"In her 1962 class picture, Ann Harrington sits four rows back in Sister Mary Rosanna’s fourth-grade class. But some 40 years after her days at Our Lady of Hope, Harrington is ready to move to the front.
The wife, mother and longtime Catholic is a candidate for ordination to the diaconate of Roman Catholic Women Priests. The movement, which began in Germany a little more than a decade ago, has since ordained 150 women, all without the approval of the Vatican or the blessing of the Catholic Church.
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| Ann Harrington is in pink sweater two to the right of Bridget Mary Meehan at Mary Magdala Liturgy in N.VA. |
“It’s very much like the civil rights movement ... Rosa Parks sitting down on the bus saying, ‘I’m not sitting in the back of the bus anymore,’” Harrington said. “I’m not sitting in the back of the Catholic Church anymore.”
Harrington will talk about her journey this week as the Interfaith Alliance of Eastern Carolina shows the film “Pink Smoke Over the Vatican,” an award-winning documentary which chronicles the stories of women who have risked excommunication to pursue what they consider to be a calling from God.
“Why are we, in 2013, even having this discussion?” Harrington, 61, asked. “It makes no sense. Women have been in every field. They do everything.
“The problem is that when a woman feels called by God to be a (Catholic) priest, there is no way for her to answer that call.”
The Catholic Church prohibits the ordination of women as priests or bishops. Though the idea of women’s ordination has been discussed for decades, Pope John Paul II declared in 1994 that “the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women.”
Newly elected Pope Francis made headlines last week for becoming the first pontiff to wash women’s feet, an act he performed during a Maundy Thursday ritual at a juvenile detention center in Rome. Though this move upset some traditionalists, Francis is considered a conservative, and he has written of his opposition to ordaining women...."
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