So...that's what it's all about!

The Parish Priest, advertising for "homestay" volunteers for World Youth day, mentioned this little tid-bit in the Catholic Weekly. The director of the Sydney archdiocese’s Liturgy Office, one Father Tim Deeter, has made plain Rome's and - a fortiori - our Cardinal's view of the creeping infection of "political correctness" in the administering of sacraments with the Roman Catholic Church in this country. Most particularly in Baptism it appears.

Fr. Tim decried the use of words in baptism that replace masculine terms such as "Father" and "Son", stating that words other than these are "not valid". Fr. Tim prefaced his remarks with the following from the Catholic Catechism:

The ordained priesthood guarantees that it really is Christ Who acts in the sacraments through the Holy Spirit for the Church. The saving mission entrusted by the Father to His incarnate Son was committed to the apostles and through them to their successors: they receive the Spirit of Jesus to act in His Name and in His Person.

I am therefore, right. Furthermore, I am male and am thus extra-right.

Words such as "Creator" and "Redeemer", apparently being used in some sacraments, will render the child un-baptised and forced to undergo the sacrament properly and with suitable male lingo. Further, were you baptised with such language, any other sacrament (Holy Communion, reconciliation, etc) are too invalidated for you are the un-baptised.

It's not about the meaning of these sacraments, it's about the right gender forms. In an all-male church this is of significance. In the end Fr Tim is correct in that changing the wording of a ritual alters that ritual. And, I am as much adverse to "political crrectness" as the next bloke. It's just the ultra-sensitivity to gender that intrigues. That Christ's church has become so hide-bound to ritual and forms would, in my opinion, appall him as did the Jewish hierarchy of his day.

Much of this began because of the patriarchal society in which this religion was formed. The Judaic tradition is utterly male and the early Christian tradition followed suit. There is only one acceptable form of clergy in these religions ( as with Islam) and that is male.

I wonder, each time I hear the calls to register and pay for WYD, just what Jesus would make of his church. What he would make of the pomp, the courtly attire of power and the strict power structure that accrues to the top.

There seems a gradual loss of the original plot.