The Liberal Catholic Church
A tri-annual magazine exploring the deeper aspects of religious thought,
experience and practice in the world today
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Path to Enlightenment
Stig Nordfjeld, Denmark
It was interesting to read several different points of view regarding the issue of ordaining women to the priesthood in the St. Michael and All Angels 1999 issue of The Liberal Catholic. Especially for a Dane, as in Denmark more than 70% of all priests younger than 40 years of age are women! Using this as point of departure, most Danes would find other churches more liberal than our church. R obert Ellwood's statements about the more or less invisible way and form in which the Lord will return the next time are important to note - as well as Ellwood's expectations for the spiritual evolution of mankind in relation to the use of the word liberal. In Denmark, some years ago, the word Liberal in the name of our church was changed to the word Free, in order not to create wrong expectations about our church. If our church were to ordain women, then the word Liberal in the name would make sense again to the Danes. If we, as Ellwood suggests, have to read the signs of the times, the thoughts of the Most Reverend Johannes van Alphen seem to be inappropriate, as it would not seem reasonable to use rituals today based on the level of evolution of mankind as at Zachariah's time. Instead of looking backwards into the Old Testament to find answers as to how the coming structure for the Mass might be, it might be wiser to seek using a combination of the words spoken by Jesus and the signs of our time. If -due to an insufficient level of evolution of mankind- the World Teacher necessarily hid some messages given to us by Jesus in the centuries gone by, it would be wise to seek among the more recently discovered texts.If this is so, then some of the answers are to be found in the Holy Gospel of Saint Thomas. An almost complete portion of this gospel, written in the Coptic language, was found in 1945 near Nag Hammadi in Egypt. It has since been translated into several languages of our time - the first translation being in Danish and was published in 1959 by Professor Dr. Teol Søren Giversen. Therefore, none of the Liberal Catholic Church founders were aware of these texts. When compared to the other well-known gospels, the gospel of Thomas gives a very distinct and quite different view on the roles and importance of the sexes of human beings: Logion 22 says: Jesus saw infants being suckled. He said to his disciples, "These infants being suckled, are like those, who enter the Kingdom." They said to him: "Shall we then, as children, enter the Kingdom?" Jesus said to them: "When you make the two one, and when you make the inside like the outside, and the outside like the inside, and the above like the below, and when you make the male and the female one and the same, so that the male not be male nor the female female; and when you fashion eyes in place of an eye, and a hand in place of a hand, and a foot in place of a foot, a likeness in place of a likeness, then will you enter the Kingdom". Logion 67: Jesus said: "If one who knows the all, still feels a personal deficience, he is completely deficient." Logion 114 says: Simon Peter said to them: "Let Maria leave us, for women are not worthy of life." Jesus said: "I myself shall lead her, in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman, who will make herself male, will enter the Kingdom of heaven." As the validity of the Holy Gospel of Saint Thomas has scientifically been proven, the ongoing discussion regarding the ordination of women to the priesthood, seems to be missing the point, simply as Jesus tells us in this gospel that everyone has to realise that we contain both qualities. Everyone has to learn to manage and balanced the use of the roles of both sexes as an important component to becoming enlightened. In order to be able to maintain this inner balance we need to simultaneously embody the qualities of both poles within ourselves. If this is so, why should we -as suggested by the Most Reverend Johannes van Alphen- separate and split these qualities in the Mass by making two persons of different sex handle these qualities separately? Why suddenly let two persons do the function which one person can already manage? If this is the case, why could a female priest with a good inner contact with both poles not be able to be a brilliant channel for the process of consecration?
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