In certain Christian denominations, holy orders are the ordained ministries of bishop, priest (presbyter), and 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 Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) is a department of the Roman Curia in charge of the religious discipline of the Catholic Church. The Dicastery is the oldest among the departments of the Roman Curia. Its seat is the Palace of the Holy Office in Rome. It was founded to defend the Catholic Church from heresy and is the body responsible for promulgating and defending Catholic doctrine.
The priesthood of all believers is either the general Christian belief that all Christians form a common priesthood, or, alternatively, the specific Protestant belief that this universal priesthood precludes the ministerial priesthood found in some other churches, including Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy.
Traditionalist Catholicism is a movement that emphasizes beliefs, practices, customs, traditions, liturgical forms, devotions and presentations of teaching associated with the Catholic Church before the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965). Traditionalist Catholics particularly emphasize the Tridentine Mass, the Roman Rite liturgy largely replaced in general use by the post-Second Vatican Council Mass of Paul VI.
During its long history, the Catholic Church has been subject to criticism regarding various beliefs and practices. Within the church, this often involves opposition or support for practices associated with traditionalist Catholicism. In the past, different interpretations of scripture and various other critiques contributed to schisms such as the schism with the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Protestant Reformation. This article however, discusses criticisms of the 20th and 21st century. The Catholic Church has also been criticized for some of its historical actions, such as the church's promotion of the Crusades, and at various times by nationalist groups who feared the influence of Catholicism in undermining their regime. Furthermore, the Catholic Church has been criticized for not practicing ordination of women to the priesthood, its handling of incidents of sexual abuse, and various inter-faith interactions.
Bishop Stephen Peter Alencastre, SSCC was a bishop of the Roman Catholic Church who served as the fifth and last Vicar Apostolic of the Vicariate Apostolic of the Hawaiian Islands. He was also an apparent titular bishop of Arabissus.
Roy Bourgeois is an American activist, a former Catholic priest, and the founder of the human rights group School of the Americas Watch. He is the 1994 recipient of the Gandhi Peace Award and the 2011 recipient of the American Peace Award and also has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Franjo Šeper was a Croatian prelate of the Catholic Church. He served as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith from 1968 to 1981, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1965. Before that, he served as the Archbishop of Zagreb from 1960 to 1969.
Apostolicae curae is the title of an apostolic letter, issued in 1896 by Pope Leo XIII, declaring all Anglican ordinations to be "absolutely null and utterly void". The Anglican Communion made no official reply, but the archbishops of Canterbury and York of the Church of England published a response known by its Latin title Saepius officio in 1897.
Instruction Concerning the Criteria for the Discernment of Vocations with Regard to Persons with Homosexual Tendencies in View of Their Admission to the Seminary and to Holy Orders is a document published in November 2005 by the Congregation for Catholic Education, one of the top-level offices of the Catholic Church.
Ordinatio sacerdotalis is an apostolic letter issued by Pope John Paul II on 22 May 1994. In this document, John Paul II 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.
The priesthood is the office of the ministers of religion, who have been commissioned ("ordained") with the Holy orders of the Catholic Church. Technically, bishops are a priestly order as well; however, in layman's terms priest refers only to presbyters and pastors. The church's doctrine also sometimes refers to all baptised (lay) members as the "common priesthood", which can be confused with the ministerial priesthood of the consecrated clergy.
Roman Catholic Womenpriests (RCWP) is an independent international organization that claims 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.
Joseph Schröffer was a German Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as Secretary of the Sacred Congregation of Seminaries and Universities from 1967 to 1976, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1976.
Papal infallibility is a dogma of the Catholic Church which states that, in virtue of the promise of Jesus to Peter, the Pope when he speaks ex cathedra is preserved from the possibility of error on doctrine "initially given to the apostolic Church and handed down in Scripture and tradition". It does not mean that the pope cannot sin or otherwise err in some capacity, though he is prevented by the assistance of the Holy Spirit from issuing heretical teaching even in his non-infallible Magisterium, as a corollary of indefectibility. This doctrine, defined dogmatically at the First Vatican Council of 1869–1870 in the document Pastor aeternus, is claimed to have existed in medieval theology and to have been the majority opinion at the time of the Counter-Reformation.
In the liturgical traditions of the Catholic Church, the term ordination refers to the means by which a person is included in one of the holy orders of bishops, priests or deacons. The teaching of the Catholic Church on ordination, as expressed in the 1983 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." In other words, the male priesthood is not considered by the church a matter of policy but an unalterable requirement of God. As with priests and bishops, the church ordains only men as deacons.
Women play significant roles in the life of the Catholic Church, although excluded from the Catholic hierarchy of bishops, priests, and deacons. In the history of the Catholic Church, the church often influenced social attitudes toward women. Influential Catholic women have included theologians, abbesses, monarchs, missionaries, mystics, martyrs, scientists, nurses, hospital administrators, educationalists, religious sisters, Doctors of the Church, and canonised saints. Women constitute the majority of members of consecrated life in the Catholic Church: in 2010, there were around 721,935 professed women religious. Motherhood and family are given an exalted status in Catholicism, with The Blessed Virgin Mary holding a special place of veneration.
A personal ordinariate for former Anglicans, shortened as personal ordinariate or Anglican ordinariate, is a canonical structure within the Catholic Church established in order to enable "groups of Anglicans" and Methodists to join the Catholic Church while preserving elements of their liturgical and spiritual patrimony.
Johannes Nicolaas Maria Wijngaards is a Catholic scripture scholar and a laicized priest.
The Association of Catholic Priests (ACP) is an independent and voluntary association of Catholic clergy in Ireland. The association was established on 1 September 2010 with the objective of having "a forum, and a voice to reflect, discuss and comment on issues affecting the Irish Church and society today". Its lay, sister organisation is the Association of Catholics in Ireland.
