Female Priest, Mary Ryan, Defies Doctrine to Follow Faith/South Africa

http://mg.co.za/article/2014-10-02-female-priest-defies-doctrine-to-follow-faith

...."In South Africa, in particular,” the bishop asserted in the silent, packed chapel, “we know that the only way to change an unjust law is to break it. And that is what we are doing today.”

Last Sunday the Volmoed (“full of courage”) retreat centre in the Hemel-en-Aarde Valley outside Hermanus marked the site of an extraordinary act of religious disobedience: for the first time in South Africa, a woman was ordained a Roman Catholic priest.

Ryan is emphatic, however, that RCWP “is not solely preoccupied with women’s ordination. Women’s ordination is the vehicle for mission in our world,” she explains. “Women are equally called to mission and to leadership in that mission, and to celebrate the sacramentality of life. That’s really what this ordination is about … We believe we are gifted as equally as men to do that work...”