Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests
For Immediate Release: June 3, 2021
Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests Response to Pope Francis’s Failure to Revise Canon Law Equating Women’s Ordination with Clergy Sex Abuse
On June 1, 2021 Pope Francis shunned the Spirit’s lead to transform the centuries old patriarchal bias against Catholic women called to priestly ministry. He failed to revise Canon 1379 which equates women’s ordination with the grave crime of clerical sex abuse. This updated Canon continues to reserve the harshest punishment of excommunication for ordained women serving the people of God as liturgical presiders, pastoral ministers, spiritual counsellors, interfaith chaplains and social justice advocates. This misogynist man-made law is a degrading insult not only to women called to Holy Orders but to faithful Catholics everywhere.
The worldwide international Roman Catholic Women Priest Movement is supported by millions of our fellow Catholics who reject the Vatican’s continued discrimination against women from a hierarchical model. Rather, they embrace an inclusive, Christ-centered and Spirit-empowered model of Church as a community of equals where all are welcome to receive Eucharist and other sacraments, including the LGBTIQA, and divorced and remarried population.
Moreover, in recent years, some Catholics in priest-deprived areas have been calling women in their communities to be ordained as well as inviting women priests to serve as sacramental leaders to promote spiritual transformation, restorative justice and social change.
The Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests claims our spiritual authority to ordain women as a prophetic act to lead the Church to live Gospel equality and justice now. We joyfully respond to the Spirit’s call to create new paths for spiritual renewal and structural transformation in our Church that affirm women as equal images of the Divine in our world.
Contacts: Janice Sevre Duszynska, rhythmsofthedance1@gmail.com, 859-684-4247
Bridget Mary Meehan, sofiabmm.bmm@gmail.com, 703-505-0004
See also:
Pope Francis Misses Opportunity to Revise Misogynist Canon Law 1379 that Equates Women's Ordination with Clerical Sexual Abuse , Roman Catholic Women Priests Are Contemporary Apostles of Equality by Bridget Mary Meehan ARCWP
https://bridgetmarys.blogspot.com/2021/06/pope-francis-misses-opportunity-to.html
New canon on women's ordination nothing new, can be changed by Phyllis Zagano
Pope Francis issues long-awaited reform of Vatican penal law
The changes include stronger penalties for sexual abuse, financial malfeasance and crimes against the sacraments, including the ordination of women.
https://religionnews.com/2021/06/01/pope-francis-issues-long-awaited-reform-of-vatican-penal-law/
More articles on Pope Francis and an explanation in Religious News Service link of distinction between Decree by Pope Benedict and the new change by Pope Francis which states a penalty in Canon Law.
My response to enshrining the excommunication of women priests and bishops in the revised Code of Canon Law:
The real scandal in the Church is not women priests but the misogyny of the hierarchy. The Roman Catholic Women Priests initiative is a prophetic justice movement that empowers women called to live their God given call to ordained ministry.
Bridget Mary Meehan ARCWP
More than 70% of the canons on the code of canon law were changed by the reform, with only 17 articles remaining untouched. The punishments are “applied with canonical equity and having in mind the restoration of justice, the reform of the offender, and the repair of scandal,” the document reads.
The real scandal in the Church is not women priests but the misogyny of the hierarchy. Bridget Mary Meehan ARCWP
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