Felix Maria Davídek (12 January 1921 – 18 August 1988) was a

bishop A bishop is an ordained member of the clergy who is entrusted with a position of Episcopal polity, authority and oversight in a religious institution. In Christianity, bishops are normally responsible for the governance and administration of di ...

of the

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Life

He was born in Chrlice in what is now the municipal part of

Brno Brno ( , ; ) is a Statutory city (Czech Republic), city in the South Moravian Region of the Czech Republic. Located at the confluence of the Svitava (river), Svitava and Svratka (river), Svratka rivers, Brno has about 403,000 inhabitants, making ...

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. He was ordained a priest on 29 June 1945 in the Diocese of

. He was arrested by the Czech secret police and was in prison from 1950 to 1964. He was secretly ordained a bishop by Bishop Jan Blaha, under appeal to pontifical privileges granted from 1951 to 1989 to bishops in communist countries, on 29 October 1967, and was given the assignment to

pastor A pastor (abbreviated to "Ps","Pr", "Pstr.", "Ptr." or "Psa" (both singular), or "Ps" (plural)) is the leader of a Christianity, Christian congregation who also gives advice and counsel to people from the community or congregation. In Lutherani ...

the clandestine or so-called underground church in

Communist Communism () is a sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered on common ownership of the means of production, di ...

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. It was reported in 1992 that in 1978 the "Vatican ordered Father Davídek to cease performing the duties of a bishop."

Irregular ordinations

Interest in Davídek greatly increased when it was disclosed after his death that, by the account of Ludmila Javorová and others, he had administered the

sacrament A sacrament is a Christian rite which is recognized as being particularly important and significant. There are various views on the existence, number and meaning of such rites. Many Christians consider the sacraments to be a visible symbol ...

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to Javorová and about four other women. Bishop Blaha declared any such ordinations would have been

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Pope John Paul II Pope John Paul II (born Karol Józef Wojtyła; 18 May 19202 April 2005) was head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 16 October 1978 until Death and funeral of Pope John Paul II, his death in 2005. In his you ...

, in his 1994 apostolic letter ''

Ordinatio sacerdotalis ''Ordinatio sacerdotalis'' () is an apostolic letter issued by Pope John Paul II on 22 May 1994. In this document, John Paul II discussed the Catholic Church's position requiring "the reservation of priestly ordination to men alone" and wrote th ...

'', wrote that "In order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance ..I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful." The irregular situation of priests in the Czech Republic in active ministry, but the validity of whose ordination was in doubt, was largely resolved by 2000 through discussions with the

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. In February 2000, the

Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) is a department of the Roman Curia in charge of the religious discipline of the Catholic Church. The Dicastery is the oldest among the departments of the Roman Curia. Its seat is the Palace of t ...

issued a declaration on the subject, announcing (a) that with regard to celibate priests, a great part (some 50 in all) had accepted the decision of the Pope that they should be conditionally re-ordained, and (b) that a further 22 priests who were married should also be conditionally re-ordained and transferred to the

Byzantine Rite The Byzantine Rite, also known as the Greek Rite or the Rite of Constantinople, is a liturgical rite that is identified with the wide range of cultural, devotional, and canonical practices that developed in the Eastern Christianity, Eastern Chri ...

as priests of the

Apostolic Exarchate of the Greek Catholic Church in the Czech Republic The Apostolic Exarchate of the Greek Catholic Church in the Czech Republic is an exarchate of the Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church that was erected by Pope John Paul II on 13 March 1996. Also following the 1989 Velvet Revolution, the married men ...

. There remained the status of some of the bishops and priests secretly ordained who had not accepted the norms (for conditional re-ordination) approved by the Pope, specifically because they were convinced they had already been validly ordained. While the Vatican confirmed that "conditional re-ordination" did not exclude the possibility that the men had previously been validly ordained, it held to the view that the doubts over validity were genuine:

"In reality, based on research done on each case, priestly ordination was not always conferred in a valid manner; perhaps in some cases it may have been, but there remained serious doubts about this, especially in the case of ordinations carried out by Bishop Felix Maria Davidek."Declaration
''On Bishops and Priests Ordained Secretly in the Czech Republic'', §3

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Davidek, Felix Maria 1921 births 1988 deaths Roman Catholic bishops in Czechoslovakia Czech male poets Czech Roman Catholic theologians 20th-century Czech poets Women's ordination activists Ordination of women and the Catholic Church 20th-century male writers Czech Roman Catholic bishops Clergy from Brno