strange fire

@ruspiritual: I shall call you “Rev” in the secret places of my heart– “Pastor Jean”

I hope and pray that you will one day be unshackled from your false belief that the Roman church is the one and only true church, and that churches that allow women leaders are lesser than. 

…I don’t at all think that the Roman church is the one “true” church. I’m not sure where you’re getting that from. I don’t think that other churches are lesser. I have literally never said that. I think that the Catholic Church is deeply corrupted and damaged in its failure to ordain women, I just don’t have any intention of leaving it. And THAT is a very personal decision. This is my church, and I stay because it’s the tradition that molded me (for good and for ill) and the tradition that I am committed to working within (that work, by the way, includes working for women’s ordination). 

Sigh. I’d just finished reading a lot of stuff that was reaffirming my beliefs about the how the priesthood is bad and thinking about my occasional longings for some of its traditional trappings but not all of them - and yeah, I was feeling weird because I think it’s not super helpful for me to want the social prestige of a title that I don’t believe in - it’s about wanting power in an androcentric, normative form and foregoing that deeper analysis of what that sort of power structure does to our communities. I do understand how you read my original post and what you’re saying, I think, - I just don’t think it fully describes my experience (and it’s hard to express my experience over the internet, of course). It’s not that I think that a desire to be ordained is inherently bad, broadly speaking, just that the desire is inconsistent with most of my thoughts about the work I want to do, which is cause for self-reflection.

@ruspiritual: I shall call you “Rev” in the secret places of my heart– “Pastor Jean”

I hope and pray that you will one day be unshackled from your false belief that the Roman church is the one and only true church, and that churches that allow women leaders are lesser than. 

...I don’t at all think that the Roman church is the one “true” church. I’m not sure where you’re getting that from. I don’t think that other churches are lesser. I have literally never said that. I think that the Catholic Church is deeply corrupted and damaged in its failure to ordain women, I just don’t have any intention of leaving it. And THAT is a very personal decision. This is my church, and I stay because it’s the tradition that molded me (for good and for ill) and the tradition that I am committed to working within (that work, by the way, includes working for women’s ordination). 

I will put Chaos into fourteen lines / And keep him there.