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Catholics Speak Out & Women’s Ordination Conference
Sponsor Five Week Speaking Tour by Ida Raming, Ph.D.
Theologian, Pioneer in Women’s Ordination Movement,
Ordained on Danube
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| Catholics
Speak Out and Women’s Ordination conference are jointly sponsoring a national
five-week tour by German theologian Ida Raming, one of the seven women who were
ordained to the Roman Catholic priesthood on June 29, 2002. |
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Raming is a pioneer of the women’s ordination movement,
who, together with Dr. Iris Mueller, drew up a published submission to the
Second Vatican Council in 1963, challenging the exclusion of women from the
priesthood.
Background
Raming’s groundbreaking doctoral study (1969) of the history
of the church’s discrimination against women from early Christian writings
through the Middle Ages conclusively proved the church’s exclusion of
women from the priesthood was based upon concepts of the essential and ethical
inferiority of women. These notions rest upon the second creation story found
in Genesis saying woman was created from the first man’s rib, and the
alleged first sin of the mythical Eve. These mythical concepts are the foundation
stones upon which the church’s continuing discrimination against women
rests.
Ida’s research published in English in 1976 as The Exclusion
of Women from the Priesthood: Divine Law or Sex Discrimination was tremendously
influential. It soon will be republished in an updated edition edited by Bernard
Cooke and Gary Macy for Scarecrow Press as the second volume of a series on
the history of women’s ordination. Raming is also the author of numerous
scholarly articles on the ordination of women. The decision of the women to
go forward with the ordinations was both spiritual and political, they said.
"Women who feel called to ministerial priesthood and who
want to live their vocation, find themselves in a situation of grave conflict
of conscience," Raming and Mueller say. "On one hand they face the
unrevised position of the church leadership. On the other hand, God is calling
them to priestly service to the church."
Raming argues that the church law restricting ordination to
only baptised males (Canon 1024) is itself illegal, because it establishes
two classes of baptism. The Church law is contrary to Holy Scripture and the
church’s earliest history in which women played prominent roles and
were ordained deacons, priests and bishops. The Brazilian bishop who ordained
the women was ordained a bishop by a bishop consecrated by Pope John XXIII.
Had the women been men, the ordinations would have been considered "valid
but illicit" because it is through the laying on of hands that one is
ordained a priest.
The ordinations occurred during widespread revelations of sexual
abuse crimes involving decades of secrecy and official cover-up. Yet the women
presented such a challenge to the hieararchy that it took the Congregation
for the Doctrine of the Faith a mere 23 days to excommunicate the seven women,
on July 22, 2002.
Raming was well prepared for this move, and filed a refutation
on behalf of the women priests, pointing out that the excommunications were
illegal. At least one prominent German theologian has publicly agreed. Dr.
Raming has given many speeches and appeared on television programs. Her deeply
spiritual roots, intellectual gifts, and the genuineness of her call are clearly
authentic. Her reasoned approach has tremendous appeal among young people,
says Tobias Raschke, spokesperson for the International Movement We Are Church/Youth.
_______________________________________________________
Catholics Speak Out/Quixote Center, PO Box 5206,
Hyattsville, MD 20782
301-699-0042 * www.quixote.org/cso * cso@quixote.org
Women's Ordination Conference, PO Box 2693,
Fairfax, VA 22031
703-352-1006 * womensordination.org * woc@womensordination.org
