<HTML><FONT FACE=arial,helvetica><BODY BGCOLOR="#ffffff"><FONT SIZE=2>In a message dated 3/5/02 4:22:36 AM Eastern Standard Time, Velsthe1@aol.com writes:
<BR>
<BR><BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">
<BR>You're kidding right? Between the well known phrase "History is written by the victors". Lets try some biblical history here. </FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" SIZE=3 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" FACE="Arial" LANG="0"></BLOCKQUOTE>
<BR>
<BR>[story about Moses snipped]
<BR></FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" SIZE=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" FACE="Arial" LANG="0">
<BR>Bugger-all, it's not conspiracy theory, it's learning from history. </FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" SIZE=3 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" FACE="Arial" LANG="0">
<BR></FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" SIZE=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" FACE="Arial" LANG="0"><BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px"></FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" SIZE=3 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" FACE="Arial" LANG="0"></BLOCKQUOTE>
<BR>
<BR></FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" SIZE=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" FACE="Arial" LANG="0">If you want to beleive that the early church ordained women, and the later church, after deciding not to allow women's ordination, covered up or destroyed the evidence that it was ever done, fine. Go ahead. You can call it "learning from history." I'll still call it "conspiracy theory."
<BR>
<BR></FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" SIZE=3 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" FACE="Arial" LANG="0">
<BR></FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" SIZE=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" FACE="Arial" LANG="0"><BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">>Firstly, the definition of infalibility that the
<BR>>Catholic Church uses is "incapable of error."
<BR>I dunno, it would still sound to me only people incapable of error would be free from guilt or sin.
<BR></FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" SIZE=3 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" FACE="Arial" LANG="0"></BLOCKQUOTE>
<BR>
<BR></FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" SIZE=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" FACE="Arial" LANG="0">Yet that is not what it means. If you want to know what the Catholic Church means by "Papal Infallibility" then don't go looking in Websters. Don't ask some guy off the street what he thinks the term means. Go look in the Catechism. Find out what the Church means by it. They do not mean "free from sin" at all, in the slightest.
<BR>
<BR>
<BR></FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" SIZE=3 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" FACE="Arial" LANG="0">
<BR></FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" SIZE=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" FACE="Arial" LANG="0"><BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">>It does NOT mean that he always knows what is right.
<BR>>It is a negative protection, preventing him from
<BR>>teaching wrong. There is a difference. He doesn't
<BR>>have an angel whispering answers in his ear.
<BR>I fear you may have just undermined yourself, and spoken heresy. Papal infallibility DOES mean the Pope is never wrong, and everything that comes from him is given to him from the lips of God. That is who the mystic of the Papacy. The Pope is the mouthpeice of God on earth and that is why whatever comes from the Papal See IS infallible.</FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" SIZE=3 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" FACE="Arial" LANG="0"></BLOCKQUOTE>
<BR>
<BR></FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" SIZE=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" FACE="Arial" LANG="0">Again, this is not what the Catholic Church teaches at all, in the slightest. It is never what they have taught. The Pope does not have things revealed to him by divine revelation. He has to study and come to his conclusions just like anyone else. Infallibility means that he is prevented from teaching error. It does not mean that he always has the right answer "given to him by the lips of God."
<BR>
<BR>If you really want to talk with me about Papal Infallibility, e-mail me privately. It is irrelavant to the evidence of early women in the priesthood, and I doubt many on the Merry Rose want to get involved in a religious debate. But first read: http://albanach.org/apologetics/infalibility.html
<BR>
<BR></FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" SIZE=3 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" FACE="Arial" LANG="0">
<BR></FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" SIZE=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" FACE="Arial" LANG="0"><BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">Women as priests being wide-sread, probably not. But it does appear that your point of arguement is that it never happened, ever. </FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" SIZE=3 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" FACE="Arial" LANG="0"></BLOCKQUOTE>
<BR>
<BR></FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" SIZE=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" FACE="Arial" LANG="0">My "point of arguement" is that there is not enough evidence to support that it happened. And believing that it did without it being documented, and then holding those who don't agree with you to be "close minded" is just foolish.
<BR>
<BR></FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" SIZE=3 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" FACE="Arial" LANG="0">
<BR></FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" SIZE=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" FACE="Arial" LANG="0"><BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">To be heretics, they have to be in the church to begin with, yes? Did the official line of the church allow women priests, no. Does that mean it never happened, of course not. Consider the raw geography involved, populations scattered to the four winds. </FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" SIZE=3 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" FACE="Arial" LANG="0"></BLOCKQUOTE>
<BR>
<BR></FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" SIZE=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" FACE="Arial" LANG="0">If I understand correctly, your argument now is that since we are talking about a large population over a large geographical area, then the odds are that somewhere, someone was ordaining women priests?
<BR>
<BR>That idea might be enough for someone to begin to base a theory on, but without more supporting evidence it is meaningless.
<BR>
<BR></FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" SIZE=3 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" FACE="Arial" LANG="0">
<BR></FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" SIZE=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" FACE="Arial" LANG="0"><BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">I think that may be another point of confusion. Your arguement is that a heretic is a heretic from the first time they have a thought against the official teachings of the church. Many of the rest involved in this discussion would probably say that soemone isn't a heretic until they are labelled as such. </BLOCKQUOTE>
<BR>
<BR>If I, as a non-ordained lay person get up next Sunday wearing a Batman costume, rush up to the atar and begin to denounce the Pope as the anti-Christ, and to tell everyone that Jesus was really a space-alien, am I a heretic before or after word of my mad ravings reaches Rome and they denounce me?
<BR>
<BR>I think there is a point here that people are missing. In the various writings "Against Heresies" that early Fathers of the Church have written, such as Irenaeus, the groups that are being denounced as heretical are condemned for a whole slew of heresies, and their involvement of women in priestly functions is almost incidental. You can scour through the entire Catholic Encyclopdia and you won't find one heretical group mentioned whose only heresy was the ordination of women. So it isn't as if some normal, faithful church somewhere in East Pampootie decided to try ordaining women and then were labelled heretical because of that.
<BR>
<BR>You seem to be grasping at straws here. All I'm saying is that when people present to you a version of history that is radically different from the accepted norm, take a real hard objective look at their documented evidence. Be critical, don't just accept their theories spoon-fed. See if you think their evidence holds up. In this particular case, it does not.
<BR>
<BR>Aye,
<BR>Eogan
<BR>
<BR>Tighearn Eoghan Og mac Labhrainn, OPE, CP
<BR>Sacred Stone Pursuivant, Baronial Bard
<BR>WWW.ALBANACH.ORG
<BR>-------------------------------------------------------------
<BR>1 out of every 4 babies in America dies of CHOICE</FONT></HTML>