What Does The Prayer Really Say?
W D T P R S

I met some wonderful people at the Cleveland blognic on Saturday.  Some of them came from as far as Columbus, OH for the event, and I am grateful.

All in all, over the whole period about a dozen people came.  Also, I learned yesterday that someone stopped in just after we has suspended the festivities, at noon.  Sorry!  We were pretty much on schedule.

Among those who were at the meeting was a young man who is considering seminary and a nice woman who said that my blog helped her to return to the Church.

Also, I learned about a marvelous museum in Columbus, which I had never heard of before.

I would very much like to visit the place, where they also have the older form of Mass.  However, to avoid confusion I mentioned that it is better to get an invitation from the pastor of the parish there.

So, this is what he sent!  (Too much!)

Fun!   What an invitation.

Do you suppose they have the TLM there? 

My photos of the blognic are locked in the memory stick of my camera, which for some reason my laptop won’t read.  So, I have to wait with them.

But here is one posted by someone who came on her own blog.

Here is a fast, patristiblogger PODCAzT inspired by the second selection from today’s Office of Readings on this feast of St. Lawrence, deacon and martyr in Rome. We hear St. Augustine of Hippo’s sermo 304, preached probably in Hippo Regius in 417 on St. Lawrence’s Day.

The sermon is short enough that we can hear the whole thing.

We have the English first, to get the content into your head, followed by the whole sermon in Latin, to get your Latin ears tuned.

 

 07-08-10 St. Augustine on St. Lawrence and how to be a Christian [31:44m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

St. Augustine of Hippo preached various sermons on St. Lawrence. Here is another one the bishop preached in about the year 401.  It might not be quite what you expected, however!  It sure wasn’t what Augustine himself expected, you can bet on that.

Put yourself in the cathedral of Carthage on a bright morning. Bishops and emissaries are gathering from all over a great council to be held in a couple weeks. You perhaps came to see the interesting people from near and far. You are standing in the nave of the basilica and the light streams through the upper story alabaster windows in dusty shafts. Incense is still wafting from the presbyterium. It is August in N. Africa and it is blazing hot already in the morning. It is clear that Augustine, a very junior bishop in the crowd, had had no intention of preaching, but you watch as the primate of Carthage Bishop Aurelius and bishops of the North African delegation pressure him into saying something in the presence of the representatives from Rome who are there for the upcoming meeting.

Augustine reluctantly takes his seat in a chair in the center takes the scroll of the Scriptures in his lap and begins (s. 305A).

1. Because the audience is getting bored and restless, the sermon was supposed to have been cancelled [subtrahendus fuit]; but out of respect for the martyr, it has to be given. So with the Lord’s help it will be so timed that it is neither burdensome, not yet cut too short to do justice to the subject. In Rome today has dawned as one of the greatest feasts there, which is celebrated by a great concourse of the people; we are uniting ourselves to our brothers and sisters there in one body, under one head, absent indeed in body, but still present in spirit. After all, it’s not only where the tomb of his body is, that the memory of his merits is celebrated. Devotion is owed to him everywhere; his flesh is laid in one place, but his spirit is triumphant with the one who is everywhere. 

The blessed Lawrence was, as we have been informed, a youth in body, but a man gravity in spirit; the greener his age, the more unfading was the victor’s wreath that commended him so much to our devotion. Well, he was a deacon, subordinate to the bishop in rank, equal to an apostle in his crown. [And with that brief comment on Lawrence, Augustine spends the next ten paragraphs talking about everything except Lawrence!] Now this kind of festival of al the glorious martyrs has been instituted in the Church so that those who didn’t see them suffering may be led by faith to imitate them, and may be reminded of them by the festival. It’s probable, you see, that what wasn’t repeated by an annual commemoration would escape people’s minds altogether. And we can’t have fervent celebrations of all the martyrs everywhere, because then not day would pass without them; I mean, you could scarcely find a single day in the whole course of the year, on which some martyrs were not somewhere rewarded with the victor’s crown. But if fervent celebrations were a continuous event, they would induce boredom; while intervals between them renew our loving interest. For our part, let us simply listen to what we have been commanded, attend to what we have been promised. On the festivals of any martyrs you like, let us prepare our hearts to celebrate them in such a way that we do not cut ourselves off from imitating them.

At this point Augustine launches himself into to an extended and rambling talk about the different ways people celebrate and never says another word about Lawrence! He seems to be taking a few swipes at the Roman delegation there too. Then he talks about St. Cyprian of Carthage, who is far more interesting for the natives anyway, and then takes some shots at their overdoing the feast of St. Cyprian.

This is one of those sermons that Augustine, who is feeling a little testy and put upon, just doesn’t seem to be able to bring to a close easily. This often happens when people who don’t really want to speak are put in a position of having to say something anyway. And his swift writing stenographers were there and caught every word for us.

And, since I read lots of Ambrose and not just Augustine, here is what the mighty bishop of Milan had to say:

In his work De officiis ministrorum, echoing Cicero, St. Ambrose of Milan (+397) spoke about martyrs. He lingers a bit over the conversation between St. Pope Sixtus II (whose feast we had the other day) and his great deacon, the Spanish born but by adoption Roman, St. Lawrence. Who died this day in 258 on the Via Tiburina.

1.41.204. What is to be said about little children of two years who obtained the palm of victory before they had any awareness of what was going on around them? And what is to be said of Saint Agnes? Exposed to the danger of losing the two most precious goods, chastity and life, she defended chastity and exchanged life for immortality.

205. We cannot pass over Saint Lawrence, who, seeing his bishop Sixtus being led to martyrdom began to weep, not because he was being led away to die, but because he would have to outlive him. He began, therefore, to shout loudly, "Where are you going, Father, without your son? Where are you hurrying off to, O holy bishop, without your deacon? You never offered the Sacrifice without your minister. What about me has displeased you, O Father? Perhaps you have found me to be unworthy? At least reconsider whether you chose a suitable minister. Do you not want him to whom you entrusted the Blood of the Lord to shed with you his own blood, whom you caused to participate in the sacred mysteries? Be careful that while your fortitude is being praised, your judgment doesn’t waver. The ridicule of a student is a bad mark for the teacher. It is necessary to remember that great and famous men are victorious through the victorious examples of their students even more than by their own. After all, Abraham offered his own son, Peter sent Stephen before him. O Father, let you also show forth your virtue in the person of your son. Offer up the one you instructed, so as to reach the eternal prize in the glorious company, safe and sure of your justice."

206. And Sixtus replied to him: "I am not leaving you, O my son, I am not abandoning you; but even greater trials are reserved for you. Because we are old an easier track to the contest was allotted; Because you are young, for you there is fated a more glorious triumph over tyranny. You will be coming shortly, so cease your weeping: you’ll follow me within three days. It is fitting that there be this interval between a bishop and a levite. It would not be worthy for you to come through to victory under the guide of your master, as if you were looking for help. Why are you asking to share in my martyrdom? I am leaving you my entire inheritance. Why are you requiring that I be present? Students who are still weak are going before their master, and those now strong, who do not have need for any more instruction are following him in order to win through without him. In such a way Elijah left behind Elisha. I am entrusting to you the inheritance of of my virtue."

207. There was a contest between them, a truly worthy contest to be fought out by a bishop and a deacon: who would be the first to suffer for Christ? They say that in the performances of tragic plays the audience would burst out in great applause when Pylades said he was Orestes and Orestes, as he indeed was, affirmed that he was Orestes: Pylades who was to be killed in Orestes place, Orestes in order to prevent Pylades from being him in his stead. But both of them shouldn’t have been allowed to live since they were guilty of the crimes of parricide: the one because he truly committed the crime and the other because he was an accomplice. In our situation, on the other hand, Saint Lawrence was driven by no other desire that to immolate himself for the Lord. Three days later, while mocking the tyrant he was burned on a grate: "This side’s done," he said, "turn me over and have a bite." ["Assum est, inquit, versa et manduca."] And so it was that he bested the heat of the flames with the might of his spirit.

Some other old PODCAzTs:

041 07-08-09 Ratzinger on liturgical silence; silent Eucharist Prayer
040 07-08-02 Eusebius of Vercelli in exile; my column in The Wanderer on detractors of Summorum Pontificum
039 07-07-27 St. Augustine on Christ the Mediator; “for all” or “for many”?
038 07-07-25 Ratzinger on “active participation”; The Sabine Farm; Merry del Val’s music
037 07-07-18 The position of the altar and the priest’s “back to the people”

I give credit to my friend Fr. Scofield of Roman Miscellany for having found this truly hideous vestment.

Brrrr…

And again…

"But Father! But Father!" some of you might be momentarily tempted to object.  "Can’t you see? That’s a Roman vestment!  That is for the Extraordinary Use!  There’s a maniple and burse, too.  Everything!"

Maybe so… maybe so.  

But nothing could induce me to put that on, I don’t care what edition of the Missale Romanum is on the altar!

Can you imagine how awful the dalmatics would be? 

The cope?

The antependium?

Damian Thompson of Holy Smoke has a piece in the Times today.   Some of our friends are mentioned.

Let’s have a look, with my usual emphases and comments.

From The Sunday Times
August 10, 2008
Let us pray in Latin: priests take on Catholics’ magic circle [I am happy to be corrected, but I think this refers to the iron grip the progressivist side has on the hierarchy of the UK.]
Damian Thompson sniffs the incense of a revolution among Britain’s parish priests

For a moment it looks as if a fire has broken out in the chapel. A cloud of smoke is billowing from the back and rolling down the aisle – and it is fiercely pungent. This is grade A incense, pure enough to guarantee an instantaneous spiritual high.  [Remember this?]

A young man walks through the door swinging a thurible on a gold chain. He passes it to a priest, deacon and subdeacon – all in gold vestments – who take turns wafting it at each other. Finally, the subdeacon turns round and, bowing low, shoots plumes of smoke diagonally across the choir stalls with the accuracy of a mid-fielder taking a difficult corner.

We are witnessing an unusual sight: [Increasingly more common, happily.] a Roman Catholic solemn mass, celebrated according to an ancient Latin rite effectively outlawed 40 years ago. And it’s taking place in the 13th-century chapel of Merton college, Oxford, which has been Anglican for 400 years.  [Now that’s more uncommon!]

Just for a week, however, it has gone back to being Catholic – but this is not Catholicism as most people know it. I’m at the summer school of the Latin Mass Society which – to the delight of the conservative Pope Benedict XVI and the dismay of trendy British bishops – is teaching priests how to say the Tridentine mass.

The last time Merton chapel regularly witnessed this sort of complex liturgy was in the 1540s, before the Protestant reformers pulled out much of the stained glass and toppled the statues of saints. The organi-sers of the summer school are reformers, too, but their aim is precisely the opposite: to restore Latin services and rich furnishings to their own Catholic parish churches, many of which were stripped bare by modernisers after the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s.

What makes this summer school rather controversial is that most of the bishops of England and Wales disapprove of the return of the Latin mass, regarding its sonorous Latin prayers and intricate gestures as a relic of the Middle Ages. Until recently, the Tridentine mass could be celebrated only with a bishop’s permission, usually granted grudgingly for special occasions. Then, in July last year, Pope Benedict XVI swept away the right of bishops to ban the old services. Most of them were horrified.

So these are tense times. But the 60 priests who have gathered at Merton college – to brush up their skills or to learn the Tridentine mass from scratch – are careful to avoid talk of civil war in the church. All are aware that this autumn, Pope Benedict is expected to announce a successor to Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the Archbishop of Westminster, who presides over a liberal “magic circle” of bishops unsympathetic to the Pope’s reforms. [It seems I was right about that term.] Will Benedict break the circle that has run the English church for 40 years?

Whoever gets the job, however, nobody expects a sudden return to the Tridentine mass in parishes all over the country. The seminaries do not teach priests how to say it and teaching yourself is difficult. A glance at the manual explains why: “Bring the thumb of each hand over the upper front edge of the paten [communion plate], tilting it to let the host slide off onto the crease of the front-centre fold of the corporal [linen cloth]. Place your left hand on the altar and with your right hand set the paten halfway under the right edge of the corporal.” And all the while saying: “. . . pro innumerabilibus peccatis, et offensionibus, et negligentiis meis, et pro omnibus circumstantibus . . .”  [But… you know… it isn’t that hard.]

Interestingly, the most traditionalist priests here are also the youngest – and I spot four in the choir stalls who are popular bloggers on the internet. Walking down the high street later, I encounter two clergy wearing the old-fashioned soup-plate hats beloved of Italian village padres. One of them has long knotted tassels dangling from the brim, “so I can tie them round my neck when I ride my horse through the parish”.  [And I know just who that was! o{]:¬)  ]

A priest who looks barely out of his teens explains what he does when unsolicited copies of The Tablet – a liberal Catholic magazine that opposes the Latin revival – arrive at his church: “I painstakingly remove the staples and feed it into the shredder. It’s time-consuming, but God’s work.” [ROFL!]

Most of the other priests at the summer school are less extreme: they have come because they are curious about the Latin mass and they can scent change in the air. “We’re not trying to turn them into traditionalists,” says Father Andrew Wadsworth, an authority on the old rite who is conducting classes. “We want to show priests how the underlying principles of the traditional liturgy can deepen their understanding of their priesthood.”  [Yes yes and yes.  This is really the point.  As WDTPRS has been repeating for a long time now, when priests learn the older form of Mass is changes who they are as priests and changes how they say any Mass.   Summorum Pontificum was above all a gift to priests.   It is one of those rarest of documents which emphasis the rights of priests, rather than of bishops, and it arms them with what they need to speed the revitalization of Catholic identity for which Pope Benedict has been working.]

Father John Boyle, [blogger] a parish priest in Ashford, Kent, recently taught himself to say the Tridentine mass by watching a DVD. “It’s made a profound difference to the way I celebrate the new mass in English,” he says. [See?  See?]  “There’s greater reverence now. I’m more of a celebrant and less of a compere.”

I sense a huge contrast with the atmosphere at the first Merton summer school in August 2007. Then, I was allowed to poke my head round the door of a training session. Now, Wadsworth lets me watch him take a priest right through the opening sequence of a Latin mass in a student’s room, using a reversed bookcase as an altar.

The priest, Canon Michael McCreadie, is in his fifties – yet today is the first time in his life that he has acted out the ancient gestures. He removes an invisible biretta (it’s a pretend mass). “Now, father, keep your hands joined,” Wadsworth reminds him. “Go to the centre of the altar, not touching it . . . left hand flat on the page. No, you should be over here,” and he gently turns his pupil towards the window.

After half an hour, we are still only five minutes into the order of service, but McCreadie is elated: “I wasn’t looking forward to saying the old mass, but after today I most certainly am.”

It’s only now I discover that he is dean of Leeds Cathedral. A year ago there were no senior main-stream clerics at the summer school. Later in the day, even more significantly, the Rev Malcolm McMahon, the Bishop of Nottingham, celebrates old rite pontifical vespers wearing a jewelled mitre and an embroidered cope that even Cardinal Wolsey might have considered over the top.

McMahon, a Dominican, is left-wing in his politics and certainly not part of a traditionalist faction – but nor does he belong to the politically correct, back-slapping magic circle. At dinner later, he effectively breaks ranks with his fellow bishops by unambiguously endorsing Pope Benedict’s vision of a church in which the old and new rites coexist. The traditionalists give him a standing ovation and a verse of God Bless our Pope.

He also tells Father Tim Finigan, [His Hermeneuticalness] author of the Hermeneutic of Continuity, the most influential of all the conservative blogs, to keep writing. Which is interesting, given that the Bishops’ Conference would dearly like to stop that particular blog.

Afterwards, Finigan writes: “Bishop McMahon has certainly won the hearts of the priests . . . All of a sudden, there is someone that many priests loyal to Pope Benedict will be watching closely . . . ecce sacerdos magnus!”

That’s Latin for “behold the great priest”. Those words will be read carefully in the Vatican, where Pope Benedict has been informed that the magic circle is desperate to install one of its own as the next cardinal. He isn’t pleased. Watch this space.

Damian Thompson is editor-in-chief of the Catholic Herald

The ultra-lefty dissenting National Catholic Reporter has particularly shameful coverage of another false-ordination ceremony for a woman who wants to be a Catholic priest.

The facts of the story go along the usual track: woman wants to be a Catholic priest, some other woman who want the same thing pretend to ordain her, they are now excommunicated.

However, it was the tone of the article in the National Catholic Reporter that just as shameful.

The writer uses terms like "priest" and "ordination" without making any distinctions.   And then speaks about the juridical effects of their actions as if the Church is the unjust oppressor of brave pioneers.

Let’s have a look at the article with my emphases and comments.

Sixth Catholic woman priest ordained [Note the two incorrect terms from the onset.  She is not a priest and she was not ordained.] this year
By DENNIS CODAY, NCR staff writer
Published:
August 9, 2008

Janice Sevre-Duszynska was [NOT] ordained a priest Saturday, Aug. 9, in Lexington, Ky., making her the sixth woman [NOT] to be ordained in the United States this year as part of the Roman [NON] Catholic Womenpriests movement.

The movement has [NOT] ordained 32 priests in the United States over the last two years. Saturday’s event was noteworthy because for the first time, a male, [Here is another problem.  They distinguish him as "male", ... as if there were any other kind!] Roman Catholic priest in good standing publicly joined the ceremony. Maryknoll Fr. Roy Bourgeois [a very strange guy] concelebrated at the ceremony and was a homilist. (See related story and read Bourgeois’ homily.)

Sevre-Duszynska, 58, is married. She has said she will serve as an itinerant [fake] priest “speaking out for the voiceless and challenging the powers that be to hear the call of nonviolence and cooperation in our world community.”

Marjorie Maguire, a longtime friend of Sevre-Duszynska from Milwaukee, talked with NCR by phone from Lexington after the [fake] ordination. About 150 people attended the [fake] ordination, which was held in the Unitarian Universalist [figures] Church in Lexington.

She said that at the end of the [pretend] ceremony, Sevre-Duszynska told the congregation that she often thinks of something Dominican Sr. Marge Tuite told her many years ago: “Never stop making the connections between sexism, racism, militarism, nationalism and all forms of violence.”

Making those connections, Maguire said, was really the theme of the day’s [fake] ordination. “Roy and Janice represent the merging of these (struggles of justice), of making these connections,” Maguire said.

During the Litany of the Saints, which is part of [in this case fake] ordination rite, as Sevre-Duszynska lay prostrate on floor, she held two objects: a wooden cross that she held during protests at SOA Watch demonstrations and an alb made of sackcloth that she wore at demonstrations for women’s ordinations that she staged during the meetings of the U.S. Catholic Bishops conferences.

[Now watch how the language shifts.]

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Lexington condemned the Roman Catholic Womenpriests movement as “in opposition to the church’s authentic teaching” and warned that “members of the Catholic faithful should not support or participate in Saturday’s event.” Participation in the event, “carries with it very serious penal sanctions in Church Law,” a statement on the diocese’s Web site warned.  [See how menancing, oppressive and unjust the official male dominated sexist Church is?]

The event, the diocese said, “has no connection to Roman Catholic Liturgy or Sacraments and cannot in any way be recognized as a valid reception of Sacred Orders.”

Despite such threats, this has been a busy year for the Womenpriests movement. Three women were [NOT] ordained in Boston July 20. A woman was ordained in Portland, Oregon June 7 and another in Winona, Minn., May 4. A woman and a man were [NOT] ordained in Canada May 29. The Roman Catholic Womenpriests claim [finally a word that get’s closer to the truth] 26 priests and a dozen deacons in the United States. A California woman, Dana Reynolds, was elected and [NOT, and laughably so] ordained a bishop for the movement earlier this year. Reynolds presided at the Lexington [fake] ordination.

The movement has at least two more [fake] ordinations planned for this year, in St. Barbara, Calif., in September and in Chicago in November.

Vatican formally condemns [again the tenor of the language is indicative of the position of the NCRep on this issue] ordinations

The Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a decree May 30 formally declaring that a woman who attempts to be ordained a Catholic priest and the persons attempting to ordain her are automatically excommunicated.

Dominican Fr. Augustine Di Noia, undersecretary of the congregation, told Catholic News Service May 30 that the decree makes clear that people directly involved in an attempted ordination of a woman excommunicate themselves automatically; it is not a penalty imposed by the local bishop or the universal church.

Since the excommunication is not imposed, there is no possibility of appeal, he said: "The only recourse is repentance.  [No recourse!  How mean.]

"The problem is not that all of a sudden there was a tsunami of attempted ordinations of women," Di Noia said, but that the Code of Canon Law and the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches "never anticipated that such a thing would happen." .  [Because it is so very weird.]

The decree was needed "for the good of the church and to ensure bishops have a common way of responding" when such ceremonies are held in their dioceses, he said.

The media spokeswoman for Womenpriests, Bridget Mary Meehan, says the punishments and excommunications are actually helping the movement.  [I doubt that.]

Such extreme treatment [Okay… these bizarre women simulate an ordination ceremony in direct defiance of the Holy See, the local bishop, and 2000 years of Christianty.  They go to some odd sect’s church to do it.  They commit scandal by trumpeting what they do.  They have all been informed of the juridical consequences…. and they do it anyway.  And the excommunication is "extreme treatment"?] doesn’t make sense to many ordinary Catholics, Meehan told NCR. “They ask, ‘Why would you excommunicate someone who just wants to serve God?’ ” [That’s pretty clear and this pretend confusion is hypocritical.] More and more Catholics are accepting the idea of women priests, she said. [So what?  Lot’s of people think that all sorts of sinful behaviors are okay.  They are still wrong.   The numbers of people who think this or that are not the basis of doctrine.]

“We are building a renewed model of priesthood for a renewed Roman Catholic Church in a community of equals in which all are welcome at the sacred Eucharistic table” said Meehan, [NOT] ordained two years ago, is a [fake] priest for house churches in Sarasota, Florida, and northern Virginia.  [Note here the imagery from the early Church: "house churches".  The idea is that the early roots of Christianity, in its first phase of growth, is somehow more authentic than what we have now.  Note the tone of words like "renewed" and "equals" and "welcome", whereas the official Church was into threats and warnings.]

“Excommunications are not keeping people from seeking us out,” [too bad] she said by phone from Lexington. “There is no punishment, there is nothing the institutional church can do to stop this movement,” she said.  [I’ve been using the word "official", but here is the code in another form: "institutional".]

Meehan had high praise for Bourgeois. She said that he is the first active male priest to take a public role in a woman’s ordination. [He should be instantly suspended a divinis, if he is really in good standing at this time.] She said he, like many other Catholics, are examining their consciences and finding that they must support a more inclusive church.  [I repeat what I sai above: there is code language here.  However, the NCRep has actually taken the side of the excommunicated separatists and trying to legitimize their movement.]

Sevre-Duszynska events leading up to ordination

    * In January 1998, Sevre-Duszynska made national news by interrupting an ordination ceremony at the Cathedral of Christ the King in Lexington and asking for ordination herself. “I am called by the Holy Spirit to present myself for ordination,” she said when the male [there are no other kind] candidate for priesthood was called forward by the bishop. “My name is Janice. I ask this for myself and for all women.”

      Sevre-Duszynska holds a master’s degree in theater from the University of Kentucky and is an award-winning playwright and received a fellowship to the Yale School of Drama.

      Even before her dramatic act at the cathedral she had worn blue arm bands to protest outside the site of ordinations, particiated [sic] in for-women-only eucharistic celebrations, written to bishops and carried placards promoting women priests.
    * In 2000, during the U.S. bishops’ November meeting in Washington, Sevre-Duszynska grapped [sic] a microphone after Cardinal Bernard Law, then of Boston, had proposed a statement on the situation in the Middle East. “I’m here to use my voice for many who cannot speak,” she said.

      “There’s an injustice within our church that affects the whole world.” She urged the bishops to be “compassionate to your sisters … women called by God to ordination.”

      Her microphone was turned off. She refused to leave the gathering, sitting there as the bishops continued their meeting in the large hotel ballroom. When that portion of the meeting ended, police escorted her out of the hotel. [What a class act.]

      The following year, as the prelates, again gathered for their November meeting, assembled for a Mass for Peace, Sevre-Duszynska interrupted the service [classy!] to answer the responsorial psalm: “Justice shall flourish in his time, and fullness of peace forever.” She responded: Justice for women in the church.” She refused to sit down and was led from the church by a group of five men, including a priest.
    * In 2002, Sevre-Duszynska was arrested and charged with trespass after she refused to leave a diaconate ordination [elegant] in Atlanta where she and several others protested sexism in the church. She told NCR in an interview at the time that she had entered the cathedral to pray. When told the service was invitation only, she said she told the ushers: “What are you talking about? I have been to many ordinations, and they’re never by invitation only. Besides, I’m a daughter of the church, and Christ welcomes everyone to the table.” The archdiocese of Atlanta filed suit seeking a permanent injunction barring her from entering any archdiocesan property.

Her protests have not been limited to ecclesiastical matters. That same year she was arrested and sentenced to three months in federal prison and fined $500 for a non-violent protest at the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Ga. She and more than two dozen others trespassed onto fort property in an organized protest calling for the closing of the school.

(Dennis Coday is an NCR staff writer. His e-mail address is dcoday@ncronline.org)

So, I think you can see why this article is so bad.   It is not simply that they present the facts of what happened, or what people said.  It is fair to relate a person’s position, no matter how strange it is.   But this paper, which has the word "Catholic" in its name, has taken the position of the fake ordination of women, which is heresy.   By doing so they also commit scandal.