Tag: Women Priests

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A church celebrates with women as priests

Several months ago, Kathy Schuck’s 15-year-old daughter posed a question that seemed innocuous but that became a call to action.

The gist of Ann Schuck’s question: Why did girls and women seem to be less important than men in their church, St. Rose of Lima in North Wales?

Kathy Schuck, 56, of Blue Bell, said she had long felt women were confined to secondary roles in the Roman Catholic Church, where she did not hear a message of inclusion. The hierarchy and exclusion of the voices of the lay members troubled her, she said. So, after 15 years, she left her parish.

“It disturbed me that the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church uses a term like ‘radical feminism’ to . . . categorize any woman who wants to have a voice in the church when that voice is not in total compliance with doctrine and orthodoxy,” Schuck said. “It was clear to me that my lack of action reinforced that that behavior was acceptable – and it isn’t.”

On Sunday, she joined more than 50 others belonging to the St. Mary Magdalene Community in celebration of its fifth anniversary. The group is led by two Roman Catholic female priests not recognized by the Vatican. Sunday’s celebratory service was held in rented space at the Drexel Hill United Methodist Church.

St. Mary Magdalene is one of several worship communities being led by women in 28 states, said Suzanne Thiel, president of Roman Catholic Womenpriests USA, a nonprofit group that prepares women for ordination and carries out the ceremonies.

“We provide spiritual comfort and solace for people who no longer find it in the Roman Catholic Church,” said Eileen McCafferty DiFranco, who was ordained in 2006 and who, along with her St. Mary’s co-pastor, is one of 113 female Roman Catholic priests, bishops, and deacons worldwide, according to Thiel.

At least eight more ordinations, which the organization maintains are valid, are planned worldwide by Christmas, Thiel said.

“We know the Vatican and the hierarchy are not happy with us,” Thiel acknowledged. “What’s important is the Catholic people have accepted us.”

Since 1976, the Vatican has been strongly reiterating that women are not full members of the Roman Catholic clergy after the Episcopal Church validated the illicit ordination in 1974 of 11 women in Philadelphia.

Then Pope Paul VI reminded Catholics that an all-male clergy was a “constant and universal tradition” of the Roman church because Jesus freely chose only men to be his apostles. By their “natural resemblance” to Christ, male priests also serve as the “sacramental sign” of him, the pontiff said.

Advocates of female clergy had long accused the church hierarchy of misogyny.

St. Mary Magdalene has drawn male and female members, some from as far as Delaware. In general, members said they did not feel fulfilled by their home Catholic parishes and sought a more intimate community with less hierarchy where their voices would be more valued.

“It’s all about intimacy. You can’t be intimate with a parish that has 2,000 to 3,000 members and no mechanism to get to know people on a deeper level,” said Judy Miller, 73, of Hockessin, Del., a member of St. Mary for three years with her husband, Chuck.

Schuck said she was welcomed, greeted by name, and introduced. “I was as comfortable as I was in someone’s home,” she said.

The St. Mary Magdalene Community has grown from 10 members to about 90, with a satellite community in Northeast Philadelphia, said DiFranco, who, along with being a priest, is a school nurse in the city. Services usually draw 30 to 40 members.

St. Mary members said that they enjoyed the congregation’s interactive homilies and that everyone was welcome to take communion. DiFranco said she doesn’t use prayers routinely heard in traditional Catholic Masses, opting instead for “non-sexist” prayers.

Members collectively decide which charities to support.

Maryrose Petrizzo, a member of St. Mary of Magdalene, said leadership opportunities were limited in her church in Wilmington. Among the positions she held was youth minister and eucharistic minister. “I could only do so much,” she said.

But at St. Mary Magdalene, she has led the liturgy and given the homily.

“That’s been so life-giving to be able to give a homily,” said Petrizzo, who has applied to be ordained.

After DiFranco’s ordination in 2006 in Pittsburgh, staff from St. Vincent de Paul in Germantown visited her and asked her not to show up for communion.

She preached on Sunday about following one’s dreams, much like women who have heeded the call to be priests.

“We succeeded in being priests in spite of the church,” she said after the homily. “Where human beings shut the door, God opens the window.”

Complete Article HERE!

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Happy 10th Anniversary!



“The rejection of women’s ordination by the Vatican is clearly based on antifeminist, theologically unfounded arguments. In answer to this we are seeing an increasing wave of resistance among Catholic women and within church reform movements as they demand equal rights for women and justice within the Roman Catholic Church.” — Dr. Ida Raming


Blessed Courageous Women!
 


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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!

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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!