Posted on 05/02/2009 7:10:09 AM PDT by Behind Liberal Lines
A woman ordained in July at a ceremony the Roman Catholic Church considers invalid will celebrate a Mass Saturday at a conference in Liverpool.
The Rev. Gabriella Velardi-Ward, a member of RC Womenpriests, an international group of Catholics who advocate women's ordination, will lead a 2:30 p.m. liturgy at the Upstate New York Call to Action conference at Le Moyne Manor in Liverpool.
The conference will also include presentations by the Rev. Roy Bourgeois, who has been criticized by the Vatican for participating at a Womenpriest ordination; and Mary Hunt, a native of Syracuse and a feminist theologian who is co-founder and co-director of the Women's Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual.
The event is Call to Action's sixth statewide conference. The theme is "It's a Question of Conscience -- Re-examining Conscience and the Doctrine of Reception."
The Catholic Church has consistently taught that only men can be ordained as priests, and church officials have typically said that women participating in what the group calls ordinations automatically excommunicate themselves from the church.
Danielle Cummings, assistant chancellor and director of communications for the Syracuse Diocese, said the ceremony Velardi-Ward will lead is not a Mass since it is not celebrated by an ordained Roman Catholic priest -- a baptized male who has received the ordination validly.
"If Mass is being celebrated by a non-ordained individual, the Mass would not fulfill the Sunday obligation of Mass for Catholics," Cummings said.
Womenpriests and its supports say its ordinations are legitimate because Catholic bishops in good standing ordained their first members to become female priests and bishops.
Bob Dugan of Liverpool, a leader of the local Call to Action chapter, said the church should begin ordaining women. "They are shutting down parishes all over the country, not just in the Syracuse Diocese," said Dugan, a member of St. Lucy Church in Syracuse.
"The reason they are shutting down churches is there are not enough priests to go around," he said. "Every member of the church has been called to priestly ministry by virtue of their baptism."
Bourgeois, who has spoken in Syracuse several times, is a Maryknoll priest and the founder of the School of the Americas Watch, which hopes to close the military training school renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation.
Bourgeois was to talk about the School of the Americas on Friday and his support for women's ordination today.
After he preached the homily at an Aug. 9 Womenpriest ordination, the Vatican gave him 30 days to recant or be excommunicated. Bourgeois has continued to speak publicly about his support for ordaining women.
"Sexism, like racism, is a sin," he said in a letter to the Vatican. "And no matter how hard or how long we may try to justify discrimination, in the end, it is always immoral."
Dugan said Call to Action planned the woman-led service to show its support for women's ordination.
"We're not trying to provoke anything," he said. "We're trying to recognize that women are called to priesthood."
These women are NOT *ordained.*
Guess she never grew up.
Funny how that problem is much, much worse in heterodox dioceses whose bishops sympathize with nonsense like this.
Let’s see.....
Not a Priest,
Not a Catholic,
Not a Mass.
Wouldn't it just be easier for this guy to become an Episcopalian?
I’m not a Catholic, but I believe it is time for the Catholic Church to ordain women. However, that is not my choice; it is the choice of the church. This woman is not an ordained Catholic priest, and she should be ashamed of herself for pretending that she is.
We're in recovery mode right now. Nine last year, four this year, six next year - and word is there's a class with 15. That ordination Mass is going to be over four hours, I'm sure.
Equals not reality.
In 2009 America?
Par for the course.
ping
Yep! Our tiny little parish has two resident priests, two permanent deacons, and at least two seminarians. One of our priests is very big preaching against contraception. I’d invite all the people here who are so disappointed never to hear that in their parishes over, but the church only holds 300 or so. It’s SRO at all six Masses.
Will never happen. Women have a different place. No less important in what they do, just different. Men and women have different strengths and some of the things priests are called to do, women would not have the stomach to do. Confession is a prime example. Just the way a man's brain works is more conducive to keeping the seal. Women would tend to be in there until the problem was analyzed every which way to Sunday. Men give a short piece of advice and absolution.
No. I don't think so.
That would undermine the goal of wrecking Catholicism.
women will never be ordained as priests. Jesus set the model. He had many women disciples but NO women apostles. It is very hard to imagine a women priest for this simple reason. Jesus is the brideGROOM the Church is his Bride. Seeing as a woman priest cannot be a brideGROOM to the Church, and the priest is to represent Christ, a woman cannot do it.
Women have just as important a role in the Church, it is just that feminazi’s have convinced some this is not so. Our job is to bring new, faithful Catholics into the fold through motherhood, and to serve the church as a disciple through religious life as a nun if called to do so. There is NO greater example we have of this than Our Blessed Mother, Mary. She served through motherhood to the Savior of the world, and served the apostles through prayer as well as ministering to their needs. Women have been the greatest vehicles of grace to the church throughout history, but they must serve in the role where Jesus needed them. It is a HUMBLING experience. Women who in defiance and heresy choose to call themselves priests are not walking in humility and serving the church, they are walking in pride and dividing the Church. It will not end well for them unless they repent and walk with Him, who CALLED them to WOMANHOOD not PRIESTHOOD.
I ordained myself President and Supreme Leader of the United States.
I’m going to give my Saturday Radio Address in front of the bathroom mirror with a hairbrush.
To say a woman was “ordained” as a Catholic priest and then immediately acknowledge that the Catholic church precludes women from being ordained tells us all we need to know about this author’s ability to connect dots.
These women are not ordained as priests - they are participants in a play.
I’m not a Catholic, and I think it’s blasphemous.
Abomination.
There’s no such thing as woman priests. Just like there’s no such thing as men priestesses. I wonder if the pagan religions who use priestesses have men trying to become “menpriestesses”.
Freegards
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