Just before administering communion to a small group of Catholics in Estero , Dena O’Callaghan, an unofficial Catholic priest from Ocala kisses her husband John, who is a Catholic priest suspended from official ministry.
Posted on 08/01/2010 6:10:30 AM PDT by NYer
Just before administering communion to a small group of Catholics in Estero , Dena O’Callaghan, an unofficial Catholic priest from Ocala kisses her husband John, who is a Catholic priest suspended from official ministry.
ESTERO — Like the first Christians, they are outcasts. They meet in private homes and sympathetic Protestant churches.
They are a small band of women priests and the people who believe that they can melt the rock-solid determination of the Vatican to keep the Catholic priesthood all male.
Since 2002, when the first women were ordained by a male priest, their numbers have grown to about 100 worldwide. The priest, Roy Bourgeois, was excommunicated for his act of defiance.
Their congregations are small, from a half-dozen to as many as 100. But they are defiant - particularly now.
Two weeks ago, the Vatican released revisions to church law that strengthened penalties against pedophile priests. But within the document was an item that enraged women Catholics from New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd to nuns in India. Among the grave crimes listed by the Vatican were heresy, apostasy, schism and the attempted ordination of women.
As the Vatican attempted to clarify its stance, rejecting the notion that it had equated women priests with sexual predators, its critics assailed the institution, claiming it has been more harsh on those who ordain women than those within the church who molest children.
"Shame on the Vatican," said Bridget Mary Meehan, a woman bishop considered a rogue by the institutional church. "They must truly be desperate. What's next, the Inquisition?"
The women priests sustain themselves on a broth of faith and outrage.
"I've been excommunicated several times, but not one pedophile priest has been excommunicated," said Meehan, who lives in Sarasota and Virginia.
But they are also a certain embodiment of hope.
Dena O'Callaghan, 73, ordained two years ago, remains upbeat in the face of every new Vatican pronouncement. She is certain that the church will eventually change its position on women priests.
"Gosh, if I didn't believe that, I'd have no vision," said O'Callaghan.
A group of about 25 people, including several women priests, several husbands and other supporters of the movement, met in Estero on July 22, the feast day of Mary Magdalene, the first person to see the risen Christ. They call her the apostle to the apostles.
O'Callaghan officiated at the Mass, assisted by her husband, John O'Callaghan, a priest who was suspended from official ministry when they married in 1996.
'Dena's Mass'
Her spiritual path to the priesthood goes back to 1976 in Detroit, when priests, nuns and lay people met to consider the ordination of women. O'Callaghan, a nun, was teaching biology at a Catholic college.
"We were asked by the speaker that day, 'Are there any women who feel called to the priesthood?' I stood. There were over a hundred women standing."
This occurred during the aftermath of the groundbreaking Second Vatican Council, when anything seemed possible within the Catholic Church. English replaced Latin in the Mass and priests turned to face their congregations.
"It all started with Vatican II and all these wonderful things we were going to do," said Ellen McNally, president of the southwest Florida chapter of Call to Action, an umbrella group that supports women priests and social justice issues. "People really wanted to go home and make it happen."
Flush with hope, Dena O'Callaghan enrolled in theological studies at a seminary in Plymouth, Mich. When she graduated with a master's degree, everyone in her class was ordained and assigned to a parish. Everyone, that is, except O'Callaghan, the only woman.
Finally, she got an assignment as an associate pastor of a Catholic parish in Saginaw, 100 miles north.
"I could do everything a priest would do but say Mass," she recalled. "If John was away, I could have a service. They called it Dena's Mass." She worked at that parish for nine years with John O'Callaghan, the pastor who would become her husband.
The couple retired to Fort Myers in 1996. In 2006, they moved to Ocala but couldn't find a parish where they were comfortable. They walked out of a Mass when a priest condemned the parents of gay and lesbian children. A neighbor who walked out with them suggested that they start their own congregation. They have been celebrating Mass around their coffee table for about 15 people ever since.
'Ready for ordination'
In 2009, at a Sarasota conference of Call to Action, O'Callaghan met Meehan.
The 'epitome' of reverence (/sarc).
They are not Catholics.
Unofficial being the operative word. They are phonies nothing more, shame on them.
There is no such thing as a Catholic woman priest so the headline is a fraud just like these women. The priesthood is conferred by a Bishop in good standing with the Church.
As many have said before, churches that open the door to lady pastors eventually are pressured to embrace unrepentant sodomites.
Nuns are teachers in our schools just like priests. What's their problem.
These agents of darkness can say and do whatever they want.
But they are not Catholic priests.
There. Fixed it for you.
Just another pretender & deceiver.
Palm Beach Post = lies
No such thing as Catholic Woman Priest, this is “brand dilution” done by left wing feminist journ-o-list wanabe.
You most clearly state in four words what this article tries to obfuscate in a thousand. If they don’t believe in the primacy of the pope, want to rewrite the liturgy and have women priests they should join the Episcopal Church or form their own, but they aren’t Catholics.
Which should have more standing, A Sincere wholesome Woman Priest or thousands of Homosexual Male Priests???.
If communion is about unifying the Church at the cross of Jesus, how can it be done in defiance?
Nor are they priests.
Generally speaking, there are a lot of people in (or claiming to be in) the Catholic church that need to read the Bible.
On topic?
(1 Cor 14:34-35 KJV) Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law. {35} And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.
Yep. Homosexuals are nothing but trouble.
Though she covers the city of Boynton Beach, Lona also writes about a diverse set of topics, including religion, the environment,the arts, neighborhood disputes, bionic dogs and maggots that paint.
There was also a blog post which pointed out the GLARING errors of her reporting of Catholocism. She apparently does not allow the facts to get in the way of her biased reporting
http://thefloridamasochist.blogspot.com/2006/03/knuckleheads-of-day-award_17.html
This is the woman who wrote this.
Oh, look. A liturgical giraffe in the background. Just what every assembly of heretics needs.
like the homosexual soldier who just released those wikileaks documents....
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