Therefore, even though Dr. Käßmann had occupied her episcopal office for over ten years and women's ordination is seen by many in the Protestant church as normal, it bears repeating that she should not have held this office in the first place. What is more, not only did she hold this office illegitimately, she also, during her tenure as bishop, ensured that those objecting to women's ordination would not be allowed to enter into the ministry in the first place. The fact that this totally unscriptural practice did not cause an outcry in Germany and around the world speaks volumes about the level of indifference and ignorance regarding the deformation of an institution of the Lord of the church.
In December of last year, the chairman of the Department for External Church Relations of the Russian Orthodox Church, archbishop Hillarion of Volokolamsk, cancelled his participation in an event [celebrating] half a century of doctrinal discussions between the ECG and the Russian Church. In a letter, he did not blame Dr. Käßmann's election alone; rather, he expressed his frustration in general with the direction Western Protestant churches have been moving in the past decades. While the Western churches have become more and more in tune with the liberal spirit of the age to the point of ordaining openly homosexual candidates, they still wanted to keep the dialog with the East going and, in fact, got angry when the East stuck to its traditional positions and raised certain issues time and again.
Read it all here.
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