{"id":50944,"date":"2020-02-24T15:49:35","date_gmt":"2020-02-24T21:49:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/?p=50944"},"modified":"2020-03-02T07:51:58","modified_gmt":"2020-03-02T13:51:58","slug":"germanys-defense-minister-calls-on-church-to-abolish-priestly-celibacy-and-ordain-women-to-the-diaconate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/index.php\/2020\/02\/24\/germanys-defense-minister-calls-on-church-to-abolish-priestly-celibacy-and-ordain-women-to-the-diaconate\/","title":{"rendered":"Germany\u2019s defense minister calls on Church to abolish priestly celibacy and ordain women to the diaconate"},"content":{"rendered":"

The National Catholic Reporter is carrying a story<\/a> that Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, a member of the governing Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Germany\u2019s current defense minister, called on the Catholic Church to abolish priestly celibacy and ordain women to the diaconate. Her Wikipedia page<\/a> says that she is a Roman Catholic. She is an important politician in Germany and had been Angela Merkel\u2019s chosen heir and had she not ruled herself out<\/a> of the running earlier this week, could well have become Germany\u2019s next chancellor. So whatever one might think, she is undeniably an important figure in German politics.<\/p>\n

Here I am not commenting on the rightness or wrongness of her proposals. What I find fascinating is that a government minister (for defense no less) would comment in the pubic square on a matter that is surely for the Church to decide. It is true that she is entitled to her personal opinion, but rightly or wrongly a politician of her stature cannot express a public opinion that won\u2019t be understood as coming from her political role (it may even be the case that she stressed that she was simply expressing her personal views (the NCR report doesn\u2019t say). It ought also to be considered that these issues are in the media spotlight in Germany this week due to the Synodal Process there.<\/p>\n

The Catholic Church has often been accused of meddling in politics. Maybe there is some case to be answered by certain members of the Church in this regard. However, conversely, is it the place of politicians to recommend major changes to the Catholic Church? Should, for example, Mark Esper, the current U.S. Secretary for Defense<\/a>, feel free to suggest similar changes to the U.S. Catholic Church?<\/p>\n

I know the natural tendency for everyone is to agree that it is a good idea, if we agree with what is being called for, and to be horrified by it if we are not.\u00a0 But that is not the question I am asking. More simply, what role should secular leaders have in deciding Catholic doctrine and practice? Historically, we can look back at figures such as the Emperor Constantine who influenced Church teaching. But today how should we process these calls, should inputs such as this be given a certain importance \u00a0or should the Church state that she deals with internal matters internally?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The National Catholic Reporter is carrying a story that Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, a member of the governing Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Germany\u2019s current defense minister, called on the Catholic Church to abolish priestly celibacy and ordain women to the diaconate. Her Wikipedia page says that she is a Roman Catholic. She is an important politician […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":50978,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3116,2480],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-new-ws","category-secularism"],"yoast_head":"\nGermany\u2019s defense minister calls on Church to abolish priestly celibacy and ordain women to the diaconate - Home<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/index.php\/2020\/02\/24\/germanys-defense-minister-calls-on-church-to-abolish-priestly-celibacy-and-ordain-women-to-the-diaconate\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Germany\u2019s defense minister calls on Church to abolish priestly celibacy and ordain women to the diaconate - Home\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The National Catholic Reporter is carrying a story that Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, a member of the governing Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Germany\u2019s current defense minister, called on the Catholic Church to abolish priestly celibacy and ordain women to the diaconate. 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Neil Xavier O'Donoghue","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/2024_09_NeiL_Portrait-96x96.jpeg?crop=1","url":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/2024_09_NeiL_Portrait-96x96.jpeg?crop=1","contentUrl":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/2024_09_NeiL_Portrait-96x96.jpeg?crop=1","caption":"Fr. Neil Xavier O'Donoghue"},"description":"Neil Xavier O\u2019Donoghue is originally from Cork, Ireland. He is a presbyter of the Archdiocese of Newark, NJ who has ministered in parishes on both sides of the Atlantic. He has spent many years as an academic mentor to seminarians. Neil currently serves as Programme Director for Liturgical Programmes at the Pontifical University and as Acting Director of the National Centre for Liturgy. Since 2020 he has also served as the Executive Secretary for Liturgy to the Irish Catholic Bishops Conference. He has studied at Seton Hall University (BA, MDiv), the University of Notre Dame (MA), and St Vladimir\u2019s Orthodox Theological Seminary (MTh). He holds a Doctorate in Theology (Ph.D.) from St Patrick\u2019s College, Maynooth and is in the process of completing a second doctorate (D.D) in the Pontifical Facultad de Teolog\u00eda Redemptoris Mater in Callao, Peru. Neil has published a translation of the Confessio of St. Patrick: St. Patrick: His Confession and Other Works (Totowa, NJ, 2009), as well editing the third edition of Fredrick Edward Warren\u2019s The Liturgy and Ritual of the Celtic Church (Piscataway, NJ, 2010). In 2011 the University of Notre Dame Press published The Eucharist in Pre-Norman Ireland an adaptation of his doctoral thesis and in 2017 the Alcuin Club published his Liturgical Orientation: The Position of the President at the Eucharist. His articles have appeared in The Irish Theological Quarterly, New Blackfriars, The Furrow and Antiphon. He writes a monthly article on some aspect of the theology of Pope Francis in the Messenger of St. Anthony and blogs regularly at PrayTell.","url":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/index.php\/author\/nxodonoghue\/"}]}},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/church-state-1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/84"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50944"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50944\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50979,"href":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50944\/revisions\/50979"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}