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Press Release, Bonn, dated 7 June 2002Translation by Colm Holmes of BASIC
Without any doubt, unconventional ways can be acceptable at times.
The "Initiative Church from Below" (IKvu) in February this year welcomed the news that on the 29th of June the ordination of women as priests in the Roman Catholic Church would take place. Roman Church law discriminates against women and bars them without any convincing theological arguments from all ministries. Therefore we continue to hold that unconventional ways can be acceptable, in order to open up this way for women who feel they have a vocation to priesthood and are qualified. But a precondition is that they have their place in the Church and are searching their solution there.
Meanwhile we sadly see ourselves forced not to support the plan for 29 June any more. Not least for the interests of the women candidates we hope that the planned timetable will be postponed, until clear and serious preconditions for such an event have been met.
In contrast to the assurances given to us by the representatives of those responsible for the preparations for the women's ordinations, important doubts about the seriousness of the bishop, who has declared himself willing to carry out the ordinations, have not been cleared up. This spiritual person has clearly disqualified himself by the recent ordination of a bishop, of whose suitability, appointment and future role nothing has been heard. With this act even the practices of the Vatican have been surpassed, which is infamous for appointing bishops over the heads of those in communities and diocese.
These procedures also have an important aspect with regard to ecumenism. They show what absurdities are reached through the widespread very formalistic understanding of ordination in the Catholic Church, as if official powers are completely independent of the actual function to be realised and are seen as private property to be passed on by the socalled succession from bishop to bishop. Theology nowadays sees the legitimacy of the office primarily based on the role in the church faith community, which derives from the apostolic succession.
Bernd Hans Goehrig, 7 June 2002
leader IKvU
Initiative Church from Below (IKvU) is an ecumenical network of 37 basic communities, church groups and socio-critical groups in the tradition of political Catholicism and Liberation theology.
| Ordinations 29 June | RC women called to the priesthood | Theologians on the teaching of the CDF | The duty of speaking out | Mistaken teachings by Popes in the past | Womenpriests home page |
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