First Woman Bishop in the Old Catholic Church

  

I used to think that “old” was something conservative. After all, people who love old things, like antiques, conserve things from the past. When I first heard of the Old Catholic Church, I thought they must be even more conservative than the Roman Catholics. Far from it! The Old Catholics are the progressives, but they look back to the old times when the church was egalitarian. They have revived the old faith of the first church. After the First Vatican Council (1870) introduced the dogma of the infallibility of the pope, the Christians who rejected the new dogma were excluded from the church and called themselves Old Catholics, referring to the Old Church, i.e. the first Christian church communities. Thus they wanted to be dissociated from the “new” Roman Catholic Church with all the doctrines that had been added during the centuries.

The church now has about 70,000 members in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Poland, and the Netherlands. The Old Catholics break with many traditions of the Roman Catholic churches. For example, there is no celibacy in the Old Catholic Church - and for about 20 years, women have also been able to be ordained as priests. In June 2023, Maria Kubin, 58, was elected as the first female bishop of the Old Catholic Church for Austria and its 8,000 church members.

The discontent within the Roman Catholic Church has led to more than 520,000 members leaving the church in 2022 alone, the highest number of church exits ever in one year. The Old Catholic church could become a refuge for these believers, who hope for reforms, particularly concerning the involvement of women in the church and how the church deals with abuse cases.

When asked what signal her election sends, Maria Kubin answered: “I think it's a lot about the feeling that women can come forward within the Old Catholic Church. It would be good if that could happen not only in our church but also in the Roman Catholic Church. Women don't want to just sit in the pew or water the flowers in the church. They want to shape things. For this reason, I have received a lot of positive feedback on my election.”

For some conservative believers, her election is a threat shaking sacred traditions. Kubin hopes that with time these people will also be able to understand that nothing sacred will be damaged by this election. She sees her role as a model for women to trust their vocation to the ordained ministry. She had held all the offices that a woman can hold in the Roman Catholic church, but that was not her vocation. In 2008 she converted to the Old Catholic Church. Women priests are not rare in the Old Catholic church but are still considered something special. Finding your place in the male-dominated world is always a challenge. Kubin would like to encourage other women to find their path forward in the Church so that her successor will also become a woman - or at least a woman will run as a candidate in the next election.

Asked about how the Old Catholic Church could be a role model for other denominations in an interview with Tobias Eßer[1] Kubin answered: “Of course, as a small church, we find it much easier to simply try things out. In this sense, you can compare the Roman Catholic Church with a large cruise ship, where you have to plan every move exactly and it is sometimes very cumbersome. The Old Catholic Church, on the other hand, is more like a small motorboat that can move quickly left and right and quickly adjust to any mistakes. There were heated discussions about the ordination of women or things like the blessing of same-sex couples in our Anglican partner church, which, like the Roman Catholic Church, is global. The Roman Catholic Church tends to prohibit new things. Anglicans are more likely to try new things. And we as Old Catholics can row back faster than the big churches. So we already have a role model function.”

There is a lot of truth in what Maria Kubin expressed in her answer, even for the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. The global perspective of the church has been used as the excuse for denying women’s ordination ever since the vote in Indianapolis in 1990. The words, “The global church is not ready yet,” have been used so many times to halt progress. The ordination of women elders has not split the church and the ordination of women pastors in regions where it is feasible would not do so either. Maybe it would be a good thing for the church to look back at the old times when women were accepted as evangelists and pastors and even the question of their ordination was not rejected (1881) but rather, approved. Let us think about what we can learn from this woman bishop’s election in Austria.

 

 


 Photo:: Alt-katholische Kirche Österreich


[1] https://www.t-online.de/nachrichten/panorama/id_100204194/erste-alt-katholische-bischoefin-der-welt-in-oesterreich-nicht-nur-blumen-giessen-.html

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