Posted on 03/21/2019 5:58:23 PM PDT by marshmallow
'Why shouldn't we pray for gender equality in the Church?' says Sister Ruth Schönenberger
The leader of one of Germany's most important female religious communities has called into question the Catholic Church's exclusion of women from the ordained priesthood.
"It is surely only natural for women to be priests and I cannot understand the reasons given as to why not," said Sister Ruth Schönenberger, head of the Benedictine Priory of Tutzing, the Bavarian motherhouse of a worldwide missionary order.
"I am surprised that the presence of Christ has been reduced to the male sex," she said in a recent interview with katholisch.de, the official website of the German Catholic Church.
"Here in Tutzing, we, too, have excellently qualified women theologians. The only thing they lack is ordination – nothing else," said 68-year-old Schönenberger, prioress of Tutzing since 2015.
The priory is one of the most important in the Benedictine world. In 1885 it founded the Missionary Benedictine Sisters of Tutzing, a congregation that today numbers some 1,300 sisters in 19 countries around the world.
Priesthood should not be based on gender
Schönenberger, who is responsible for the 70 members at the Tutzing priory and those at two other Benedictine convents, said the criteria for priesthood should not be based on one's gender.
"Our present image/concept of the priesthood urgently needs to be fundamentally revised and I am genuinely surprised that priests themselves don't protest more against present developments since they involve them," said the prioress, noting that men and women should be treated as equals.
(Excerpt) Read more at international.la-croix.com ...
Power.
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