Bridget Mary- Part 1
It is with overflowing joy and deep gratitude to the Spirit that we gather today to ordain Lynn Lavictoire as a priest in the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests here in Ottawa, Canada.
Today is holy ground.
Today, we witness what happens when a woman says yes to God’s call—and refuses to let that call be silenced.
Lynn describes her journey to priestly ordination as rooted in a deep and persistent awareness of God’s presence in her life—calling her, guiding her, and inviting her into ever-deeper service. Through years of prayer, community, and courageous discernment, she has come to trust that this call is real, sacred, and meant to be shared. Her journey reflects a heart attuned to the Spirit and a commitment to serve God’s people with compassion, justice, and love.
And Lynn, today we say to you:
We see you.
We affirm you.
We celebrate you.
A groundbreaking body of scholarship from the Westar Institute, especially After Jesus, Before Christianity, invites us to look again at the earliest followers of Jesus—not through the lens of later institutional structures, but through the vibrant, diverse, Spirit-filled communities they actually were.
What do we discover?
We discover there was no single, uniform Christianity in the beginning.
We discover many Jesus movements—creative, courageous, and alive in the Spirit.
We discover communities with remarkable openness regarding leadership, belonging, and shared ministry.
In those early centuries, followers of Jesus formed chosen families—communities rooted not in status or power, but in love, mutual care, and shared mission. They gathered in homes. They shared meals. They prayed together. They engaged in lively conversations, deep discernment, and communal leadership.
Sound familiar?
It should.
Because what we are living today in women-priest-led inclusive Catholic communities is not something new—it is something ancient.
It is Gospel-rooted.
It is Spirit-led.
Like those early Christian communities, we gather around tables—kitchen tables, Eucharistic tables, tables of welcome—where all are invited, all are heard, and all are blessed.
At our Eucharistic celebrations, the homily is often a dialogue.
The Eucharistic Prayer is prayed together by the community.
The table is open.
Especially open to those who have been excluded, wounded, silenced, or told they do not belong.
And so we proclaim with our lives:
This is the banquet of love, and there is a place for everyone.
The Gospels themselves affirm this inclusive vision.
Mary Magdalene stands at the heart of the resurrection story.
She is the first witness to the empty tomb.
She encounters the Risen Christ.
And she is sent—sent!—as the apostle to the apostles.
In both canonical and newly recovered ancient texts, women are not silent.
They are teachers.
They are leaders.
They are spiritual authorities within their communities.
In the Gospel of Mary, when Mary Magdalene’s authority is challenged by Peter and Andrew, Levi defends her leadership and affirms her credibility as a disciple beloved by Jesus. Mary is recognized as a legitimate spiritual leader worthy of respect and trust.
Like Mary Magdalene, women and men today share equal authority to preach, teach, preside, and minister in Christ’s community of equals.
The international Roman Catholic Women Priests movement claims the spiritual authority to ordain women as deacons, priests, and bishops in apostolic succession to serve the people of God.
The movement began in 2002 with the ordination of seven courageous women on the Danube River. Our first women bishops were ordained by a Roman Catholic male bishop in apostolic succession. Therefore, our ordinations are valid, though not recognized by Canon Law. Today, there are nearly 300 women priests, deacons, and bishops serving inclusive Catholic communities throughout the world.
And today, in Lynn—and in women priests around the globe—we see that same Spirit alive and moving.
Like Mary Magdalene, Lynn is called to proclaim the Good News.
Like Mary Magdalene, she is sent.
Like Mary Magdalene, she stands in a lineage of courageous, Spirit-filled discipleship.
We reject excommunication because no human law can erase what God has created in baptism.
We are not leaving the Church.
We are helping to renew the Church—toward equality, justice, shared leadership, and the fullness of Gospel love.
We stand in the prophetic tradition of holy obedience to the Spirit. Like Joan of Arc, condemned by church authorities and later canonized, we trust that institutional rejection does not invalidate God’s call. We also remember women like Saint Mary MacKillop and Saint Mother Theodore Guerin, who followed conscience and suffered ecclesial punishment before later being honored by the Church.
We are engaging in prophetic obedience by challenging an unjust law so that women and all genders may fully answer God’s call to ordained ministry in service of the people of God.
Yes, there is a cost.
Women priests often walk a path marked by misunderstanding, rejection, and exclusion.
But it is also a path filled with grace, courage, compassion, and deep joy.
We serve in inclusive communities, homes, hospitals, prisons, and places at the margins.
We accompany the grieving.
We bless the brokenhearted. We anoint the sick, we preside at baptisms and weddings,
We celebrate the sacredness of everyday life in Eucharistic Liturgies where all are welcome.
And we do this together—
as companions,
as equals,
as a community of love.
And now, today, we ordain Lynn.
Lynn, your yes matters.
Your voice matters.
Your leadership matters.
Your ministry matters.
You are not alone.
You stand within a worldwide movement of Gospel equality.
You stand within a community of baptized equals.
You stand within the living tradition of Jesus’ disciples.
And most of all—
you stand in the infinite love of God who has called you by name.
So today, we rejoice.
We rejoice in your courage.
We rejoice in your calling.
We rejoice in the Spirit who continues to renew the Church through you.
And today we proclaim in this ordination:
The Spirit is alive.
The call is real.
And the future of the Church is unfolding—right here, right now—through courageous women like you, Lynn.
Amen.
Lynn Victoire ARCWP- Part 2
Lynn’s Homily
“Who can discern the will of the Holy One?” That’s the question asked in our first reading from the Book of Wisdom well over two thousand ago. Yet it is as relevant today as it was back then. We are immersed in a secular culture of conflicting ideologies, corrosive power dynamics and “me first” attitudes. It’s hard to find God in this environment because as the Book of Wisdom warns us our “reasoning is faulty and our plans are shaky …Our best guesses about the things of this earth are only approximate, and we toil to discover even those things which are within our grasp.”
We need wisdom to guide us in our discernment. Not human wisdom, but: the kind of wisdom that was present in the beginning when God created the universe; the kind of wisdom found in the words of Jesus, the radical preacher from Nazareth; the kind of wisdom given to us through the Holy Spirit. Wisdom speaks softly and hearing it in the noise of modern living is challenging. Sometimes it can be found in mystical signs or a supernatural feeling, but it is often as simple as being in conversation with somebody else. I know that when I look around this room, I see many people who have been the source of this divine wisdom for me.
Wisdom can also be found in the movement of the Holy Spirit in all the faithful. The Catholic Church calls this “sensus fidelium” and it is the basis of synodality, a correction for the many things that are wrong in the Catholic Church today including the sexual abuse of children, financial abuse, clericalism, oppression of Indigenous people, treatment of LGBTQ+, and the minimization of women’s roles to name a few issues. Everyone was excited about synodality because it gives a new voice to the concerns of all people including the poor, the marginalized, the oppressed, and the victimized. However, the question that has emerged after these first few years of synodality is how long will it take for the Church hierarchy to truly listen and act on the wisdom that has been spoken through the voice of the people? Women have been waiting too long.
In the second reading, Saint Paul provides us a beautiful model of the ideal community where everyone treats each other with dignity and love. A community bound together in peace because “there is one Saviour, one faith, one baptism, one God and Creator of all.” A sacred place where God’s grace is poured out on the people who receive and exercise their diverse gifts for building up the Body of Christ. This is the model of the early Church, a community embracing the unity of hearts, the inclusion of all people, and the diversity of their gifts.
These are also the ideals of the Roman Catholic Women Priests movement who welcome all people in all their diversity to live the way Jesus taught us. People are allowed to be amazingly creative, always dynamic and grow in relationship with each other and our wonderfully mysterious Triune God. When I first heard about Roman Catholic Women Priests, the burning question was how long was I going to sit in the pews and keep saying “no” to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit? An instructor during my husband’s diaconate formation program once told us that if you are not standing on the edge, you are taking up too much room. I think you know where I stand now.
As well as answering God’s call, being part of the Roman Catholic Women Priests means stepping out with other women and men to make a difference. Justice demands that we raise our voices because change is needed and to stay quiet only serves to reinforce the status quo.
I would love to be able to say that the path I have chosen to travel will lead to a place of joy and hope. However, in today’s Gospel, Jesus offers us a stark reality check. He begins by commanding us to love one another, but in the next breath, pulls back the curtain to reveal the friction that inevitably occurs when the kingdom of God collides with the ruling elite. The world will hate us because the world hated him first.
And when Jesus talked about “world,” he wasn’t talking about all the people who were not his followers. His heart was always open to the poor and the marginalized, the sick and the disabled, and anyone who was open to his message. Jesus’ greatest anger was directed towards the governing Jewish religious elite who controlled people’s lives and saw him as a disruptive threat. We all know what happened to Jesus after that.
In the modern context, it is the Catholic Church which has taken on the role of world, a system of control responsible for the spiritual care of over 1.4 billion people but which has pushed over half these people to the margins because they are women. The equal baptismal dignity envisaged by Paul is not being practiced. Women priests stand as a disruptive threat, a reality that was acknowledged through changes in canon law as recently as 2021 which more clearly articulated Church disapproval of ordained women including pushing them out of the Church by excommunicating them. As more and more people begin to actively support women’s ordination, the Church is likely to react even more strongly, but we cannot back down when we are challenging unjust laws and attitudes. Jesus never did.
Despite the strong resistance the Church has put up against ordaining women, and the challenges women priests will face, the winds of change are rising. Not every bishop, priest, and deacon in the Church share the same opinion. Many are in favour of ordained women and if not as priests, at least as deacons. Synodality has also escalated the potential for change and the current pope has every intention of continuing the process. Women priests all around the world are being authentic witnesses of discipleship in Christ demonstrating ordination is not an exclusive ministry for men. The winds of change are rising and that gives me hope. But what gives me the greatest hope is the statement coming from the Church hierarchy itself saying, “what comes from the Holy Spirit cannot be stopped.”