Posted on 07/08/2006 9:23:38 AM PDT by WestTexasWend
By coincidence, a potentially historic speech about women that received little media fanfare was made two weeks before America's Episcopal Church elected Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori as its leader, the first female to head a branch of the international Anglican Communion.
The speaker was Cardinal Walter Kasper, the Vatican's top official on relations with non-Catholic Christians, addressing a private session with the Church of England's bishops and certain women priests.
Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, spiritual leader of the 77 million Anglicans, invited Kasper to discuss the English church's projected move to allow women bishops. To date, only the United States, Canada and New Zealand have female Anglican bishops.
Official Catholic and Anglican negotiators have spent four decades working toward shared Communion and full recognition of each other's clergy and doctrine. Mincing no words, Kasper said that goal of restoring full relations "would realistically no longer exist" if Anglicanism's mother church in England consecrates women bishops.
"The shared partaking of the one Lord's table, which we long for so earnestly, would disappear into the far and ultimately unreachable distance. Instead of moving towards one another, we would coexist alongside one another," Kasper warned, though some cooperation would continue.
In the New Testament and throughout church history, Kasper explained, bishops have been "the sign and the instrument of unity" for local dioceses and Christianity worldwide. Thus, women bishops would be far more damaging than England's women priests.
This centrality of bishops also explains why within world Anglicanism there's far more upset about U.S. Episcopalians' consecration of an openly gay bishop than earlier ordinations of gay priests. But Kasper didn't repeat Rome's equally fervent opposition to gay clergy.
The cardinal said women bishops should be elevated only after "overwhelming consensus" is reached with Catholicism and like-minded Eastern Orthodoxy.
Anglicans cannot assume Catholicism will someday drop objections to female priests and bishops, Kasper said. "The Catholic Church is convinced that she has no right to do so."
Why? Casual Western onlookers might suppose Catholicism's stance is simple gender prejudice, but Kasper cited theological convictions that some Anglicans share.
The Vatican first explained its opposition to women priests in 1975 after then-Archbishop of Canterbury Donald Coggan notified Pope Paul VI that Anglicans overall saw "no fundamental objections in principle" to female clergy. That year, the Anglican Church of Canada authorized women priests, followed by U.S. Episcopalians in 1976.
Pope Paul's 1975 reply to Coggan said the gender ban honors "the example recorded in the Sacred Scriptures of Christ choosing his apostles only from among men; the constant practice of the church, which has imitated Christ in choosing only men; and her living teaching authority which has consistently held" this fits "God's plan for his church."
That established basic points which were elaborated in a 1976 declaration from the Vatican's doctrine office and a 1994 apostolic letter from Pope John Paul II.
Before Paul's 1975 letter, Rome's Pontifical Biblical Commission reportedly voted 12-5 to advise privately, "It does not seem that the New Testament by itself alone will permit us to settle in a clear way" whether to permit female priests.
The commission examined numerous Bible passages. Yes, Jesus' 12 apostles were male, it said, and there's no New Testament evidence of women serving explicit priestly functions. However, women filled leadership posts and enjoyed high status. One was even considered an "apostle" if Junio or Junias (Romans 16:7) was female.
Protestants who forbid women clergy don't usually cite Jesus' choice of male apostles but rather 1 Timothy 2:12 ("I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men; she is to keep silent"). The Pontifical Commission said this scripture perhaps referred "only to certain concrete situations and abuses," not all women anytime and everywhere.
Catholic ping!
The Apostle Paul was not just casually mentioning his personal disapproval of women as pastors when he wrote that into holy scripture, he was instructing Timothy under divine inspiration on how God intends for his church leaders and overseers (pastors, bishops, etc) to organize and operate local church congregations.
That portion of scripture is primarily why we Baptists do not ordain women as pastors, and I would think that it is also a large part of the reason why the Catholic Church does not ordain women to the priesthood or the higher ranks of clergy. I hope that both churches stick to their biblical principles and do not cave in to feminist activism concerning this matter.
mega-dittoes
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God created the book of nature as well as the book of Scripture, the laws of nature as well as the laws of Scripture.
I think that as long as we live on God's good earth, sex will always be a meaningful category, a category with broad consequences far beyond one's fitness to be a wetnurse or a sperm donor.
The broad, meaningful --- and God-designed, blessed and beautiful --- consequences of male/female: that's what I'd like to see expanded on, celebrated, and implemented.
Imagine that.
Sometimes it feels really great to be a Catholic. This is one of those times.
So the Church cites first timothy when it comes to reason why women can't be priests but it overlooks timothy when it says that priests should be married. Okie dokie.
Can you imagine Pope Benedict caving into anything? Thank God we have another great pope.
Anglicans cannot assume Catholicism will someday drop objections to female priests and bishops, Kasper said. "The Catholic Church is convinced that she has no right to do so."
***
Hallelujah!
Amen!
"The Church has never said priests cannot be married."
Technically correct but a falsehood nonethe less. The Catholic Church believes its Pope has the final say in how it will teach its believers instead of just following the word of God.
"Thus it could be changed at any time."
You mean just like the practice of polygamy in the Mormon Church?
Dear marajade,
The epistle that you cite merely states that bishops should be married no more than once, not that priests or bishops should be married.
The Catholic Church agrees. As well, the discipline in the Latin Rite is that priests typically will maintain vows of celibacy, as encouraged by St. Paul elsewhere.
sitetest
My sentiments exactly.
I believe the book of Timothy states that priests should be the husband of but one wife and their children faithful. Big diff from what you are saying in my opinion.
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