I was a guest on the Diversity on Fire Podcast Show with host, Heather Payeur. She titled the episode, “Unburying the Truth.” We certainly had a very engaging conversation in unraveling the true history of women priests in the Catholic church.
With her openness to allow a discussion that presented entirely new factual truth to the subject at hand, the listeners are able to see a whole new side to that issue that they never knew had previously existed. Some might be thinking, I know my Catholic faith, and the truth is that there never were women priests in our Catholic church’s history. So how can I or any other member of our church lie about this fact? Further, they will pursue that our lies are nowhere to be found in the bible. And even our church fathers explicitly state, “there never were women priests in this church’s history.” Biblical research is wonderful in that, in its specific areas of expertise, it finds answers lost in history. And it is exactly in this early part of our church’s history we find truth, completely contradicting our hierarchy’s centuries-old claims.
Heather then brought up an important question. Knowing what you know now about your faith, as opposed to what you were told about your faith from a young age, did you or are you presently experiencing a crisis of faith? With this new revelation for me or are you presently experiencing a crisis of faith? With this new revelation for me, came initially a very deep sense of the betrayal of my trust by my own church. Yes, this was very painful to realize that my church, of all organizations, had deceived me. Though this was my crisis of faith I found myself in, how could I ever move forward in my faith life? I decided to follow Jesus’ lead in how He too questioned the authority figures of His own time when he felt they were doing wrong.
Alas, today I find myself speaking out to ensure for any other women, whether religious or laity, that you have an opportunity to discover this previously hidden history found in your own church’s early history. How ironic! If ever there was a time in our church’s history where this previous practice of women priests needs again to be put back into effect, now is that time! The current priest shortage continues with an ever-alarming loss of priests each year. Having one pastor in charge of five parishes won’t fly. More of these churches will close, thus further eroding the laity from their decades-old parishes. If common sense would only prevail from our church hierarchy and allow women to retain their former priestly roles to help keep your parish church open, rather than closed.
To learn more about this topic, be sure to opt-in for a chapter of the book, Scandal in the Shadows. Click the image to the right.
Listen to my chat with Heather:
