CNA Staff, Jun 27, 2024 / 17:15 pm (CNA).
A Belgian civil court has fined two Catholic prelates after they denied a woman entry into a diaconate formation program.
According to the Belgian newspaper De Morgen, the woman, Veer Dusauchoit, asked the Archdiocese of Mechelen-Brussels to register for training as a deacon in June 2023 and again in October 2023.
Dusauchoit made her first request to Cardinal Jozef De Kesel and her second to Archbishop Luc Terlinden after De Kesel’s 2023 resignation at age 76. Both times, her request to join the four-year diaconal training program was denied.
The two prelates will have to pay 1,500 euro (about $1,605) each, the court ordered.
The court in Mechelen ruled that the archbishops made a mistake when refusing Dusauchoit entry to the program but did not address the question of actually ordaining Dusauchoit. According to De Morgen, the court cannot overturn the archbishop’s refusal or decide in his place who will be admitted to deacon training.
“We received the verdict yesterday afternoon, are now studying it, and will then decide how to proceed,” a spokesman for the archdiocese said in response to a request from the website katholisch.de on Wednesday.
The Catholic Church teaches that holy orders — of which there are three degrees of diaconate, priesthood, and episcopate — is the sacrament of apostolic ministry and is reserved to baptized men.
Pope Francis has reiterated numerous times that holy orders are “reserved to men.”
Dusauchoit, 62, has served at her parish church in a Flemish part of Belgium for years, according to De Morgen. As her parish no longer has a priest, Dusauchoit got involved with arranging funerals and scriptural readings, katholish.de reported.
In an April 22 op-ed, Dusauchoit described herself as a “religious, socially committed, feminist, and ecologically inspired woman.” She claimed that as late as the 1970s in Belgium, wives of deacons were required to attend deacon training together with their husbands.
“Women in the Church are still not fully appreciated and given their equal place,” she wrote.
“Out of that frustration, from the conviction that training as a deacon can help the Church grow further and at the same time from the determination not to break with the Church, I decided to register for training as a deacon,” she wrote.
In Belgium, the state pays the salaries of ministers of recognized religions, which include Catholicism, Protestantism, Judaism, Anglicanism, Orthodoxy, and Islam.
The bishops of Belgium, since the 2023 refusals to admit Dusauchoit, have since expressed support for the ordination of women to the diaconate.
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The problem here is nothing other than the Catholic Church accepting money from the secular government. That needs to end immediately. Same goes here in the US where the USCCB agencies receive tens (if not hundreds) of million of dollars from the Federal government through various contracts. That makes the Church an agent of the US government and needs to stop for various reasons.
Am I mistaken? Does not the Vatican’s secret agreement with China provide a voice to the genocidal Marxists a voice in selecting bishops? Why then shouldn’t the secular materialists in Belgium have a voice in who is admitted to the diaconate training program.
It would seem only fair.
Or maybe the bright lights in the office Secretariate of State are gravely mistaken.
Ancient German custom had preChristian tribal chiefs assume responsibility for the financial support of religious practice that continued with Christianity. Most of Europe was either occupied or influenced by the German tribes, Franks, Ostrogoths, Visigoths. Today most European states permit the option of withdrawal from the state imposed tax including Germany, Belgium, Italy, although most have kept the tax as a guaranteed source of income. And with that as in Belgium the State may assume a role in how the funds are spent. Belgium, with an ultra liberal government endorses the feminist agenda.
Germany is perhaps the prime example of a Church that has lost its relevance with the people yet continues [the remaining upper clergy bishops and cardinals] to live in luxury professing a vision of Christianity that has little to do with Christianity. The Catholic Church in Europe, as well as the USCCB here would take a strong step toward revival by cutting off financial support from their governments, and fealty to government agenda and return to relative poverty but genuine Christianity.
What happens in Belgium if a Muslim woman asks to be admitted to a clerical program reserved for Muslim men?