of the priesthood, though, also rules out the idea of using women. Why? Because in the Catholic Church, the priest acts in the person of Christ. It’s not merely a role in a show, though. Let’s pretend it is only that simple and mundane, though. The priest is acting as Christ. Let’s find something similar. The movie Braveheart, starring Mel Gibson, is a pretty popular one. What if the role of William Wallace was played by a woman? Let’s take… Shirley Temple? Or maybe Julia Roberts? How about Jennifer Anniston? Seeing any of these women trying to play the role of the epitome of a man’s man is nothing short of laughable.

Even with all that, though, will come the claim that women have a “right” to the priesthood. Well, this claim involves a fundamental misunderstanding about the priesthood. It is not a right. It has never been about rights. If anything, the priesthood is a sacrifice, a painful thing, that should be taken very seriously. There’s an old saying that goes “the road to hell is lined with the skulls of priests.” Every priest automatically carries responsibility for his flock. He is the one responsible for them to make it to heaven. In the book of James, there’s a warning- “Let not many become teachers, my brothers, knowing that we will receive a stricter judgment” (James 3:1). It’s not a call to take lightly.

And ultimately, that is what it is. The priesthood is a calling. Christ chooses his priests. We don’t decide to be priests for him. It is not about rights. Ultimately, it isn’t even about the symbolism. At the very heart and soul of the issue is the fact that Christ chooses his priests. And the Church, speaking with the authority of Christ, as she has done since the time of Christ, has spoken definitively, saying that Christ has always, and will always, only choose men.