Women's Ordination Conference and Roman Catholic Women Priests Challenge Pope's Slam on Women Priests and Our Supporters

Once again the Vatican is the gift that keeps on giving. Roman Catholic Women Priests are leading the Church into a renewed priestly ministry in grassroots communities. For some, like Pope Benedict, this is a revolution, but for millions of Catholics, including many male priests and some bishops, including one cardinal who are rising up for gender justice, it is a welcome holy shakeup!

Next weekend, two USA bishops, Regina Nicolosi and Bridget Mary Meehan will preside at women's ordinations in Indiana and Florida!

Bridget Mary Meehan, ARCWP

Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests

www.arcwp.org

703-505-0004

sofiabmm@aol.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 5, 2012

Contact: Erin Saiz Hanna, 202.675.1006 

On holiest of days, Pope slams women's ordination supporters

Response from Erin Saiz Hanna, Executive Director   

   

WASHINGTON, DC - Today, Roman Catholics globally joined together for the feast of Holy Thursday, to commemorate the Last Supper of Jesus the Christ and welcome the Easter Triduum, the holiest days for Catholics.  It was during the Last Supper that Jesus gave those gathered a new commandment -- to "love one another, as I have loved you, that you also love one another."

While during these holy days we would presume to hear Pope Benedict XVI echoing Jesus' call for love and inclusion, instead the Pope put forth a message of fear, intimidation, and oppression. In his homily earlier today, he denounced "disobedience" within the church and strongly reprimanded priests who support women's ordination.

The Women's Ordination Conference (WOC) is discouraged that the Pope would use this sacred time in our religious tradition to attack his fellow priests, who in good conscience, support women's full inclusion in the Roman Catholic Church. It is not these priests who are disobedient, it is the hierarchy who has lost touch with the people of God.

Out of fear of the growing numbers of ordained women and the overwhelming support they receive, the Vatican is trying to preserve what little power they have left by attempting to extinguish the widespread call for women's equality in the church. It will not work.

More than 63 percent of U.S. Catholics, and millions of Catholics worldwide, support the ordination of women. The Vatican's own Pontifical Biblical Commission found in 1976 that there is no scriptural reason to prohibit the ordination of women.  The Bible describes how women were prominent leaders in Jesus' ministry and early Christianity.  In all four gospels, Mary Magdalene was the primary witness to the central event of Christianity-Christ's resurrection. 

It is long overdue for the Vatican to listen to its own research, its own theologians and its own people who say that women are equally created in the image of God and are called to serve as priests in a renewed and inclusive Roman Catholic Church.  

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Women's Ordination Conference, founded in 1975 and based in Washington, D.C., the is the oldest and largest national organization working for the ordination of women as priests, deacons, and bishops into an inclusive and accountable Roman Catholic Church. WOC also promotes new perspectives on ordination that call for less separation between the clergy and laity.  

Roman Catholic Women Priests Denounce Pope Benedict XVI's Holy Thursday Message

Roman Catholic Womenpriests-USA, Inc. 
Suzanne Avison Thiel, President

Portland, Oregon USA  suzthiel@yahoo.com
romancatholicwomenpriests.org  

Janice Sevre-Duszynska, Media ARCWP

Lexington, KY. rhythmsofthedance@gmail.com

            859-684-4247      

5 April 2012 

This Holy Thursday, Pope Benedict XVI,  in another heavy-handed move,  denounced all priests who have questioned church teachings on celibacy and the ordination of women but he surely cannot denounce the millions of Catholics who no longer believe that such practices are what Jesus would want.  The Catholic people through the sensus fidelium have already accepted women priests.  We in this prophetic movement continue to experience the support of Catholics throughout the world who are in favor of a married priesthood and of women who are answering their call from God to be their priests.  For the pontiff to so boldly speak against the men and women who have taken the risk to question these teachings is simply a misused tactic and exercise of the sin of arrogance and sexism. His unwillingness to even participate in a dialogue with the so called "dissidents" is nothing but a  punitive, radical, authoritarian attempt to squelch any freedom of conscience and so-called disobedience. We call on all Catholic women to speak out for their equality and justice. Our Church must continue to evolve and be renewed in the signs of the times. Let us not forget that there were married men and women participating in the events of Holy Week- holy women that Jesus knew and loved and trusted with priestly ministry.  

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI has denounced priests who have questioned church teaching on celibacy and ordaining women, saying Thursday they were disobeying his authority to try to impose their own ideas on the church.

Benedict made the rare and explicit criticism from the altar of St. Peter's Basilica in his homily on Holy Thursday, when priests recall the promises they made when ordained.

In 2006, a group of Austrian priests launched the Pfarrer Initiative, or pastor initiative, a call to disobedience aimed at abolishing priestly celibacy and opening the clergy to women to relieve the shortages of priests.

Last June, the group's members essentially threatened a schism, saying the Vatican's refusal to hear their complaints left them no choice but to "follow our conscience and act independently."

They issued a revised call to disobedience in which they said parishes would celebrate Eucharistic services without priests, that they would let women preach, and they pledged to speak out publicly and frequently for female and married priests.

The group now claims more than 300 Austrian priests and deacons as well as supporters in other countries, and its influence has grown to such an extent that top Austrian bishops met with Vatican officials in January to discuss how to handle them, Italian news reports said.

So far, neither the Vatican nor the archbishop of Vienna, Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, have imposed any canonical penalties on them.

In his homily, Benedict said the dissidents claim to be motivated by concern for the church. But he suggested that in reality they were just making "a desperate push to do something to change the church in accordance with (their) own preferences and ideas."

"We would like to believe that the authors of this summons are motivated by concern for the church, that they are convinced that the slow pace of institutions has to be overcome by drastic measures, in order to open up new paths and to bring the Church up to date," he said. "But is disobedience really a way to do this?"

He said Jesus always followed true obedience to God's will, not "human caprice."

Benedict's straightforward, "lucid" homily reaffirming mandatory celibacy for priests shows that the pontiff is in solid command at the helm of the Catholic church, said the editor of the Vatican's newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano.

The pope, who turns 75 this month, has recently taken to using a cane and other devices to help him move during public ceremonies, and some observers have speculated that the less physically vigorous pontiff's leadership grip of the church might be loosening.

But Benedict's strong call to priests to staunchly embrace church teaching on celibacy "once again erases the stereotype of a weak pope who supposedly isn't governing the church," wrote Vatican editor Gian Maria Vian in an unusually prominent front-page commentary on the papal homily.

Early in the evening, Benedict went to Rome's St. John in Lateran Basilica to preside at the traditional Holy Thursday foot-washing ceremony. There, two aides helped the pope down the few steps from the altar, but otherwise Benedict walked steadily and briskly on his own to the array of priests who sat, each with one foot bare, so the pope could pour water over the foot in a symbol of humility and service. In remarks at the service, Benedict denounced "arrogance" as the "true essence of sin."

In the same spirit of service, the pope earmarked the collection of money offered by faithful during the Mass to help refugees of the violence in Syria.

The head of the Pfarrer Initiative, Rev. Hellmut Schueller, downplayed the severity of Benedict's message and said the pope was merely asking for reflection on whether disobedience can reform the church.

In a telephone interview with The Associated Press, Schueller noted that Benedict didn't forbid what the dissident priests were doing or advocating.

"We are listening with interest to this message," he said. "I cannot see it as a very sharp wording."

The members of the initiative, Schueller said, will reflect on Benedict's words as part of a dialogue he hopes to open with Austrian bishops.

"We have decided to go this way because it's the way of our conscience, as faithful, and we are expressing only the opinion of the people at the base of the church."

He said the initiative did not seek to split the church or create schism, saying the positions articulated in the call for disobedience increasingly reflected the will of ordinary Catholics.

Any divisions that are being created, Schueller said, are between the base of the church and the hierarchy.

Holy Thursday homilies are often unusual in that the pope uses them to issue direct messages to priests. In 2006, for example, Benedict read a letter written by a cleric who was killed as he prayed in Turkey.

And on Holy Thursday in 2002, Pope John Paul II broke his silence over the explosion of the U.S. sex abuse scandal, denouncing the sins of priestly abusers and the "grave scandal" that was casting a "dark shadow of suspicion" over all priests.

___

AP writer Frances D'Emilio contributed to this report from Rome.

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