The three churches named above--the Armenian Apostolic Church, which ordains women deacons, the Orthodox Church of Greece, which has voted to do so, and the Old Catholic Church of the Czech Republic, which has ordained a women deacon--along with the four European member-churches of the Union of Utrecht that ordain women deacons and women priests (the Old Catholic Churches in Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, and Switzerland) have all demonstrated such apostolic succession and valid orders.
It will be worthwhile to examine below the current situation in the three churches that find that they can validly and licitly ordain women to the diaconate: the Armenian Apostolic Church, the Orthodox Church of Greece, and the Old Catholic Church of the Czech Republic.
In 1889 Old Catholic bishops of the Netherlands, Austria, Germany, and Switzerland signed the Union of Utrecht.
Merkt was a son of an Old Catholic family in the small town of Kempten in southern Swabia.
(45) The second has already been mentioned, and that was the Old Catholic Church, which until the end of the 19th century provided the moral support for popular liberalism.
His friends suggested he try the Old Catholics, of which he had never heard.
They have an easier time sitting down with a group of Protestant ministers than with us." He asks that Old Catholics be viewed not as competition but as a complementary ministry.
The discussion concerning the ordination of women to the deaconate in the Old Catholic Church is offered as a model of conciliar dialogue, and, while the Old Catholic Church was not very active in the former East German regime, it offers encouraging opportunities for Christians from that region.
Overall, these essays reflect theological connections more than narrow specializations, raise hopeful and stimulating liturgical possibilities for church unity, and acquaint readers with the status and ecumenical potential of the Old Catholic Church.
Although the Old Catholic church is small in membership, numbering about 300,000 worldwide and 50,000 in the United States, the ordinations are important because they mark the first time that women have been ordained openly by a bishop whose authority to ordain is unquestioned by the Vatican.
Male priests of the Old Catholic church are considered valid, though illicit, by the Vatican.
Chapman ends this section by recounting a visit to the United States by an
Old Catholic representative, Bishop Eduard Herzog, who took the American Episcopal Church to be the American
Old Catholic Church, and declined to plant separate
Old Catholic congregations there.