CTA Board Statement on the Ordination of Women in Pittsburgh July 31
Call To Action supports the initiative of Roman Catholic Women Priests (RCWP) to claim their right to their vocation to the priesthood and to challenge the discrimination that excludes women from the sacrament of ordination to priesthood and from equality in church leadership solely on the basis of gender. John XXIII articulated this right in 1963 in his encyclical, Pacem In Terris, “Human beings have also the right to choose for themselves the kind of life which appeals to them: whether it is to found a family—in the founding of which both the man and the woman enjoy equal rights and the duties—or to embrace the priesthood or the religious life” (Paragraph 15). This injustice which persists in the Roman Catholic Church denies women full recognition of their call to ordained ministry and, thus, denies the faithful the special gifts that women called to ordination might bring to this ministry in the church. Call To Action affirms that, after decades of attempting to bring about a change in the church’s prohibition through education and petition, a call of conscience impels these women to respectful dissent. We are grateful to RCWP for leading this new effort to bring about change in our church. We look forward to the time when all ministries in our church are valued equally regardless of the gender of the individual minister.
Call To Action expresses its sincere congratulations to the women, Eileen McCafferty DiFranco, Olivia Doko, Joan Clark Houk, Bridget Mary Meehan, Rebecca McGuyver, Dana Reynolds, Kathleen Strack Kunster and Kathy Sullivan Vandenberg, who were ordained priests; and to Cheryl Bristol, Juanita Cordero, Mary Ellen Robertson and Janice Sevre-Duszynska, who were ordained deacons in Pittsburgh on July 31. They are pioneers in this movement and the step they take is not without risk. They have our support, our gratitude, and our respect. We believe that the ministry they will do as ordained women priests will contribute to the building up of the Body of Christ and will help to bring about a renewed Church for our time.