Mexico City Newsroom, Jul 5, 2023 / 16:10 pm (CNA).
Cardinal Robert Sarah, prefect emeritus of the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, stressed that “the priesthood is unique” and warned that “no council, no synod” can “invent a female priesthood.”
In his conference on the priesthood, entitled “Joyful Servants of the Gospel” given July 3 at the Conciliar Seminary in Mexico City, the cardinal assured that no one “has the power to transform this divine gift to adapt it and reduce its transcendent value to the cultural and environmental field.”
“No council, no synod, no ecclesiastical authority has the power to invent a female priesthood … without seriously damaging the perennial physiognomy of the priest, his sacramental identity, within the renewed ecclesiological vision of the Church, mystery, communion, and mission,” he emphasized.
Sarah stressed that “the Catholic faith professes that the sacrament of Holy Orders, instituted by Christ the Lord, is one, it is identical for the universal Church. For Jesus, there is no African, German, Amazonia, or European priesthood. The priesthood is unique, it is identical for the universal Church.”
Priesthood ‘a gift’
In his conference, the prefect emeritus also reflected on “being a priest” and stressed that “the priesthood is a great, great mystery, so great a gift that it would be a sin to waste it.”
“It’s a divine gift that must be received, understood, and lived, and the Church has always sought to understand and enter deeper into the real and proper being of the priest, as a baptized man, called to be an alter Christus, another Christ, even more so an ipse Christus, Christ himself, to represent Him, to conform to Him, to be configured and mediated in Christ with priestly ordination,” he explained.
For the Guinean prelate, “the priest is a man of God who is day and night in the presence of God to glorify him, to adore him. The priest is a man immolated in sacrifice to prolong the sacrifice of Christ for the salvation of the world.”
The cardinal said that the “first task” of priests “is to pray, because the priest is a man of prayer: He begins his day with the Office of Readings and ends his day with the Office.”
“A priest who does not pray is about to die. A Church that does not pray is a dead Church,” he warned.
Regarding the lack of priestly vocations, he encouraged the faithful to pray because “it’s not that we are few.”
“Christ ordained 12 for the whole world. How many of us are priests today? There are close to 400,000 of us priests in the world. There are too many of us,” he said, citing the same observation made by Pope Gregory the Great in the 7th century.
“Many have accepted the priesthood, but they’re not doing the work of the priest,” Sarah explained.
“So in response, we must pray. Ask him to send workers to his harvest, pray. And show that we priests are happy, because if young men see that we are sad, we won’t attract anyone.” he urged. “We have to be happy, even if we’re suffering.”
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
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Serving the poor, the abandoned, the weak, the sick, the elderly, the marginalized, the exploited, the stigmatized, the powerless, the victims of injustice, the rejected, the dejected, and the ejected – is a humble mission of service to which all are called.
That might be true, but it has nothing to do with the subject of the article, like most of your posts.
Thanks Athanasius,
The humble Jesus of Nazareth did just that. There is nothing higher than what Jesus did, taught and welcomed people of goodwill to come and imitate. All ritualistic exercises are experiencing hiccups and existential crisis just as it used to be in the days of Jesus. Think of the plight of the Pharisees, Sadducees, Levites, etc.
Perhaps we have code language (“to which all are called”) to the concealed effect that women should be ordained…
About priests who pray…Some years ago, yours truly asked an orthodox and steadfast Jesuit friend why so many priests are so compromised. “It’s not doctrinal,” he said, “they stopped really praying years ago.” And then this reason: “three squares and a flop.”
So, today, the pointy-headed and layered smoke screens of a paradigm shift, a polyhedral church, a new nominalist head of the Dicastery on Christian Doctrine, dismissive disdain for “backwardness” together with a new punch bowl version of synodality, then a 2023 synod on synodality, and then a 2024 synod on the synod on synodality. Finally, a lesbian church–with female priestesses in bed with Christ’s bride–Holy Mother the Church?
Of what synods have to offer, who will extract the cyanide from the synodal punch bowl? “Facilitators” in purple and red hats?
“invent a female priesthood”? Who are the inventors?
During Jesus’ time with “man” he was said to be a Jewish Rabbi. He taught in the Temple.
Women are the heavy lifters… St. John Paul II explained it this way: “Parenthood… is realized much more fully in the woman, especially in the prenatal period… This unique contact with the new human being developing within her gives rise to an attitude towards… every human being… It is commonly thought that women are more capable than men of paying attention to another person… The man… always remains ‘outside’ the process of pregnancy and the baby’s birth; in many ways he has to learn his own ‘fatherhood’ from the mother” (Mulieris Dignitatem, 18).
How can we be so stupid. Some hurdles that WOMEN had to endured in the 19th, 20th and 21th centuries…
History Today:
1840 First women’s rights convention
1920 19th amendment granted women the right to vote
1955: Black seamstress Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat to a white man on a bus in Montgomery, Ala. civil rights movement.
1963: President John F. Kennedy signs into law the Equal Pay Act, FOR WOMEN!
1981: Sandra Day O’Connor is sworn in by President Ronald Reagan as the first woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.
1984: Democratic presidential nominee Walter Mondale names U.S. Rep. Geraldine Ferraro (N.Y.) as his running mate, making her the first woman vice president nominee by a major party.
1994: Clinton signs the Violence Against Women
2013: The U.S. military removes a ban against women serving in combat positions.
2016: Hillary Clinton becomes the first woman to receive a presidential nomination from a major political party.
2021: Kamala Harris is sworn in as the first woman and first woman of color vice president of the United States.
Over the centuries women were dishonored by males. Now we have a group of old MEN continuing to call the wrong shots.
God bless all holy women.
“Now we have a group of old MEN continuing to call the wrong shots.”
Are you not yourself an older man? And do you really believe in such a deterministic view of humanity? Curious.
Women can do many things Morgan, but there are some things they cannot do. Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks did great things, however, I noticed in your comment above that some of the achievements that women have done seem to pertain to worldly, government offices.
I mean, yeah cool, Ferraro being selected as first woman VP candidate, Hillary being chosen as first woman presidential nominee, Harris being selected as first Black VP by our “Catholic” president etc. But those offices are only temporary, worldly means of power. The Catholic Church will last until the end of the world.
Women have done tremendous things, and are now able to be elected to powerful, high government offices and do many other things too.
But that does not give them the power to consecrate bread and wine into the Sacred Species and hear other people’s confessions.
The priesthood is much more important and humble than the highest government office. Jesus Christ is not only the God-Man who sacrificed himself for the world, Jesus Christ himself is a priest.
All priests at the moment of consecration are Jesus. He speaks through the priest because the male priest is acting in place of Christ.
“Do this in memory of Me”.