Shortly after Pope Francis opposed the possibility of an ordained female diaconatetwo German-speaking cardinals have publicly said that only men can be ordained priests.
“Women cannot be called to this position,” Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller told the Swiss portal kath.ch June 7th. “The priest represents Christ in his masculinity.”
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The German cardinal, who served as prefect of the Congregation – now Dicastery – for the Doctrine of the Faith from 2012 to 2017, underlined the theological and doctrinal foundations of this point of view, saying that the prohibition of women accessing Priestly ordination is deeply rooted in the sacrament itself.
Cardinal Müller, who taught Dogmatic Theology at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany, emphasized “the fundamental equality of all people in their personal relationship with God,” whether men or women.
Just as “a man cannot become a mother and a woman cannot become a father,” only men are called to the priesthood, said Cardinal Müller, according to CNA Deutsch gathersGerman agency of the ACI Group.
“The vocation comes from God. One would have to complain to God himself that he created human beings as male and female.”
Echoing Pope Francis’ words about the nature of the priesthood in Querida Amazonia, Cardinal Müller emphasized that “the Church cannot be represented by a man because she is a woman and Mary, the Mother of God, is her archetype. She is in the nature of the sacrament that only a man can represent Christ in relation to the Church”.
The German cardinal’s statements follow those of Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, Archbishop of Vienna (Austria), reported CNA Deutsch.
In a sermon at Catholic University ITI in Austria on June 1, Cardinal Schönborn said he was “deeply convinced that the Church cannot and must not change this, because it must keep the mystery of women present in an unadulterated way.”
“We were all born of a woman. This will always be reflected in the mystery of the Church.”
Like Cardinal Müller, Cardinal Schönborn affirmed the teaching of Saint John Paul II that the ordination of women would violate a fundamental ecclesiological principle.
In 1994, Pope John Paul II, citing traditional Church teaching, declared in his apostolic letter Priestly Ordination: “Therefore, in order to remove all doubt about a question of great importance, which concerns the very divine constitution of the Church, by virtue of my ministry of confirming the brothers in the faith (cf. Luke 22,32 ), I declare that the Church has in no way the power to confer priestly ordination on women, and that this ruling must be considered definitive by all the faithful of the Church.”
Translated and adapted by the ACI Prensa team. Originally published in CNA.
Anian Christoph Wimmer
Anian Christoph Wimmer, a multilingual Australian with Bavarian roots, is the editor-in-chief of CNA Deutsch. He held senior positions at Australia’s SBS and was editor-in-chief of the historic Münchner Kirchenzeitung. Graduated in Philosophy and Chinese Studies from the University of Melbourne, Anian Christoph Wimmer was on the jury for the Catholic Media Prize of the German Bishops’ Conference and was an honorary researcher in Communications at the University of Melbourne. He has served on the Board of Directors of Caritas in Munich.