As an aside, the Sisters of St. Francis in Dubuque, Iowa were the spirit-filled women who formed me in grade school at St John Brebeuf Parish in Niles IL. God bless them all.
An American Nun Responds To Vatican Criticism
Happy 10th Anniversary!
Blessed Courageous Women!
Lexington woman ordained as priest
To the Vatican, Donna LeMaster Rougeux, a married mother of three who works as a hospice chaplain, is part of a revolt.
But Rougeux and others believe she is following a spiritual calling.
Rougeux, 52, was ordained through the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests on Saturday in Lexington, becoming one of only two such female priests in Kentucky and 130 in the world.
Bridget Mary Meehan, a bishop with the same association who presided over the ceremony, called it part of a “new spiritual uprising in the church.”
“It’s part of a big justice movement that recognizes we all are images of God,” Meehan said.
The Roman Catholic Church does not recognize Rougeux’s ordination. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Lexington issued a statement calling it a “provocative and headline-grabbing fiction.”
The church’s position is that only men can be ordained. That’s not sexist, but biblical, said Tom Shaughnessy, spokesman for the diocese.
As Pope John Paul II pointed out, “if the church is faithfully to follow the example of Jesus, who chose twelve men as his first priests/bishops, then the Roman Catholic Church is not free to ordain women,” Shaughnessy said in a statement.
Rougeux chose automatic excommunication when she was ordained a deacon earlier, according to the church’s position.
Rougeux and others involved in the women’s ordination movement, however, don’t acknowledge the excommunication.
“We believe the church is the people of God,” not the male-dominated hierarchy, said Janice Sevre-Duszynska of Jessamine County, who in 2008 became the first Kentucky woman ordained as a priest.
The controversy over ordaining women is part of a larger debate in the church over the role of women, the propriety of contraception and other issues.
This year, for instance, the Vatican strongly criticized the nation’s leading organization of nuns, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, for not speaking strongly enough against ordination of women, among other things, prompting a show of support for the nuns.
And debates over issues such as whom to ordain are not unique to the Roman Catholic Church.
People who support ordaining female Roman Catholic priests say it is a step toward correcting centuries of incorrect teaching and practice by the institutional church, based on misogyny.
One of the Scriptures read at Rougeux’s ordination ceremony at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Lexington was from the Gospel of Luke, about Jesus healing a woman who had been unable to stand up straight for 18 years.
“The institutional church is trying to keep women bent over when it refuses to recognize our call to priesthood,” Meehan said in her homily. “Women are silent, and invisible, and subordinate no more.”
People involved said the communities involving women priests use male and female images of God and inclusive language and liturgies.
Part of the goal is to “de-clericalize” and create a community of equals, Meehan said.
“Christ calls both men and women to the priesthood,” said Sevre-Duszynska. “When it’s in you, it’s there. It doesn’t leave.”
Rougeux said the call to ministry was definitely in her.
She grew up in the United Church of Christ but converted to Roman Catholicism in the 1980s. She taught in a Catholic school, then she said she felt a pull to attend seminary, and finally a call to ministry.
She found out about the women priest movement on the Internet.
“It’s like God has revealed it one step at a time,” she said.
Rougeux has a degree in pastoral studies from Lexington Theological Seminary, has completed additional work in clinical pastoral education, and is a chaplain at Hospice of the Bluegrass.
“I think I bring a whole other bag of experiences to helping people,” she said. “I think we are all needed.”
Rougeux said she wants to help the community of like-minded Catholics grow in Lexington.
“I want them to grow together as a community of God helping the world,” she said.
Rougeux said she was excited to be part of the movement to reform the church.
“I think my granddaughters are going to look back at this and think history was being formed.”
Complete Article HERE!
Sexism and the Roman Catholic Church
By — Roy Bourgeois
I have been a Catholic priest for years and like most people I know, my experiences in life have changed me.
Growing up in a small town in Louisiana, as Catholics, my family did not question our segregated schools or ask why the black members of our church had to sit in the last five pews during Mass. Nor did we, needless to say, question why women could not be priests.
Joining the military was my ticket out of Louisiana. I volunteered for duty in Vietnam, which became that turning point in my life. In the midst of all the violence and death, my faith became more important and I felt God was calling me to be a priest. After four years in the military, I entered the Maryknoll Order.
In my ministry in the United States, I have met many devout Catholic women who are called by God to be priests. They are rejected because the Church teaches only baptized males can be ordained. This makes no sense to me.
Don’t we profess that God created men and women of equal worth and dignity? The Holy Scriptures state clearly in Galatians 3:28 that “There is neither male nor female. In Christ Jesus you are one.” All Catholic priests say that the call to be a priest is a gift and comes from God. How can we, as men, say that our call from God is authentic, but your call, as women, is not?
After much reflection, study and prayer, I have come to believe that the exclusion of women from the priesthood is a grave injustice against women and against our loving God, who calls both men and women to be priests. I also believe that if we are to have a healthy and vibrant Church, we need the wisdom, experiences and voices of women in the priesthood.
The Vatican refers to the ordination of women as “a grave scandal” in our Church. When Catholics hear the word “scandal” they think about the thousands of priests who sexually abused children, and the many bishops who covered up their horrific crimes.
Pope Benedict XVI is telling priests like me to be obedient to our Church leaders and not to question or discuss our Church teachings.
This presents a problem because the Church teaches us about the primacy of conscience. Our conscience is sacred because it gives us a sense of right and wrong and urges us to do what is right, what is just. When we betray our conscience, we separate ourselves from God.
Often, I think how we, as Catholics, were silent when our schools were segregated; not questioning why black members of our Church had to sit in the back pews. As a priest, I have learned that when there is injustice, our silence is the voice of complicity. Sexism, like racism, is a sin.
And no matter how hard we may try to justify discrimination against others, in the end, it is not the way of God.
Complete Article HERE!
Holy Wisdom Monastery provides church services for disaffected local Catholics
Alice Jenson’s faith took an irreversible turn six years ago.
It was Nov. 5, 2006, and she was contributing to Mass at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Madison as a lay person, reading Bible passages from the lectern.
The same day, Madison Bishop Robert Morlino required all priests to play a recorded message from him explaining his position on three issues state residents would vote on that week, including a ban on same-sex marriage, which he supported.
When the priest hit “play,” Jenson walked out.
“It was the first time I’d ever outwardly gone against what I was raised to follow,” said Jenson, 67.
She found a new religious home at Holy Wisdom Monastery, a former Roman Catholic monastery in the town of Westport, just outside Madison. Its Sunday service, offered by the sisters who live there, retains many elements of a traditional Catholic Mass but diverges in sometimes startling ways.
Women can lead the service and preach the sermon. Gay relationships are warmly embraced. All parishioners, not just Catholics, can consume the communion wine and bread because the service is ecumenical, meaning welcoming of all Christian traditions.
It’s an alternate universe of sorts — what some think a Catholic Mass might look like today if the liberal spirit of Vatican II in the 1960s had taken root and flowered.
“We’re doing what the hierarchical church was afraid to complete,” said Jim Green, a longtime Holy Wisdom parishioner who is gay and describes himself as “a Catholic in exile.”
The service, called Sunday Assembly, is attended by people from many denominational backgrounds but has become especially popular with Catholics displeased with Morlino or church doctrine in general. Membership doubled in five years to 335, and parishioners estimate a majority are Catholics who left their regular parishes.
Detractors say the parishioners strayed too far from Catholicism to warrant the label.
Approach evolves
Though many self-described Catholics attend Holy Wisdom, it’s no longer an official Catholic Mass.
A little history: In the 1950s, a group of Benedictine nuns opened a high school at the site for girls in the Madison Catholic Diocese. Benedictines belong to a monastic religious order regulated by the canon law of the Catholic Church. Masses at the site were led by Catholic priests, often provided by the diocese.
In 1966, the nuns closed the school and turned the buildings into a Christian retreat center. The sisters, spurred by the Benedictine tradition of hospitality, gradually made the service more inclusive to all Christians. Lay people, especially women, took on greater roles.
In 2000, the Benedictine sisters went a step further, welcoming a Protestant woman to live with them. “When we chose to open our community to Protestant women, it meant other doors closed,” said Sister Mary David Walgenbach, the monastery’s head.
The sisters sought independence from the Catholic Church, and the Vatican granted it in 2006. Consequently, they no longer are tied to the local diocese. They remain affiliated with a Benedictine federation, but they have a special status, not a full membership, because of their ecumenism.
Bishop’s request
When the sisters disassociated from Rome, Bishop Morlino asked them to no longer celebrate Mass at the site so as not to cause confusion, said Brent King, a diocesan spokesman.
“Many people had visited (the monastery) over the years, and the bishop felt it would take time for people to understand that it was no longer a Roman Catholic institution,” King said, adding the bishop “was in no way unfriendly toward their desire to start a non-Catholic ecumenical community.”
The sisters understood the bishop’s position and stopped calling the service a Catholic Mass in 2006, Walgenbach said. Priests ceased to lead the service.
Today, the sisters describe the Sunday Assembly as being “for the celebration of Eucharist,” a term most commonly used to refer to Catholic communion. However, Walgenbach said some Protestant churches also use it. To many people, the service still has the essence of a Catholic Mass.
“You wouldn’t know it wasn’t a Catholic church, except for the person officiating,” said parishioner Pat Hobbins-Kemps, 64. A lifelong Catholic, she said she left her regular parish partly out of a lack of opportunities for women to lead.
Finding a home
Trisha Day, 66, said she came to Holy Wisdom after growing tired of sermons that focused on politically charged issues such as abortion and homosexuality while saying little about social justice and the poor.
Jeanne Marquis, 68, found Holy Wisdom after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. “I needed someone to talk about forgiveness instead of retaliation,” she said. “I needed a place where I was encouraged to ask questions.”
Ann Baltes, 44, a lifelong Catholic, said she sought a place where she and her husband, Bill Rosholt, a Lutheran, could participate in communion together.
Are these parishioners still Catholic? The answers vary.
Jenson says she’s not. “Too much divides us.”
Day calls herself “a transitional Catholic,” unsure where she’ll end up. Green said his Catholic identity can’t be taken from him. “The church is the people of God, not the institution,” he said.
Joanne Kollasch, one of the three Benedictine sisters who live at the monastery, said she “is a Catholic and will remain a Catholic,” adding, “I don’t like to be thought of as less Catholic because I’m ecumenical.”
Said Walgenbach: “The Catholic spirituality is bigger than the Roman Catholic Church.”
Both sisters said they respect the Catholic Church and Morlino and don’t seek controversy.
Detractors
Syte Reitz, a member of Madison’s Cathedral Parish who blogs about Catholic issues, said disaffected Catholics are free to start their own churches, but they shouldn’t confuse people by suggesting they still are faithful Catholics.
“Does it matter whether they are errant Catholics or not Catholics?” asks Reitz. “No matter what we label them, the laws of right and wrong and of morality still stand, and they and others will suffer from the mistakes that they make.”
Reitz said because a male priest is not presiding over the Eucharist, the bread is not being turned into the body of Christ, thus depriving attendees of the Catholic Church’s central sacrament.
King, the diocesan spokesman, said for Catholics to fulfill their obligation to attend Mass on Sundays, they must attend a Catholic Mass validly offered by an ordained Catholic priest.
Does the Holy Wisdom service qualify?
“In charity, we must respond that it does not,” he said.
Complete Article HERE!
Former North Side Catholic nun gets ordained
The Nun’s Story …
A former North Side Catholic nun was ordained a priest recently in an unsanctioned church ceremony in Fort Myers, Fla.
She was immediately ex-communicated from the Catholic church.
“I reject that,” said Judy Beaumont, 74 — the former Sister Mary Daniel — who grew up in Rogers Park before becoming a Benedictine nun who taught theology at St. Scholastica Academy.
Beaumont, who is now referred to as Pastor Judy, was ordained by the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests.
“We are following our conscience and we are full loyal members of the church,” said Beaumont.
“We will do everything we can to bring about a new way of inclusivity in the church,” said Beaumont, who is now the 11th priest ordained by her group.
The key differences in the women’s “ordination” ceremony are:
† They don’t take a vow of obedience to the bishop. (“It basically denies you the ability to follow your conscience.”)
† Their bishop is a woman, who serves as a spiritual adviser.
† They don’t take a vow of celibacy and allow married, single, grandmothers, gay and straight women into the priestly fold.
† Rather than always referring to God as a “he,” their church language is more inclusive. The “Our Father” prayer reads “Our Mother/Father, who art in heaven.”
“The institutional church will not hire any of us to do church ministry, so we do what we can ministering in hospitals and to the homeless,” she said. “We hold Sunday mass in “church” houses and live on donations. “Stepping outside the institution is hard.”
Two more women are being ordained priests in the next few days, Beaumont added. “I didn’t decide I wanted to become a priest, it was a calling,” she said.
Complete Article HERE!
Thoughts on the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter
COMMENTARY by Lisa Fullam
The New York Times reported on the launch January 1 of the new ordinariate (like a diocese, but nation-wide in scope,) for Anglicans wishing to swim the Tiber and become Catholics. (For more about the ordinariate, go here.)
Is this good news or bad news, and for whom?
I react with dismay to the perception that these folks were finally motivated to move to Rome because of two issues–ordination of women (which strained the camel’s back,) and the Episcopal Church’s stance of openness to same-sex partnered clergy and laity, (which seems to have been the proverbial last straw.) Sure, some folks were likely wanting to rejoin Rome for some time, but the door’s always been open–it does seem to me that these two issues are the key turning point. The establishment of the ordinariate means that the new RC’s will be able to use a variant liturgy that echoes the Book of Common Prayer, and of course their clergy in this generation may remain married, though future applicants to seminary must promise celibacy like regular Roman priests.
My dismay is that once again the Catholic Church is defined by negation–”Don’t like the idea of women in ecclesial leadership? Come join us! Don’t like gay people? We’re the Church for you!” Along with the US magisterium’s attack on Obamacare because it might involve paying for contraception–”We’re Catholic! That means we’re against the Pill!”–Catholicism is seen as summed up in negative positions. The fact that Episcopal priests need only take an on-line course to qualify for ordination underscores the idea that the point here isn’t educating new clergy in the fullness of Catholic tradition (which is distinct in many ways from Anglican tradition, right??) but in welcoming in people who take the “right” position on these few issues, teach them a few things about liturgical particulars, and they’re good to go.
A point of curiosity is how the wives feel about being tolerated for a generation as an exception. Many, doubtless, believe that clergy should be celibate. Still, the implicit attack on their marriages must sting. “Sure, your husbands are welcome in our ranks, and we’ll let you stay married to them–but no future married priests will be allowed! You wives are a distraction and obstacle!”
And perhaps there’s good news, too. Good news for the Episcopalians, surely, who will continue to celebrate the vocations of women, married men, and partnered gay people with less internal opposition. The message of the Episcopal Church USA as a place of welcome for those disdained by Rome will be more clear than ever. I’m curious about the magnitude of the reverse flow of RC’s who have moved to the ECUSA–I suspect that far more are swimming the Tiber in the opposite direction than are swimming toward Rome. I know some very good people who are now Episcopal laity or clergy, and lots of Protestants, too. I’ve been in churches where half the congregation (by the pastor’s estimate,) are former RC’s.
A final point–the one-two punch of rejecting women’s ordination and excluding gays as defining why people would become Catholic should remind Catholics that those of us concerned about the role of women and concerned about attitudes toward gay people in our Church are natural allies. The issues facing the two groups are not the same, to be sure. Women are not described as “disordered,” nor are women described as a threat to society should they marry. On the other hand, women with vocations to priesthood cannot “pass” in a hostile Church the way gay men can. And there are other points of difference. But still–let’s remember and cultivate those natural alliances of all those regarded as outsiders in the Roman Church, yet remain Catholic nonetheless.
Complete Article HERE!
Following God’s Calling, Not Man’s
Historically, a number of brave women have established themselves as a catalyst for change, dedicating their lives to a cause that becomes so compelling that they’re willing to risk everything they know to achieve their goal.
One such woman is Lexington resident and peace activist Janice Sevre-Duszynska. As a member of the Roman Catholic Women Priests, she and others like her relentlessly challenge the church’s dogma including their right to be ordained as priests. Her story and those of many other determined women have been featured in Pink Smoke Over the Vatican, a documentary that played at the Esquire Theatre earlier this month.
Although Sevre-Duszynska remains committed to her quest for reform, the bigger question remains: Will members of a church steeped in tradition and conservative values ever recognize women as priests?
The calling to join the priesthood emerged around the time of her first communion, Sevre-Duszynska says. Growing up in a predominantly Polish-Catholic neighborhood in Milwaukee, she says at age 10 she was ask to help tidy the sanctuary (the part of the church where the altar is located). While cleaning, she says she lived her dream by pretending to celebrate mass as a priest.
Her ambitions almost drove her to step into the sanctuary as an ‘altar girl’ during a mass, a rite reserved only for young boys, but she stopped short fearing she would get her superior in trouble. Reading the gospels at a young age, Sevre-Duszynska realized Jesus also loved women and saw them as equals, not inferior members of the church. She pays homage to her mother for passing on the sense of liberation theology that caused her to question Catholic dogma and the role of women. After mass, Sevre-Duszynska’s mother would question the homily pointing out male priest’s disconnect to women lives as well as the real world.
“My mother was dropping this little seed in me, saying not only do they not have the lived experience of raising a family, they don’t know what is a woman’s lived experience,” she says. “My mother taught me what’s really important is my relationship to God and my relationship to others.”
Her desire lay dormant for many years until a series of events reshaped her life. In the 1980s, she and her family moved from Milwaukee to Lexington, Ky. A few years later, one of her two sons was killed in an automobile accident, and subsequently her marriage of nearly 25 years ended in divorce. Experiencing such devastating loss motivated her in more spiritual directions. In 1998, Sevre-Duszynska made national news when she interrupted an ordination ceremony at the Cathedral of Christ the King in Lexington.
“I walked up there and said, ‘I am called upon by the holy spirit to present myself for ordination — my name is Janice, I ask this for myself and all women,’ and I prostrated myself on the alter like a male candidates for priest,” she says. “So, I’m down on the ground and Bishop Williams says, ‘Get back to your seat you’re disrupting the service.’ Well, I always say it wasn’t disrupting it was interrupting.”
In 2000, Sevre-Duszynska garnered media attention yet again during a U.S. bishop’s conference in Washington, D.C., where she made a public announcement during the gathering calling for the ordination of women priests. After organizers silenced her microphone, she refused to leave the meeting until police escorted her out of the hotel.
Two years later, Sevre-Duszynska was arrested and charged with trespass after she refused to leave a diaconate ordination in Atlanta where she and several others protested sexism in the church. In 2001, she hung a banner in Rome during a bishop meeting that called for the ordination of women priests in eight languages.
“I was known as the sign lady and the banner lady and I headed up the ministry of irritation,” she says.
Her journey began to see fruition in 2006, when she was ordained a deacon of the church by the order of Roman Catholic Women Priests in Pittsburgh. She continued her preparation by studying theology at Lexington Theological Seminary working toward her doctorate, adding to her master’s degree in theater from the University of Kentucky.
In 2008, Sevre-Duszynska was ordained a “womanpriest” by the order at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Lexington. With more than 150 people in attendance, she celebrated the joyous event with family, friends, fellow peace activists and supporters of the women’s ordination movement including three male priests in good standing.
The Rev. Roy Bourgeois delivered the homily, an act that would have lasting repercussions. After sending invitations to a number of male priests, Bourgeois called to tell her he would be proud to attend and deliver the homily.
“I said, ‘I know you know what you’re doing — but do you know what you’re doing?’ ” she says.
The two met as peace activists in their shared quest to close the U.S. Army School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Ga. — an organization accused of training paramilitary assassins for militant groups in South America. During a 2001 protest, Sevre-Duszynska crossed into the base, resulting in a sentence of three months in federal prison.
The School of the Americas, recently renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC) is believed to be responsible for several deaths in El Salvador including those of Catholic priest and activist Oscar Romero, six Jesuit priests and four Catholic nuns, two of whom were members of the Maryknoll order. As a Catholic priest in the order of the Maryknolls, a division of the Catholic Church that helps poor and repressed people overseas, Bourgeois was friends with the two women.
“For the next year, I was full-time building a movement calling for the closing of School of the Americas and the training of all of these soldiers coming from El Salvador and all of these other countries, all paid for by our tax money,” Bourgeois says. “I was zigzagging all over the country talking about this injustice in El Salvador and the injustice in the school of the Americas and then I discovered an injustice much closer to home in my church.”
With a sincere ring in his voice, Bourgeois recalls how he wrestled with his conscience over his own beliefs. While away on missions, he met a number of women like Janice who received a calling from God to be priests. Until then, he never really questioned church tradition, but tells how he was unable to reconcile one question that continued to haunt him.
“As Catholics, we do profess that God created men and women of equal dignity — and as Catholic priests, we always say the call to be a priest comes from God,” he says. “So I began to ask a very important and basic question, ‘Who are we as man to reject God’s call of women? How can we as men say that our call from God is authentic but God’s call of women is not?’ ”
After returning home from Sevre-Duszynska’s ordination ceremony, Bourgeois received a call from Maryknoll headquarters requesting a meeting with the superior general and general council in order to explain his actions. Two months later, he received ‘the letter’ from the Vatican stating he had 30 days to recant his belief and public statements for the ordination of women or be excommunicated from the church.
During his visit to headquarters, Bourgeois says he posed the question to the Maryknoll council and other priests in the church; their response, he says, was silence. After crafting a lengthy and passionate letter to the Vatican, Bourgeois says he received the no response or even acknowledgment of its receipt.
By ultimately following his conscience, Bourgeois says he refused and continues to refuse to remain silent about the issue and gives talks around the country in support of ordaining women priests. As a result, two months ago — a little more than two years since he attended Sevre-Duszynska’s ordination — Bourgeois received another summons to Maryknoll headquarters in New York. Superiors ordered him to recant his statement within 15 days or receive expulsion from the Maryknolls, his family and community for more than 39 years.
Bourgeois says he visits the mailbox every day expecting the final letter. He likes to joke that his chances of winning the Georgia State Lottery are better than his chances of being allowed to remain in the order.
But a small glimmer of hope arrived recently in a copy of a letter sent to the Vatican. Bourgeois says it was signed by more than 100 priests in good standing supporting his position to honor his conscience. Bourgeois believes hope lies in sheer numbers, with more and more people in the church coming forward in support. Many of them have supported female ordination for some time but are afraid to come forward because of harsh repercussions. He particularly questions the church’s stand on excommunication for supporters of women priests in relation to some other scandals that rocked the church.
“How many priests has the Vatican kicked out or excommunicated for their crimes against children?” he says. “There’s none — not a single one. They have not excommunicated them or the bishops who have covered up the crimes. That continues to be a big issue in the Catholic Church.”
To date, the Roman Catholic Women Priests movement boasts 120 female priests with branches in in Eastern and Western Europe, Eastern and Western Canada and the United States, says womanpriest Bridget Mary Meehan. In addition, Meehan says she recently ordained the first woman in South America expanding the order to yet another continent. She explains the grassroots movement continues to play by church rules, a measure necessary to gain credibility.
She says of the seven womenpriests originally ordained on the Danube in 2002, two were later ordained secretly by a male bishop in good standing. As part of apostolic succession in the Catholic religion, the church only recognizes priests ordained by chosen bishops in good standing; an act that was completed under the veil of secrecy, but carried out nonetheless, Meehan says.
“That means they recognize apostolic succession and a male bishop would need to ordain us,” Meehan says. “We got that, and that’s the part that they hate. They take the movement seriously and they’ve done everything they could to punish us because they see it as a direct threat to the all-male, patriarchal dominant model. It’s a threat to the male authority power structure of the church.”
The movement includes more reforms than simply ordaining women, Meehan adds. The grassroots movement looks to reinvent the church into a more egalitarian, circular model where all members participate and feel empowered.
The group believes the Catholic Church in its current state bears little resemblance to the vision of Jesus. She tells of how in all four gospels, Jesus appears after his resurrection to Mary Magdelene, who is still widely believed to be the apostle to the apostles. When traditionalists question her right to be a priest, she counters with historic evidence of women priests in the church more than 1,200 years ago.
“Women priests are reclaiming our ancient tradition of women in ordained ministry,” Meehan says. “People who are guardians of the tradition and traditionalist Catholics should celebrate that women are taking their rightful place following the example of Jesus, who had male and female disciples — all they have to do is read the gospels.”
Pink Smoke Over the Vatican, the award-winning documentary directed by Jules Hart, follows the lives of several women, including Sevre-Duszynska, and their quest for ordination.
With all the adversity these women face in the Catholic Church, the question arises why don’t women like Meehan and Sevre-Duszynska simply embrace another faith that ordains women as church leaders — why fight the fight?
For Sevre-Duszynska, she simply professes Catholicism to be her religion since birth and her religion of choice. Other churches have approached her, but she still feels connected to her roots. She says while reform needs to occur within the church, she can’t help but love the institution based on the gospels and filled with patron saints that has always been a part of her life.
“Why should I leave the richness and all of my experiences in the church that I worked to and was called upon to speak out and challenge it?” she asks. “I feel like a daughter of the church, why would I want to leave it?”
Complete Article HERE!