Ordination of women in Christianity

The Ordination of women in the Christian woman confessions is a polemical subject, which was the object of claims and caused doctrinal assertions. This question does not recover a uniform situation, and can take varied forms: it can be a question of entrusting to a woman a ministry of church, or the responsibility for a community the faithful ones (what is generally allowed), or specifically of ordering women as catholic priest.

The Church Anglican and the churches of the International Catholic Union of Utrecht (Catholic Old men) admit sacerdotal ordination women. On the other hand, this practice is regarded as invalid (without effect) and illicit (because nonapostolic) in the Catholic church and the orthodoxe Church. The ordination of women as pastors is a practice nowadays widespread in various Protestant confessions, but it should be stressed that the role of the Pasteur does not correspond to that of a priest.

Basic theological problems

According to the doctrines roman catholic, the priest is a sacrificator who acts In Persona Christi : in the person of Christ. However, always according to theology, Jesus-Christ is at the same time true God and true man.

If the women were ordered priests, how could they act as the person of Christ? Would have it to be said that: Is Jesus-Christ at the same time true woman and true Goddess? That could run up against the eucharistic sensitivity of the mass.

The doctrines of the humanity of Christ are put to the test with the profit of the Gender theory which abolishes any distinction between the men and women.

Doctrines of the Roman Catholic church

Sacrament of the order reserved to the men

the Canon law states in Can. 1024: “Only a baptized man receives crowned ordination validly”
ordination returns processing it alive image of Christ priest , i.e., as affirm it the Pères of the Church “That Pierre baptizes, it is Him Christ who baptizes; that Paul baptizes, it is Him which baptizes; that Judas baptizes, it is Him which baptizes” Saint Augustin (Tr VI, 7, p. 357).
the Catechism of the Catholic church , in 1992, recalls that: “ the Jesus Lord chose men to form the college of the twelve apostles, and the apostles made of the same lorqu' they chose the collaborators who would succeed to them in their task. The college of the bishop S, with which the priest S are plain in priesthood, makes present and brings up to date until the return of Christ the college of the twelve. The Church recognizes dependant by this choice of the Lord himself. This is why the ordination of the women is not possible. ”
In the apostolic letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis of May 22nd, 1994, the pope explains: “ This is why, so that there remains no doubt about a question of great importance which relates to the divine constitution itself of the Church, I declare, under the terms of my mission of confirming my brothers (cf LLC 22,32), whom the Church does not have in any manner the capacity to confer sacerdotal ordination on women and who this position must be definitively held by all the faithful ones of the Church . ” The use of the expression I declare, under the terms of my mission of confirming my brothers indicates that it brings into play sound pontifical Infaillibilité and that impossibility of ordering women belongs to the deposit of the faith.

The ordination of the women as deacon, priest or bishop explicitly prohibited, and is regarded as impossible by the Roman Church since only the male candidates can arrive at the Sacrement of ordination, with the explanation which it is about an unknown practice in the history and the tradition of the Church, at least for the priesthood. The Roman Catholic church considers that the recent choices in certain Christian confessions to order women with the priesthood are an obstacle with the Œcuménisme.

Deaconesses

Even if certain Protestant confessions admit women pastors, the doctrines and the discipline roman catholic do not conceive sacramental ordination women with a few degrees that it is. The role of Protestant Pasteur seems closer to that of deacon than to that of priest in the Catholic church.

The title of deaconess existed in the past within the Church: Sainte Genevieve is called thus. The deaconesses were widows and virgins in charge of catechesis, assistance, baptème, animation of prayers, etc). This role was never sacerdotal and conferred a strictly laic role to the women.

The council of the Vatican II restored the diaconate like a permanent state, the deacons being specifically charged “to manage the baptism solemnly, to preserve and distribute the eucharistie, to attend the marriage in the name of the Church and to bless it, carry money to dying, of reading with faithful the Holy Scripture, informing and to exhort the people, to chair the worship and the prayer of faithful, to manage the sacramental ones, to govern the rite of the funeral and the burial. ” This role of the permanent deacon is similar to that which the Protestant pastors in their community hold.

“ the catholic doctrines, expressed in the liturgy, Magistère and the constant practice of the Church, recognizes that there exist two degrees of ministerial participation in the priesthood of Christ: the episcopate and the presbitériat. The diaconate is intended to help them and to serve them. This is why the term sacerdos indicates, in the current use, the bishops and the priests, but not the deacons. Nevertheless, the catholic doctrines teach that degrees of sacerdotal participation (episcopate and presbitériat) and the degree of service (diaconate) are all the three conferred by a sacramental act called “ordination”, i.e. by the sacrament of the Order. ”

Nowadays, the ordination of deaconesses is impossible in the Roman Church, but the pontifical text on the absolute impossibility of the ordination of the women applies only to the sacerdotal function (priest and bishop). It seems that a ordination diaconale of woman could be recognized by the Catholic church if the diaconate were dissociated from the sacrament of the order.

Abbesses

For Catholicism, there is no obstacle of principle to entrust to a woman the pastoral responsibility for a community, but it is practiced only in one precise case: that of a mother abbess of a female religious community.

A mother abbess is ordered with this role, and has on her community an ordinary authority comparable with that of the bishop on her diocese.

However, the abbesses do not have faculty to celebrate Eucharistie fully because they do nothing but direct the prayers.

Polemics and claims

Catholics in favor of the ordination of the women

August 1st partisans of the ordination of the women in the Catholic church evoke the fact that Jesus appeared ressuscity the first time at three women, asking them to announce the news of the Résurrection to the Apôtre S. It would be thus false to believe that Jesus would have chosen only men for preaching.

Businesses of ordinations lillicites

The July 25th 2005 on the River the St. Lawrence, two women asserting the quality of bishop, members of the American organization Women' S Ordination Conference (“Conference for the ordination of the women”), themselves not recognized by the Catholic church, achieved the ritual of ordination to the priesthood and the diaconate on two Canadian and seven American:

Passing from the words to the acts, the bishops Gisela Forster and Marie-Christine Mayr-Lumetzberger ordered four women priests and five women deacons at the time of a ceremony copied on the model roman catholic of which they are claimed.

These ordinations are not valid, underlines Mgr Anthony Meagher (archbishop of Kingston - Ontario, Canada), because “the people who propose to confer these “ordinations” do not have the authority to do it and the people wanting to be “ordered” are not eligible”. The gesture of these women involves excommunication latae sententiae , i.e. their excommunication rises directly from their assent to ordination and that the Vatican does not need to pronounce it so that it is effective.

Doctrines of the orthodoxe Church

For the orthodoxe Église the rêgle is the same one as for the Roman Catholic church: faithful to the practice multi-millenium rested by Jesus, priesthood (of the priests or the bishops) is not a right nor a capacity: it is about a service conferred by the Church, following the apostles. The claim does not seem to be raised in this context.

Doctrines of the Protestant Churches

In the Protestantism, the pastors are a ministerial function, but do not have sacerdotal specificity. Consequently, these guides of the community, resulting from this one, can be chooses indifferently woman or man. Consequently, a woman can be, in certain branches of Protestantism, Pasteur. Certain confessions, the such Baptisme for example, do not allow to the women the accession with the office of Pasteur, and others still authorize it only if the Pasteur woman remains under the authority of Pasteur of male sex.

Doctrines of the Church Old woman-Catholic

In the Église old woman-catholic there are different payments: The churches of Western Europe have woman-priests; the others do not devote women, but accept the ordination of the women in the other churches of the union.

Doctrines of the Churches Anglicans

the debate was open within the Eglise Anglican and remains a sharp controversies subject. Some Churches Anglicans, and in particular the Church épiscopalienne (with the the United States), ordered woman-priests and some of these Churches devoted woman-bishops.

Appendices

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