The Church Can't Make Mothers out of Fathers: Bishop van Elst Critical of Ephemeral Zeitgeist

The Bishop of Limburg found joyful words against woman's ordination, for celibacy and criticized the adaption of the ephemeral Zeitgeist.

[kreuz.net] Bishop Franz-peter Tebartz-van Elst stood critically against "commonly accepted proposals for modernization".

He explained this on the 1st of October for three journalists of the newspaper 'Nassauische Neu Presse' which was very hostilely inclined to the Bishop.

The Priest Functions as a Father

The Bishop spoke forcefully against the effort to the theologically impossible ordination of priestesses.

For: The priest has a father function within the community: "The Father is the Father, the Mother is the Mother."

The Church is then for that reason not in a position to ordain women priests.

Jesus had made men to be his Apostles, thereon the Church buttresses itself.

The question if women may be priestesses is no question of adequacy -- rather a question of the concrete pattern of Jesus.

In answer to a - stupid - request the Bishop explained that God loves women exactly as much as men. It is also important that women participate in the Church.

So he was occupied with a few positions concerning women.

Relative to the priesthood the Bishop was clear: "Those who are to become Priests, it is to say, they will be called by the Church."

There is no right, therefore, to be a Priest: "That doesn't just go for women, rather for men as well."


Journalists have Problems with Celibacy

The obligatory question about the abolition of celibacy was not answered so directly by Msgr Tebartz-van Elst:

"Many priests to live and are aware that they have then decided to devote their lives to God."

The Bishop contradicted the theory, whereon celibacy is a reason that today so few young men want to be priests.

He reproved the communities - and pastoral ministers, who have children and stay away even without celibacy.

"The reason for the priest shortage is much more in the secularization of life. Many people could imagine a life without God."


Secularization means Wordly

As a further reason for the priest shortage he identified lack of support, whereby the decision to become a priest can be hindered.

Thus he proposed: "We need evidence of Faith."

A German Longing for Sects is Nothing New

A Catholic Confessor-Bishop prepared the old liberals of yesterday an abrupt, but well-earned end.

By Alexander Bauer

[Kreuz.net] Already 200 years ago -- during the so-called Enlightenment -- starstruck, fashionable German Archbishops were infatuated with schism from the Catholic Church.

At a meeting in Bad Ems -- in the modern state of Rheinland-Pfalz -- the Archbishops of Germany declared their indedependence and pastoral authority from the Pope's in 1786.

They insisted in the principle, that every German Bishop with jurisdiction receives his power from God just as the Pope receives his. For this reason, they would not accept Papal regulations for their diocese.

The Archdiocese put the Pope under pressure, to accept the conclusions of the "Emser Punktation". Otherwise they resolved to put their interests with the general German national council.

Indeed, the rpelats broke then with their plans. Really, it was not appealing to other Church respresentatives to fall further into provincialism.


Now The Old Liberal Horn Grumbles

In the year 1818 a robber-synod of a dozen priests from the Westerwald attempt to establish a "liberal Church Constitution" in the Diocese of Limburg.

The Papal Curia were to be kept out of all legal and liturgical matters.

A Diocesan Synod was to ratify these decisions in future.

The provincial pastor even pushed for the abolition "of the standing priestly celibacy because he found himself unqualified for such a difficult and unreasonable."

Such schismatic tendencies were even spread to episcopal circles in the first half of the 19th Century in German speaking areas.


Crushing Defeat

At the same time the movements of the traditionalists and loyalists -- "Ultramontane" -- Catholics ever stronger.

In the year 1842 the Holy Father sent the Ultramontane Confessor-Bishop Peter Josef Blum (+1884) in position.

Under his forty year long, holy leadership, the Diocese found the Catholic Faith and became once again true to the Holy See.


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