Female Priests Defy Catholic Church At The Altar

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Female Priests Defy Catholic Church At The Altar
by LILY PERCY

In 2002, seven women were secretly ordained as priests by two Roman Catholic bishops in Germany. After their ordination, a kind of domino effect ensued.

Those seven women went on to ordain other women, and a movement to ordain female priests all around the world was born. The movement, named Roman Catholic Womenpriests, says more than a hundred women have been ordained since 2002, and two-thirds of them are in the U.S.

In the “laying on of hands” during the ordination ceremony, the priests place their hands on the candidates before they are officially ordained. The future priests are (from left): Ann Penick, Marellen Mayers, Patricia “Patti” LaRosa and Caryl Johnson.
On a recent June day in Maryland, four more women were ordained as priests. The gallery at St. John’s United Church of Christ was filled with Catholic priests and nuns, there to support the women and the ordination movement — though visitors were asked not to photograph them. Witnessing the ceremony was enough to risk excommunication.

The audience turned to watch as the women made their way down the aisle, beaming like brides. The two-and-a-half-hour ceremony ended with Holy Communion — the moment they’d been waiting for. Each woman performed the rites for the first time as a priest, breaking bread and serving wine as tears of joy flowed down their faces.

Marellen Mayers is one of the women ordained that day, and like her fellow ordinands, she was raised in the Catholic Church. Her mother had an altar at home, and when Mayers was a child, she would stand in front of it, wearing a cloth as her vestments and saying the Latin Mass.

"My brother and sister would be kneeling behind me, and if I said, ‘Dominus vobiscum,’ I would turn around and say, 'You’re supposed to say ‘Et cum spiritu tuo,’ " Mayers recalls.

Marellen Mayers (front, second from left) and Patti LaRosa (front, far right) join hands with fellow members of the Roman Catholic Womenpriests movement on their ordination day.
Fellow ordinand Patti LaRosa had a similar experience growing up. She came from a close-knit Italian family and always felt comfortable in the Catholic Church. In the late '70s she got married, had two kids and was working as an assistant at a law firm in Rochester, N.Y.

Several times a week she would go to church during her lunch break, and one day she realized, “I’m supposed to be a priest.”
npr.org/2011/06/12/137102746/women-priests-defy-the-church-at-the-altar
 
From the same NPR article:

"No member of the Roman Catholic Womenpriests has been excommunicated by the Church???], but they have felt repercussions. They’ve not only been threatened but also have lost friends and colleagues within the Church — many of whom fear they will lose their jobs if they support the women’s ordination movement openly.

LaRosa recognizes they are breaking Church law — specifically Canon 10:24 — but says, “when you have an unjust law, sometimes it needs to be broken before it can be changed.”

They’ve ALL been excommunicated as were the original Bishops who “ordained”,them.NPR a fount of liberal lies.

npr.org/2011/06/12/137102746/women-priests-defy-the-church-at-the-altar
 
Several times a week she would go to church during her lunch break, and one day she realized, “I’m supposed to be a priest.”
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I must have missed my “true” vocation. On more than a few occasions in my lifetime, I had put plaster on my children and grandchildren’s wounded knees. I ought to have been a doctor.:rolleyes:
 
Pax_et_Bonum said:
They’ve ALL been excommunicated as were the original Bishops who “ordained”,them.NPR a fount of liberal lies.
Click to expand...
Rather than being a deliberate lie, the NPR article more likely reflects a lack of understanding by its author. Journalists frequently get religious and scientific facts wrong, because they aren’t well versed in either subject.

I suspect the author is thinking of excommunication only as the formal version of Ferendæ Sententiæ. Its a common misconception, even among Catholics. As far as I know, all of the excommunications have been Latæ Sententiæ, which is the passive version in which persons automatically excommunicates themselves by doing something forbidden.
 
This might have been a strong reaction, but, after clicking on the link to read to rest of the article, the pictures of the women “priests” made me want to throw up.

How can these women claim to have been comfortable growing up in the Church that expressly forbids what they are doing? How could they have grown up Catholic and not have been taught that God Himself created gender roles for very good reasons? How could they not trust that God would not have let His Church get something this important wrong?

It disgusts me that society is moving more and more toward “unisex” everything, as if ignoring the differences between boys and girls (or the differences between races, creeds, age, etc) will make everything better? These differences exist for a reason.

Men and women are naturally inclined toward different things. Those natural inclinations were purposefully created by God. Yes, sometimes our society takes it too far and bad things have come out of it, but is there any good thing that God created that we haven’t managed to pervert? That’s what human nature is since the Fall: we pervert the good things that God created and use those things for evil. Thankfully, Divine nature can take those evil things and use them for good, as well as turning us from our perversions.

This “ordination” is a huge example of a wonderful, good, God-created gift to humanity that has been perverted by pride and the sense of entitlement. Girls are told that they can be anything they want to be, and then they don’t understand why they can’t be priests. I however, will never tell my daughter this. It is simply not true. A girl can choose any earthly profession, that is true. BUT, a religious vocation is a call from God, and He alone chooses who and when and what.

Jesus was ridiculed for many things, so if He had wanted women priests, it would have been just one more thing He was ridiculed for. But He selected no women. Even going back to the Old Testament, God chose no women. Only men. There has to be a reason.

I’ll get off my soap box now, before I open myself to the sin of unrighteous anger, but really, this is just ridiculous.
 
Pax_et_Bonum said:
Female Priests Defy Catholic Church At The Altar
by LILY PERCY

In 2002, seven women were secretly ordained as priests by two Roman Catholic bishops in Germany. After their ordination, a kind of domino effect ensued.

Those seven women went on to ordain other women, and a movement to ordain female priests all around the world was born. The movement, named Roman Catholic Womenpriests, says more than a hundred women have been ordained since 2002, and two-thirds of them are in the U.S.

In the “laying on of hands” during the ordination ceremony, the priests place their hands on the candidates before they are officially ordained.
npr.org/2011/06/12/137102746/women-priests-defy-the-church-at-the-altar
Click to expand...
You need not read any further than the first three paragraphs I have quoted from the NPR article to see this is not consistent with the administration of the Sacrament of Holy Orders.

Even if paragraph one were true (which it is not and other posters before me have have shown this) and these seven were priests, paragraph two goes on to state that these seven then went on to ordain other women as priests and paragraph three states they did this in the laying on of hands during the ordination ceremony.

This shows a complete lack of knowledge in the Sacrament of Holy Orders and the Code of Canon Law of the Catholic Church by the author of this article.

A priest cannot ordain another priest. The dispenser of the Sacrament of Holy Orders is the validly ordained Bishop alone. Therefore the 'laying on of hands" is by the Bishop not another priest.
 
Excuse my ignorance, but I have to expose this ignorance for all to see since I have a pressing question.

Is the “ordination” of priesthood for these women “priests” even valid? I realize that it was done by valid Bishops, but did a priesthood actually take place since it was done to women?

I suppose I might be comparing it to a priest trying to bless a piece of pie with the intent of the pie becoming a valid Eucharist? No matter what his intent would be, the pie would not become the Body of Christ. In the same token, a priest who blesses a piece of homemade bread, even if it contains things other than just wheat, this does become the Divine Body, yet is illicit.

Now, I’m not sure… are they just illicit priests or no priest at all?
 
Loboto-Me said:
Excuse my ignorance, but I have to expose this ignorance for all to see since I have a pressing question.

Is the “ordination” of priesthood for these women “priests” even valid? I realize that it was done by valid Bishops, but did a priesthood actually take place since it was done to women?

I suppose I might be comparing it to a priest trying to bless a piece of pie with the intent of the pie becoming a valid Eucharist? No matter what his intent would be, the pie would not become the Body of Christ. In the same token, a priest who blesses a piece of homemade bread, even if it contains things other than just wheat, this does become the Divine Body, yet is illicit.

Now, I’m not sure… are they just illicit priests or no priest at all?
Click to expand...
Yes, I’m quoting my own post because it was too late to edit. I found the answer to my question while looking around the other forums 🙂 in the link below

catholicculture.org/commentary/otn.cfm?id=813
 
I saw this article yesterday, and I was so saddened by the comments section.

It is so clear in the comments that people “hate” Catholics, but do not understand us or our faith at all. (Or don’t want to.)

I’ve never felt “persecuted” in any way before…I am white, upper middles class, college educated and living in an area that has a large Catholic presence. But the comments on that site made me feel so misunderstood and defensive, angry and frustrated.

I can’t imagine how people face the REAL persecution they face for their Faith in places like China.
 
I had some protestant friends in college once suggest that we celebrate communion with Doritos and Coke. I am NOT joking.

This reminds me of the same sort of thing: utter disconnect.
 
I’ve always rather wanted to be Queen of England, and used to pretend so as a child. A little friend would even crown me with a crown made from tin foil. However, this “coronation” made me Queen as much as this “ordination” made these women priests.

Another example of “I want it, therefore it must be right.”
 
Loboto-Me said:
Is the “ordination” of priesthood for these women “priests” even valid? I realize that it was done by valid Bishops, but did a priesthood actually take place since it was done to women?
Click to expand...
The ordination is invalid and illicit since women cannot be ordained.
 
k8e308 said:
…
How can these women claim to have been comfortable growing up in the Church that expressly forbids what they are doing? …
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Yes. I’m sure that down the street there is a church of another religion that ordains women priests. If becoming a priestess is so important, wouldn’t it have been a lot easier to join it than trying to change the Catholic church? :confused:
 
sedonaman said:
Yes. I’m sure that down the street there is a church of another religion that ordains women priests. If becoming a priestess is so important, wouldn’t it have been a lot easier to join it than trying to change the Catholic church? :confused:
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I’m sure the Episcopalians would welcome them, since they genrally allow women priests and are somewhat “close” to Catholic rituals.
 
dixieagle said:
I’ve always rather wanted to be Queen of England, and used to pretend so as a child. A little friend would even crown me with a crown made from tin foil. However, this “coronation” made me Queen as much as this “ordination” made these women priests.
Click to expand...
Sorta like Jack Lemmon in Some Like It Hot dressing up as a woman and saying over and over, “I’m a girl.” I’m a girl."
Another example of “I want it, therefore it must be right.”
Click to expand...
Perhaps. I look at it rather as, "It defies authority, therefore it must be right."We tend reflexively to assume that the popular or received wisdom, especially if associated with some “official” source or long-standing institution, is always ripe for challenge, and also that if some independent thinker or writer takes an unconventional position, however extreme or counterintuitive, then there simply must be something right in it, or least worth listening to. “Innovator” and “iconoclast” are among our favorite terms of approbation, and “questioning authority” and “thinking outside the box” are applauded even by many self-described conservatives. By contrast, “unoriginal” and “conventional” are treated as if they were synonyms for “unintelligent” and “unthinking.”

We the Sheeple?
By Prof. Edward Feser
 
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