National Catholic Reporter Editorial

Editorial Comment re: NCR Editorial Policyfrom Nicole Sotelo, CTA
I thought you would be happy to see this week's issues of NCR that covers the RCWP movement. No matter one's opinion on it, it is a heartening sign that NCR is not shy now from covering controversy and church reform/revolution issues: http://ncronline.org/In fact, here is a quote from the Sr. Rita's "From the Editor's Desk" letter in the issue that seems to confirm what we have surmised, that under her leadership, church reform issues will be covered: "As independent journalists we have taken seriously the words of Pope Paul VI, who once described the press as "a mirror" that ought to reflect "the truth of events, of facts, of daily happenings." Using this as our guide, we chose to tell the story of women who believe they have been called by God to priesthood and who now hold that they are validly ordained within the Roman Catholic church. We think it serves our readers to let these women tell their own personal stories, to present themselves, their motives and their intentions, as essential to the human dimensions of the larger story of women in the church and world. To do less would be to fail our mission."
Finished playing by the rulesFrom the Editor's Desk
Given that the Vatican has banned Catholics from so much as talking about women deacons or priests, is it surprising that some women are opting to fast-forward to action? They aren’t discussing whether women should be ordained; they aren’t asking for permission to be ordained; they are just doing what, as they see it, a church crying “priest shortage” needs them to do. These are women who have faithfully served the church in many ways, putting their own wishes on hold. Until finally, they have said, “Enough.”When even the deeply traditional Greek Orthodox church finds a way to authorize ordaining women deacons, how is it that Roman Catholic church officials get by with treating women as they do: as if they were children -- so infantile that their dreams for themselves and for the church are unworthy of even serious talk. Fortunately, numerous ordained men, even bishops, with a stronger sense of justice and more courage than the rest, have come forward to assist, assuring that these illegal women priests are validly situated in the apostolic line.We find it fascinating that while church officials assert these “simulated” ordinations lack meaning, some of the women have received the Vatican’s highest penalty -- formal excommunication. In other cases, as in the recent St. Louis ordinations, the hierarchy has tried various tactics aimed at bringing these women to heel.The hierarchy is rightly nervous about women declaring themselves ordained, however illegally, because these ceremonies carry a strong implicit message. Well-educated women, loyal to the church, know that the historical and theological reasoning advanced for excluding them from ordination is dangerously thin. Citing the growing number of priestless parishes worldwide, they make a compelling case for a different kind of church -- an inclusive church, in which both men and women, whether married or not, heterosexual or homosexual, can participate at all levels. They know that polls show they have significant backing, given that some 70 percent of the Catholic faithful in the United States support women priests. So, like Catholics who ignore many of the church’s other bans -- on birth control, on single-gender lifestyles, on divorce and remarriage -- because they find little in these teachings that corresponds to their own experience of what is right and good, these women, in the vein of other defiant trailblazers, are saying we are finished playing by the rules.Whither women priests? Perhaps they will become yet another breakaway movement, as many church officials must drearily hope. Or, depending on the faithful’s response, these women could conceivably drag the church into the 21st century. We’ll pray for that.Ordination timeline
1974Eleven women are ordained irregularly as Episcopal priests, prompting that denomination to approve women priests.1990sPublic revelations surface that women were secretly ordained priests to serve in underground churches behind the Iron Curtain.2001Book about Czech woman priest Ludmila Javorova, ordained during Communist years, is published; also this year, the Spiritus Christi community in Rochester, N.Y., ordains Mary Ramerman.2002Roman Catholic Womenpriests begins when a male Roman Catholic bishop ordains seven women in a boat on the Danube River.2003Bishops ordain three people in the Womenpriests organization.*2004Six people are ordained in Womenpriests; also this year, the Greek Orthodox church decides to restore the order of the diaconate for women.2005Thirteen people are ordained in Womenpriests; Patricia Fresen becomes a bishop.2006Seventeen people are ordained in Womenpriests.2007Twenty-three people are ordained in Womenpriests, including the two women ordained priests in St. Louis Nov. 11. By Fresen’s count, 50 people, including six men, have now been ordained worldwide by the Roman Catholic Womenpriests movement. There are four bishops in the movement..
Though church bans women priests more and more women are saying, 'Why wait?'By PAMELA SCHAEFFER
“What a day. What an occasion. What a rabbi!”The speaker was Patricia Fresen, a bishop in the Roman Catholic Womenpriests movement. The day, Nov. 11; the occasion, a jubilant ceremony at a Jewish synagogue, during which Fresen would ordain two women -- the latest of a series of such ceremonies, aimed at helping women to fulfill what they say is their calling: to serve the church as Catholic priests.Fresen, presider and homilist at the event, is a former Dominican nun of 45 years and a former seminary professor in South Africa. As a native English-speaker, she oversees the movement’s formation program for candidates in English-speaking countries and has quickly become its best-known bishop in the United States.Though still a small organization, Roman Catholic Womenpriests has grown exponentially since it began just five years ago with the ordination of the so-called Danube Seven -- seven women ordained on a boat on the Danube River in 2002. The growth -- its leading edge in North America -- has surprised some, met expectations of others, and is clearly worrying some members of the church hierarchy.Their mission“Roman Catholic Womenpriests is an international initiative within the Roman Catholic church. The mission of Roman Catholic Womenpriests North America is to spiritually prepare, ordain and support women and men from all states of life, who are theologically qualified, who are committed to an inclusive model of church, and who are called by the Holy Spirit and their communities to minister within the Roman Catholic church.” -- www.romancatholicwomenpriests.org“We have a lot of new applicants,” Fresen said in an interview the week before the ordinations. “I now have five assistant program coordinators, and we can barely keep up. It has amazed me. We never thought it would take off like this.”Given the international dimensions of the movement and the increasing frequency of ordinations, tracking the numbers has been a bit tricky, but Bridget Mary Meehan, U.S. spokeswoman, finds it “a nice problem to have.” By Fresen’s count, since those first ordinations in 2002, 50 people -- including six men -- have been ordained, bringing the total to 37 in the United States and Canada and 50 worldwide. Leaders report that another hundred or so have entered the movement’s formal pre-ordination training program. In the United States, the rising numbers prompted a decision last fall to divide the country into five regions to deal more effectively with the demand.In many cases, the women who have been ordained, and many now coming forward, are the very women dioceses and parishes have relied on to fill ministry gaps as numbers of Catholic clergy have declined. These are women “of a certain age” -- often in their 60s -- who have faithfully served in parishes, archdiocesan offices, health care settings and educational institutions for years, even decades, while they watched their hair turn gray. A common theme is one of women who long felt called to the priesthood and have tried to live out that call by serving where they could, putting any hope of ordination on hold. But as they looked down the road at the church they would leave for their children and grandchildren, some said they decided it was now or never, realizing they had little to lose.Particularly in the United States, many Catholic women have studied theology -- a prerequisite for being ordained by the movement, and the reason some are not surprised by the growth. Also required is a year- or two-year-long training program involving study of sacramental theology and a liturgical component that calls for mentoring by a priest. Ordained men, including former priests and active priests who support the movement, have stepped in to serve as mentors, Fresen said.Fresen noted that numerous inquiries had come from women religious in the United States, some of whom have long harbored hopes of ordination or of seeing other women ordained. “Some congregations have discussed this at the top level,” Fresen said. “It is one of my deepest hopes that women religious will move toward this,” despite personal and collective risks, such as upsetting donors or losing jobs, particularly in cases where sisters work for the church.Women priests cite a variety of events that fueled their courage to violate a law they find unjust: the church’s law that only celibate men can be priests. For Fresen, the struggle against apartheid in her homeland played a major role. Her religious congregation, the King William’s Town Dominicans, joined with others in the 1970s to challenge laws of apartheid. Inspired to resistance by Nelson Mandela, then-Archbishop Denis Hurley of Durban, and other courageous leaders, they illegally integrated their schools and sheltered activists of all races, enduring terrifying police raids in their convents and risking their lives.“Those were dangerous years, but they helped to prepare me for the present struggle for justice for women in which I have become involved,” she said.Key momentsOther historic events more directly linked to women priests include ordinations of the “Philadelphia 11,” the 11 women ordained irregularly as Episcopal priests in 1974, resulting in that denomination’s swift, if still controversial, decision to approve women priests. There was the public revelation in the 1990s that women had been secretly ordained priests to serve in underground churches behind the Iron Curtain. The story of one such woman, Ludmila Javorova, became the subject of a book by Miriam Therese Winter, published in 2001.That same year, in December, after protracted tensions with Catholic authorities over liberal practices, the Spiritus Christi community in Rochester, N.Y., ordained a woman, Mary Ramerman, in a ceremony that drew participants from faraway states and overseas. A harbinger of the sorts of communities the Womenpriests’ movement would create, Spiritus Christi supported priestly roles for women, celebrated gay unions and offered Communion to non-Catholics in violation of church law. Then, in a startling development, the rigidly traditional Greek Orthodox church decided in 2004 to restore the order of the diaconate for women, citing authoritative sources that the church had ordained women as deacons at least through the Middle Ages.Meanwhile, in Europe, some women who had begun meeting in the late 1990s decided their own time had come and, with ordination in mind, began enrolling in universities to study theology. A major stumbling block was overcome when Bishop Romulo Braschi of Argentina (regarded by the Vatican as schismatic) agreed to ordain them. That ordination, on the Danube River near the town of Passau on the border between Germany and Austria, marked the beginning for Roman Catholic Womenpriests.Rabbi Susan Talve, spiritual leader of Central Reform Congregation, welcomes worshipers gathered for the ordinations of Elsie Hainz McGrath and Rose Marie Dunn Hudson.Each year, the numbers of ordained have leaped upward. In 2003, three were ordained, including two of the movement’s four bishops. In 2004, six were ordained; in 2005, 13; in 2006, 17; in 2007, 23. The ordained include both priests and deacons. The diaconate for Roman Catholic Womenpriests is transitional, as it is for men becoming Catholic priests. Fresen became a priest in 2003 and a bishop in 2005.The numbers include the six men -- men who, like the women, could not otherwise serve as Catholic priests. Two are married; two are openly gay; two were denied entrance to Catholic seminaries because of physical handicaps.Besides its commitment to inclusiveness, the Womenpriests movement discourages titles for priests and bishops and requires no vow of obedience.Hierarchical rumblingsAmong Catholics generally, reactions to the movement range from elation to eye rolling; from tears of joy to expressions of disdain. Even church officials have reacted inconsistently to a trend that flies in the face of the church’s official stance that women cannot be priests. The first ordinations resulted in formal excommunication by the Vatican for the Danube Seven. The decree, signed by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) was dated July 22, 2004, ironically, some noted, the feast day of St. Mary Magdalene, sometimes called “apostle to the apostles.”Subsequent ordinations have so far failed to elicit a Vatican response, leaving it to local dioceses to decide whether silence or public warning is the best approach. In St. Louis, Archbishop Raymond L. Burke warned of excommunication latae sententiae for Elsie Hainz McGrath and Rose Marie Dunn Hudson, the two scheduled to be ordained, along with their supporters, meaning that even without a formal decree, their actions put them outside the church. (Burke’s 1,750-word statement can be viewed at www.stlouisreview.com, archbishop’s column for Nov. 9.) After the ceremony, McGrath and Hudson were served with a summons to appear before a church tribunal Dec. 3. McGrath, a former editor at Liguori, a Catholic publishing house, labeled it “a canonical kangaroo court,” and both women said they would not appear.The women priests tend to regard such hierarchical rumblings with a mixture of amusement and regret. “Burke is a paper tiger,” said Gerry Rauch of St. Louis, a board member of the Women’s Ordination Conference, which supports a variety of forms of priestly roles for women, ranging from ordination to a “discipleship of equals,” in which all symbols of power, including ordination, would be obsolete. The women priests say many male priests support the movement privately and contend that three bishops in good standing have taken the extraordinary step of ordaining women bishops. Fresen said supportive priests are more common in Europe than in North America, where most of the future ordinations are expected to occur.Her own ordination, she said,was duly documented and notarized, with a record of those present, along with copies of the three bishops’ apostolic successions (with her name at the end) signed and sealed in a bank vault whose location, in Da Vinci Code fashion, is known only to a few.Some say conflicts are bound to increase as the ordination ceremonies move increasingly to land from boats, where several of the ordinations have taken place. Advocates cite two points in favor of using boats. First, in most cases, it has put participants outside the jurisdiction of local bishops. Second, the symbolism links the events to New Testament stories involving Jesus and water. Increasingly, though, candidates are seeking local sites, Fresen said, because travel costs to out-of-town events can be prohibitive for friends and families, and the cost of renting boats has proven high.Others in the movement dismiss conflicts with church authorities as irrelevant. “I care about the people in the parishes, not about making a statement,” said Andrea Johnson, a former coordinator of the Women’s Ordination Conference and a former employee of a Catholic parishes where she performed a variety of roles. “As more and more parishes are forced to close because there are fewer priests to staff them, while the hierarchy refuses to call even already ordained married priests to serve, many dioceses are building bigger churches so they can hold fewer Masses. People in those parishes are being asked to pay for their own oppression,” she said. “We” -- the women priests -- “are not just about doing something we’ve always wanted to do. It’s about the people.”Meehan said women in the movement, if once angry at church authorities, for the most part no longer are. “We are not complaining. We are on the ground doing the ministry of priests, continuing the work we have espoused for the last 30 years, working in the grass roots, creating a new inclusive model of church. This offers the church a moment of great hope.”Paying the priceSuch pioneering for some has come with a hefty price. Were women priests to compose a litany of emotional and financial costs, it would include the following: Fresen, fired from a prestigious teaching post and expelled from her religious order; Jane Marchant, forced to resign her position as head of health care ministry for the Boston archdiocese; Meehan, facing income losses now that Liguori, a Catholic publishing house, has removed her books from its lists.The Rev. Jeff Bert of Metropolitan Community Church congratulates Elsie Hainz McGrath, right, and Rose Marie Dunn Hudson on their imminent ordinations.Even for some outside the church, support has had its costs. In New York City a Lutheran pastor who had agreed to host an ordination earlier this year reluctantly backed down after being warned of “serious damage” to Lutheran-Catholic relations. The ordination was moved at the last minute to the less encumbered Judson Memorial Church in Washington Square.In St. Louis, Rabbi Susan Talve, spiritual leader at the hosting Central Reform Congregation and a former president of the St. Louis Rabbinical Association, stood firm, though Catholic officials excoriated her and other Jewish congregations distanced themselves. Talve was disinvited from a program on Judaism at Fontbonne University, a Catholic institution where she had been scheduled to talk about her faith, and Catholic leaders said they would decline to participate in any future interfaith event in which Talve had a leading role.The brouhaha did little to dampen the upbeat mood at Talve’s synagogue. Indeed, more than 600 people turned out on a Sunday afternoon -- Catholics, Protestants and Jews -- in support of an event designed to put Catholics pro and con into a swoon, if for different reasons. Disdainful non-participants would focus on its defiance of church laws, not only against ordaining women, but also against intercommunion with members of other denominations and faiths, while those in favor would focus on what they described as prophetic expression of the church at its visionary best, the church, perhaps, of the future. Some noted, too, a tinge of sadness, given that, as one Jewish participant put it, “the relationship of these two women and their church will be very different come Monday morning.”All worshipers were invited to follow Fresen in the “laying on of hands” -- the ancient liturgical symbol for ordination -- and many did, including at least a dozen non-Catholic clergy who had joined the opening procession to the altar and lined up again to receive Communion.A different callingAdmittedly, women priests say, they can’t serve Catholic parishes directly. Many of the women celebrate the Catholic sacraments where they are invited, often saying Mass in people’s homes. Some meet regularly with communities ranging from a few participants to a couple hundred.“Our ministry is largely to people on the margins,” Fresen said in her homily in St. Louis. “And it seems to us,” she added, “that the margins are getting bigger and bigger.” She referred to the huge numbers of Catholics who, if church law were strictly applied, would be barred from receiving the sacraments. These include men and women who have divorced and remarried without getting their first marriage annulled by the church; gays and lesbians living with partners; people who have received or supported an abortion; couples who are unrepentant about the fact that they use contraceptives to limit family size. Some bishops, such as Burke, would include those politicians who support keeping abortion legal.Increasingly too, the church’s margins include the more liberal young (though it has often been noted that many young Catholics are of a conservative bent -- and not a few have raged against ordaining women on blogs).One presently on the margins is Katie Wallace-Clare, 35, who, when planning her recent wedding in Baltimore, invited Andrea Johnson, a longtime family friend, to preside. Having a woman priest perform the ceremony reflected “my core values,” said Wallace-Clare, who describes herself as presently disenfranchised from the church, though she and her husband have agreed to raise their future children as Catholics. “I am really struggling with the integrity of the church,” she said, citing the sex abuse scandals and the church’s teachings related to women. She said her Catholic friends attending her wedding -- even some of whom remain church loyalists -- were uniformly excited to see a woman preside. “I got nothing but positive responses. My friends were all excited to see this shift,” she said.Megan Heeney, 23, who recently graduated from St. Louis University, lives at a Catholic Worker house in St. Louis, and served as acolyte in the St. Louis ordinations, said, “I think young Catholics are looking at the world, seeing what the Catholic church teaches about social justice, and realizing this is really incongruent with women not having the opportunity to be priests. I went to a Jesuit school, loved every minute of it, and had I been a guy, the Jesuits would have recruited me. I would have had the opportunity to go through discernment weekends to process what is my calling is in life. So what I’m excited for in the movement is to see us go in a direction where young women can have these opportunities.”Heeney said she and the two other acolytes, both around her age, had agreed that “the opportunity to bless these women” -- the two being ordained -- “was one of the powerful experiences of our lives.”A question for some observers of Roman Catholic Womenpriests is whether and how the movement will reinvent itself as it grows. Fresen acknowledges that successive reorganizations may be needed as inevitable internal differences arise. Seeds of conflicts were present years before the movement began, when some prominent feminist theologians inveighed against women becoming priests, arguing they should instead promote a “discipleship of equals,” a church without clerics. Fresen herself envisions that “perhaps within a couple of generations” Christian communities will choose and ordain their own leaders, whether married men, women or gays, much as a group of Dutch Dominicans recently proposed in a document released in the Netherlands.Victoria Rue, playwright, director and feminist theologian at San Jose State University in California, sought ordination, though she supports in theory a discipleship of equals, after determining that “visible leadership on the part of women” would further gender equality in the church. “Women priests serve as symbols of people’s hope that the church can change,” said Rue, a lesbian who lives with a partner.“We are using the master’s tools to dismantle the master’s house,” she said, playing on an aphorism of African-American feminist poet Audre Lorde, who said such was not possible. At the same time, Rue feels strongly that women in the movement should study not only theology, but also feminist theology, so they will understand how power systems work and avoid getting caught up in them. “I think everyone is in a wait-and-see mode, hoping that women in the Womenpriests movement don’t take on the trappings of hierarchy,” she said.“I hope in the future, offices might not be needed, but that, as in the early church, people will be ordained to use their various gifts -- ordained to do liturgies, but also ordained to feed the hungry, to visit the sick. But we’re not there yet. We need to use the structures as they are and transform them.”
Ordaining women Profiles of five women priests
BRIDGET MARY MEEHANRaised in rural Ireland in a Catholic family with a deep devotion to Mary, Bridget Mary Meehan entered religious life as a young woman. A former member of the Immaculate Heart of Mary sisters, she is now a member of the Sisters for Christian Community, a non-canonical order. She and her father, with whom she shares a home, divide their time between Falls Church, Va., and Sarasota, Fla. Meehan leads a house church in each place.On her way to ordination, she earned a master’s degree from The Catholic University of America, a doctor of ministry degree from Virginia Episcopal Seminary and spent 15 years in pastoral ministry. An author and producer, she has 16 books in print, including The Feminine Face of God, and is host of “GodTalk,” a cable access television program. She is dean of the doctorate in ministry program for Global Ministries University, an online theological program that she helped establish.Meehan began thinking of serving as an ordained priest while working as a pastoral associate at Fort Myer Chapel in Arlington, Va., a community of military chaplains. She would sometimes preside over Communion services, and worked with a ministry team preparing couples for marriage, but felt she could do much more as a priest. She was ordained in 2006 and is spokeswoman for Roman Catholic Womenpriests in the United States.Asked about the organization’s stance on abortion and other controversial Catholic issues, Meehan said the movement had not adopted positions on moral issues, but emphasizes the primacy of personal conscience in moral decision-making and the need for women’s voices and experience to be part of any conversation about sexual morality and ethics. “Women have been excluded from the conversation in these areas,” she said.JOAN HOUKJoan Houk, mother of six, was teaching parish religion to children in the 1970s and decided she needed to upgrade her knowledge and skills. So Houk enrolled in a community college, and starting with one class at a time, earned a four-year college degree in 1996 and went on to earn two master’s degrees -- one is in conflict management from George Mason University, the other in divinity from the University of Notre Dame. Along the way she worked as director of religious education for a parish. She had followed her husband, John, a civil engineer, to both coasts, then he followed her to South Bend, Ind., so she could attend Notre Dame. From there, the couple went to Kentucky where Joan served as pastoral director for two parishes that lacked a resident priest.They returned to Pittsburgh, Joan Houk’s home, when her mother became ill.Houk -- with her husband as a major backer -- became involved in Roman Catholic Womenpriests after hearing Patricia Fresen speak. Since her ordination in 2006, she celebrates home Masses and meets a variety of other pastoral needs. The Houks still belong to a parish but no longer receive Communion there or work in parish ministry. They volunteer at parish fundraisers and social events.Still, Houk said, she considers herself a faithful Catholic. “This is one point I am very strong on. I will not allow people to tell me I am out of the church. Some say I am out because I don’t follow one teaching” -- that women can’t be priests. “If you took that reasoning down the line, a lot of very conservative people would be out of the church.”JUDITH McKLOSKEYFor Judith McKoskey, the day of her ordination by Roman Catholic Womenpriests -- Aug. 12, 2007 -- is her “public ordination.” A private experience of ordination came first.“I was working as the national office administrator for the National Association for Lay Ministry, and for Christmas I received a blood red eucharistic chalice and plate from my boss. My family and I joked about it, but it sent electricity through me.” After Christmas, she took the items to her spiritual director -- a religious order priest -- who had a surprising response. “He told me how joyful he was to proclaim my priesthood,” she said. “Since that day, Jan. 9, 1994, I have been living as a priest, consciously, every day.”McKloskey, 61 and married, wanted to be a priest as a young girl, but eventually “gave up the dream.” She earned a biology degree from the University of Dayton, a master’s in library science from Case Western Reserve University and worked as a librarian, becoming the first director of a multicounty library cooperative in Minnesota. After her daughter was born in 1982, she began volunteering in her parish. She now prays with several small faith communities and celebrates the sacraments when asked.“I am not trying to set up a confrontation with the hierarchy,” she said. “I am trying to hold a question up: Can God be calling women to be priests as well as men? At my age, there is no time to waste. I believe that only in the numbers will it become apparent if this is the work of the Holy Spirit.”JEAN MARCHANTAs a little girl, Jean Marchant loved to play priest and hoped to be one when she grew up. By the time she was in third grade, she realized her mistake. “I put my sense of call in my back pocket and went on with life,” she saidShe married at 20, earned a bachelor’s degree at the University of Massachusetts, was inspired by the ordinations of Episcopal women, and earned two master’s of divinity degrees, one at Weston School of Theology in 1987. Drawn to spiritual care, she worked as a hospice chaplain for 17 years, and as director of mission at Caritas County Hospital for five years. Along the way, she raised two daughters, was divorced and married a former Catholic priest.A new job as director of health care ministry for the Boston archdiocese, coordinating chaplain visits to 70 hospitals, gave her an up-close look at the top-down handling of sex abuse scandals under Cardinal Bernard Law, and parish closings under Cardinal Sean O’Malley. She began to think she was misusing her gifts by supporting what she found to be “a very dysfunctional system.” Still, she stayed. “I’d always said I wanted to work within the church and push the boundaries.” Then came the final straw: “The archdiocese launched a vicious campaign against the rights of gays to marry. I had a lot of connections with the gay community and saw sacredness in those relationships,” she said.Marchant was ordained under a pseudonym in 2005, then “came out” as a woman priest in 2006 and resigned her archdiocesan post. She and her husband co-pastor a small faith community and she continues to work part-time as an interfaith hospice chaplain.KATHY REDIGKathy Redig joined the Sisters of the Good Shepherd as a young woman, but left before professing vows. She became involved in parish work, earned a master’s in pastoral ministry and became certified as a chaplain through the Clinical Pastoral Education program.Working as chaplain was frustrating at times, she said, because she would develop close relationships with people, hear their life stories -- often including things they had never told anyone else -- and then, when people were close to death and wanted to be anointed, she was unable at times to find a priest to perform the sacrament. She worked in a religiously diverse hospital in LaCrosse, Wis.A turning point, she said, was when a friend and mentor, an ordained Baptist minister, greeted her as “pastor,” though he knew she was a Catholic and could not be ordained. “I felt he was saying, ‘Kathy, you don’t need to get permission from your bishop to do what God is calling you to do.’ ”A second incident moved her to act. One day she said to her husband, after a frustrating experience at a local parish, “You know, the only way we’re going to find a church we like is to start one of our own.” He looked at her seriously and said, “You’re right,” she recalled.She decided to ask for ordination through Roman Catholic Womenpriests and was ordained a deacon Aug. 12. She expects to become a priest next spring in a ceremony in her hometown of Winona, Minn.Meanwhile, Redig and her husband are holding conversations with about 14 people, laying the groundwork for a future church community.
Reluctant bishop ordained for North AmericaBy PAMELA SCHAEFFER
No one was more surprised than Patricia Fresen herself when she agreed to become a bishop in the Roman Catholic Womenpriests movement. After becoming a priest in 2003 and losing her place in her religious community by edict of the Vatican’s cardinal in charge of religious life, she moved to Germany, where another woman in the movement had offered her a home. The following year, she learned that a male Catholic bishop wanted to ordain her a bishop. She described him as a man “driven by a sense of justice who feels women have been excluded from the priesthood far too long.” At first she declined. “I told him I couldn’t take all of that on,” she said. She cited her recent major life transitions: severed from her religious order, emigrating from her native land, losing a prestigious post as a founding faculty member at St. Augustine’s, the Catholic University in Johannesburg, South Africa.He persisted. He said that he and other observers expected the growth of Roman Catholic Womenpriests to be strongest in North America, given the large numbers of women with degrees in theology, and the overall educational level of Catholics generally -- making it less likely the Vatican could control their thinking.He noted her many qualifications: a licentiate in theology from the Angelicum, the Domican pontifical university in Rome (where she also took many courses at Gregorian University, the Vatican’s premier training ground for priests); a doctorate in theology from the University of South Africa; seven years teaching candidates for the priesthood at St. John Vianney Seminary in Pretoria, South Africa -- the teaching post she held before St. Augustine’s. Add to that her fluency in English, and she was the best candidate for ordaining the English-speaking women likely to come forward, he said.But the real mind-changing words, she said, were these: “Patricia, if and when you are ordained a bishop, it will not be for you. You will not get a diocese. ... You will not receive a bishops’ salary. I will lay hands on you in the apostolic succession in which I stand, so that you can ordain others. You will be my hands.” It was, Fresen said, “as if a flame rose up in me.” She heard herself saying, “I am ready.”She became a bishop the following year, in 2005.As the eldest of 12 children, Fresen said her sense of justice began as she saw her parents become drained of energy and resources while faithfully following church teachings against birth control. Later, when her religious order sent her to study theology in Rome, she said she experienced discrimination “countless times.”“I will give you one example,” she said. “I could give you a thousand.” A professor of moral theology at the Angelicum, a Dominican priest, told students to prepare for an upcoming class period, when they would simulate their future roles as confessors, applying principles of moral theology to questions the faithful might bring. “Sister, you will be excused because you will never hear confessions,” Fresen recalls him telling her.She grew indignant. “Professor, I have paid, studied and would like to come,” she told him. The male students applauded, and then, when the day arrived, and the professor asked who would be first, they began to chant her name. “It was a prophetic moment for me,” she said, when, feeling their support, she took the designated chair and draped the stole across her shoulders.Meanwhile she was a frequent guest at ordinations of fellow students, knowing her own would never come. Granted, she said, much of the discrimination she encountered was unintentional, “but when a blind person steps on your foot, you can still say, ‘Ouch.’ ”What did you think of this article?Join NCR's interactive community to respond to this and other issues shaping our church today. Visit NCRcafe.org today.Next came her stint at the seminary in Pretoria, where she often found herself sitting in back of the chapel listening to her students preach, but was barred from preaching herself. Often they would tell her, “Sister, you would make a very good priest,” she said.And then there were the formative experiences related to the Dominican’s refusal to obey unjust laws requiring apartheid in South Africa. (See main story.)By the time Fresen was ordained, during a trip to Germany to attend an academic conference, her anger had turned to longing. On her return home, she harbored a hope that her religious order would grant her exclaustration -- the canonical term for a period of discernment for a religious considering leaving religious life. But to her surprise -- and she suspects to their later regret -- they presented her case to the Vatican and the die was cast.Although identities of the three bishops who ordained her (it takes three to ordain a bishop, under canon law) are closely guarded, it is clear the Vatican is looking for a trail. Before the recent ordinations in St. Louis, women priests-elect Elsie McGrath and Rose Marie Hudson were called into the Catholic Center in St. Louis and questioned by a church official about their backgrounds, their motives and the Womenpriests movement. Eventually, Hudson said, the questioning turned to Fresen and the names of the bishops who ordained her. Truth is, Hudson said, “we don’t know.”Perhaps Fresen’s sweetest moment since her ordination was returning to South Africa for the first time in February, where she received “a very warm welcome” from her Dominican sisters and celebrated a midweek Mass at her mixed-race former parish.“I received a huge ovation,” she said. People had asked me if they should call me “Mother,” and I explained that people ordained in the Womenpriests movement do not use titles. So when she preached, people responded -- as is the custom at the parish -- using her nickname. “Yes, Trish, Amen, Trish,” they cheered.