Ultra-liberal, double-standard riddled NPR has a puff piece about women pretending to be priests.
From the onset, let’s be clear. No woman can ever be validly ordained a priest.
No what they say or do, they can only ever simulate a sacrament. I suppose they could validly baptize, just as even an atheist can, provided they use the right matter and form.
They can never be priests and everything they do is empty.
In the following, my emphases and comments.
Female Priests Defy Catholic Church At The Altar
by Lily PercyJune 12, 2011
In 2002, seven women were secretly ordained as priests by two Roman Catholic bishops in Germany. After their ordination, a kind of domino effect ensued. [The writer, in the bag, so to speak, for the issue, wants to to accept some premises. The problem with this is that a) women can’t be ordained, they can never be priests, they can never be bishops. Then, there can be no real “domino effect.]
Those seven women went on to [pretend] ordain other women, and a movement to [pretend] ordain female priests all around the world was born. The movement, named Roman Catholic Womenpriests, says more than a hundred women have been [pretend] ordained since 2002, and two-thirds of them are in the U.S.
On a recent June day in Maryland, four more women were [pretend] ordained as priests. The gallery at St. John’s United Church of Christ was filled with Catholic priests and nuns, there to support the women and the ordination movement — though visitors were asked not to photograph them. [cowards] Witnessing the ceremony was enough to risk excommunication. [Well merited, too.]
The audience turned to watch as the women made their way down the aisle, beaming like brides. The two-and-a-half-hour ceremony ended with [pretend] Holy Communion — the moment they’d been waiting for. Each woman performed [faked] the rites for the first time as a [pretend] priest, breaking bread and serving wine as tears of joy flowed down their faces.
Marellen Mayers is one of the women [pretend] ordained that day, and like her fellow [dress-up] ordinands, she was raised in the Catholic Church. Her mother had an altar at home, and when Mayers was a child, she would stand in front of it, wearing a cloth as her vestments and saying the Latin Mass.
“My brother and sister would be kneeling behind me, and if I said, ‘Dominus vobiscum,’ I would turn around and say, ‘You’re supposed to say ‘Et cum spiritu tuo,’ ” Mayers recalls. [All that shows is that she’s bossy.]
Fellow [dress-up] ordinand Patti LaRosa had a similar experience growing up. She came from a close-knit Italian family and always felt comfortable in the Catholic Church. In the late ’70s she got married, had two kids and was working as an assistant at a law firm in Rochester, N.Y. [She was perhaps on a better path. Now her immortal soul is at risk.]
Several times a week she would go to church during her lunch break, and one day she realized, “I’m supposed to be a priest.” [LOL! Nooooo….]
As members of the Roman Catholic Church, these female [pretend] priests are all [get this…] breaking church rules, [Not a “rule”. This is is a teaching, not a rule. It is an irreformable, infallible teaching. The Church has no power to ordain women. It can never happen.] which allow ordination only to baptized males. No member of the Roman Catholic Womenpriests has been excommunicated by the Church, but they have felt repercussions. [? Is that actually the case?] They’ve not only been threatened but also have lost friends and colleagues within the Church — many of whom fear they will lose their jobs if they support the women’s ordination movement openly. [Good.]
LaRosa recognizes they are breaking Church law [But the law is based on a teaching. Because the Church believes A,B,C, we have laws X,Y,Z.] — specifically Canon 10:24 [10:24? She really did her homework.] — but says, “when you have an unjust law, [It’s not just a law.] sometimes it needs to be broken before it can be changed.”
They are deceiving themselves. They are delusional.
Women can never be priests.
They can put on whatever clothing they want and go through whatever ceremony they want, they will never… never… be priests.
This just isn’t going to get anywhere. The liberal press will try to make this seem bigger than it is. Note that “domino” image… 7 women faked an ordination, then another 7, and another and another… give me a break.
UPDATE:
One of our commentatrices posted about a cartoon she made. Be sure to check out her comment and look at the cartoon.
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When the so-called Catholic media and so-called Catholic universities which train deacons and religious ed teachers to believe this lie are not disciplined by bishops, this false teaching will continue to grow. The deacons I worked with in RCIA and some of the teachers taught that women priests were “just a matter of a different Pope”.Time for a USCCB document to be read out at all parishes.
Are these two bishops not known? I have a hard time thinking that their identities could really be kept secret. People talk.
I hope one day to be a Priest (am currently waiting for a response from two Traditional Societies of Apostolic life), I feel ineffibly sad for these wyvern non-priests. They have knowenly defied the Church, cut themselves off the Society of Christians and place their souls in mortal peril.
I wonder if during the ‘ceromany’ whoever was pretending to ordain them asked if the Church had found them worthy (not that anyone can be) of Ordination, and if so who answered the affirmative ?
Even worse than that are the (real) Priests who have either failed to stop these mad wyverns before they went through the dress-up or even encrouaged them, unless they repent I fear a strong condemnation from them come judgement day.
I went to a REAL Ordination last week, of four men who were previously anglican minsters and are now part of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham; then as now I prayed a prayer that is frequently on my lips “Jesus please make me a good and holy Priest”
irenaeus: the bishops are almost certainly “Old Catholic” bishops, or more precisely, the Utrecht bishops whom the Old Catholics use for their female “ordinations”.
How is it that the wymyn remind me of the Anglicans saying that their orders are valid?
Mundabor
Of course the stoles are on top of the chasubles. You can clearly see what is most important to these people.
Also, it seems as if they have their pretend “priests” ordaining other pretend “preists.” Don’t they have a pretend “bishop” to take care of that? I guess once you get rid of one thing, you don’t need to worry about keeping anything else.
Would that they see the error of their ways before it’s too late. And shame to those priests and nuns who attended.
The author unintentionally got one thing right. They were indeed “breaking bread and serving wine.”
This reminds me of the general confusion in our society today. Men and women with families and spouses realize they are homosexual. Someone who has lived as a man realizes they are a woman. We are continuously fed the lie that “you can be whatever you want to be” which is only chasing down the general meme of discontent that is sowed by our commercialism. Putting an altar in your house and then letting your daughter pretend to be a priest…two words: child abuse.
These ladies cause great scandal especially among the young. Though I imagine there are not many children involved in the charades given the success rate of the other “unjust law” with regards to contraception…
Biological Hope
Oh great. I can’t wait for this crud to be recycled by Australia’s ‘CathNews’.
And just how much will it take for the American episcopate to pull the plug on NCR?
I love this stoles on the outside thing. I was discussing this with a somewhat lapsed colleague (but still with very good instincts) at work (funnily enough regarding Bp Morris of Toowoomba). He suggested that in the context of vestment wearing tradition this is sort of analagous to wearing your underwear on the outside …
But the real question is “what of those bishops who simulated ordination?”.
According to a cursory Internet search:
– The ordaining prelate in the original 2002 sacrilege was Romulo Antonio Braschi. He, along with the original seven [pretend] ordinands, were all declared excommunicate by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on August 5, 2002.
– Ten of the 100 or so women have [not] been ordained bishops, and one of these wymynbishops presided over the recent abomination of desolation.
– On March 12, 2008, H.E. The Most Rev. Raymond Leo Burke, Archbishop of St. Louis, excommunicated three members of the Roman Catholic Womenpriests organization.
– The CDF clarified in May 2008 that any woman attempting to either impose or receive Holy Orders incurs excommunication latae sententiae.
I refuse to believe that Lily Percy is so poorly trained and incompetent as a journalist that she is incapable of finding this information.
Haven’t the womyn priests and the two bishops (assuming this story is true) excommunicated themselves?
This is why all bishops need to follow the lead of Bishop Vigneron and practice tough love. When parents don’t correct their children, teach the proper ways, and enforce the rules, bad things happen. Dissent-fests like the AcC, CFTAE, and the NcR require a firm and timely response to prevent the loss of souls.
It’s a bit like watching someone trying to defy that oppressive law of gravity by throwing themselves off a cliff….God have mercy on them and may He grant them the grace of knowledge and wisdom to know that we are supposed to work with God’s laws, not against them, to serve Him and become all we can be in Him.
I would suggest as an appropriate motto for a female unbishop – “Nemo dat quod non habet”
but also add – this is where the Church needs to hold a few public trials and publicly, openly declare the excommunications that these folks have already incurred. (See http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20071219_attentata-ord-donna_en.html)
The more articles like this that go out, the more some of the faithful are being confused. A public trial would help to clarify the issue for those who remain confused.
It seems to me that with all their talk of rules and Canon Law, they’re focusing only on the temporal side of priesthood while totally missing the transcendent side.
Agree with Tim Ferguson.
Whilst properly instructed Catholics very well know how things stand, the vast number of poorly instructed ones will be confused and, possibly, driven even further from the Church.
To be effective punishment must be swift, and public.
Mundabor
So lets see….
. In 9 years they have ‘more than a hundred’.
. One of them was married with kids in the late ’70s early ’80s – so she is at least 50.
.One of them knew the latin mass as a child – so she is what..60?
I think the biological solution will apply here as well.
The counterpoint to “no member ..has been excommunicated” is “… they have felt repercussions”? Is repercussions Latin for the Anglo Saxon, ‘felt like fools’?
Actually we women can be ministers of two sacraments: baptism, and matrimony. The same number as the vast majority of men.
But to NPR it’s all hocus-pocus. They don’t see any problem with saying these are “priests” who are “ordained,” because it’s all playing games of let’s-pretend to them anyway. They have mental scare quotes around all uses of those terms.
This is the fruit of the crisis of catechesis from the mid-and-late 20th century. Even while things are a bit better in some places (and a lot better in others—Diocese of Arlington, VA), the intellectual content of a lot of RCIA and Communion and Confirmation Prep–in my experience–isn’t so good.
And so we get women who want to be priests but can’t because they’re not men.
First rule of moral life, after avoid evil, and do the good: Accept reality.
What surprises me is that this stuff is still a story. Every time it happens, the women imply that the whole Church is going to change. But nothing changes. Then a year or two later, a couple of nice old ladies get “ordained” again. Big whoop. You’d think by now it would be old news.
“…and everything they do is empty.”
Ouch, haha. Maybe an ‘everything they do [concerning sacraments] is empty’, or something of the like would have sufficed. Because of the independent clause, that could be taken wrongly.
Also, I, too, laughed at the stole on the outside. Taking the traditional symbolism of vestments, now their authority trumps charity? Hmm…
Regarding the “none of the womenpriests has been excommunicated” claim, that is clearly false. Here is a link to a decree of excommunication (and other penalties) written by Card. Burke when he was in St. Louis. He also points out that at least some of those original Danube 7 were excommunicated. I hope the link works: http://archstl.org/files/archstl/images/stories/pdfs/03-12-08-delcaration_fresen-hudson-mcgrath.pdf
ALL: Keep in mind that what these wymym really crave… crave more than anything else… is approval from men in Rome.
@St. Irenaeus:
Yeah, the “bishops” are known, and IIRC, were declared excommunicate by Rome. The problem is, these “bishops” were people who received ordination from “Old Catholic” splinter groups, whose orders are dubious for a number of reasons.
In a way, we ought to be grateful that Womenpriests do not seem to have been able to attract a canonical bishop to preside at these events. If these fake ordinations were done by, say, a Weakland, or a Hunthausen, or a Gumbleton, it would sow more confusion among the faithful than if they were done by some eccentric seminary drop-out whose “church” consists of a website, a post office box, and a “cleric” or two celebrating a liturgy in their living room.
Yes the NPR article has left out the significant fact that these women do not have the indelible mark of priesthood. MSM so frequently blasts out articles which display basic ignorance of the faith in the first place.
“In 2002, seven women were secretly ordained as priests by two Roman Catholic bishops in Germany. . . . Those seven women went on to [pretend] ordain other women . . .”
Did this strike anyone else as odd: they were “ordained” priests, and then went on to “ordain” other women? Even granted (per absurdum) that they could be ordained priests, they couldn’t ordain anyone else unless and until they were ordained bishops. Is there any end to their theological confusion?
Furthermore, here is the CDF’s response to the Danube 7. Yes, they were all excommunicated.
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20021221_scomunica-donne_en.html
It is Weiner-like for someone in that group to say “Oh, nobody has ever been excommunicated.”
–Dan
I’m dying to know who the two “bishops” were! I wonder if their act, ipso facto, excommunicates them? Either way, that only males can be Priests is dogmatic, so these bishops are heretics headed to hell (“The floor of hell is paved with the skulls of bishops.”–St. Athanasius).
That comment from there made me chuckle.
?I’ve always wanted to have a degree from Harvard University, so this past weekend, my wife conferred one on me. Also, I’ve always wanted to be a duck, so she also declared that I am a duck. I wish no ill will on these women and I pray for them. I do not wish them excommunicated. But if NPR reported on my first two statements with the same lack of research and critical thinking with which it reported this story, it would be laughed off of the air. This is no different than Fox News “reporting” about Sarah Palin.?
Oops that was the comment
This is sad, and it’s sad that this stuff continues to occur. As Tim Ferguson and Mundabor have said, some clearer action by Local Ordinaries and Rome would be helpful to the Faithful.
During my RCIA (just this past year), the Pastor of my parish said he hoped women would be “allowed to be ordained” soon. Thankfully, the seminarian catechist stepped in and clarified that such a thing cannot and will not happen, and cited Ordinatio Sacerdotalis.
Among other things, this problem seems to refer to a larger confusion about gender roles and male identity vis a vis female identity. Fr. Z’s reminder of their craving of recognition from men in Rome is sad but true, I think.
@Daniel Latinus: Thanks. I was worried about precisely what you suggested would be bad: that someone clearly within apostolic succession had tried this stunt. “Old Catholics” are sad, having run into some parishes and their literature in Switzerland. Pretty much Episcopalians. It’s amazing what happens when you sever from Rome.
‘Several times a week she would go to church during her lunch break, and one day she realized, “I’m supposed to be a priest.” ‘
Whatever happened to “discernment of spirits”?? This is what comes of the contemporary notion that all “feelings” are valid, worthy, and reliable as motives for action.
I heard about this on NPR Sunday afternoon, while I was eating my dinner (I keep my portable radio on the table when I eat in the evening). I immediately turned the volume down, so I wouldn’t get indigestion from listening to this ‘crap’!
These ‘women’ just don’t get it-they CANNOT BE ORDAINED PRIESTS! What’s so hard about that? Why can’t they get it through their thick skulls? Rome has already made that decision in 1994! AND IT CAN’T, AND WON’T BE CHANGED! [sorry for shouting, Father-I just get so aggravated about this!]
It makes me ashamed to be a woman sometimes—sigh.
Tim Ferguson, you got the right idea about ‘public trials’! Good that Father Z gave you that ‘gold star of the day’!
And when I turned my radio volume back up, there was only one line at the end of the story about the ‘other, conservative Catholic conference’ in Detroit (Call To Holiness). Shows you what side NPR is on regarding the Catholic Church–and it ain’t on the loyal, true and faithful side!
I made a cartoon about this post, Fr. Z. I wondered what my daughter who took First Communion this year would say to a woman who said she secretly pretended to be a priest. It goes against what we teach children when they are preparing for the Sacraments. If I can make it better, please let me know.
A Womanpriest Meets a Little Girl
I thought there was a woman (Norma Jean Coon) that you wrote about on this blog a couple months ago that was “ordained” but later apologized. I don’t recall if she was excommunicated before that though, but she was involved with the Womenpriests and apologized for her involvement in it.
@irishgirl
It would be nice to hear more about the Call to Holiness conference.
Father Z, you had one post telling us who participated there. Any more news about it?
It’s bad spiritual direction. St. Therese felt a huge longing to become a priest, but she had enough good spiritual direction and sense to realize that it meant she was supposed to pray for all priests and unite herself spiritually to their work. St. Teresa of Avila felt a huge longing to go to the Holy Land and started out with her brother, but her parents’ vocation was (among other things) to catch the kids and stop them, and to redirect their good longing from getting them enslaved, raped, and very probably brought to a bad end, instead of becoming great missionaries and little-c crusaders in their own country. Plenty of saints have longed to be dead as soon as possible in order to be with God more quickly, but that doesn’t mean God wants them to rush right out and kill themselves. It means He wants them to keep Him in mind, and possibly to become religious or normal-life Christians who are “dead to the world” and live totally for and in Him. The Wright Brothers longed to fly like birds, but that didn’t mean God wanted them to waste their time trying to grow feathers!
It’s okay to want the impossible, if the impossible is basically a good thing. But if it is impossible, that’s a sign that the thing itself, that you’re longing for, isn’t the proper goal. So you look around to find out what your goal really is supposed to be, somewhere in that neighborhood.
But nobody told these women that; nobody helped them to find the way to deepen their vocations instead of running off to play with the hungry wolves. We have not given these women proper care; and we should all pray for them. Some women have already wised up and turned their lives around; let’s hope for more.
\\The deacons I worked with in RCIA and some of the teachers taught that women priests were “just a matter of a different Pope”.\\
It’s people like this who are the true papists. They think that the pope can say something and automatically make it truth. They carry papal infallibility to a degree that Vatican I never intended.
It isn’t just the secular media that are portraying these women as “female priests defying Rome’s rules.” Fishwrap-Lite is playing along with the NCR agitprop. Fr. Anthony Ruff’s unlikely band of disgruntled liturgists and Lutherans, having not gotten its way with the new translation, is now cozying up to the sacrament-simulator crowd, apparently taking the “any enemy of my enemy is my friend” approach. A real shame. Oh, well… I guess that, as Peter Kreeft is fond of saying, “When God saw that the Church in America lacked persecutions, he sent them liturgists.”
What diocese, what parish do these women serve? To which bishop did they make their
promise to remain obedient? Did they follow the years of formation and training that
non-fake seminarians go through before they are called before their bishop to be ordained?
Or do they follow the route taken by the performer Sinead O’Connor, who breathlessly
informed an interviewer that she got herself ‘ordained’ after subjecting herself to an entire
year of study? In short, what Church do they think they’re serving and what makes them
think that they have anything like the formation we Catholics expect of (actual) priests?
Another thing– are these women also hearing confessions? The mind reels at the implications
if they are. They can only simulate absolution. Not being actual priests, they are not bound
by the seal of the confessional, so any protection canon law would give a penitent would not
apply in their case, I suppose. So any person fool enough to make their confession to one of
these ‘priestesses’ would not, in fact, be absolved and would only add to their sins the sin of
participating in the mockery of a sacrament. To top it all off, if the ‘priestess’ decided that her
time in the confessional was just too juicy a bit of gossip not to share, the penitent would have
no recourse under canon law.
Immagine the look on their faces when they meet St. Peter at the gates and he tells them to leave the vestments and hit the road!
Several times a week she would go to church during her lunch break, and one day she realized, “I’m supposed to be a priest.”
Too bad it wasn’t what many good priests must pray for, “I’m supposed to be a saint.”
I hope the pretendettes are not trying to hear confessions! Picture that one!
Bless me Fadd-her Hazel for ……
I am going to be ordained a Congregationalist minister by girlfriend who used to be a Congregationalist minister just so I can “feel like” I have the approval of the anti-Catholic Yankee bigots who live all-around me. Once I have their approval I am sure my life will be just so fufilled.
RE: SuzyQ’s comment about these wymyn only seeing the temporal side of the priesthood.
I agree wholeheartedly. My theory of the “modernists” and dissenters is that they only see the material. I called them “materialists.” For example:
–The Eucharist is only a meal of bread and wine, not Body and Blood of Christ.
–The priest’s vestments or sacred vessels must not be too beautiful or of the finest materials. They don’t see the beauty or expense for the glory of God (unless they are the priests, I suppose).
–Excommunication or any bishop’s admonishment is an arbitrary power-mad action. There is no supernatural, eternal consequence of sin or disobedience.
–When our local bishop corrected the faithful who were not kneeling for the Eucharistic prayer, the materialists saw him as being bossy. They could not see that they ought to kneel before their God.
While it is clear that these ordinations were void, it seems not to be the case that the bishops involved were all of some certainly invalidly consecrated succession. It is most probable that the “bishops” of this new occult “ordination” are those of Womenpriest movement.
The man who performed the original “Womenpriest” ordination on the boat in Germany was Rómulo Antonio Braschi, who heads a Brazilian sect. He claims consecration as a bishop from Roberto Palin, head of another Brazilian sect. Who claimed consecration from Manoel Ceia Laranjeira from yet another Brazilian sect. Laranjeira claims consecration by a yet an other leader of another Brazilian sect, Salomão Barbosa Ferraz. Finally, Ferraz was consecrated bishop by the rebel Roman Catholic bishop of Botucatu, Brazil, Carlos Duarte Costa in 1941.
Whether this line of odd-balls actually has preserved Catholic orders is anyone’s guess. Frankly, I am skeptical of theologies that treat ordination like “cooties” that you just catch from someone else and pass on, outside of any Church structure. Bishops exist to guide and govern dioceses, not to run around “making” new gyrovague “bishops.” In short, to have the intention of making gyrovague bishops does not seem to be the intention required for valid conferral of orders. It is not “to intend what the Church does.”
I wonder how one of these women would react if I were to approach her to request, on behalf of myself and a stable group of the faithful, that she celebrate Mass in the extraordinary form as per the provisions of Summorum Pontificum. I would be sure to remind her, of course, that altar girls are not permitted in the EF.
This Benedictine loves that expression “gyrovague bishops.” And the cooties analogy is great too. I guess there are good cooties as well as bad cooties. Maybe we can come up with a theology of the types of cooties as Aquinas did with angels.
The woman featured prominently in this article, Patti LaRossa, was not even Catholic at the time of her simulated ordination. Patti is a member of Spiritus Christi here in Rochester, a community which split from Corpus Christi church in 1998-9, thus entering into schism and excommunicating themselves. Spiritus Christi has “ordained” four women thus far: Mary Ramerman, Denise Donato, Chava Redonnet, and now Patti. For the record, no male fake vocations have come from this community.
I have a few questions in general about this women priestess movement… Are there any standards whatsoever to evaluate and screen these women priestess candidates? Do they receive the same rigorous psychological tests that real male seminarians must endure? Do these priestess candidates have to please large lay-run vocations boards in order to even be accepted into seminary by their bishop(ess)? Do they complete the five to six years of study and formation that male seminarians must complete or do they merely obtain your run-of-the-mill two year Master of Divination degree at a local lay theology school?
I suspect the bar is much lower and that anybody can be “ordained” by this group so as to produce quantity over quality.
Stacy Trasancos,
Excellent xtranormal video! (Sent it to three of my daughters)
Centristian “I wonder how one of these women would react …”
I’m sure she’d patiently point out to you that misogyny is a Latin word.
acricketchirps:
Yes, a fine Latin vocabulary word…like “androgyny”.
Gyrovague bishops pretend-ordaining sarabaite priestesses.
Does anybody know whether any dissenting men have sought ordination from the women pseudo-bishops (or “episcopettes” as I call them)? If none have, why? Do they not believe in the ladies’ ability to consecrate them? Surely there must be priest-wannabes among male heretics, as among female?
“The audience turned to watch as the women made their way down the aisle, beaming like brides.”
Funny how they were beaming likes brides… about to be [so they thought] conformed to the image of the Bridegroom, the High Priest. That sounds errr… well confusing… or like some sort of sexual sin.
If you are interested in what these so-called woman “priests” are doing in Oregon, go to:
http://vocalblog.blogspot.com/
That’s the blog for “Voice of Catholics Advocating Life”. Unfortunately the archbishop for Western Oregon is doing little if anything about these fake priests.
Yet again, looks like this feminist stuff goes to some womens’ heads.
To me, they appear to be crazy for power, even going over The Popes’ Head, even Christ!
A load of nutters in my mind.
Lord have Mercy.