A bishop is an ordained, consecrated, or appointed member of the Christian clergy who is generally entrusted with a position of authority and oversight.
In certain Christian churches, holy orders are ordained ministries such as bishop, priest, or deacon, and the sacrament or rite by which candidates are ordained to those orders. Churches recognizing these orders include the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Anglican, Assyrian, Old Catholic, Independent Catholic and some Lutheran churches. Except for Lutherans and some Anglicans, these churches regard ordination as a sacrament. The Anglo-Catholic tradition within Anglicanism identifies more with the Roman Catholic position about the sacramental nature of ordination.
A deacon is a member of the diaconate, an office in Christian churches that is generally associated with service of some kind, but which varies among theological and denominational traditions. Major Christian churches, such as the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Anglican church, view the diaconate as part of the clerical state.
Ordination is the process by which individuals are consecrated, that is, set apart and elevated from the laity class to the clergy, who are thus then authorized to perform various religious rites and ceremonies. The process and ceremonies of ordination vary by religion and denomination. One who is in preparation for, or who is undergoing the process of ordination is sometimes called an ordinand. The liturgy used at an ordination is sometimes referred to as an ordination.
The ordination of women to ministerial or priestly office is an increasingly common practice among some major religious groups of the present time. It remains a controversial issue in certain Christian denominations where "ordination" has for almost 2,000 years been limited only to men.
Mary Ramerman is one of the founders of the Spiritus Christi church in Rochester, New York. Ramerman, a convert to Catholicism from Methodism who wished to become a priest, was encouraged by the Reverend James Callan, who was serving as Administrator of Corpus Christi parish in Rochester, to migrate to his parish from her native California to join the staff.
The Union of Utrecht of the Old Catholic Churches (UU) is a federation of Old Catholic churches, nationally organised from 1870 schisms which rejected Roman Catholic doctrines of the First Vatican Council; its member churches are not in communion with the Roman Catholic Church. The 1889 Declaration of Utrecht is one of three founding documents together called the Convention of Utrecht. The UU is in full communion with the Anglican Communion through the 1931 Bonn Agreement; and, with the Philippine Independent Church, the Spanish Reformed Episcopal Church, and the Lusitanian Catholic Apostolic Evangelical Church through a 1965 extension of the Bonn Agreement. As of 2016, the UU includes six member churches: the Old Catholic Church of the Netherlands (OKKN), the Catholic Diocese of the Old Catholics in Germany, the Christian Catholic Church of Switzerland, the Old Catholic Church of Austria, the Old Catholic Church of the Czech Republic, and the Polish Catholic Church in Poland.
Ordinatio sacerdotalis is an ecclesiastical letter issued by Pope John Paul II on 22 May 1994 in which he discussed the Catholic Church's position requiring "the reservation of priestly ordination to men alone" and wrote that "the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women". While the document states that it was written so "that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance", it has been contested by some Catholics, as to both the substance and in the authoritative nature of its teaching. Many scholars agree it is not an infallible statement, as it does not define a teaching related to faith or morals.
The Danube Seven — Christine Mayr-Lumetzberger, Adelinde Theresia Roitinger, Gisela Forster, Iris Muller, Ida Raming, Pia Brunner and Angela White — are a group of seven women from Germany, Austria and the United States who were ordained as priests on a ship cruising the Danube river on 29 June 2002 by Rómulo Antonio Braschi, Ferdinand Regelsberger, and third unknown bishop.
The sacrament of holy orders in the Catholic Church includes three orders: bishop, priest, and deacon. In the phrase "holy orders", the word "holy" simply means "set apart for some purpose." The word "order" designates an established civil body or corporation with a hierarchy, and ordination means legal incorporation into an order. In context, therefore, a group with a hierarchical structure that is set apart for ministry in the Church.
The United Protestant Church in Belgium (VPKB/EPUB) is a minority Christian church in Belgium, where the majority of the population is Roman Catholic. It is the largest Protestant denomination in the country. The name of the church in Dutch is Verenigde Protestantse Kerk in België (VPKB) and in French l'Église Protestante Unie de Belgique (EPUB). The church has 50,000 members.
Roman Catholic Womenpriests (RCWP) is an independent international organization that asserts a connection to the Roman Catholic Church. It is descended from the Danube Seven, a group of women who assert that they were ordained as priests in 2002 by Rómulo Antonio Braschi, before being excommunicated by the Vatican, and their request for a revocation of the excommunication denied, in Decree on the Attempted Ordination of Some Catholic Women. According to a book published by the organization, Women Find a Way: The Movement and Stories of Roman Catholic Womenpriests, at least two other unnamed bishops were involved in the ordination. In addition, the RCWP considers these bishops to be in good standing, and the RCWP says the bishops acted in full apostolic succession.
Marjorie Tuite (1922–1986) was a progressive activist on issues related to the Church and the larger world, such as racism, poverty, war and the ordination of women. She was born and raised in New York City and joined the Dominican Sisters of the St. Mary of the Springs Order in 1942. Tuite had an undergraduate degree from Fordham University, a master's degree from Manhattanville College in Education Theology, and a Doctor of Ministry from what is today University of Saint Mary of the Lake and Mundelein Seminary.
Peter Paul Brennan was an American bishop. He was archbishop of New York for the Old Catholic Confederation. Brennan was also a bishop of the Ecumenical Catholic Diocese of the Americas, bishop of the African Orthodox Church, primate of the Order of Corporate Reunion, and president of Married Priests Now!.
The Women's Ordination Conference is the oldest and largest organization in the United States that works to ordain women as deacons, priests, and bishops in the Roman Catholic Church. Founded in 1975, it primarily advocates for the ordination of women within the Catholic Church. The idea for the Conference came in 1974, when Mary B. Lynch asked the people on her Christmas list if it was time to publicly ask "Should Catholic women be priests?" 31 women and one man answered yes, and thus a task-force was formed and a national meeting was planned. This first meeting was held in Detroit, Michigan, on Thanksgiving weekend of 1975, with nearly 2,000 people in attendance.
In the liturgical traditions the Catholic Church the term ordination refers to the means by which a person is included in one of the orders of bishops, priests or deacons. The teaching of the Catholic Church on ordination, as expressed in the Code of Canon Law, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and the apostolic letter Ordinatio sacerdotalis, is that only a Catholic male validly receives ordination, and "that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful." As with priests and bishops, the church ordains only men as deacons. The church cannot ordain anyone who has undergone sex reassignment surgery, and may sanction or require therapy for priests who are transsexual, regarding these to be an indicator of mental instability.
The International Federation of Married Catholic Priests was an association of priests who sought to reform existing celibacy rules within the Catholic priesthood in order to allow clergy to engage in their own marriages. It was dissolved in 2008 and changed to a more common reform-based group with a new name and with members other than priests. An organisation with that name currently exists. Their goals include women's ordination, allowing priests to marry and increased participation of the laity in church affairs.
Pastor's Initiative is a dissident Roman Catholic group founded in Austria in 2006 by Helmut Schüller as its leader, initiated by an "Appeal to Disobedience", or "Call to Disobedience". Composed of priests with lay support, the group advocates ordination of women, married and non-celibate priesthood, allowing Holy Communion to remarried divorcees and non-Catholics, while disagreeing with some teachings of the Catholic magisterium.
Stephen Arthur Jensen is a Canadian prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He was ordained a priest on May 24, 1980 by then-Archbishop James Francis Carney. On April 2, 2013, he was ordained Bishop of the Diocese of Prince George.
Founded in 1996 at the First European Women's Synod in Austria, Women's Ordination Worldwide (WOW) is an ecumenical network of national and international groups whose primary mission is the admission of Roman Catholic women to all ordained ministries. The WOW network includes organizations from Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, Ireland, Japan, Malta, Poland, Western Europe, and the United States.
