DOCUMENTARY “PINK SMOKE OVER THE VATICAN” TO BE SHOWN 3:00 – 5:00 PM ON SATURDAY, Nov. 9 At: 2 Westmill Ln., Palm Coast, Fl.-- FREE

         
See:  http://ncronline.org/blogs/grace-margins/women-priests-demonstrate-profound-faithfulness-god
         www.associationofromancatholicwomenpriests.org
         www.romancatholicwomenpriests.org         
         http://bridgetmarys.blogspot.com/ 
         http://www.womensordination.org/

 2 Westmill Ln., Palm Coast FREE

"Pink Smoke Over the Vatican," the award-winning documentary about the struggle for justice and equality for women in the Roman Catholic Church -- and how it affects women worldwide -- will be shown on Saturday Nov., 9, 3:00 – 5:00 at 2 Westmill Ln., Palm Coast, Fl. Questions and discussion will follow.

The film's title came from Women's Ordination Conference (WOC) activists who burned Pink Smoke instead of the Vatican's symbolic white smoke before Joseph Ratzinger was elected pope. The WOC activists were highlighting the lack of women in the papal election process and the Vatican's ban on women priests. 

The ordination of women in the Roman Catholic Church is seen by many as a keystone to the empowerment of women worldwide. The women interviewed in Pink Smoke have made the connections between sexism in the Roman Catholic Church and discrimination and violence toward women and children in our world.  These concerns include traditional prejudice, education, employment, female genital mutilation, hunger, poverty, and reproductive safety.
   
In "Pink Smoke Over the Vatican" filmmaker Jules Hart tells the story of the women priest movement in the Roman Catholic Church. “It is not every day that you meet people who give up everything for what they believe in,” says Hart, who is not Catholic, about the women priests and supporters who inspired her to make this film.  Women who are ordained -- and their supporters -- are not only excommunicated by the Vatican; if they work for the Church, they lose their jobs. Male priests who want to support the equality of women remain silent out of fear of losing their jobs and pensions.

The film chronicles the history of the women's ordination movement in the Roman Catholic Church, beginning with the secret ordination of Ludmila Javorova in 1970 during Czechoslovakia's communist rule. When male bishops ordained seven women on the Danube in 2002, the Roman Catholic Women Priests movement began. In 2003, two of the original seven women were ordained bishops. More women were ordained in North America in 2005 and in the U.S. in 2006 in Pittsburgh. Today over 200 women have been ordained Roman Catholic Women Priests or are candidates for ordination. They are currently in 24 states in the U.S. and in nine other countries, in Latin America, Canada and Europe.

The film features interviews with some of the women who claim to have been ordained in the same line of apostolic succession that male priests and bishops also claim. It includes interviews with Catholic theologian Dorothy Irvin whose work in the early Church period has drawn attention to tombstones, frescoes, catacombs and mosaics documenting women's ministries as deacons, priests and bishops.

Other prominent women who have not been ordained also are interviewed. Commentary by Maryknoll priest Father Roy Bourgeois on the women priest movement and the sacrifices he made for supporting it give a male priest’s perspective on gender injustice within the Church. Also included are the perspectives of the spokesman for the Pittsburgh (PA-USA) diocese, Father Ronald Lengwin, who gives the latest official position of the hierarchy on women’s ordination.

People who have seen Pink Smoke say that it is a grassroots prophetic story that speaks truth to power.