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.
What I'm thinking here is is that I am a woman my husband should get on the thread and reply that what the Pope is directing in relation to woman in the priesthood is in direct conflict with the Bible says about men being married in the priesthood.
GOTCHA! I knew you didn't agree with 1 Timothy 2:11-12
So the Bible literalist isn't so literalist when it comes to her wanting to see women in the clergy, LOL!
Do you realize that you just compared Sacred Scripture to the Islamic faith? Hey, it's Timothy that says you can't teach and we are going by the Bible.
Yeah right. Like the Pope has the only true interpretation of what the Book of Timothy says. Can't you as a follower of Christ and the Word read it for yourself?
Where in this thread before your previous post did you cite 6:61? And further BTW, why are you even posting to me? As a woman, shouldn't I question what the Pope says is final in silence? That's what your other believers are arguing in this thread, are they not?
What I'm thinking is it is a little too late for that. You've been on here long enough by yourself. I'm thinking you should answer for yourself about 1 Timothy 2:11-12. Instead of doing that, you want to go run for your husband now? He can't answer this for you. But, you have already answered by comparing its content to Islam.
"So the Bible literalist isn't so literalist when it comes to her wanting to see women in the clergy, LOL!"
You didn't get me. I believe that Christ is the head of the Church as is the husband, do you?
I want to make it clear for you here. I'm not anti Catholic and I'm not anti protestant. I'm just a plain old bible believer.
My freeper husband's logon is zanarchist, and he is in complete agreement with me. Is that enough for you?
What about what the Bible says?
I do read it for myself and find it in complete harmony with Catholic teaching. I am sorry that I place more reliance on two thousand years of constant teaching by the Church (and by those bishops mentioned by St. Paul, btw) than in your Johnny-come-lately private interpretation. Why should I give more respect to your interpretation than to that of the bishops who have been placed in authority over the Church (which is what St. Paul was discussing in the first place).
"I am sorry that I place more reliance on two thousand years of constant teaching by the Church..."
That's the problem. I place more reliance upon the Word of God.
Come, come now. What we are arguing is that you claim to go strictly by the Word of God when trying to beat us over the head with Timothy, but when we use the same book to point out to you that women shouldn't be in the clergy, WHICH, this thread was all about anyway, you start crying foul.
Am I in clergy? I wouldn't even step church in the Catholic Church. I'm here posting the Word of God.
No, your husband should be in agreement with 1 Timothy 2:11-12 and so should you if you are the Bible literalist you claim to be.
My husband isn't a leader either.
"I keep asking her that, but she won't answer. The silence is deafening."
She is silent because as a woman she is not permitted to speak. LOL!
I fear you are being evasive. You refuse to answer directly your thinking on the verses I gave you. I've posted the Word of God as well, which you ignore when it is convenient for you, yet you demand that Catholics follow Scripture to a tee according to your interpretation of it. Please, if you make those demands of others, you can not turn around and then free yourself from what Scripture dictates about women.
Well I kinda did. I quoted the Book of Ephesians 5:22 but that wasn't good enough either!
ROFLO! Touche'!
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