Edit: he’s been quiet since being reprimanded and sidelined by Pope Benedict during the creation of the Ordinariate. Now he’s feeling his oats, and his time is short. Here’s an article from the anti-Catholic, Nazi continuations magazine, Spiegel:
[Spiegel] Trier - At the spring meeting of the German Bishops' Conference, Cardinal Walter Kasper has proposed a new diaconal Office for Women. He spoke of a Church deacon who undertakes pastoral, charitable, catechetical and certain liturgical services. Such an office is different from the post of male deacon, said Kasper. The church deacon will be commissioned by blessing, not by a sacramental consecration.
"I think if there is such a position that is not easily attached to the classic office of deacon, it would have a lot more flexibility," the retired Cardinal said on Wednesday in Trier. The occasion was a study day in which the bishops discussed how they could incorporate women in the Catholic Church more thoroughly.
They committed themselves to "the proportion of women in leadership positions that require ordination to increase significantly," said Bishop Franz-Josef Bode. Currently, women in the Catholic Church at the top management level make up 13 percent. At the central level, this may be 19 percent. The figures show: "Women are still under-represented." After five years, the bishops wanted to examine how their intent had been implemented, said Bodo.
Women in the priesthood earn a rejection from Kasper. "I think that it changes nothing that women can not be ordained to the priesthood." This was "the unbroken tradition of the Eastern Church as in the Western Church." Women are however, employed in all other parts of the Church with honor full time. "Every German parish would collapse if the women would not cooperate.”
The Movement We are Church called on the margins of the Spring Plenary for women priests again. "Are the key positions in the Church only through the Office," said Annegret Laakmann Officer. "We want to be priests, bishops and Popes." According to the view of the movement, there need to be more positions for women in the administration of the Church are not being addressed. "It's a matter of course, that women with similar qualifications get these positions," said Laakmann. The talks had been "a placebo”.
wit / dpa
The danger here is that this is an idea which is not without historical precedent. There were, at one time, deaconesses which somewhat resemble what Cardinal Kasper is suggesting. According to the old Catholic Encyclopedia, their role was originally limited to charitable functions, keeping order among the women in Church, providing instruction to (presumably female) catechumens, and to administering baptism (immersion being the normal practice of the day, it was deemed improper for male clergy to baptize women). Aside form baptism, however, their role was supposed to be strictly non-liturgical.
ReplyDeleteHowever it would be a bad practice to revive for the same reasons that it was suppressed beginning about the fifth century (later mentions of "deaconesses" up to the high Middle Ages refer to an honorary title bestowed upon certain nuns): it led to serious abuses. To quote the article, "We hear of them presiding over assemblies of women, reading the Epistle and Gospel, distributing the Blessed Eucharist to nuns, lighting the candles, burning incense in the thuribles, adorning the sanctuary, and anointing the sick. All these things must be regarded as abuses which ecclesiastical legislation was not long in repressing."
What irony that nearly all of these abuses (save only the administration of Extreme Unction) are now, barely a century after that article was written, not only rampant, but essentially sanctioned by Rome! Now the revolutionaries wish to reestablish the suppressed office of deaconess, doubtless as a beachhead en route to women "priests."
I hope priests would have the courage to present their list of "problems" to a woman, prior to going to confession to a man-priest. Just to experience what God said: ..."confess your sins to one another..."
DeleteHuh?
DeleteHe isn't sidelined anymore now that Pope Francis explicitly mentioned him by name, considering him a good theologian…
ReplyDeleteI wonder why women were mentioned in Mathew's Gospel, at the multiplication of the bread and fish : "5,000 men, besides women and children.....", while Luke, John and Mark do not mention the presence of women at the same event...
DeleteDid they forget about women, as they forgot about them at the Last Super?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2353094/Dominican-cardinal-greets-news-gay-U-S-ambassador-anti-homosexual-slur.html. They were probably making sandwiches?
DeleteWhat else would you expect from this ridiculous old relic?
ReplyDeleteWe'll see how his good friend in Peter's Chair responds.
Save us from Card. Kasper!
ReplyDeleteShock horror! Women lighting candles and burning incense! The centre cannot hold, the whole universe must collapse if such "abuses" return.
ReplyDeleteIn the dark days of the Cold War women were ordained as priests in Iron Curtain countries because male priests would be arrested. Despite all the male blah about unchanging traditions, when the chips are really down the Church needs women to operate at all. No doubt it will be so again.