The comments at the opening of the Church's Synod in Turku, were aimed at clergymen who are opposed to the ordination of women, who refuse to work together with female ministers.
In his speech, Paarma said that he hopes that a minister who refuses official duties for reasons of conscience should seek work that he feels that he could do.
As Paarma sees it, a minister is there for the congregation, and if the congregation has chosen both men and women as ministers, it is not the business of the minister to sort colleagues into those he considers acceptable, and those he dose not.
Women were allowed into the Finnish Lutheran ministry in 1985.
Wallin: Church needs to promote tolerance
Addressing the Synod on behalf of the national government, Minister of Culture Stefan Wallin urged the Church to serve as an example in strengthening tolerance and gender equality.
In his view, it is the responsibility of the State, the Church, and the individual to see to it that equality is carried out in a changing Finland.
Wallin pointed out that while Finland has generally been seen as a unified nation, Finland has during its entire existence had many different cultural, religious, and linguistic groups, and the multiplicity of these groups is increasing through immigration, for instance. Wallin feels that the National Church has a considerable role in improving the position of minorities.
He noted in his speech that there is a considerable challenge in seeing how to back the immigrants’ own identity on the one hand, and integrating them in the Finnish environment on the other.
