Truth Is Stronger Than The Stupid Lie: Roman Catholic Priest [and one of WOW’s Founding Mothers} Ida Raming by Christiane Florin 27 December 2022
/Truth Is Stronger Than The Stupid Lie: Roman Catholic Priest Ida Raming*
by Christiane Florin | 27 December 2022
Aktualisier 9 Jan 23
Zum Nachhören: Deutschlandfunk, Tag für Tag, 27.12.2022, 9.35 Uhr.
"Truth is stronger than the stupid lie".
Ida Raming has often said and written this sentence. The theologian and publicist has been fighting for equal rights for women in the Roman Catholic Church for over 60 years. Actually, there shouldn't be anyone like her, because she took a sacrament forbidden to women. The fact that someone like Ida Raming does exist did not escape the attention of the Vatican. Twenty years ago she was illegally ordained a Roman Catholic priest. Joseph Ratzinger personally excommunicated her for it.
Foto: Karlheinz Reinhartz
On this summer's day, the woman who is not supposed to exist is sitting in a Cologne kitchen, rebelliously happy. Ida Raming is a guest of a couple who are friends. The evening before, she had discussed the priesthood at the well-attended Karl Rahner Academy in Cologne. The 90-year-old has cult status among friends and foes, precisely because she has been repeating sentences like the one about lies and truth since the 1960s.
"We are no longer silent"
In October 1962, the Second Vatican Council began - and so did Ida Raming's struggle. The event of the century ended three years later. After that, things changed. For example, the priests no longer turned their backs to the faithful during Mass, they looked at the church people. The liturgical texts were translated into the national languages. The church people were supposed to see and understand.
Ida Raming wanted more even then: she demanded equal rights for women, including ordained ministry. The young theologian and her comrades-in-arms wrote petitions to the Council, and their texts were published as a book in 1964. We Are No Longer Silent was the title. It was the first clear public statement by women about their oppressed situation in the Catholic Church, she says. But for the Council's grandees - all men - there were God knows more important things than this woman's thing.
When the Council Fathers entered St Peter's for the world event, Ida Raming was 30, now she is 90. The conversation at the Cologne kitchen table begins with a suspicion of futility.
"Degradation of women"
Florin: For more than 60 years you have dedicated yourself to the issue of equal rights. Has it been worth it?
Raming: I don't give up hope. I believe in the statement: Truth will win, not lies. After all, we learned as children: lies have short legs, and it is not so finely spun. It does come to the light of day. Truth has greater power than lies.
Florin: What does the lie consist of?
Raming: From my point of view, the lie consists in the degradation of women also in the claim, impudently, to describe the nature of women with these words: "Equal, but different." And then the otherness has the same legal consequences - you have to imagine! - as discrimination. That's lies and deception, Iris would have said. She was also a great pioneer, Iris Müller, who is already dead.
Florin: But what you call lies has lasted for 2000 years. There is no church in which women had equal rights? So you get away with the lie.
Raming: You mean Catholic?
Florin: Yes, not a Roman Catholic one.
Raming: We also worked together here, also on a so-called letter to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. I reproached them because that is the highest Congregation which says what is to be believed and so on. They have never taken note of the research results of us or other scientists. They simply ignore them and they always find these new formulas. For example, Kurt Koch recently wrote that the polarity between the sexes is decisive and that we have to follow it. This Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and others define what is meant by polarity. I have to say: lies and deception. Quite honestly.
"I will not give up"
"The Kurt Koch" of whom she speaks is one of the highest officials of the Roman Catholic Church. He belongs to the Curia, to the government of the Pope. It is that cardinal who recently compared the reform efforts of the Synodal Way in Germany with the Hitler-loyal German Christians in the Nazi era. According to official Roman doctrine, women have a God-given destiny either to motherhood or virginity. From this perspective, the fact that women are denied ordination to the priesthood is considered true equality in keeping with the nature of women.
Ida Raming shakes her head when she thinks about this teaching. She comes from Fürstenau near Osnabrück. She studied theology and German language and literature in Münster and Freiburg to become a teacher. After her state examination, she began a dissertation on the exclusion of women from the priestly office. In the subtitle of her doctoral thesis, she asks rhetorically whether it is God-given tradition or discrimination. For Ida Raming, the essence is discrimination.
Ida Ramming’s Doctoral Thesis: The Exclusion of Women from the Priesthood: Divine Law or Sex Discrimination
She earned her living as a teacher at a secondary school near Münster. Like a pedagogue, she corrects cardinals like Kurt Koch and the German Walter Kasper, and the gentlemen of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in any case with a public red pen. As in Council times, she writes letters to Rome and registers the most minimal learning progress in the upper clergy. Immobile churchmen are her motivational trainers.
Florin: Have you never thought about quitting?
Raming: No, we stay with it. We are a thorn in the flesh of this church — this is necessary — which always stings and stings and so on, because they have to wake up sometime. I have had a small success, but only a small one. Cardinal Kasper wrote in the "Badisches Tagblatt" that we must respect the two thousand year old tradition of the exclusion of women from the priesthood. And I thought: I must write to him now. First I wrote to him personally, then I wrote him an open letter. I said: When have you ever examined this terrible, long tradition with experts? They haven't! And they simply claim: Oh, that was always tradition, that's what God wanted, and so on.
No, I was able to prove, I can also prove in writing, that the tradition, the so-called tradition, is full of severe discrimination against women. She is not in God's image, she brought sin into the world, she must always be under the dominion of man. I can prove all that.
Florin: But you never thought about giving up and looking for another subject?
Raming: Actually, it has always been my life's theme, I guess I can say. And that's also because of the dissertation, which I really owe to a so-called doctoral supervisor that I was able to write this at all. And he said: ‘It must be possible to ask this question.’ And what I wrote with many sources was accepted by two professors. I worked carefully. But now I will say this: during the examination of the doctoral thesis, I realised that I had stirred up a hornet's nest. All in all, I graduated magna cum laude, and that's enough.
Florin: You are excommunicated but you want to belong. Why do you want to belong?
Raming: Because I still have a voice in this church. Kasper has actually learned, in inverted commas, that you can no longer use this argument of 2000 years of tradition. He learned that because I wrote to him. That's a little, just a little progress. But still, when people stir and say something and keep saying: someday maybe it will be understood, somewhat understood, yes. I am not giving up.
The concrete of John Paul II
Ida Raming received her doctorate in Münster in 1970. It was only years later that she found a publisher who would print her doctoral thesis. This was not due to the quality of the content. The material was too explosive. The Church was powerful at the time. In 2021, the dissertation was published again. What it says is still relevant. Although since the 1960s the Roman Catholic Church no longer claims that women are inferior, nothing has changed about the supposedly God-given female destiny and the exclusion from the ordained ministry.
In a nutshell, this is justified as follows: Jesus was a man, the apostles were men, the priest represents Christ also through gender - these justifications have been repeated incessantly for decades. Pope John Paul II dogmatically expressed them in concrete.
On Pentecost 1994, he addressed the apostolic letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis to the bishops he calls brothers:
"So that any doubt may be removed concerning the important matter which concerns the divine constitution of the Church itself, I declare, by virtue of my office of strengthening the friars, that the Church has no authority whatsoever to ordain women priests, and that all the faithful of the Church must definitively abide by this decision"
The papal word of power in the gesture of impotence claims finality, doubt is futile. Ida Raming did not stop writing. She went for ordination, which the Pope denied her. She is convinced that the Holy Spirit belongs to everyone. Together with six comrades-in-arms, she chartered a ship. It set sail from Passau on 29 June 2002.
The Seven from the Danube
A radio report from that day captures the atmosphere between sacred seriousness and media event.
"It was a very special atmosphere when the bishops laid their hands on the women. Outside the windows of the ‘Passau’, the lush forests on the banks of the Danube passed by. A Peruvian music group played and many of those present were deeply moved. Some had their hands cupped in front of their faces. Others took out their handkerchiefs. For many, this was clearly the moment they had been waiting for for a long time.
For the consecrating bishops, the Argentinean Romulo Braschi and Ferdinand Regelsberger, it must have been a somewhat strange situation - for it was quite clear that all present would actually have wished for another bishop for the consecration.
Like the now consecrated Ida Raming from North Rhine-Westphalia: 'I do regret that we couldn't find a Roman Catholic bishop. But they don't dare.’
A certain Joseph Ratzinger
The Argentinean who did the consecration was the bishop of a fictitious, free Catholic church, officially he had been excommunicated for a long time. Episcopal press offices at the time called the consecration a spectacle or absurd theatre. Reform groups like "We are Church" also considered the action dubious. The Seven from the Danube did not choose the path of small reform steps, they deliberately transgressed a prohibition. Contra legem is the term for this kind of action. For only a baptised man can validly receive ordination, according to church law.
Ida Raming on the right
The women were excommunicated on 5 August 2002. A certain Joseph Ratzinger, then Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, justified their exclusion from the sacraments thus:
"Since the women Christine Mayr-Lumetzberger, Adelinde Theresia Roitinger, Gisela Forster, Iris Müller, Ida Raming, Pia Brunner and Angela White, in response to the monitum of this Congregation of last 10 July, published the following day, had not shown any signs of repentance by the appointed date, 22 July 2002, they were excommunicated. In the absence of any sign of contrition and repentance for the grave offence they have committed, this Dicastery, in accordance with the Monitum, imposes on the said women the excommunication reserved to the Apostolic See, with all the legal consequences established in can. 1331 CIC.
In fulfilment of this commanded intervention, the Congregation trusts that the aforementioned, enlightened by the grace of the Holy Spirit, will come to their senses and find the way back to unity in faith and communion with the Church which they have violated by their actions."
"None of the seven women repented. I say that with pride."
More of Ratzinger's decrees followed - many years later even the canon law was changed. However not in the sense of the Seven from the Danube. Since 2021, ordination of women priests has been explicitly mentioned as a criminal offence drawing automatic excommunication of those involved.
The ordained women remained unimpressed and unenlightened by the grace of the Holy Ratzinger Spirit. They formed an Association for Roman Catholic Women Priests (RCWP). Some, including Ida Raming, climbed to the next level of prohibition, became women bishops and in turn ordained women priests. At the kitchen table in the Rhineland, Ida Raming lets the Danube ship pass by once again.
Florin: You decided 20 years ago to be ordained contra legem.
Raming: That's right. Yes, because we saw. After Ordinatio Sacerdotalis 1994 John Paul II, the doors were closed, and I'm sorry to say they are still closed today. And we saw: We are not getting anywhere. We argued, we wrote, we published. We got nowhere. Yes, what else could we do then? And there is the word, one must not forget that. Many say that one must obey God more than men, Acts 5:29. We said that publicly at the ordination because we did not promise any obedience to the bishop who was present. That is a man's law not God's law which says that ordination is validly received only by a baptised man.
Florin: You were immediately excommunicated by a man, a certain man, Joseph Ratzinger.
Raming: That was very quick. It is striking that the Vatican had somehow observed everything. How I don't know? I don’t know what channels he has either.
Florin: And they still are. It's not like they repented or anything. They are still excommunicated?
Raming: That's important that you ask that. All those who were there, that was seven women, were asked to repent: Repent and say "We have brought harm upon the Church. We have brought trouble upon the Church. You can repent in so-and-so - I don't know how much time there was, I think. 14 days or so. None of the seven women repented. I say that with pride.
Florin: And when they were ordained, when they were Roman Catholic priests, that's what they called themselves afterwards. What did you do with it then? Did you do the same as the men?
Raming: We went to Asemwald where they might have been or heard of. That's a district of Stuttgart. There is a small chapel of the Protestant church. It was always possible to celebrate services in the chapel in the Asemwald. We also had guests there. I have to say something else: Ordinations have also taken place in the Asemwald, of Canadian women, of people from the USA, and we have grown, now to 282, almost 300 are already ordained women priests and bishops in the USA, Canada, and South Africa has also been added. In Latin America there are also some. The women don't want to wait any longer either. How long should they wait?
Florin: You don't just call yourself a Catholic priest. Why the Roman?
Raming: I am an ex-communicated paying member of the Roman Catholic Church. Yeah, so why is that? I mean, I'm not saying now the Roman Catholic Church does everything right, that's not true at all. But I belong to it, and I'm not leaving it either. We protest within this church.
"A commitment with a promise of obedience - that was not for me".
Meanwhile, she sees more allies than ever within the church. She is happy that women religious like Philippa Rath and Katharina Ganz are fighting for equal rights, that they write books and counter with theological knowledge what Ida Raming calls a stupid lie. Of all things, women religious are rebelling! Ida Raming got to know quite different convent sisters as a child:
"I grew up in a school run by Franciscan nuns in Thuine in the district of Lingen, where I also did my Abitur. They were, I have to say, not in tune with the times, they were backward. Of course we weren't allowed to wear trousers, that was frowned upon, and we weren't allowed to be in the theatre. If we wanted to play the brave little tailor or something, we weren't allowed to wear trousers. Then they said you could put bloomers on the nurses' aprons. So not a word about the historical women's movement, the profane women's movement. Not a word about it. Then they realised I wanted to study theology. Then they said yes, if that's what you want to study, then why don't you join the Franciscan Sisters here? I said no, I won't, because I can tell you quite honestly: such a commitment with a promise of obedience was not for me. I would have liked to have had a spiritual place as well. But the monasteries at that time were not open to this question. The monasteries at that time were really not open to this question. Now that has changed too."
"It is outrageous. They should be ashamed of themselves"
The 90-year-old lives in Stuttgart, she travels to podiums when health permits. When she meets the Bishop of Rottenburg-Stuttgart, she shakes his hand and he shakes hers. Although excommunicated, she feels inside. She has dedicated her life to this church, renounced her own family for religious reasons, voluntarily, she emphasises. She endures hostility, she smiles when she is ridiculed as a priestess and bishop. It must be love that she feels for her Church.
Florin: You have now waited more than 60 years. Many women today are no longer prepared to do that. You are leaving the Church at the age when you wrote your dissertation. Where will the momentum come from?
Raming: Yes, but I would say that women are increasingly demanding their necessary rights. After all, this has not only been our cause. Nor do I regret that we have set this as this sign. I cannot doubt that the women who have been ordained with us have a vocation. A great crime is that the men in the Vatican want to dictate to the Holy Spirit whom God's Spirit has called. They make endless mistakes. And if the Pope were sitting here, I would say something to him, too - you can't leave it like that. It is simply outrageous. They should be ashamed of themselves.
Florin: But they are not. They don't listen and they are not ashamed. Do you love this church?
Raming: Do I love it? I would say I love, or try to love, Jesus and the disciples he gathered around him.
They (the church hierarchs) always refer to Jesus. I say they have not studied the time, the society of that time at all. They didn't see that it was a very patriarchal society where women had no right to testify nor the right to vote. And I also give the example: Jesus could not have said to Mary Magdalene: go to the nearest synagogue to say clearly that I am risen. She would not have come out of it in one piece. That's what I wrote to Bishop Wilmer and others: You must take into account the structure of the times! You can't just say that everything is set by God, impossible. They really do make mistakes. Men exercise power over women and that is sin!
"I don't give up"
It is one of the rare moments in conversation when Ida Raming becomes audibly angry. Often she speaks as a patient teacher, shaking her head at all the errors she finds in papers of highly decorated churchmen. From afar, she is said to be dogged, because even 20 years after her consecration on the Danube, she has no regrets. Up close, at the kitchen table, she seems neither dogged nor bitter. She has wit because she is serious about her church.
When the microphone is off, she slides over some pages, a text in typical Raming style: sometimes bold, sometimes skinny, sometimes straight, sometimes italic. Peppered with biblical passages. Underlined, bold and with exclamation marks it says: "Human rights are for women - including women in the church!" The gentlemen in Rome will surely get mail from her soon. Every letter, every email, every phone call ends with the sentence:
"Truth is stronger than the stupid lie."
"Wahrheit ist stärker als die blöde Lüge". Die römisch-katholische Priesterin Ida Raming
*Note from Women’s Ordination Worldwide: Ida Raming is a pioneer of the women’s ordination movement and a founding mother of Women’s Ordination Worldwide . Together with Dr. Iris Mueller, she drew up a published submission to the Second Vatican Council in 1963, challenging the exclusion of women from the priesthood. She is a member of the Danube Seven: the women ordained to Roman Catholic priesthood on the Danube on 29 June 2002.
Raming’s groundbreaking doctoral work (1969) on the history of the church’s discrimination against women from early Christian writings through the Middle Ages conclusively proves the exclusion of women from priesthood is based on concepts of the essential and ethical inferiority of women. Her influential research was published in English in 1976 as The Exclusion of Women from the Priesthood: Divine Law or Sex Discrimination. She is also the author of many scholarly articles on the ordination of women.
Raming argues that the church law restricting ordination to only baptised males (Canon 1024) is itself illegal because it establishes two classes of baptism. The Church law is contrary to Holy Scripture and the church’s earliest history in which women played prominent roles and were ordained deacons, priests and bishops.
