Today we rejoice that the
Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests will ordain 6 women:
Deacon
Barbara Billey who lives in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, has been married
for 32 years. She is currently a counselor and art therapist. Barbara, a Doctor
of Ministry candidate, has a particular interest in women's spirituality and a
passion for integrating sacred arts in liturgy.
Deacon Susan Marie
Guzik from Eastlake, a suburb of Cleveland, is a widow, mother,
grandmother. She received certification as a Lay Ecclesial Minister in the
Diocese of Cleveland. Susan has volunteered in the Diocese as a pastoral
minister and for the past seven years served as the Director/Advisor of the
Stephen Ministry Program at St. Mary Magdalene Parish.
The
following women will be ordained PRIESTS:
Mary
Bergan Blanchard from Albuquerque, NM, is a former Sister of Mercy, a
widow, mother, grandmother, teacher, writer and licensed counselor. After
retiring in New Mexico, she served as a Mental Health Counselor in a Roman
Catholic Church for twenty years.
Mary Eileen
Collingwood, from the Cleveland area, is a wife, mother and grandmother who,
with her advanced degree in theology, has served for 40 years in church
ministry and taught theology on the high school and college levels. In the parish she was Director of Religious
Education, Coordinator for Marriage Preparation and Pastoral Minister.
Irene Scaramazza, from
Columbus, Ohio has advanced degrees in theology, pastoral
counseling, and family therapy. She is currently working as a hospice
chaplain having completed her Provisional Board Chaplaincy Certification.
Marianne Therese Smyth,
from Silver Spring, MD; is a mother of two sons. She is a hospice volunteer
with Montgomery Hospice and has worked for 25 years as a para-educator with
special needs
students. She has a Masters of Education in counseling, a
certificate in theological studies and serves the Living Water Inclusive
Community in Catonsville, Maryland.
These women, like the Samaritan woman have left their water
jars behind. They come today to share the living water of their lives with
God’s people.
The story of the Samaritan woman at the well records the longest conversation
between Jesus and anyone in the gospels. This sacred text reveals that Christ
is the “wellspring of love” that will fill us forever. Everyone is invited to
drink the “living water” and belong to the community of faith. Jesus’ trademark
is inclusiveness. There are no outsiders. All that is required is that we
worship in spirit and truth.
In the encounter with the woman at the well, Jesus goes beyond the
social and religious taboos of his times.
It is astonishing for us and shocking even for the apostles that
Jesus confided his identity as Messiah to a woman who does not belong to the
religious establishment and who is a foreigner and divorced.
According to biblical experts, the woman understood Jesus’ mention
that she had no “husband” not as a call to true repentance, but as a call to
true worship. Other commentators believe that Jesus’ referral to the woman’s
“husbands” pointed to the Samaritan practice of intermarriage outside the
tribe, a custom that caused tension with the Jews because it destroyed Jewish
ancestral lines. No matter what interpretation we accept, the Samaritan woman
continues to live in couples today who reflect the face of God as they live as
spiritual equals in committed, covenantal relationships.
So too, today, Roman Catholic Women Priests are listening and
responding to God's Living Water flowing through us as
we evangelize our church with the good news that all are invited to live
Gospel equality now in inclusive communities where everyone is welcome.
Like the Samaritan woman, we too are daring and bold women, who
are leaving our water jars behind, because we are being and encountering the
Living Water of God’s love every day on the margins of our
church. Beyond our comfort zone and off the power grid we minister
to the family of God who do not have a spiritual home - divorced and remarried
Catholics, gays, lesbians, transgender, women who are excluded from liturgical
leadership, youth and many others who are seeking a
contemporary model of Church that is aligned with Gospel values.
In his recent book, A
Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence and Power, President
Jimmy Carter, who supports women’s ordination and women’s equality in all
religions, finds it “ironic” that women are welcomed into many professions “but
are deprived of the right to serve Jesus Christ in positions of leadership” as
they did in the early Christian churches. The former president said that the violence and abuse of women in society is directly connected to the spiritual inequality of women in religious practice. He said that he
would become a Catholic when he is invited to do so by a female priest! I assure you that we have issued an
invitation!
World-renown
Spanish human rights activist, Sister Teresa Forcades, affirms the vision of
Vatican 11 and suggests that Pope Francis might be an agent for change. In an
article entitled: "Activist Nun -Change Comes from the Bottom" written by
Janice Sevre-Duszynska and published by the National Catholic Reporter:
“Sister Teresa said that it must be the people
in the church who will promote the acceptance of contraception and an end to
the church's homophobia and who become voices in the struggle for justice for
women.” ‘We now have women priests with the
people from the bottom up,’ Forcades said with a smile. ‘The people are ready.’
”
Twenty years ago, on May 22, 1994, Pope John Paul II issued an
apostolic letter, “Ordinatio Sacerdotalis” (“Priestly Ordination”) which
reserved priesthood in the Catholic Church to men only."This teaching that
'women are not fully in the likeness of Jesus' -- qualifying, as it does, as a theological
explanation -- is utterly and demonstrably heretical,” said Augustinian
theologian John Shea in his 2nd letter to U.S. bishops.
Despite two decades of blatant discrimination of women and denial of women’s basic human rights as
spiritual equals before God, justice is rising up for women in the church in
grassroots, inclusive, Catholic communities. With almost 200 Roman Catholic
Women Priests in the international movement, a renewed priestly ministry is flowering in 10 countries.
Catholics worldwide are embracing a new model of church led by women
and men.
In imagining
a dialogue with our beloved Pope Francis, I would invite him to consider
faithful dissent in our church as healthy. I would ardently
appeal for the end of discrimination, spiritual violence and bullying
toward any member of the Body of Christ, including the Leadership Conference of
Women Religious and for the cancellation of ecclesiastical
punishments, including excommunication against women priests and our
supporters. Let us pray that the Spirit will move our Pope to affirm all of us
as beloved sisters and brothers in the family of God.
I believe that on a deep, mystical level women priests are
beginning a healing process of centuries-old deep misogyny in which spiritual
power was invested exclusively in men. With
your prayers and commitment, we are recovering the dropped thread of our sister
women in the early Church who embraced with dignity their full right to preach,
to proclaim and to lead worship.
Now we ordain you, our beloved Sisters, Mary, Marianne, Mary, Irene,
Barbara and Susan. In solidarity with Jesus
and the Samaritan woman may you be God's living waters bringing refreshment
to the arid structures of our Church and beyond. May you help to liberate God's people from oppression by acts of justice, compassion and love. May you foster spiritual renewal in inclusive faith communities of equals.
Today, all of us rejoice that Christ Sophia, Wellspring of Wisdom, is in our midst!
Bridget Mary Meehan, D.Min., a Sister for Christian Community, was
ordained a Roman Catholic priest in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on July 31, 2006.
She was ordained a bishop on April 19, 2009. Dr. Meehan is currently Dean
of the Doctor of Ministry Program for Global Ministries University, and is the
author of 20 books, including Living Gospel Equality Now: Loving in
the Heart of God, The Healing Power of Prayer and Praying with Women of the
Bible . She presides at liturgies in Mary, Mother of Jesus Inclusive
Catholic Community in Sarasota, Florida. Dr. Meehan can be reached at sofiabmm@aol.com
and www.arcwp.org
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