(As reported in The Tablet , 22/29 December)

THE ARCHBISHOP of Munich, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, has said that intensive reflection is needed on the issue of women’s ordination.

Answering questions put by the 250 pupils of the Mary Ward School at Munich/ Nymphenburg, where he gave the first of six catechetical sessions he is holding during the Year of Faith, Cardinal Marx said the issue “leaves many questions open.”

Asked for his views on women’s ordination, Cardinal Marx replied: “I can understand when people say they cannot comprehend one or the other argument. Questions always remain. We must go on thinking about this intensively. Perhaps we have not yet come to the end of the road we set out on together.”

The cardinal pointed out that men and women have the same equal dignity and that when Jesus had called God “Father” it was not in the gender sense. It was only right that women should have leading positions in the Church, he underlined, noting that three of the seven heads of department in the Archdiocese of Munich were women.

In his class, which was on the Apostolic Creed, Cardinal Marx emphasized that faith was a gift that one could only ask for and not obtain by force. “That is why it is so important for us to express our faith together. No one can say ‘I have never doubted,” the cardinal stressed.

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One wonders what the German-cardinal-become-pope thinks about all of this…….

In any event we do indeed move forward…….