From AP via CBS with my emphases and derision:
ROME, June 8, 2010
Protesters March in Vatican for Female Priests
Reform Groups Press for Ordination of Women, as Catholic Church Struggles With Abuse in Male-Only Priesthood(AP) Groups [Makes it sound like a big deal, doesn’t it?] that have long demanded that women be ordained Roman Catholic priests took advantage of the Vatican’s crisis over clerical sex abuse to press their cause Tuesday, demanding the Vatican open discussions on letting women join the priesthood.
Representatives of a half-dozen Catholic reform groups [bringing the grand total of this pressing demonstration to about four old women] marched on St. Peter’s Square on the eve of a three-day rally marking the end of the church’s yearlong celebration of the priest.
Vatican officials have said during the rally Pope Benedict XVI may apologize for the decades of rapes and molestation that children suffered at the hands of priests. [Yep… AP is doing a great job with their inflammatory phrasing in this topic. BTW… look for AP’s coverage of ministers abusing children. The underlying assumption of that profoundly stupid phrase is that only Catholic celibate Protestant men harm children.]
The umbrella group Women’s Ordination Conference said the Vatican shouldn’t be celebrating the priesthood while "turning a blind eye when men in its ranks destroy the lives of children and families." [Shall we talk about all the lives of children and families priests have helped? Let’s then compare percentages. And let’s look also at the uptick of female abuse of children.]
"While the hierarchy spends their time covering up scandals and throwing major celebrations for themselves, Catholic women are working for justice and making a positive difference in the world," said Erin Saiz Hanna, the Women’s Ordination Conference executive director.
She spoke at a news conference before a dozen members of the reform groups marched to the Vatican in a bid to hand out flyers to tourists, priests and other passers-by.
Police stopped them when they reached the square and asked them to leave, which they did.
UPDATE:
Another AP story… they sure are interested in this… has this photo…
… with a story about the big protest in Rome.
Looks like they have the big mo!
Yawn yawn yawn.
As good Queen Victoria once said: “We are not amused.”
Most of us are so tired of these tired people with their tired complaints. They need to “get a life” so that the Church can get on with its Life.
Yada yada yada-these ‘she-males’ haven’t a clue!
They are so obstinant in their pride and in their arrogance!
Haven’t they heard that “Roma Locuta-Causa Finita Est’ [Rome Has Spoken, Case Is Closed] back in 1994?YOU LOST, LADIES! NO PRIESTESSES-NOT NOW, NOT EVER! NEVER!
Yeah, Father Z, I know I’m ‘shouting’-but I am so irritated!
Amen to that, smcollinsus!
zzzzzz..bzzzz..huh? what? oh, them…zzzzz….
Can I a man become a Nun?. I need to protest this in Rome. He He!!
The umbrella group Women’s Ordination Conference said the Vatican shouldn’t be celebrating the priesthood while “turning a blind eye when men in its ranks destroy the lives of children and families.”
This is so boring. The Vatican has not “turned a blind eye” to this problem for over a decade now. How far into the future is required to put this behind them for these groups?
And why is it always put as an “either/or” scenario rather than “both/and”?
Why can’t the Church celebrate its good priests while dealing with problem priests?
Father, what was that Roman tradition of spitting?
Your line ‘We have seen at least some of this movie before’
reminds me of Fr. Corapi’s quote:
“There’s no need to worry. We’ve read the book and we know how it ends…WE WIN!”
applies to both posts!
A dozen people “protesting” is international news? Well, I guess it isn’t every day that a dozen clowns show up at St. Peter’s in Rome.
Dan
Sigh, it’s always about them, isn’t it? So self-absorbed… Oh well, what can you do? Ignore them, I guess.
Let’s protest that sexist women won’t allow men to get pregnant and see how people look at us.
Women give physical life and men give spiritual life. What’s not to understand? Now, sure men must cooperate in conception, but all that proves is that women must catechize their own children, which we already knew.
becket1, I think you’re onto something huge! Someone should conduct an investigation. Let’s get the protests rolling.
Now that Helen Thomas is retired, perhaps she can become the spokeswoman for the WOC.
Someone should ask them about the blind eye they turn concerning the evils of feminism/women’s liberation which destroy the lives of children and families throughout the whole of society.
You cant get more destructive of children and family than an ideology that violently opposes both children and families at the very point of their creation.
yawn, yawn yawn, have these women not heard the news that there never could be and never will be wymnpriests? To third becket1 the Vatican should commission a report to explain why men can’t become religious sisters, even though they can become Religious brothers/priests, perhaps these women should take a leaf out of Our Lady’s book and be HUMBLE, methinks that as Our Lady cannot offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass then then chances of any other woman doing so are astronomically remote, even better impossable.
I’ve said it before and will say it again. Forced Ad orientam would solve this issue in an instant. These women crave everyone to be looking at them, not at an image of a dead male hanging from a cross.
So why do they want to be a part of the hierarchy they hate so much? I mean really, they spend half their time insulting the Church hierarchy and the other half begging to join.
are these out of work reporters from the National Anti-Catholic Reporter?
“While the hierarchy spends their time covering up scandals and throwing major celebrations for themselves, Catholic women are working for justice and making a positive difference in the world.”
Because Catholic men are incapable of doing so? The scandals have nothing to do with priests having to be celibate men and everything to do with a faulty seminary screening process. These so-called “wymynprysts” pretend to speak for all Catholic women, when they plainly do not. I’m a Catholic woman and I find their behavior to be reprehensible. Priests need all the support we can give them, not this ignorant nonsense.
Every time I read something like this, I can’t help but remember that scene from “The Life of Brian” (which I probably should not have watched, but I did not know any better at the time). Anyway, here it is, courtesy of the Internet Movie Data Base:
Judith: [on Stan’s desire to be a mother] Here! I’ve got an idea: Suppose you agree that he can’t actually have babies, not having a womb – which is nobody’s fault, not even the Romans’ – but that he can have the *right* to have babies.
Francis: Good idea, Judith. We shall fight the oppressors for your right to have babies, brother… sister, sorry.
Reg: What’s the *point*?
Francis: What?
Reg: What’s the point of fighting for his right to have babies, when he can’t have babies?
Francis: It is symbolic of our struggle against oppression.
Reg: It’s symbolic of his struggle against reality.
So this is newsworthy? A conference with a dozen misguided women??
They certainly can be ordained…in a protestant church and being protesters that sounds about right. What Catholic teachings do they uphold and hold so dear that they even want to remain in the church??? Oh, change it to their liking? Right. Good luck with that. Peace and justtice? I have gotten to really dislike those words put together…no peace and no justice has been brought about through their efforts. And praying for justice? WE had better be praying for mercy with that justice because God’s justice is not going to be pretty for wayward mankind. I think I have read something in Scripture about fire from heaven?
I’m going to protest outside of the next NEA national meeting to be allowed to be a teacher because we all know that all women who are teachers are molesters- you know like Mary Kay Letourneau, Keenon Aampay Hal, Tonya Craft, Pamela Joan Rogers Turner, et. al.
See, with male teachers, there will be no more child molestation performed by teachers.
Dr. Eric: EXACTLY! Well done.
I regret having to point this out, but women religious, many of whom (progressives) are on board with female faux-ordination, are not innocent of the charges of abuse of children in the Catholic Church. [SNAP has a page on abuse by nuns.] The self-righteous progressive religious (and lay-) women and their advocates in the media should quit invoking the “abusive male hierarchy” theme before it comes back to bite them.
She spoke at a news conference before a dozen members of the reform groups marched to the Vatican in a bid to hand out flyers to tourists, priests and other passers-by.
Really? A dozen people supporting women’s ordination warrants a story? It just goes to show the Lamestream Media will find anything to make the Church appear in a bad light.
It’s hardly sporting to talk to these people anymore. They look more pathetic by the year. It really is quite sad. Do they understand how laughable they are to the Romans? Seriously, they really do find it all very amusing…and I’m not even talking about the clerics!
It’s hard to tell from the picture..but it looks like a whole mob of three wanna-bees. I’m surprised the wind didn’t blow them away totin’ that banner for a sail.
And I’m sure these women oppose abortion, condemn contraception and IVF, love the Extraordinary Form of the Mass, encourage frequent confession, and practice many traditional devotions. Faithful and obedient in all things save one.
I’m also sure a magical unicorn will take me to the lost world of Atlantis after dinner.
What a blatant display of sheer and abject stupidity! That’s it in a nutshell, no more complicated than that.
Reform Groups Press for Ordination of Women
Ummm, has anyone at the Associated Press looked up the word “reform”? When did the Church ever allow women to be ordained priests?
I sympathize with people who have a great desire to do something, feel they were born to do it, but very few male high school and college star basketball players make it into the pros. A guy’s chances are a lot less, no matter how well he plays, if he’s 5’8″. Biology is destiny, for many people.
The women who feel called to be Catholic priests keep running into the same brick wall and kicking it, which does them no good. They should choose some sort of vocation to serve God as faithful Catholics or join a Protestant church in which they can be ordained clergy. If they choose the right one, they can even be called “priests” though I doubt they’d be called “Father.” Would that bother them?
“You can’t always get what you want
And you don’t always want what you get
But if you try, sometimes you get what you need.” [Ah yes… those great prophets of our time Jagger and Richards. Very apt.]
MichaelJ: That is perfect. Especially the part about his (sorry, her!) struggle against reality. Gotta love John Cleese.
But Father, I must say that your speaking of “four old women,” when I see one young woman and two older women holding a banner in the photo, was perhaps uncharitable. It seemed intended as an insult because you added “old” when you could have just said “four women.” With all due respect, when you get over 60, or even 50, you’ll find that being called an “old man” or hearing others your age called “old” will annoy you and that you’ll be viewing 80 and up as “old”, if not 90 and up. [Gosh. I am really really sorry.]
The woman in charge of organizing the soup kitchen volunteers in my parish is 93, still driving, still bowling, and the woman in charge of outreach ministry to the sick is in her 80s, still driving, a daily communicant, and still keeping her home, large lawn and Mary Garden immaculate, without any help, so I have a bit of trouble thinking of them as “old.” Another mainstay of the parish was an 88 year-old woman, still driving herself to daily Mass and all her meetings, who died this winter.
Many women of all ages work hard in Catholic parishes around the world and don’t ask to be priests. I wish there were more positive stories about good Catholic women [So write some. You can do it, if it is important to you. Write them.] instead of all the emphasis on a minority of dissident ones, just as I wish we heard more about all the good priests instead of the emphasis on the minority who have abused children or had affairs.
But Jesus said His Church would be hated by the world so I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised. I have to keep reminding myself of that.
(sarcastic tone)
I am all for women priest…just as long as we can worship golden calves, institute temple prostitutes and get drunk before Mass. [Temple prostitution was the inevitable result in the ancient world of the cult of priestesses.]
(sarcastic tone).
I’ve said it gajillion times; I’ll say it again: These gals would not want a minute of what a typical diocesan priest goes through day to day; (I’m not one, so I can speak on their behalf without being accused of being a “whiner”:<)!.)
They want the “wine and cheese”, “entitled”, “sabbatical when I want one”, “professional status”…you know where I’m going here…”priesthood”.
Guess what, gals?
Ain’t gonna happen.
Become a member of one of the dying, dissenting LCWR communities…you can have all of the “wymynpryst masses” crap–which ARE going on, by the way; the “professional status”; the “sabbaticals” galore (eating up the retirement fund, I might add), etc. etc.
“Tell it to somebody who cares”, in the words of a great Boston Irish priest I was privileged to work with and live with…”tell it to somebody who cares”!
Oh my goodness, I just noticed the sexy shoes on the young demonstrator. Scary anomaly?
The young one must be a ringer. Either they hired her as their P.R. person, or she’s the daughter of one of the others who threatened to cut her out of her will.
Seriously, that is the first reasonably attractive and reasonably well dressed woman that I’ve seen anywhere near this “wymynpriest” nonsense. Heretofore they have been uniformly short-haired greying feminists in sensible shoes, you would call them ‘matronly’ (hey, I can say that, I’m matronly myself) except they don’t look motherly enough.
And what is it, five of them? Even Arlo Guthrie didn’t call it a “movement” until it was fifty people walking in, singing a bar of ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ and walking out.
Love the Arlo Guthrie reference….
A relic of my misspent youth . . . . :-D
JosephMary-I’m with you regarding ‘peace and justice’. Those words together grate on my nerves. I want to ask these ‘she-males’, ‘WHOSE peace? WHOSE justice? REAL justice IS coming, and IT won’t be pretty!’
Jayna and nazareth priest-bravo on your posts, too! I especially like your brand of sarcasm, nazareth priest-somehow you remind me of the no-nonsense delivery of Father Corapi! Oh man-I’m sure he’d let these harpies have it ‘right across the kisser’!
Look closer, there are FIVE women there, 4 older women (well that are all older looking than me) and one that is maybe close to my age, and for many that is “old” too.
As a former (or perhaps reformed and educated) feminist, I can “understand” but cannot condone or accept what these women want. Or what is it that is missing in their lives that they seek to destroy what they want in the pursuit of a “dream” that is not real or tangible.
There are ministries and chrism to which they can both aspire to and do in answer to a call to vocation, that are within the sphere of “womanhood.” Not every woman can procreate and bear a living child, but women-kind are called to nurture and grow life, same as not every man can father a child by procreation, but man-kind is called to live a life of strength and protection of life.
I really feel pity towards these women that have lives of spiritual poverty and emptiness that they attribute to the fact that “they are only women,” and if they were a man, they would be priests.
Women whose personal pains are such that they lash out like an animal towards those that wish to be of aid and service.
I was there, with six other priests of my archdiocese, and we saw these ladies as we departed, exhilarated, from the Mass with the Holy Father.
Some of us were irritated, others were amused. One of my brother priests was going to snap a photo of us in front of the piazza, and I said, but not with them in the picture! So we avoided that difficulty. Another of my brothers, possessing a far more agile wit, asked to be photographed in front of them. The resulting picture shows him, facing us (and away from the protesters), gesturing over his shoulder with his thumb, his other hand covering a guffaw.
We all thought it hilarious; and agreed emphaticallly it would not be published, but only circulated privately.
So you will have to take my word for it.