Finnish priest suspended in row over women priests
By George Conger, Religious Intelligence
The Archbishop of Turku has suspended a male priest for refusing to serve alongside a woman priest.
On Oct 7, the Turku cathedral chapter informed the pastor of Vammala, the Rev Markus Malmivaara that his license to officiate as a minister of the Finland’s Evangelical Lutheran Church had been suspended for 90 days by Archbishop Jukka Paarma for contumacy. Mr Malmivaara had refused to celebrate the sacraments alongside women clergy. His claim to be acting out of conscience and theological principle was not held to be grounds for disobedience.
In September 2006 a committee of the Finnish House of Bishops chaired by the Bishop of Espoo, the Rt Rev Mikko Heikka recommended that congregations no longer be permitted to allow ministers to absent themselves from services where they would have to serve with a female priest, nor would the parish be permitted to accommodate traditionalist clergy by scheduling male clergy only services.
The committee recommendations prompted protests from Finnish traditionalists, who mounted a petition drive that attracted approximately 100 signatures objecting to the new rules. However, the House of Bishops adopted the new rules, saying they would provide pastoral support and guidance to traditionalists. Male clergy could not refuse to con-celebrate the sacraments with women clergy, but were granted the right to decline to receive Eucharistic elements consecrated by a female priest.
When the Church of Finland authorized women priests in 1986 it also declared that “those members and officials of the church who take a negative view of opening the ministry to women, shall continue to have freedom to operate in our church and a possibility to be ordained and appointed to different posts in the Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Finland."
The bishops withdrew the guarantees for traditionalists in 2006 after protests from supporters of women clergy that special accommodations for traditionalists had led to discriminatory practices that penalized women clergy.
“We consider our ecclesiastical superiors to have arrived at the situation spoken of clearly in Article 28 of our church’s chief confession, the Augsburg Confession,” traditionalist clergy the Rev Anssi Simojoki and the Rev Martti Vaahtoranta wrote last year.
“When bishops teach or ordain anything contrary to the Gospel,” the Lutheran confession states, “churches have a command of God that forbids obedience.”
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