NALC and CORE: The ALC Redivivus or the New ELCA?

[Richard Johnson]

STOP IT, BOTH OF YOU!! 

[George Erdner]

STOP IT, BOTH OF YOU!! 

Could you please be more specific? Are we to stop correcting each other or what? 

[Charles_Austin]

Our Esteemed Moderator brought up the view that this humble correspondent was starting to "sound like George." I credited Mr. Erdner with being a man of strong conviction and firmly-held opinion.
But I'm done now.

[Lois Voeltz]

Carol, thanks for your observations. I acknowledged what you said to be true, but would you mind now answering my questions? I remain very unconvinced that your Creator's Tapestry website and blog was conceived, planned and formed without Marie's knowledge and involvement.

I have chosen not to get invovled in this thread until this post.  Carol and I are the ones that had the idea of a blog and website. We researched how to do it, learned how to do the lay-out, she & I discussed categories (on the website) and how we would link the two sites.  The Creator's Tapestry document was at the beginning of our sites.  We decided to use the media available for widest distribution - online blog and website.  (Much like Luther did using the printing press!)  We know that publishing a hard-copy book would be too expensive.  And CPH would not publish a book that we would write - inviting conversations on both sides of the debate about the role of women in ministry and the church.  (How I wish the booklet that the Australian Church published could be published by CPH, a booklet that presents many sides to the difficult Biblical texts that speak about women in the church.)  We presented the idea to the other women but made it very clear that there would be no 'one point of view' but instead, the blog and website are to be sites for a variety of voices, as Carol said in another post.  We started by suggesting to any of the women that have been communicating for the past 5 years to write an article.  Marie wrote as well as other men and women.  Each writer's opinion is just that.  The blog and website are wide open but not just one point of view.  Some writers affirm women's ordination.  Others do not.  All the articles and links are not of one voice, are decisions made by Carol and me.

Please do not present Marie as a controller of us or any other group of women or men.  She is not!  I hope you can take the time to read the entire blog and website.

Lois Voeltz

[ptmccain]

Lois, thank for your note. As I reflect on the agenda being advocated by your group, I am reminded of a report that Hermann Sasse once shared. The effort to continue to push for the ordination of women in The LCMS can not be entertained by "discussion" or by treating the issue as if it were, in fact, something to be debated. The dishonest game playing must end.

Here's that story that well describes the situation here:

“During the First Session of the Second Vatican Council a lady turned up in Rome and asked for an audience with the pope to discuss with him the question of the ordination of women to the Catholic priesthood. She was Dr. Gertrud Heinzelmann, a lawyer at Lucerne, the famous centre of the Roman Church in Switzerland. Pope John, who was otherwise kindness and patience personified, lost his patience. ‘Tell that suffragette that I shall never receive her. She should go back to her homeland.’ Why did the good pope, who was otherwise prepared for a dialog even with the worst enemies of the Church, give such a harsh answer? Could he not have replied something like this: ‘Tell my daughter that the ordination of women is against the Word of God’? This was his argument when the Archbishop of Canterbury declared such ordination to be against the tradition of the Church. Could he not have referred her for further information to one of his theologians? John was not an intellectual like his predecessor. He was not a great theologian either. But he was, as his ‘Journals’ show, a great pastor. Every pastor knows, or should know, that there are cases, when a discussion is impossible."

Sasse, “Ordination of Women”, in The Lutheran 5.9 (3 May 1971): 3.

[LutherMan]

I have noticed that the pro WO crowd seem to be the graying generation who were around for the turbulent Seminex years in the LCMS.  Aren't they of SP Kieschnick's generation and older?
I was an adult during Seminex.

[Charles_Austin]

So let me see if I understand this.
Ordination for women cannot be discussed within the LC-MS unless all participants agree as the foundation for "discussion" that ordination for women is totally impossible. It is not a matter that can be "debated" within the LC-MS and it is "dishonest" to do so.
Is that right?

[jpetty]

Yes, some things just can't be thought.

[peter_speckhard]

So let me see if I understand this.
Ordination for women cannot be discussed within the LC-MS unless all participants agree as the foundation for "discussion" that ordination for women is totally impossible. It is not a matter that can be "debated" within the LC-MS and it is "dishonest" to do so.
Is that right?

No. "There are cases when discussion is impossible," is, I believe, the conclusion Sasse drew, and Paul thinks that discussing the ordination of women with the Daystar crowd is one of those cases. In other words, he sees zero chance of them ever changing their mind and views the call for discussion in the same vein as the LCNA folks insisting on vote after vote every time they were voted down, until such time as they finally won a vote, at which point it became time to move on, case closed. At some point the discussion has to end, as it effectively did in the ELCA on women's ordination long ago and PALMS ordination more recently.

As for whether Paul is right about that, there may be some disagreement, but your charaterization of what he said is totally wrong as I read it. I beleive he has made clear that some personal history with some of the main players informs his diagnosis.

[Charles_Austin]

Peter writes:
"There are cases when discussion is impossible," is, I believe, the conclusion Sasse drew, and Paul thinks that discussing the ordination of women with the Daystar crowd is one of those cases.

I ask:
"with the Daystar crowd"? don't know much about who those folk are. But what about with NALC or someone else? Does the NALC have to agree that women's ordination is impossible before the subject can be discussed?
It has been my experience that serious theologians, some of them at high levels in the LC-MS do not take this extremist view. Rather than say "we won't talk about this," they say "here is what we believe, now we will listen to you (even if we think you will not convince us that you are right)."
That is much more wholesome and brotherly than the view laid down by ptmccain.

[J.L. Precup]

Peter writes:
"There are cases when discussion is impossible," is, I believe, the conclusion Sasse drew, and Paul thinks that discussing the ordination of women with the Daystar crowd is one of those cases.

I ask:
"with the Daystar crowd"? don't know much about who those folk are. But what about with NALC or someone else? Does the NALC have to agree that women's ordination is impossible before the subject can be discussed?
It has been my experience that serious theologians, some of them at high levels in the LC-MS do not take this extremist view. Rather than say "we won't talk about this," they say "here is what we believe, now we will listen to you (even if we think you will not convince us that you are right)."
That is much more wholesome and brotherly than the view laid down by ptmccain.

The LCMS does not have a history of mergers...some small assimilations, yes.  I could easily envision the LCMS courting the NALC and possibly bringing it aboard as a separate non-geographical district (synod to you ELCA folks).  If it is advantageous, possibly allowing the NALC to bring along some female clergy if they are not the senior pastor (in an isolation ward with a district president (bishop), someone like Paul McCain, "persuading" congregations to drop their female pastors), and with the provision that all future clergy comes from LCMS seminaries...therefore, problem solved...no more female clergy.

[John_Hannah]

If WO is not to be discussed, that is fine with me. Then we can drop the "Orders of Creation" nonsense. Right?

Peace, JOHN HANNAH

[James Thomas Sharp]

If WO is not to be discussed, that is fine with me. Then we can drop the "Orders of Creation" nonsense. Right?

Peace, JOHN HANNAH

For Adam was formed first, and then Eve.

Order of Creation.

Nonsense?

[John_Hannah]

If WO is not to be discussed, that is fine with me. Then we can drop the "Orders of Creation" nonsense. Right?

Peace, JOHN HANNAH

For Adam was formed first, and then Eve.

...and after roaches.   

[James Thomas Sharp]

If WO is not to be discussed, that is fine with me. Then we can drop the "Orders of Creation" nonsense. Right?

Peace, JOHN HANNAH

For Adam was formed first, and then Eve.

...and after roaches.   

So we should probably come to a consensus on the ordination of roaches before we start negotiating on ordination of human women?