In honor of the “ordination” today

Today, on a boat in Pittsburgh, 12 women are pretending to get ordained. In their honor, a little riff on Gilligan’s Island has been written:

Come sit right back
and you’ll hear a tale,
a tale of some heretics
That started from a Pittsburgh port,
aboard a tiny ship.

The mate was a fan of labyrinths
The skipper was a nun
10 other women were on board
for sacramental fun.
(for sacramental fun)

The liturgy was getting rough,
The litany was long,
Invoking Lilith, Gaia too,
Seemed just a bit too wrong
(though not to Bishop Spong)

The ship set ground in a strange new world,
uncharted heresy
With lesbians And feminists
An acting deacon’s wife
Peace activists
And the rest
Here on Womanchurch Isle

So this is the tale of the priestesses
There here for a long, long time.
They’re sure to make a mess of things
And bitch and moan and whine.

No pope! No men! No canon law
Not a dime to Peter’s Pence!
Like Lollard, Hussites, Bogomils,
They’ve left out common sense.

So join us here each year my friend,
There’s sure to be more fun,
With a hearty shout, “non serviam!
My will, not Thine be done.”

FR. Z ADDS: I am not sure we will thank Tim for planting the Gilligan’s Island theme song in our heads, where it will no doubt stick for a while, but this was pretty good parody work, I’ll say.

About Fr. Timothy Ferguson

A canonist and priest of the diocese of Marquette, student of Latin, history and theology with a particular interest in liturgy, the Middle Ages, penguins and the Green Bay Packers
This entry was posted in HONORED GUESTS, SESSIUNCULA. Bookmark the permalink.

7 Comments

  1. CaesarMagnus says:

    I got a good laugh out of that. Thanks. :)
    So where do these “bishops” come from who are doing this (I won’t say ordain since that is not actually happening)? Are they actually “Catholic” or are they from some other group?

  2. Dean says:

    /satire on

    Oh, Lord I am quite worthy
    That I should be a priest.

    Whoever does not think so
    Is a chauvinistic beast.

  3. Tim Ferguson says:

    Apparently, the “bishop” doing the ordination today is a woman who claims to have been secretly ordained a bishop herself by “Roman Catholic male bishops” whose names she is not releasing. The Bishopess, Ida Raming, will be accompanied by concelebrants Gisela Forster and Patricia Fresen (the press release doesn’t make it clear whether Gisela and Patricia are pretending to be bishops or pretending to be priests.

    I’m very curious to know who the “Roman Catholic male bishops” are – I suspect they are either vagi with valid but illicit orders, or fringe-left loonies with barely a toehold inside the institutional Church. It would be very, very interesting to find out, though.

  4. animadversor says:

    Yes, Mr. Ferguson, interesting to find out, but not, I think, too spiritually, profitable.

  5. animadversor says:

    uh, “spiritually profitable.”

  6. Great stuff, I stole it immediately :)

  7. From 2002 on the Danube 7:

    “Reached at her home in Austria, Mayr-Lumetzberger told NCR July 10 that while the women hope for dialogue with their bishops and -with the Vatican, they will not back down.

    “Our call comes from God, not from the Vatican,” Mayr-Lumetzberger said. “We cannot say it is invalid.

    “The two men who performed the ordinations are 61-year-old Argentine Romulo Braschi, a former Catholic priest who claims to have been made bishop in 1999 by a retired Argentinian prelate, and former Benedictine monk Ferdinand Regelsberger, who was ordained a bishop in May by Braschi.

    “Braschi’s claim to epsicopal status is disputed by church authorities.

    “Neither man is today in communion with Rome. Braschi describes himself as a bishop of the “Catholic-Apostolic Church of Jesus the King,” which he founded in the 1970s. Braschi claims 250 followers in Switzerland and Germany, though the Munich archdiocese put the number at 50. In 1996, Braschi launched the “Charismatic-Oxala-Nana Union,” devoted to “Afro-Argentinian nature religion.” He is also said to have embraced the Hindu doctrine of karma.

    “During the ceremony, which took place before some 200 friends, family and supporters, Braschi acknowledged that he has no authority to perform an ordination for the Roman Catholic church.

    “A third bishop, Dusan Spiner of the Czech Republic, was expected to take part June 29 but did not arrive, apparently due to traffic. Spiner was consecrated a bishop in secret during the communist era by the late Czech Bishop Felix Davidek. During the era of Soviet persecution, the Czech bishops had been given special permission to carry out ordinations without Roman authorization in order to ensure the continuation of the hierarchy.

    “Davidek ordained a small number of women priests and deacons in the 1960s, including Ludmila Javorova, who later emerged from the underground and became a symbol for the women’s ordination movement.

    “After the fall of communism, Spinet agreed not to function as a priest and today serves as a parish priest in Slovakia. According to news reports, Spiner ordained the seven women as deacons on Palm Sunday and had promised to ordain them as priests.

    “Mayr-Lumetzberger told NCR that the women would ask the Czech bishop to re-ordain them sub conditione, meaning in case the June 29 ordination was not valid.

    “Given that official Catholic doctrine holds that ordaining women is impossible, church authorities have pointed out that the pedigree of the bishop makes no difference in terms of validity.

    “Bishop Maximilian Aichem of Linz, in whose diocese Mayr-Lumetzberger lives, said that with their act the women had “put themselves outside the Catholic church.” A spokesperson for Cardinal Friedrich Wetter of Munich called the event a “sectarian spectacle” that had “nothing to do with the Catholic church.”

    “Cardinal Joachim Mesiner of Cologne said the project was absurd, comparing a woman wanting to be a priest with a man wanting to give birth. Roitinger told reporters that she has been threatened with expulsion from her religious order, the School Sisters of Hallein.

    The June 29 action split opinion even among supporters of women’s ordination. Some believe it a prophetic challenge to injustice, while others see it as an unconstructive provocation.”

    The women pretending to be bishops went from pretend priest to pretend bishop in less than 3 years. Fast tracking heresy…

Comments are closed.