Word: ordain
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...years Judaism's Conservative branch struggled over whether women should become rabbis. Reform Jews, more liberal, have ordained women since 1972, and 71 are now rabbis. But the Conservatives warily delayed, until in 1983 the faculty of the Jewish Theological Seminary voted to train and ordain women. Last week, with the first female seminarian about to graduate, the cycle was completed when the Rabbinical Assembly, the organization of Conservative rabbis in the U.S. and Canada, announced it would admit to membership anyone ordained by the seminary, male or female...
...statements about women have only one thing to say: motherhood." The Pope got a taste of such criticisms on his visit to the U.S. in 1979. Sister Theresa Kane, then president of the Sisters of Mercy of the Union, declared in his presence that the church should ordain women; John Paul remained unmoved. "The joke went around," says Suzanne Hiatt, an Episcopal priest, "that he had been told he should step on the ground and kiss the women, and instead he kissed the ground and stepped on the women...
Church officials insist that the matter of ordination has nothing to do with discrimination. Says Archbishop John Foley, president of the Pontifical Commission for Social Communications in Rome: "The ordination of women (is) not a concept emerging from sociological considerations. Jesus clearly did not ordain women to the priesthood, nor did he authorize the church to do so." As for further discussion, another Vatican official says categorically, "The verdict is in. It is simply not worth discussing for the duration of this pontificate...
...Boston as well as the rest of the country, women are trying to increase their role within the Church. There is even considerable pressure now to ordain women, notes Father Thomas F. Powers, director of campus ministries for the archdiocese...
...pleased to see your coverage of the Jewish Theological Seminary's decision to ordain women rabbis [Nov. 7]. However, the Conservative movement did not "topple a Jewish tradition," as your article implied. The seminary's action was preceded by years of discussion and research, and by the gathering of the written opinions from our leading rabbis on the permissibility of ordaining women. Jewish law has always been pushed toward granting greater equality for women in areas as diverse as inheritance, marriage and control over their own sexuality. Seen in this light, the seminary is simply asserting its responsibility...