A Catholic politician who is being touted as Angela Merkel’s successor has said she hopes for the ordination of women to the priest-hood. Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who was appointed general-secretary of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Germany’s ruling party, in February, said it was “perfectly clear” that it would be an “immense break” with tradition, but argued that “the Catholic Church would not perish.”
“I wish that the priestly ordination [of women] would come,” she told Christ & Welt, a supplement of Die Zeit, a German newspaper.
She said she could have imagined herself as a priest, but knew it was impossible. A more realistic goal, she suggested, was female deacons. “What do women not bring with them, except that they are women?” she said. “What are they missing, that they cannot receive this consecration? That they are not allowed to become deaconesses? Apart from the fact that they are women, nobody could answer me that positively! Kramp-Karrenbauer, who is a member of the Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK), an influential lay group, stressed the importance of women in the Church, saying that if you “close your eyes and think away all the women,” it would leave “only a small remnant.” She suggested quotas for women in leadership positions. “Women determine the daily work in the church, which must also be reflected in offices,” she said. “Much of what we see today as a set of rules has evolved over the centuries, and was shaped by institutions, not by Jesus,” she said.
