Roman Catholic Womenpriests ordain three in Europe, 12 more on Pittsburgh riverboat

Fifteen more women were ordained this summer under the auspices of Roman Catholic Womenpriests, five to the diaconate and 10 to priesthood. Most are CTA members, and many have been active in CTA regional chapters.

In a movement begun with ordinations of women on the Danube River in 2002 and continued last summer on the St. Lawrence River in Canada, the 2006 celebrations were on boats, symbolizing the church as a ship of faith. On Lake Constance in Switzerland June 24, three women who became priests included two Americans: Regina Nicolosi of Red Wing, Minn., and Jane Via of San Diego. Nicolosi, a nursing facility chaplain, will preside at the Eucharist at Minnesota CTA's fall conference Sept. 23 in Bloomington, Minn. The homilist will be Dr. Victoria Rue, ordained a RC Womanpriest last summer. A professor at San Jose State University, she presides at Masses in a nondenominational chapel on campus.

Via is a longtime member of CTA San Diego County where she shares biblical scholarship gained from her Ph.D. in religious studies. She also has a law degree and works as a county prosecutor. She presided at her first Eucharist July 30 with her recently formed Mary Magdalene the Apostle Catholic Community, meeting in a Methodist church.

Bishops censure ordinations

Having declared the 2002 Danube Seven excommunicated, Ratzinger's Vatican now ignores subsequent RC Womenpriest rites, as does the USCCB, leaving the denunciations to local bishops. Several local bishops of those ordained this summer have said the women have excommunicated themselves by ordination or by subsequent “attempts” to celebrate Eucharist. Some have added that attendees at RC womenpriest rites commit grave sin or are themselves excommunicated. But the RC Womenpriest program and its coordinator-bishop, Patrica Fresen of South Africa, have a consistent response: the ordinations are valid because the RCwomenbishops were duly consecrated by canonical male bishops (secretly, to avoid Vatican reprisal, and documented with a notary), so that the women enjoy apostoloic succession. The rites are illegal because of canon law, but the women are conscientious objectors disobeying that law as unjust and accepting the consequences.

CTA Pittsburgh plays host

On July 30, CTA Pittsburgh hosted a reception in the riverside hotel overlooking the cruise boat “Majestic” on which ordinations would take place the next day. Honored guests were the three women bishops who would ordain, and 12 ordinands—eight for priesthood and four for the diaconate. At an opening press conference, they shared their stories and fielded questions about themselves and the movement.

CTA Pittsburgh had its own priest candidate: Joan Clark Houk, a veteran of 30 years of parish ministry that included serving as pastoral director of two priestless parishes. Her M.Div. degree could have led to ordination in the Episcopal church, but her conscience tells her to stay a Roman Catholic and be part of the nonviolent resistance against an unjust church law and take the consequences. Since the hierarchy says the women ordained have excommunicated themselves, Houk stays in her parish pew at communion time and prays for the whole church. But she has agreed to be priest-chaplain for CTA Pittsburgh.
Other CTA members ordained priests with Joan are Bridget Mary Meehan and Kathy Sullivan Vandenberg (photos, page 5), Eileen DiFranco (essay below), and Dana Reynolds, co-founder of a spirituality center in Monterey, Calif.

Sevre-Duszynska is peace activist

All four womendeacons ordained July 31 are CTA members. Janice Sevre-Duszynska of Louisville, Ky., is co-chair of the “Ministry of Irritation” of the Women's Ordination Conference. In this work of public witness, she is frequently seen in a white alb demonstrating at ordinations and meetings of the U. S. bishops with an “Ordain Women Now” placard, or even heard speaking out inside these assemblies. She is also an ardent nonviolent peace activist: at the yearly November peace demonstrations at the U. S. Army's School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Ga. (story, page 7), she has been arrested and jailed for civil disobedience, and last year co-presided at a CTA inclusive liturgy for fellow demonstrators.

The other new deacons are Cheryl Bristol, a lesbian-gay rights activist from Mt. Clement, Mich.; Juanita Cordero, who is forming a new Catholic Community in San Jose, Calif.; and Mary Ellen Robertson, a hospital and hospice chaplain from Muskegon, Mich.

For CTA, RCWomenpriest movement is one option

Call To Action respects the RCWomenpriest movement as one way we can work for change. After years working “through education and petition, a call of conscience impels these women to respectful dissent”. But CTA also works on other fronts: the new Women Justice Coalition now preparing repord cards on dioceses' treatment of women, the very successful Mary of Magdala celebrations and those Celebrating Women Witnesses, and many more.

CTA also recognizes that RCWomen-priests, like any initiative, has shortcomings and runs risks. As our own Sheila Daley reported in these pages a year ago, the 2005 Women's Ordination Worldwide conference in Ottawa on the eve of the RCWomenpriest ordinations in Canada was deeply divided: “Some saw the ordinations as having the potential of co-opting women into the patriarchal structure rather than being a strategy for transforming it.”

Fortunately, that debate also goes on continually within the RCWomenpriest movement itself. Karen Lenz, a leader of Southeastern Pa. Women's Ordination Conference and editor of its outstanding newsletter, EqualwRites, was on the boat in Pittsburgh. But before she went, she wrote: “The first task of womenpriests must be a redefinition: priest must stop meaning membership in a privileged class and begin signifying simply servant. Jesus was clear about this. Womenpriests must then without delay begin to serve in ways more compassionate than they have before.”

Lenz also stressed “a careful selection and formation process… to insure that women seeking ordination are motivated not by frustration, or rage, not vengeance; nor by over-inflated egos, or even outright pathology. There must be competent spiritual direction and —yes — psychological testing, or we will pay a heavy price.”

She concludes: “Let us grow beyond our anger and proceed in love. Let us seek out fellow travelers different from us in age, education, ethnicity and socio-economic status. If we can do that, there will be no stopping us.”