Unfortunately they still haven't learned that it's their type of disobedience and pride that has been the cause for what they continue to complain and whine about! ‘We Want To Take Mary Off Her Pedestal’ German bishop supports 'Church strike' for women's ordination Munich, Germany, May 15, 2019 / 02:15 pm (CNA).- At least one bishop has offered his support for a week-long “Church strike” organized by German Catholic women, during which participants organize their own prayer services rather than attending Mass. Calling itself "Mary 2.0" the initiative issued an open letter to Pope Francis, which called for the ordination of women, and claimed "men of the Church only tolerate one woman in their midst: Mary." "We want to take Mary off her pedestal and into our midst, as a sister facing our direction," the letter said. The website features paintings of Mary and other women with their mouths taped over. The campaign has met with considerable criticism from German Catholics, some of when even launched of a "Maria 1.0" website, which says that the Mother of God "does not require any updates and should not be instrumentalized.” But several Church representatives have gone public in support of "Mary 2.0." The official news portal of the Catholic Church in Germany provided broad coverage of the call for a strike, taking place May 11-18. It also reported that Bishop Franz-Josef Bode of Osnabrück supports the campaign. Bode, who leads the Commission on Women in the German bishops' conference, told press agency EPD that while he regrets the strikes will not attend Mass, he believes it important to acknowledge the impatience of "many women in the Catholic Church" and their feelings of "deep hurt" for not being adequately appreciated for their contribution. Bode said that while he does not believe women will be ordained priests in the near future, the Church could soon ordain them as deacons. Participants in the "Church strike" are refusing to step into a church from the week of May 11 to 18 and will not attend Mass. Instead, services such as a "Liturgy of the Word" are held throughout the week. According to the campaign's Facebook page, these services have garnered between 18 and 155 registered attendees. Referencing the abuse crisis as a reason for the urgent need for change, the group’s letter to Pope Francis makes a range of demands, from the abolition of "mandatory celibacy" to an "updating" of the Church's teaching on sexual morality and the ordination of women to "all ministries" – including the orders of deacon, priest and bishop. In an interview published on the official website of the Archdiocese of Paderborn, vicar general Fr. Alfons Hardt praised the organizers of the campaign as women who are "concerned about the sustainability of their church." Hardt said "this is a motivation that I value highly," even though the campaign might also create division. Whether women can be ordained to the priesthood is an open question, Hardt asserted, saying, "on the one hand we have a definitive decision by Pope John Paul II on the question of the ordination of women and on the other hand we still do not have a final answer. At least in Germany this question is discussed very openly, especially among theologians. It is clear that there is a need for a global ecclesial consensus for this which currently is not the case." Pope St. John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI, and Pope Francis have all taught that the sacrament of ordination is reserved to men by divine institution, and that, while the role of female “deacons” in the early Church can be studied, such study does not imply that women can be ordained sacramentally. Despite its demands and – initially - very small numbers, "Mary 2.0" has not only received support from several German prelates but also sustained coverage in Germany, where many Catholics are turning their back on a church in crisis in the wake of the abuse scandals and other controversies, with a recent prognosis predicting the number of Catholics in the country will halve by 2060, and Church attendance in constant decline, hovering at the 10 percent mark on average according to most recent official figure. In March, Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich and Freising announced that the church in Germany would embark on a "binding synodal process" to tackle what he described as the three key issues arising from the clerical abuse crisis: priestly celibacy, the Church's teaching on sexual morality, and a reduction of clerical power. More recently, another German bishop, Franz-Josef Overbeck of Essen, voiced similar expectations for the "Pan-Amazonian Synod" in October. Overbeck, who also leads the influential Catholic Latin America relief organization Adveniat, predicted that "nothing will be as it was before" after that synod. Speaking to journalists on May 2, he said that the role of women in the Church would be reconsidered at the meeting, and so would sexual morality, the role of the priesthood and the overall hierarchical structure of the Church. The synod will take place from October 6 to 27. https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/...rts-church-strike-for-womens-ordination-28538
It doesn't matter how many "facts" you have. You have no authority. I don't know why you never address this point. Every time it is brought up I don't hear a response from you about it. In a court room a judge has authroity to make rulings. A person sitting watching a trial can't stand up halfway through it and proclaim the defendant guilty. Only a judge can. You are making the claim that somehow you have the right to adjudicate juridical matters. You don't and neither does any lay person.
BrianK is absolutely correct that we have a responsibility as lay people. Although humility and prayer is a must, so is stopping Church donations. Many priests are finally listening. Just last week the sermon from a local Jesuit priest calling the Pope’s statements heresy was astonishing. His lecture of right and wrong in our society was so clear. It is the first time I have ever heard a priest say living together before marriage is a serious sin! As lay people we can do more to inform our Bishops that we will not tolerate this nonsense coming from the Vatican. Catholics who have donated large sums of money to the Church have recently backed down. It is sad that we have come to this, but it works.
IMO this is precisely where detachment comes into play. Fr Ripperger speaks a lot about this topic in his videos.
Yes! We stay in our place. We work out our salvation in fear and trembling. (To use an old expression) I don’t know about you but I sometimes tremble.
I think a great majority of these militant feminists hate men and are deeply wounded souls. Anyone that hateful and angry is either very wounded, or possessed I fear. They are too radical to be normal. But we have to remember that God wants them...and He wants us to pray for their conversion. He wants them back. If they receive the grace, they will quit killing babies. Homosexuals need our prayers too. God wants everyone back. He commanded us to pray for our enemies. If we obey, He can extend grace into their souls for conversion. It’s hard, but we depend on His grace too because we are all sinners. Maybe just less wounded sinners, but still sinners just the same.
Very good point Don. We have no control over these events except through our prayers. I think a lot of this confusion comes from most of us living in "modern" democracies, we think we need to have a position about all government goings-on and to have our say about things. The Church is not a democracy.
True. Everyone who can type becomes an expert. Oddly I have arrived at the opposite position, the more I am forced to learn about canon law and Church Teachings in general, I find I seem to know less and less. The rules in the Church are very convoluted and confusing. One must almost be an expert in order to have a grasp on what is going on. Even then the experts disagree with each other making it more confusing.
I think that's a bit unfair to people troubled by the current state of the Church, especially to converts. It's bad enough for cradle Catholics who were taught that Christ protects the Church sometimes despite and not because of our hierarchy, including Popes. Those of us for whom a trust in Christ's promise is akin to being part of our DNA need to make allowances for others whose trust is wavering or who made a huge commitment when they converted and may now be trying to come to grips with a situation they never anticipated. I don't believe that anyone alive today has seen such turmoil in the Church or been subjected to so much confusion about what the Church actually teaches, what, precisely, is the extent of papal infallibility and the balance/relationship between Sacred Scripture, Tradition and the Magisterium. Easy access to mass media and the internet plays a part in that but I'm not convinced it's nearly as big a part as apologists would have us believe. Some might find helpful this discussion between Dr. Taylor Marshall and Fr. Dwight Longenecker (both former Protestant minsters):
Sorry if you took my statement as unfair somehow. I reread it and don't see that and I definitely didn't mean it in a meanspirited way. I am as confused as anyone else. This has me sick to death. I haven't received the sacraments in a year and a half because of this garbage. My point was simply that I don't think we are going to arrive at a proper conclusion to this so we should sink back into prayer. As you pointed out in an earlier post on this thread we are all becoming more and more fractured by trying to figure out the excrutiating minutiae of all of this.
I have never claimed to have authority to judge. What I am doing is using my ability to reason (which God gives to all), to make sense of the chaos in the Church that we are confronted with. No one can deny that the present crisis is unprecedented. I have formed my thoughts after considering all available facts, which I have put forth in my discussion. If the facts that I present are not true, point them out, and we can discuss them. Don't attack me. Jesus told us to discern the times. He did not say such discernment is reserved for the authorities. Luke 12 54 And he said also to the multitudes: When you see a cloud rising from the west, presently you say: A shower is coming. And so it happeneth. 55 And when ye see the south wind blow, you say: There will be heat. And it cometh to pass. 56 You hypocrites, you know how to discern the face of the heaven and of the earth: but how is it that you do not discern this time? It is undeniable that PF has plunged the church into confusion with his words and actions, and is preaching a gospel other than what the Apostles passed down to us from Jesus. And it has been publicly declared that the aim is to make irreversible changes to the Church. It is also undeniable that we have 2 men who are called pope, who dress as pope and live on Vatican grounds. I cannot believe that Benedict XVI does it out of ignorance; rather, it is deliberate. +
This article shows that Danneels indeed wanted to take credit for pushing Bergoglio to the fore in the 2013 conclave. Cardinal Danneels admits being part of clerical ‘Mafia’ that plotted Francis’ election Jeanne Smits, Paris correspondent https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/c...g-part-of-clerical-mafia-that-plotted-francis September 25, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) - The authorized biography of Cardinal Godfried Danneels, out next week, is even more of a bombshell than expected. Not only do the two authors, Jürgen Mettepenningen and Karim Schelkens, reveal that the Cardinal was a regular member of a secret pressure group of Churchmen that met in the Swiss town of Sankt-Gallen, but the Cardinal himself has publicly and good-humoredly admitted the fact. Danneels even said that what was officially but discreetly labeled “the Sankt-Gallen group” was referred to by its members as “the Mafia”. Its self-imposed aim was to counter the growing influence of Cardinal Ratzinger under the pontificate of Saint John Paul II, serving as a sort of outlet where handpicked cardinals and bishops could express their impatience at the traditional mindset of the Pope and his closest counsellor. The Belgian press doesn't hesitate to say that one of the group's primary goals was the promotion of Cardinal Bergoglio (now Pope Francis) in view of John Paul II’s nearing death – something the book itself, which is not yet available in bookstores, perhaps clarifies. The Sankt-Gallen group certainly aimed to promote the ideas and preferences for which they had found a champion in Pope Francis. Said Schelkens in an interview this week: “The election of Bergoglio was prepared in Sankt-Gallen, without doubt. And the main lines of the program the Pope is carrying out are those that Danneels and Co were starting to discuss more than ten years ago.” “They wanted Church reform, they wanted to bring the Church closer to the hearts of people; they moved forward by stages,” commented Mettepenningen. “At the beginning of the year 2000, when John Paul II’s end was becoming more foreseeable, they thought more strategically about what was going to happen to the Church after John Paul II. When Cardinal Silvestrini joined the group it took on a more tactical and strategic character.” The new climate in the Church after Pope Benedict’s resignation made these things easier to discuss, according to Mettepenningen. “It is only now that the existence of a society of same-minded Church leaders can be made known to the public,” he told the Dutch media KerkNet. “In the international press they were talking about the so-called ‘team Bergoglio’ that promoted his choice as Pope, but the name was badly chosen. In 2013, it was about the content first, the person came afterwards. Danneels took part in both conclaves. He openly showed his disappointment after the first one. He described the second one, in which Pope Francis was elected, as his “personal resurrection.” The biography was presented earlier this week at the National Sacred Heart Basilica in Koekelberg, in the presence of Cardinal Danneels who endorsed the two authors’ work. A short video of the event was published on the Internet: it concentrates on the Sankt-Gallen group whose existence had never been revealed to the public. Says Cardinal Danneels: “The Sankt-Gallen group is a sort of posh name. But in reality we said of ourselves, and of that group : ‘The Mafia’.” A voice-over continues: “Cardinal Danneels speaks for the first time of the secret group of Church leaders to which he belonged. The group met every year since 1996, and together they organized the secret ‘resistance’ against Cardinal Ratzinger, who at that time was the right-hand man of John Paul II.” Then Cardinal Danneels speaks again: “There were some bishops, a few cardinals – too many to name. Things were discussed very freely, no reports were made, so that everyone could blow off steam.” The journalist explains: “When Pope John Paul II died in 2005, the group already pushed the present Pope to the fore. But it was to be Ratzinger all the same. Danneels could hardly hide his disappointment.” The video cuts back to images of the cardinal just after Benedict XVI’s election: “The proof of the pudding is in the eating,” he said, unpleasantly, at the time. The voiceover goes on: “It was not to be long until the Sankt-Gallen group got a new chance, because unexpectedly, Pope Benedict resigned." Mettepenningen himself provides the next comment: “In 2013, in a way this group actually achieved its ends, notably through the choice of Pope Francis. You can say that through his participation in that group, Cardinal Danneels has been one of those who were the pioneers of the choice of Pope Franciscus.” The journalist concludes: “That is why you could see him beaming on the balcony next to the Pope in Rome. Since then he has returned regularly to Rome to speak with the Pope.” The Sankt-Gallen group – or the “Mafia”, to use the cardinal’s own description – was founded by Mgr Ivo Fürer, one year after his nomination as bishop of the small cathedral town. Cardinal Danneels joined a few years later. Among the other members quoted by his biographers, Cardinals Carlo Maria Martini and Achille Silvestrini from Italy, Walter Kasper and Karl Lehmann from Germany, and the Dutch Cardinal Adriaan van Luyn as well as Basil Hume from England were prominent. There must have been more, as the book also speaks of members from Austria and France, as well as unnamed bishops. Why are some named, and others not? Did the named prelates give their consent to be “outed,” and if so did they have an objective? Whatever their aim, Danneels for one has had no qualms about voicing his angry opposition to Pope Benedict and seems to glory in the fact that he has played a role in bringing a more “modern” Church vision into being, despite the fact that the Pope Emeritus is still alive. Church historians Mettepenningen and Schelkens were given full access to Danneels’ personal archives which still bore the police tape that sealed them in the wake of the cover-up of a child-abuse scandal in which the Cardinal was accused of being involved. This is perhaps one of the clues to the disclosure of the “Mafia’s” existence: Danneels left his Episcopal palace under a cloud when he retired in 2010. Being presented as a “maker of kings,” as the Belgian press now calls him, is a deal more flattering and gives him a prominent role in bringing about the modernization of the Church. (cont'd below)
Mettepenningen justified the group’s existence in an interview to the Flemish press: “During the lengthy pontificate of John Paul II there was an increasing tendency to centralize everything that was imposed from the top, with the margin of ‘free speech’ becoming ever narrower. From 1996 onwards, a group was erected in Sankt-Gallen by the bishop of Sankt-Gallen, a group of top cardinals and bishops from Europe who found their ‘freedom of speech’ with one another there. Since 1999, Cardinal Danneels was himself a member; together with Ivo Fürer, he was the member who belonged longest to the group.” “Nobody knew anything about it but there were suspicions in Rome, where they were ‘not amused’ to know about this group that we called Sankt-Gallen in the biography – and which the cardinal, apparently, calls the Mafia, but it’s a term of endearment, showing a certain mischievousness.” The Flemish media, Knack, that presented the book in a lengthy article, says the Vatican sent “the sinister Cardinal Camilo Ruini to try and find out who, what and where: he came up with an empty sack. At the same time, the Sankt-Gallen group tried to get a hold over developments in the Vatican. The question that was put more and more emphatically was: 'What after John Paul II? How can we avoid Ratzinger as Pope?'" While the group’s existence was known of by some specialists – such as Austen Ivereigh of the Tablet who spoke of it in passing in The Great Reformer, his biography of Pope Francis – what Mettepenningen and Schelkens have published is an inside account, with the blessing of Danneels who remembers the meetings as “spiritual holidays,” a “form of mutual support and comfort in dark times,” as Knack puts it. Danneels’ biographers show him to be a man who lost favor in Rome over his progressive stances. In 1980, at the general bishops’ synod which he was attending for the first time, Ratzinger expressed pessimism over divorce and general moral decay. Godfried Danneels responded that it was time to find a new “balance between the law and mercy.” “That was new,” says Knack: when the time came for the synod to elect delegates, Danneels got more votes than Ratzinger. The same Danneels was vocal in his defense of a former fellow student, Gustavo Gutierrez – a liberation theologian who was in trouble with Ratzinger. Later, Rome was to block his nomination as president of the European bishop’s conference. Saint John Paul II’s Apostolic Constitution Universi Domini Gregis, 79, clearly condemns the constitution of a “Mafia” like the Sankt-Gallen group: “Confirming the prescriptions of my Predecessors, I likewise forbid anyone, even if he is a Cardinal, during the Pope's lifetime and without having consulted him, to make plans concerning the election of his successor, or to promise votes, or to make decisions in this regard in private gatherings.” Ironically, he published the Apostolic Constitution in February 1996, the very year that the Sankt-Gallen group was formed.
You are making a judgement, but perhaps you don't see it. I guess we can just leave it here. We've all had this discussion before and it just goes round and round. God Bless SG.
Oh no, praetorian, dont stop receiving the sacraments. This is satan's goal: to discourage us and get us to stop praying. This is the great battle and we cant give up or give in.
Thanks Sunnyveil, but since Holy Communion for adulterer's was declared magisterium it is a dilemma I cannot resolve with my intellect. I've tried, I just can't, but I appreciate the concern.
I'm sorry, Praetorian, if I offended you, especially because you must be one of the least mean spirited people on the internet. I wouldn't so much put it in terms of us not arriving at a proper conclusion because we can't really arrive at any conclusion. I had actually been asking myself what's the point of talking it to death when we have no authority. Having no authority doesn't make us incapable of helping bring about a solution because we always have recourse to prayer and God is all powerful. Nevertheless, I still have a niggling feeling that we need to keep abreast of what's happening. There's no point burying our heads in the sand and sometimes it can be healthy to talk things through and get different perspectives. For example, you have brought me to my senses on more than one occasion when I needed correction. There's also the real possibility that after the next Synod we could be faced with having to make a terrible choice. Please God it won't come to that. Please talk to a good priest about receiving the sacraments. More than one priest has told me that questioning and criticism is ok as long as it doesn't over-step the bounds of charity (my wording but the gist of the advice I got and I certainly struggle with the charity aspect).
