What happened?

I've been away for two days, and upon my return I see Father storming out of the place, Mother seems fit to be tied, and Sister Caprice is in the Chapel crying?!?!?

As an update, I've been over visiting the Dominicans as Father instructed me. It turns out that they are a wonderful order, very prayerful, young, dynamic and in love with the Eucharist.

I'll fill that in later, as Father seems to need a refresher on Adoration and Eucharistic Exposition. What seminary did he go to, anyway?

Anyway, the most immediate response seems to be to call Sister Caprice down. We entered the community at about the same time and have had many late night talks in the community room. She really is a very devout woman, deeply in love with Jesus. I can understand her desire to be a priest; as handling the Sacred Species and being able to celebrate the Sacraments is such a unique thing in our world. Trust me, this is a misguided love.

I talked to Sister for about an hour today, and I think we're going to reconnect after dinner as we both drew dish duty.

So far I've explained to her the importance of the priest acting in persona Christi; that is, he stands in the place of Christ who was (and is!) inescapably male. Certainly the care and compassion that tends to be embodied in women is also a reflection of the Divine Love, but as a person, a man is better able to represent Christ, especially in the celebration of the Sacraments.

She seemed to understand this, so far.

Tonight, we're going to discuss that because Christ only called men to be His closest followers, the Twelve, whom we see as the first priests and the predecessors of the Apostles; that the male priesthood is a divinely inspired mandate, ie: something we cannot change, even if we wanted to.

Like I said earlier, I am convinced that this was just a moment of misguided religious fervor from our dear Sister. I will talk to Father and Mother later, as they seemed to have disappeared right now, to calm them down and explain that Sister Caprice really isn't a heretic; just misguided youthful exuberance.