Help me deal with my mother's anti-women priests ideas!

[pigsinmud]

I was brought up going to a C of E church with my mum, but went to a Catholic primary school. At the age of 14 I refused to go to church any more - I told her it was all rubbish which upset her, but I felt she refused to take my beliefs into account. I am now an atheist - I think!

Anyway, my mum stopped going to church when I was about 18 - so 23 years ago. About 5 years ago she started going to the C of E church again, but stopped because she didn't like women taking the service. She swapped to the local RC church that my primary school was linked to and now has decided to be baptised a Catholic. It is mainly because they don't have female priests - she thinks it's wrong, but can't give me an answer as to why she thinks it is wrong. Plus, the fact that there a lot of people going who she knows from when I was at school.

I can't deal with the fact she is so opposed to female priests. She even went as far to say that if I was to become a vicar (highly unlikely!) she would not come to my ordination. My dad is about it all and thinks she is going through a phase. She doesn't have any reasons WHY women shouldn't take church services, she just tells me it's wrong.

I'm just venting really!

Hey mad and green, this is fascinating. New avenues to explore. Unsure of the scene on these in uk but will google.

Apple does restrict choice I guess. But it's so far forward at present it seemed best analogy.

Perhaps you can do some serious study into comparative religion. You should find out more about the guy born of a virgin who's birthday is 25 December.

No, not Jesus - the ancient Persian god Mithra.

That's why the Christian church picked 25 December - a spoiling tactic against Mithraism.

Once you really start delving you'll discover just how much organised religion is a construct, and how much of Christian myth is actually borrowed from elsewhere.

madhair- santa being satan is part of an annual lesson given to 5 year olds at the school where my sister works. It is a large (1000 pupils) baptist private school. My sister believes totally in the creation myth. She believes that the world is 4000 years old and that humans c0-existed with dinosaurs.
She also teaches science at her school.

I like the computer analogy too. I wonder whether my liberal-universalist christianity is analgous to an open-source ubuntu platform?

OP it sounds like your mum is brining up this topic directly because she knows that it's a matter you disagree on, and she perhaps actually enjoys having a bone of contention. If you don't enjoy it you need to address the underlying desire to provoke discord and avoid engaging on this actual topic.

If you do wan to engage with her, read up on the "priesthood of all believers" concept: effectively, all christians are priests in that any of us can address the almighty directly without a mediator (c.f. sundering of the veil in the temple at the resurrection). also anyone who says that sacraments performed by a woman are invalid is probably guilty of the heresy of Donatism - this was decreed a heresy in 300AD and the doctrinal statement that a sacrament is a sacrament regardless of the status of who performs it can be directly applied to saying that of course sacraments performed by women priests are valid.

My mum was also anti-women-priests for the first decade after the CofE started ordaining them. Then she got a grip and realised that on the occasions when a visiting minister was a woman nothing bad happened and the sermons were just as edifying and the eucharist just as sacred, and now she's fine. I thank a lot of people on the CofE had to go on this journey, it's a massive shame that your mum's absence from the church during this period caused her to miss this learning process when many other people were on the same path.

I feel sad for those children, atthestroke.

Richard - oh dear, have you not read more widely on Mithraism/mystery religions and the comparisons with Jesus? You may find that the whole 'Christianity nicked it from the facts about some ancient god' is sinking, if not sunk, in very shifting sands, quite a while ago now, unless you are big fans of certain 19th c theologians and some dodgy unqualified blokes from Jesus Seminar fame.