"In the Name of the Father and of the Mother" by Malwina Gudowska Swerve/Article about Monica Kilburn Smith, Calgary Herald/ Canada

http://www.calgaryherald.com/entertainment/Name+Father+Mother/6452926/story.html

"Calgary’s only female priest is a member of a small but growing movement that is challenging the very nature of what the Roman Catholic Church considers sacred.
There’s something both ironic and prophetic about meeting a Roman Catholic priest at a Humpty’s restaurant. With its grim, 1990s-inspired decor and large booths that swallow you up, the eatery best known for “breakfast that never ends,” regularly serves as a weekend confessional for morning-after tales of wild, alcohol-fuelled nights. Tonight, it’s filled with mostly older folks, many alone, ordering steak sandwiches and either quietly pondering life, it appears, or reading trashy newspapers, or both.

And then there’s that famous egg: proud, Humpty sat on a wall until he had his fall and, at that point, no one could put him back together again. The nursery rhyme’s themes of descent and finality are weighty symbols for what could happen to an institution which critics, and even many supporters feel is in a time of crisis.

As she (yes, she) comes through the Humpty’s doors, the first thing I notice about Monica Kilburn Smith is the brilliant white hair that frames an incongruously youthful face. The 51-year-old Calgarian greets me warmly but cautiously before unbuttoning her long black coat. Kilburn Smith was ordained a Roman Catholic priest on May 29th, 2008.

She is the only female priest in Calgary, one of eight such priests (and one female bishop) in Canada and one of more than 100 in North America and Europe who are part of the Roman Catholic Womenpriests (RCWP), an international group seeking to reform the Church.

“The phrase I use when asked why I do this is ‘a loving rage and a raging love for the church, and a deep caring for women’” says Kilburn Smith. “The church should be at the forefront, leading the way and saying ‘Women are as holy as men. Women hear God’s call like [men] do, and let’s listen to them.’ But they don’t.”

Kilburn Smith and other women priests believe their ordinations are “sacramentally valid” because they were ordained in the same “apostolic succession” that ordains men as Roman Catholic priests. The RCWP movement began in 2002 with the Danube Seven, a group of seven women who were secretly ordained on the river in Central Europe by male bishops in good standing with the Church. Two of the seven women were later ordained bishops by several male bishops in Europe so that they could continue the movement. The identities of the male bishops cannot be revealed because they continue to work within the Church and would face excommunication. For their part, the Danube Seven women were excommunicated six months after being ordained..."

Read more: http://www.calgaryherald.com/life/Name+Father+Mother/6452926/story.html#ixzz1warmfLir