Tuesday, January 24, 2006
NCR GIVES WOMENPRIESTS PUBLICITY
Bishops may wag their fingers and threaten excommunication, but Catholic women called to ordination feel their time has come. In a gentle protest action at the U.S. bishops’ meeting in Washington Nov. 14, members of Women’s Ordination Conference delivered a large bouquet of roses to the bishops, with postcards bearing the names of 80 American women interested in ordination and the name of each one’s bishop. The roses are a symbol of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, whose feast day it was, who also felt called to priesthood, said participants.
These women say they don’t want to abolish the global church; they simply want to reform it. Some will continue to wait for official Vatican approval of women priests, while they support those seeking ordination now through emerging candidate formation programs such as the German-based Weiheämter für Frauen and its North American counterpart, Roman Catholic Womenpriests. And they’re organizing alternative ordinations, such as the so-called “floating ordinations,” which they call “illicit but valid,” held in 2002 on the Danube River between Germany and Austria, and last summer on the St. Lawrence Seaway in Canada. Those so ordained now minister in a variety of contexts, some informal and others quite traditional, save for lack of approval by church authorities.
Continue reading...
According to the article, Celine Goessl, a Sister of Mercy of the Holy Cross, attended the inaugural meeting of Women's Ordination Conference in 1975. She thought ordination was imminent back then, but indicates that today it is probably a good thing it wasn't "because we have grown over the years and matured. We see a renewed concept of what a priestly servanthood really means". Servanthood. It usually means you are not clamoring for your own way. However, since she is on the board of Women's Ordination Conference, I think she may have a tad more to learn about it.
Then there is Regina Nicolosi of Red Wing, Minnesota, wife of an oradined deacon in the St. Paul Minneapolis archdiocese, who was ordained a deacon of the Diocese of Seaway on a ship in the St. Lawrence. She and her husband met with Archbishop Harry Flynn last October to see if they could convince him not to excommunicate her. Her ministry is "the nursing home where she is a chaplain and conducts communion services" which she refers to as "her small parish." Why does some priest allow her to play with the Eucharist? Or is her deacon husband responsible for that? Perhaps after she completes her plans to be ordained in Switzerland next summer, the culprit will have to stop.
I loved this line from the article: "...we identify ourselves as women priests. Not to further the divide between cleric and lay, but to bring people together." Is mental incapacity a prerequisite for women's ordination?
Whether it is or not, Dagmar Celeste seems to have caught it. Dagmar is homegrown Ohio. Former first lady. She was ordained on the European floating church in 2002. She wants us to know that her "primary ministry is promoting peacemaking..." Just imagine the war if we put her and her ilk in charge of international peace! She has been excommunicated by the Vatican, but she still attends Mass though "does not regularly receive Communion unless, as is often the case, a lay person chooses to share the host with her." Actually, sharing a host is not a big deal. Sharing the Eucharist, on the other hand...but that's where EMs take us unfortunately.
Denice Donato, ordained in 2003 in Rochester, N.Y. by a bishop of the Ecumenical Catholic Church and serving at Spiritus Christi, greeted the newly ordained at breakfast last summer after the ordinations in the Seaway Diocese. She had a message for the new "priests"..."Now, go out and live it. Out there are people who are hungry for what the church has to offer." Too bad that when these women are finished with the hungry, they are still hungry.
Donato's call to priesthood came while she attended an Ignatian retreat in 1987. Somehow I doubt it was Ignatius she was listening to. Perhaps he has an impersonator. In 1987, while she was working on the staff of Corpus Christi Parish in Rochester, she wrote to Bishop Matthew Clark to request ordination. She says his response was "warm and inviting" but he told her "he could not do that." It might have had the required impact if it had icicles hanging off of it, but apparently she took it as encouragement.
Today she is a priest at Spiritus Christi, ordained by Bishop Peter Hickman of the Ecumenical Catholic diocese, and serving a parish with "250 children in faith formation classes", three weekend Masses plus daily Masses, and two dozen weddings a year, "both gay and straight." I guess that's how her bishop protected her gift of faith.
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!
