"Defying the Vatican, Catholic Women Claim Their Priesthood" by Tim Padgett/TIME

Judy Lee Presiding at Liturgy at
Joshua House for Homeless in Ft. Myers, Fl.
By Tim Padgett/TIME/Sept. 27, 2010
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2019635,00.html
"Like any good priest, Judy Lee knows how to use a Bible story. One of the readings for Roman Catholic Masses on a recent Sunday, from the Book of Wisdom, recounts how the Hebrews defied the pharaoh by worshipping God "in secret." That passage resonates at the house in Fort Myers, Fla., where Lee is conducting Mass for 25 Catholics gathered in front of a coffee-table altar in defiance of the Pope. "Rome says you'll be thrown out of the church for being here," says Lee, "because I'm a woman."
"Lee, 67, considers herself a validly ordained Catholic priest. ..She and the more than 100 other women who claim to be Catholic priests in the U.S. and abroad can thank the church for one thing: its hysterical response to their movement — in July the Vatican branded female ordination a delictum gravius, or grave crime, the same label it has given pedophilia — has elicited enough attention to lift their profile out of the catacombs. .."

"....We're the Rosa Parks of the Catholic Church," says Bridget Mary Meehan, a Womenpriests bishop and former nun. "We no longer accept second-class status in our own religion." Meehan, 62, once did ministry work that included "everything a priest does," she says — except saying Mass. ...Like Meehan, most of the almost 80 Catholic women ordained in the U.S. hold advanced religious degrees and have logged years of lay work in the church, from premarriage counseling to serving Communion. Many are married — another doctrinal no-no, since Catholic priests, with rare exceptions, must be celibate — and they often have outside jobs to make ends meet. Mary Magdalene Apostle's pastor, Jane Via, is a San Diego County prosecutor... "