The Danube Seven 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 a third unknown bishop.
The seven women are: Christine Mayr-Lumetzberger, Adelinde Theresia Roitinger, Gisela Forster, Iris Muller, Ida Raming, Pia Brunner and Angela White (the last a pseudonym for Dagmar Braun Celeste, the Austrian born former first lady of Ohio in the United States[1]).
Braschi, an Independent Catholic bishop whose own ordination is in the line of apostolic succession and thus considered valid by the Roman Catholic Church, was excommunicated by the latter.[2]
The women's ordinations were not, however, recognized as valid by the Roman Catholic Church,[3] although the women (and their successors) consider their own ordinations to be valid and even studied in a three year program, designed by Christine Mayr-Lumetzberger, prior to their ordinations.[4][5]
Legal consequences and responses edit
On 10 July 2002, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a monitum against the women, warning that they would be excommunicated if they did not admit the invalidity of the ordinations and repented.[6] As a consequence of this violation of canon law, specifically canons 1008-1009 and 1024-1025, and their refusal to repent, the Vatican excommunicated the women.[7] The women asked the Vatican to revoke the excommunication, but this request was denied in Decree on the Attempted Ordination of Some Catholic Women.[8]
See also edit
References edit
- ^ Vries, Lloyd (17 October 2002). "Former Ohio First Lady Reveals A Secret". CBS News. Retrieved 17 May 2019.
- ^ General Decree regarding the delict of attempted sacred ordination of a woman [1]
- ^ Can. 1024 Archived December 3, 2010, at the Wayback Machine: A baptized male alone receives sacred ordination validly
- ^ "Roman Catholic Womenpriests". romancatholicwomenpriests.org.
- ^ Peterfeso, Jill Marie. “Transgressive Traditions: Roman Catholic Womenpriests and the Problem of Women's Ordination.” University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2012.
- ^ Mroz, Kate (2019). "Is it Necessary to Break the Rules? A Comparative Look at Amina Wadud and the Roman Catholic Womenpriests Movement". In Shafiq, Muhammad; Donlin-Smith, Thomas (eds.). Making Gender in the Intersection of the Human and the Divine. United Kingdom: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. p. 271. ISBN 978-1-5275-2794-2.
- ^ Connoly, Kate and Willan Phillip. "Vatican casts out 'ordained' women", "The Guardian", August 6, 2002.
- ^ Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Decree on the attempted ordination of some Catholic women In the course of these meetings the members arrived at the collegial decision to confirm the decree of excommunication. In the case under consideration, in fact, hierarchical recourse is not possible as it concerns a decree of excommunication issued by a Dicastery of the Holy See acting in the name of the Supreme Pontiff (cf. Canon 360).
Further reading edit
- BBC story, 5 August 2002
- Women Priests?, EWTN
- Full text of the 10 July 2002 monitum at Vatican.va