Hey, how's it going? It's Fr. Mike. I'm back, you guys!
It's Wednesday. So clearly, there's a video today. So excited! Hi, my name is Fr. Mike Schmitz and
this is Ascension Presents. A little while back, we invited people to write in
the comments section or on Twitter, a little "#ask Father Mike"
We got a bunch of questions in and so I'm gonna try to answer two of them today.
Both kind of- one is serious, the other is serious-er. So here we go.
Um, Steph_Lynne_80 asks the question: "I'm a confirmation sponsor for my niece.
What's your best advice for my role?" Well Steph, I have to say this, full disclosure, I'm the confirmation sponsor for a number of people. I'm the worst confirmation sponsor ever. So let me tell you what I learned from being a bad confirmation sponsor so you can be a better confirmation sponsor
than I've been. Three things quick. Number one, pray for your confirmand.
So pray for your niece. Oh, by the way, niece, congratulations on getting confirmed. Niece of Steph, congratulations. Pray for your niece. Pray for your person you're sponsoring. And not just like, "Oh, I'll pray for them leading up to the confirmation." Like dedicate for the rest of your life, like, "I'm going to be praying for them on a regular basis until I enter heaven and then I'm gonna pray for them on a more regular basis
because it's my job." So, intercede on their behalf. Now one way you can do that is by just offering up, you know, very simple, like "Every day, I'm gonna pray one Our Father and three Hail Mary's for this confirmand, for this person that I am a sponsor of. You could go hardcore and be like,
"From now until the day they get confirmed, I'm gonna pray a Rosary for them
or a decade of the Rosary for them or a Chaplet of Divine Mercy for them." They could give you a really serious, like intentional thinking in that kind of way. It could be that on the day they were confirmed every year, you go back and pray a Rosary for them or something like that, but pray for them, number one. Number two, be involved in their life. Now this is one of the hard things because um, we're typically, you get a confirmation sponsor who's like, "Well, you know, I know this person or the person is my aunt or the person is my cousin my older brother or sister," but I would say if you're going to be a confirmation sponsor, you have to be involved in the person's life because this is the thing that like
is kind of sad for me is that I'm not really involved in the lives of the people that I've sponsored and that's like the thing I need to literally repent of.
I pray for them all the time, but I'm not really involved in their lives.
So please be involved in their lives, because number three, you're called to be a witness to what it is to be a disciple. You're called, as the sponsor, to be a witness to them of what it is to be a disciple, not just with your actions. Of course, that's the case. But also, are you someone that
they can go to and say, "OK, how do I follow after the Lord Jesus in this
really confusing world?" Like, that could be your role. Not only to pray for them
and be involved in their lives but to be that kind of resource for them, to be
able to say, they can come to you, and say, "OK, I'm trying to make sense of this. You're my older sister or older brother in the Faith. Can you help me?" "Yeah, totally." If you're praying for them and if you're involved in their lives, to be that disciple, that witness to them. Now, the next question. The next question is,
actually, I'm a little bit nervous about this because it's kind of a serious—it's kind
of a heart question, and the question is from Matthew Alisha who wants to know "I was wondering why women can't be priests in the Catholic Church." Now, before I ... before I try to answer this, one, I know that I probably won't give an
answer that's completely exhaustive. Obviously. This is like a couple minute video. Number two, this is an issue that—for so many people—is not a head issue, it's a heart issue. So I'm going to give some reasons, but those reasons might not hit your heart and they might seem they're the surface and they might not convince you at all. So, what I want to say, first of all, is three, please,
I invite any person who's hurt by this, because I know people who are hurt by
this teaching of the Church, to know the Church does not say
that you're less if you're a woman, the Church does not say that you are not as great if you're not a man. Here's what it is to be a priest.
Here's what the Church sees itself as, and it goes all the way back to the beginning. In the beginning, the Old Testament, the
priesthood was always associated with fatherhood. Again, all the way back to the beginning.
In Exodus, before the Golden Calf incident, what happened was the father of the household was the priest of the household and so priesthood was always directly associated with fatherhood. It wasn't just associated with like,
can you do this job or can you do this task? Are you good enough? No, no. There are bad dads who are still priests. The priesthood was
always connected with fatherhood. Because of that, the Church says because of that,
we don't have the ability to ordain women, why? Because men, only men can be fathers
and only women can be mothers, and if the priesthood is fatherhood, then it
means only men can be priests. Now, let's step back.
Let's press pause for a second What's most people's experience in the parish, in the Catholic parish? Basically, we're run by single-parent families, essentially right? Most Catholic parishes now only have a priest,
only have a dad. but think back fifty years, sixty years, when a lot
of Catholic—not everyone, but a lot of Catholic parishes— they had the dad, they had the priests, but they also had the moms. They had religious sisters in every parish. Now my guess is this. My guess is if more Catholic parishes had both fathers and mothers, meaning had both priests and religious sisters,
this would almost be like a moot point. This would almost be one of those things like, "No, no, it makes sense because in my own home,
my dad was my dad and my mom was my mom." One wasn't better than the other. And if most parishes operated that way, with both dads, the priests, and moms, the religious sisters, then we'd realize what
it is to live as part of the family of God, then we would get to be the
children of our heavenly Father, it would be incredible. There are more reasons for this. And maybe we can talk about them in a different video, but that's the very beginning. It's the reason why the Church says like, we can't ordain someone who's not a man is because it takes a man to be a dad and the priesthood is
not about function, it's not about, "Can you do this job?" It's, "Hey, can you be a dad to these people?" That's not to dismiss moms because we need moms. So if you're a young woman who is considering a religious vocation, please, the Church needs your vocation. Because we've got dads but we desperately, desperately need moms. From all of us here at Ascension Presents, my name is Father Mike. God bless.
