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Women challenge Catholic Church ban on female priests

 
 
Reyn
 
Reply Mon 25 Jul, 2005 09:00 pm
I say good on them! More power to women priests....

Nine women challenge Roman Catholic Church ban on female priests
at 21:10 on July 25, 2005, EST.

GANANOQUE, Ont. (CP) - Nine women risked excommunication Monday by challenging the Roman Catholic Church's ban on female priests with an unofficial ordination ceremony.

The ceremony took place on a tour boat late Monday afternoon as it floated on the St. Lawrence River in the Thousand Islands region near the U.S.-Canada border at Kingston, Ont.

Four of the nine - including Canadian Michelle Birch-Connery, 65 - were ordained as priests and five as deacons in the hymn-filled ceremony. The smiling women filed into a hall on the boat behind a rugged log cross entwined in wire.

In the past, the Vatican has frowned on such ceremonies. In 2002, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict, excommunicated seven women who had been ordained in a ceremony in Europe.

American Dana Reynolds, one of the women ordained, said she plans to move forward with her work despite what the church does.

"My concerns are that I follow through with my calling, that I am ordained and that I am able to continue my own personal ministry," the Carmel, Calif., resident said.

She said the women do such things as offer spiritual counselling and work in hospices.

"We are worker priests," she said. "We will not be able to have parishes and that sort of thing because the church clearly forbids that, but we are doing our work in the world for humanity so we'll move forward with our work."

The ordination was carried out by three of the women who were ordained in the European ceremony and later excommunicated and by the director of the group's Roman Catholic women priests ordination program.

Reynolds was not deterred by excommunication, saying it is only a punishment that is given by the church.

"It cannot take away the fact that in my soul I am Roman Catholic and will always be Roman Catholic and that is between me and my God. So the Vatican can offer excommunication as a punishment that I might be denied the sacrament in the church. The sacraments belong to everyone, I believe."

The ordination ceremony followed a weekend conference in Ottawa of a U.S. group known as the Women's Ordination Conference.

Monday's ordination ceremony is believed to be the first of its kind in North America. Some 40 women have been ordained, however, around the world over several years under similar circumstances.

Reynolds said the women want to work within the church to renew it.

She said the canon law forbidding women priests is unjust.

"And when there is an unjust law, it needs to be broken, and we're doing this according to our prophetic obedience because we feel called by God.

"Each of us has our own individual callings, but selectively we are called to make this statement that women are full human beings and therefore entitled to the priesthood as well as men."

Theologian Pauline Jacob said the rules governing this type of ceremony was scrupulously respected. The priest candidates wanted to avoid being disqualified by a simple procedural error, she said in an interview.

The women who have been ordained over the last three years have been more than 50 years old and participated in church functions for decades.

"In some people's eyes, the ordination might seem like a provocation," said Jacob, who is writing a doctoral thesis at the University of Montreal on the religious vocation of women.

"But it's not their goal. It's the result of a long progression."

Before the ceremony, Archbishop Anthony Meagher of the Kingston Diocese, said the "attempted" ordination is a "non-event" because the Roman Catholic Church has no authority to ordain women.

While the role of women is important in the church, he said it stands by the statement of the late Pope John Paul II, who said Christ had every opportunity to ordain women but did not.

"This is Jesus's heritage," he said, adding that, while John Paul said women should be in decision-making positions in the church, "he always stopped short of ordinations."

"We could question it, but we can't change it," said Meagher.

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amosunknown
 
  1  
Reply Tue 26 Jul, 2005 06:53 am
I dont understand why there is government in church. And why there are laws for that church that the government inforces. Seems to me that Christ came to set us free from the law.... I dunno. And if their only concern is doing work for the people, then what difference does it make what their title is. Mother Teresa did just as much work for the people as any pope, and she certainly wasnt a priest. If people want titles and positions given by man and honored by man, then doesnt that negate everything they said about doing their work for God. I doubt he's sitting around nixing them from the records for doing good work in this world and not fighting to be reconized as priests, i dont think he cares, as long as the work is done. It all seems prideful to me. If they feel that God has ordained them to be priests then what they know their God has made them is all that should matter. Because like they said, its between them and their God. Infact, if they disagreed so whole heartedly with the whole thing, why not excuminicate themselves fromt he church so they can do what they feel they should be doing.... But then again, this is a catholic deal, and most things catholic evade my understanding.
0 Replies
 
amosunknown
 
  1  
Reply Tue 26 Jul, 2005 06:58 am
Just thought I would add, that i mean no disrespect to the Catholic faith. we all believe what our hearts tell us it right, and i dont mean anything against anyone of any faith, God deals with the hearts and will of man, not me. We should all know what we believe, because we're the only ones that answer to God no one else is gonna do that for us. but we all have opionions- thats the human condition.
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Jonsey
 
  1  
Reply Fri 29 Jul, 2005 12:15 pm
I agree, I commend them for trying to make a change. I don't understand why women cannot become priests...its not anywhere in the bible is it?
0 Replies
 
Francisco DAnconia
 
  1  
Reply Fri 29 Jul, 2005 12:30 pm
Nope. Nowhere in the bible does it say anything like 'women cannot be priests.'

Have you heard the Church's archaic logic for preventing women priests? They've said that it's because those working in the service of God should model themselves after Jesus, who, if you'll remember, was neither a woman nor had any women apostles.

This logic has more holes than an Ayn Rand plot.

This is the same church, by the way, that preaches equality and forgiveness...but apparently not if you're female. You go to Hell. Sorry, but that's the way it is.
Rolling Eyes
Wouldn't it be nice if those in power, in both religious and governmental institutions, acted the way they tell people to act? There's no real downside to allowing priestesses, other than the fact that all the men running the heirarchy will now be threatened by people who have instinctive organizational abilities.
0 Replies
 
Jonsey
 
  1  
Reply Mon 1 Aug, 2005 02:54 pm
well said, it's so sad sometimes. Religion has great ideas, basics, fundementals, but so frequently they are twisted to suit our mission or arguement.
0 Replies
 
rhythm synergy
 
  1  
Reply Tue 2 Aug, 2005 12:57 pm
I think back then, gender roles were set and unquestioned. Even in the bible, it asks men exclusively to become ministers (I don't have any verses on me. If anyone asks, I can get it). But I believe things have changed. God can use ANYONE willing and humble. I'm just so suprised it took the Catholic Church so long.
0 Replies
 
Reyn
 
  1  
Reply Tue 2 Aug, 2005 05:50 pm
rhythm.synergy wrote:
I'm just so suprised it took the Catholic Church so long.

I apologize in advance if my comments offend anyone, but nothing about the Catholic Church surprises me. They have a long, sordid past filled full of many misdeeds, which I won't list. That they would drag their feet on ordaining women as ministers is quite typical. They are not known for their enlightened attitudes.
0 Replies
 
hamburger
 
  1  
Reply Tue 2 Aug, 2005 07:28 pm
this ordination happenend practically on our doorsteps. archbishop meagher of kingston issued a statement saying that it was not an ordination. what struck me though, was that he was rather careful in his language. there was no condemnation and he stated that women are an important part of the church. i don't think it's the last we have heard from these women. it'll be interesting to watch. here is part of what was reported :
-------------------------------------------------------------

Though nine women will be ordained priests on a boat in the St. Lawrence River in July, Canadian Archbishop Anthony Meagher of Kingston said the ceremony will be neither Catholic nor an ordination.

"To attempt an ordination this way is to step outside the church. If someone decides they don't want to be Catholic, there is nothing we can do. There is no need for me to get out into a row boat and announce that what they are doing is wrong," he said June 7.

At the same time, Archbishop Meagher said that as a protest the actions have significance. "There is no doubt the church has to change. There has to be more involvement of women in leadership and in decision-making," he said. But staging an invalid ordination is not the way to do it, he said. "I think there are more effective ways to protest," Archbishop Meagher said.

An association of approximately 14 groups is coordinating the ordination ceremony under the name "Roman Catholic Womenpriests Program." The ceremony will take place July 25 in the middle of the St. Lawrence River, following a women's ordination conference July 22-24 at Carleton University in Ottawa.

To avoid the jurisdiction of the Kingston Archdiocese and the Diocese of Ogdensburg, N.Y., the organizers have rented a tour boat that will float on the border between Canada and the United States. Among the nearly 500 seats available, 220 already have been purchased at a cost of US$85 each.

Archbishop Meagher said the jurisdiction is "irrelevant because there is no ordination."

The July event will mark the first of its kind in North America. It is modeled after a similar event that took place in 2002 on the Danube River, between Germany and Austria, where seven women were ordained by a schismatic bishop.

The women who took part in that ceremony were excommunicated by the Vatican less than a month after the ceremony. Two of the women priests have since been ordained "bishops" and will perform the St. Lawrence ordinations.

Father Thomas Lynch, dean of studies at St. Augustine's Seminary in Toronto, predicted the Vatican will respond quickly, as it did after the Danube River incident. "Individuals who have sought this path before have been excommunicated," he said. "There will likely be a public statement from Rome for the sake of the faithful."

Victoria Rue, a candidate for the upcoming ordination, said the threat of excommunication would not keep her from participating.

"I always felt no one could take my church away from me. If it (excommunication) happens, it happens, but it is not anything that would deter me," she said.

She said her desire to be ordained has to do with "understanding the inclusiveness of all images of God."

After the ceremony, the women priests will have no parish and will make only one vow of "co-authority," rather than obedience.

Another candidate, Michele Birch-Conery, 65, a former nun who lives on Vancouver Island, will continue to teach feminist literary analysis at North Island College while acting as a priest for anyone who calls.

"We could be called to the gay and lesbian community here on the island. They might call me to do a blessing or marriage. I probably could become a marriage commissioner for British Columbia," she said.

Birch-Conery said she would "present myself to the people as a Catholic priest."

Father Lynch said the church teaching stipulating that the priesthood was reserved for men is "not about women being less as persons."

"The church feels it has the right to only ordain men because it is a tradition that has been given to us by the Lord himself, and has been affirmed by the power of the Holy Spirit through the centuries," Father Lynch said.

In any action of the sacraments, it is principally Christ who acts, and only secondarily the priest. Christ's maleness, and by extension, the male priesthood, keeps alive the nuptial symbolism that is so much a part of biblical theology and Catholic worship, he said.

"Christ is the bridegroom of the church, and if a priest is ... to act in the person of Christ, he must be male," Father Lynch said.
0 Replies
 
Reyn
 
  1  
Reply Tue 2 Aug, 2005 07:38 pm
Yes, indeed, it is interesting! Thanks for your post. I will follow-up if I catch any additional news.
0 Replies
 
OperaGhost
 
  1  
Reply Sun 14 Aug, 2005 11:10 pm
I think it's great that they've challenged the Church on this. And it's so sad that the only way the Vatican can react is by excommunicating them. Rather than opening up and listening to their people, they will throw them out because they have different beliefs. I too am a Catholic woman, and I don't see anything wrong with what they are doing. I think it is an important step forward for us women in the world of the Church. Hopefully it makes a difference. I love God and I love my Church, but I don't think women were meant to be subhuman.
0 Replies
 
Jim
 
  1  
Reply Wed 17 Aug, 2005 11:03 am
I know I shouldn't post this, but I just can't resist.

I recently ran across a pundit who writes under the pen-name of "Spengler" for the Asian Times (www.atimes.com). The headline of one of his articles was:

"Women Priests? Women Never Forgive Anything!"
0 Replies
 
lightfoot
 
  1  
Reply Thu 15 Sep, 2005 08:06 pm
Unfortunately when you talk about religion and what each "religion" ...."believe" you have to think to yourselves, what is the most important to me. If you believe there is a God and he is the "maker" then you have no need for a religion....Religions are man made, I am told there are over 30,000 different kinds in the USA.
You don't need to "belong" to a religion if you know there is a God... just belong to him.
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Reyn
 
  1  
Reply Thu 15 Sep, 2005 08:47 pm
lightfoot wrote:
You don't need to "belong" to a religion if you know there is a God... just belong to him.

You've made a good point. Thank you.
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Green Witch
 
  1  
Reply Thu 15 Sep, 2005 09:02 pm
The women will eventually win. When the Vatican chases out all the homosexual priests (as has been put into motion), the place is going to be pretty empty - they will then need the women to fill all those empty posts.
0 Replies
 
Reyn
 
  1  
Reply Thu 15 Sep, 2005 09:07 pm
Do we really need anybody to fill these posts? As 'lightfoot' says, if you believe in God, or a god, do you really need religion, or any yahoo priests, etc?
0 Replies
 
Green Witch
 
  1  
Reply Thu 15 Sep, 2005 09:13 pm
I can't remember who said this but it seems appropriate:
"Those who cannot think for themselves need religion"
0 Replies
 
Reyn
 
  1  
Reply Thu 15 Sep, 2005 09:15 pm
I don't think that thinking and religion go hand-in-hand.

Is that where faith comes into it? Laughing
0 Replies
 
 

 
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