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 am I missing?
"It's my personal interpretation of what you were saying."
Fine, let's get back to the thread shall we? What does the Book of Timothy say?
Stop the game playing. 1 Timothy 2:11-12.
Geez, I hate it when people do this but here goes:
Let the woman learn in silence, with all subjection.
But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to use authority over the man: but to be in silence.
Clear enough for you now?
"I'm just a plain old bible believer."
Well, then you are the priest of your own private church, as you are interpreting for yourself, with no input from any organized religion, what the meaning of biblical passages are. So, you have set yourself up as your own private church, a church of one (two, if you include your husband), where you are Pope, Bishop, priest, layman(woman), and parishioner, all at the same time, preaching to yourself what you do or do not want to believe, and interpreting the Bible as you choose, at whim, from day to day. Interesting concept. The Church of Marajade. No parishioners welcome, a UniChurch. Those 20,000 plus Protestant churches just increased by one, the Private Church of One.
Well FR is the Church. And I'm speaking. Too bad.
I guess you missed the part where I quoted scripture in the Book of Peter?
I feel like John the Baptist. Someone crying out in the desert. Its not my Church, its Christ's Church.
Hey, I never said you couldn't speak on FR. I am talking about the structure of the Church and the Bible says you can't be in the clergy, so too bad!
Oops I meant that FR isn't the Catholic Church.
Modest too.
"I am talking about the structure of the Church and the Bible says you can't be in the clergy, so too bad!"
Yeah its too bad you believe and belong in an organized religion that doesn't practice what the Bible says.
If you want to insult me and the Church, fine, but you have shown your true feminist colors by refusing to answer the question posed to you about 1 Timothy 2:11-12 and the one that Dogma for dollars posed to you from Corinthians. It's so transparent that you want women to be in the clergy. It's clear as glass to me.
Traditional Anglican ping, continued in memory of its founder Arlin Adams.
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Resource for Traditional Anglicans: http://trad-anglican.faithweb.com
More Anglican articles here.
Humor: The Anglican Blue (by Huber)
Speak the truth in love. Eph 4:15
All I want is to go to Christ's Church where the Bible and what it says is believed and practiced?
What scripture from Corinthians and you're supposed by forum rules ping another poster if you quote them.
Ooops! That should have been dollars_for_dogma! Sorry.
"Its not my Church, its Christ's Church."
No, it's your made-up church.
ping
You're right its not. Its Christ's Church. Romans 16:16.
Please show me that from the Forum rules because I don't see it:
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