By Stephen Brown
Harare, 9 December (ENI)--The question of the ordination of women in Orthodox churches is not "closed", according to Dr Konrad Raiser, the general secretary of the World Council of Churches.

The issue of the ordination of women, along with inclusive language, has emerged as one of the key issues at the WCC's eighth assembly in the Zimbabwean capital, Harare, dividing Orthodox churches, which do not ordain women, and many churches of Protestant and Anglican traditions, which ordain women as ministers, and in some cases, as bishops. Earlier this week, Vsevolod Chaplin, an official of the Russian Orthodox Church described the ordination of women and inclusive language as "blasphemy".

At a press conference yesterday 8 December, in Harare, a journalist asked Dr Raiser, a German Protestant theologian and leading ecumenist, to comment on Chaplin's comments. Dr Raiser pointed to recent research about women's ordination by two respected Orthodox theologians, Bishop Kallistos Ware and Elisabeth Behr-Siegel, which, he said, had reached the conclusion that "there are no essential or ecclesiological reasons preventing the ordination of women in the Orthodox tradition".

Speaking to ENI today, Dr Raiser said that the research by Bishop Kallistos and Behr-Siegel was developing "emerging perspectives" from an Orthodox perspective, showing that "if you take seriously the Christian affirmation that men and women are created equally in the image of God ... the systematic exclusion of women from the ministry cannot be defended on purely theological grounds." Although the exclusion of women from the ministry was still defended in Orthodox churches on the basis of "history, tradition, [and for] canonical reasons", these were not at the "theological centre", Dr Raiser said.

For the moment the question of the ordination of women to the priesthood in Orthodox churches was a "purely theological discussion", Dr Raiser told ENI, but the fact that the issue was being raised "gives us hope that the discussion can yet move beyond the present situation of stalemate".

During yesterday's press conference, Dr Raiser said that he "fully agreed" with remarks by Dr Janice Love, a member of the United Methodist Church (USA) and a member of the WCC's outgoing central and executive committees, who described Chaplin's speech was "one of the saddest I have ever heard" in her 23 years as a member of the WCC central committee. She added that she was particularly upset by its "anti-ecumenical spirit".

At the press conference, Dr Raiser also restated his hope that the world's main Christian traditions would start preparations for a universal Christian council to resolve the issues dividing the church.

Dr Raiser first proposed in 1996 that the main Christian traditions should in the year 2000 start talks to settle outstanding differences, saying that only a genuinely universal council would be able to deal with the many problems between churches. Universal councils were held in the first centuries of the Christian church, bringing bishops together to settle doctrinal differences.

Delegates at the WCC assembly are debating proposals, known as "Common Understanding and Vision", for the future of the WCC. An early draft of the proposals included the proposal for a universal council, but the suggestion was dropped in the course of revision. Instead the CUV document now talks of a "forum".

Asked by ENI at the press conference whether he was disappointed that the CUV document did not include the proposal for a universal Christian council, Dr Raiser said that he was "not surprised that [the proposal] has not immediately caught on", but he still believed that this was the direction to go.

"I haven't given up hope that, if not in the year 2000, then in 2001, a gathering can take place which can initiate such a process," he said, adding that such a proposal was being discussed by a commission at the WCC assembly.

"I don't stop being visionary when I express my own thoughts," he said. "I am a little more cautious when I am interpreting the views of the WCC."

Dr Raiser's proposal received the cautious support of Tom Stransky, an official Roman Catholic observer at the WCC's assembly.

Stransky told the press conference that an "essential part of the Roman Catholic understanding of being in the ecumenical movement is to enter into this conciliar process".

Stransky also said that he would not "rule out" the possibility of his church joining the WCC in the future. In 1972, after considering the issue following the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church had decided not to seek membership of the WCC, Stransky said. However, the "same objections" might not apply in the future. [778 words]

Photographs of the assembly are available from Photo Oikoumene

Related sites:

WCC Assembly Web Site

Photo Oikoumene

ENI special reports in French

ENI takes no responsibility for the content of external sites

This selection of ENI articles from the WCC assembly are for personal information only and remain copyright 1998 Ecumenical News International. They may not be reposted electronically or reproduced in any form whatsoever. For further details about subscriptions to the full ENI Daily News Service, including details of media subscriptions, contact ENI, PO Box 2100, CH-1211 Geneva 2, Switzerland, Tel: +41-22 791 6515, Fax: +41-22 798 1346, Email: eni@eni.ch, or consult the range of ENI products.