Posted on 06/15/2006 2:51:17 AM PDT by Cavalcabo
On July 31, a dozen well-educated, experienced Roman Catholic women will pass into uncharted spiritual waters on a boat cruising Pittsburgh's rivers.
On that afternoon, three women in vestments will lay their hands on the heads of the 12 women and anoint their hands with oil during an ordination ceremony that will be the first of its kind in the United States.
Among the participants is Joan Clark Houk, 65, of McCandless, who with seven other women are answering a call to be priests; the other four are candidates to be deacons.
It will be the fourth such ceremony in the world since 2002, all unrecognized by the Vatican. The women are part of a growing international movement to push for women's ordination.
The Women's Ordination Conference, based in Fairfax, Va., will announce today its support of the Pittsburgh ceremony, which will be held aboard the Gateway Clipper boat Majestic. Pittsburgh was selected because of its central location.
In a three-page letter dated May 9, Mrs. Houk, a member of St. Alexis in McCandless, advised Bishop Donald Wuerl of her plans. She has received no response. Mrs. Houk also sent a copy of the letter to all 360 priests in the diocese.
"It is a sin for the Church to discriminate against women and to blame God for it," Mrs. Houk wrote.
The Rev. Ronald Lengwin, spokesman for the Diocese of Pittsburgh, said the church "has determined that the ordination of males is a part of the faith handed down by Christ through his apostles and therefore the church is not free to change it. Ordination to the priesthood can only be conferred on a male."
(Excerpt) Read more at post-gazette.com ...
These people are about as Catholic as Marx, and about as much "bishops" as my goldfish. But of course the press loves them and always refers to them as "Catholics," and sometimes even treats them as representatives of the Catholic Church.
The awful and completely NON-Catholic pro-abortion group known as "Catholics for a Free Choice," which is actually funded by the Ford Foundation and several other large foundations, is always the first place the press goes for its "Catholic" opinion interviews. By setting thesmelves up as a sort of parallel church, accepted and promoted by the media, these groups hope to simply obscure and confuse the real Catholic Church.
I wonder why they think "Womenpriests" sounds less goofy than "Priestesses." Maybe it's just a German-to-English thing.
That says it all right there. End of discussion.
This is simply not news.
I see this phrase often. WHO called? It's just another way of saying I'm going to do what I want and I know God approves.
I'm partial to the term "Priestettes," myself. Makes them sound exactly as frivolous and unworthy of serious consideration as they are.
Astute observation...
Good verbiage!
They got an injunction against the clowns using "Catholic Church" in their name.
Any reason why that couldn't be done with THIS set of clowns?
or
HerChurch, Ebenezer Lutheran in San Francisco. Here's their memorable video. (Make sure you put all beverages down and swallow before you watch. Oh, and you might want to reduce your screen size if you don't want to go blind.)
Oh, and as a bonus, they've already got goddess rosaries.
It would seem to me as a Baptist looking in from the peanut gallery that if the RC Church itself doesn't ordain these women or recognize their ordination they aren't going to be priests, or I guess that would be priestesses, in the Church. I would think that any priestly duties they perform will be bogus and meaningless as far as the Church is concerned, and possibly even in the eyes of the law. IOW, I wouldn't consider a marriage ceremony conducted by one of those "priestesses" as a valid, Christian, church sanctioned marriage, or a baptism performed by one of them as a true rite of the Church. Seems to me it's all just politically correct make believe to give the ladies a feeling that they are doing something meaningful to defy what they think is a repressive church hierarchy.
To me, following the scriptural instructions given to the early Church by Jesus himself speaking through the epistles of the Apostle Paul is not repression of women. It's simply acknowledging that Jesus Christ has total, absolute authority to say what is the proper procedure to follow in ordaining ministers in his church which he bought and washed with his own blood. Unfortunately the mainline protestant churches are much farther down this unscriptural but politically correct road than the RC, or my own Baptist denomination which has so far rejected attempts to make it conform to the liberal left's loony tunes ideas of what church doctrine should be instead of what it's Head says it MUST be if it's authentic.
Baptists and Catholics may seem to be strange bedfellows in many respects, but it may eventually come down to the point where we are the only people who still believe that Christ is in charge of running his church and not the PC loony left.
Make that "some protestant church groups ordain women all the time".
Those protestant denominations and non-dominational churches who still believe that the divinely inspired Word of God is the final authority on faith and practice don't ordain anyone who doesn't meet the qualifications laid down at the beginning by the One who is the divine Head of the Church and the sole, final authority on how it is to operate in a hostile world.
BTW, not everyone takes every word uttered by St. Paul as the revealed Word of God.
>>Baptists and Catholics may seem to be strange bedfellows in many respect, but it may eventually come down to the point where we are the only people who still believe that Christ is in charge of running his church and not the PC loony left.<<
You are right, see my tagline. We are on the same team when it comes to the culture wars.
From the head of the Anti-Catholic Troll hunters I would like to award you the "Humanitarian of the Day" Award. It's so nice to see someone who does not consider us an enemy.
God Bless you!
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