Fr. Z's Blog

Sr. Fiedler with an ERA button

Sr. Maureen Fiedler is one of our favorites at National catholic Fishwrap.

This could be an great exercise for a fundamental theology class: count the errors.

No… there may be too many to cover in a class period.

Only someone like Maureen could present something so deeply tangled and confused.

Roy Bourgeois: a man of conscience
Maureen Fiedler

Last night, I was stunned [shocked!] — but not totally surprised — to hear the news that the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had dismissed Fr. Roy Bourgeois from the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers.

My first reaction was a prayer of solidarity with Roy, whom I have long admired as a man of conscience and whom I count as a friend. [And thus reason goes out the door.]

But I also exhaled a loud sigh of dismay. This is the latest sign that the Catholic church is moving backward into the 19th century with all deliberate speed. [LOL!  Right.  I am not sure that many sane people think this is happening.  I look around at the Church and still see the 1970’s.] It is another move by the Vatican that puts its actions at odds with the core message of the Gospel [LOL!] and with the document on the Church in the Modern World from Vatican II: “Every type of discrimination … based on sex … is to be overcome and eradicated as contrary to God’s intent” (No. 29). [Dopey. The prohibition of women’s ordination is not discrimination.  It also isn’t just a “policy”.]

[Get this! Swallow your Mystic Monk Coffee and put down the mug.] It is a sign that Vatican officials refuse to read or understand the extensive scholarship on the question of women’s ordination, scholarship that has so thoroughly refuted their arguments that any intelligent opponent of women’s ordination would have given up long ago. [HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA!]

It is yet another action that suggests that Rome’s desire to shore up its all-male power structure comes before anything else. [This is is, isn’t it.  For people like Fiedler, the ordination of women is about power/oppression.  She is, no doubt, incapable of seeing the theological issues through any other lens that that of the civil rights/anti-war protests of the 1960’s.] The Vatican’s fear of women, women’s gifts and women’s powers is on display yet again for all to see. [HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA!]

My real sadness in all this: The Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers cooperated in the process. [They did? When did they do that? If Maryknoll cooperated why did the CDF have to get involved and override their vote about Roy?] I don’t know if, in the end, their leadership voted to dismiss Roy (the press release is unclear on that), but they did ask Roy to recant his stand. [They would have to do that, wouldn’t they.] To Roy’s credit, he refused. He refused to give in to the medieval and oppressive process [LOL!] that asked recantations and threatened dismissal for his stand of conscience. That process — in this instance and in other settings — flies in the face of all that is good and holy and respectful of persons. [This is total melt-down, isn’t it.  Kinda fun.] It is not Catholic in the deepest sense of that word. True Catholicism respects conscience.

One day, when the Catholic church finally decides to ordain women, Roy will be recognized as a prophet and a saint. In many quarters of the church, he already is.

She is unhinged.

Forget Maureen’s spitttle-flecked rant for a moment.

What get’s my goat in this is how the once magnificent Maryknoll has been destroyed.  They have sunk so low that Roy Bourgeois is now their poster child?  They have sunk so low that the CDF had to clean their house?  Think about how amazing Maryknoll was once upon a time.

Corruptio optimi pessima!