Women ordained as priests have been condemned by the Roman Catholic Church. But instead of just leaving the church, they say they want to change it Sam Upshaw Jr., Louisville Courier Journal
They packed tightly in a circle in a Unitarian Church office in downtown Louisville, warmed by space heaters and the glow from tea candles flickering on a table.
The men and women prayed for immigrants seeking asylum, for the homeless on Louisville's streets, for the people who feel they've been betrayed by organized religion.
About 15 turned out for this Mass on a cold November night. One said she came in secret, fearing other Catholics would punish her for attending.
That's because this Mass is not sanctioned by the Vatican: The priest giving Holy Communion was the Rev. Mary Sue Barnett, a woman excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church since her ordination by the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests in 2013.
The Vatican has denounced female ordination, adding it in 2010 to a list of grave crimes that includes child sex abuse and making the offense punishable by excommunication for both the woman and the cleric who ordained her.
But Vatican condemnation isn't enough to stop Barnett and some 265 other women around the world who have been ordained as priests, deacons or bishops from offering communion.
While they tend to focus more on activism than church services, women priests head at least 80 known congregations. Some serve only a handful of people on an irregular basis, while others, like one in Indianapolis, attract up to 70 people for special events and regularly see 20 worshipers on Sundays.
Two organizations ordain Roman Catholic women in the United States: Roman Catholic Womenpriests and the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests. Combined, they have nearly 8,000 Facebook followers.
"The dismantling of patriarchy is what we're about," said Martha Sherman, president of Roman Catholic Womenpriests and a resident of Salem, South Dakota. "Women have been put down and have not had a voice in society."
Their movement is small when compared with more than 400,000 ordained male priests ministering to nearly 1.3 billion Roman Catholics worldwide. But movement leaders say the church's long-running scandal over sexual abuse by priests and efforts to cover it up have prompted more Catholics to attend women-led services.
In Louisville, where the Roman Catholic archdiocese still struggles to regain trust 15 years after a $25.7 million settlement paid to victims, some rank-and-file Catholics argue the church must accept female leaders, including priests, if it truly wants to heal.
"It’s a hard time for some people to be Catholic. We feel Catholic, we are Catholic. But there are things within the institutional church that cry out for change," said Jeanne Denny of Louisville, who considers herself Catholic to her bones.
"For a lot of us, it is a palpable ache," said Denny, who attends vigils and protests with Barnett.
Some people who follow women priests also attend traditional church services, while others solely rely on women priests for spiritual leadership. Many are lifelong Catholics, like Marian Foster, 57, who as a child played at giving communion to her friends using pickle slices and Hawaiian Punch.
"That was the day I learned what blasphemy was from my mother, and apparently I was doing it," she said. "But it didn’t feel blasphemous at all. It felt authentic."
Another Louisville woman, Cindy Starr, left St. William Catholic Church in Park Hill after discovering her priest had sexually abused children. Church leaders had moved him there in 1990, knowing his history, thinking the risk was lessened because the parish had few children.
"So many of the people I cared about were making excuses for (him)," she said. "It hurt me."
Starr said she so longed for a less male-dominated approach to Scripture that she crossed out references to men in her Bible. Yet she only felt at home in Catholicism.
In 2015, after reading about the women priest movement, she attended a service with Barnett.
It felt like home.
"We're half the population and need to be included," she said. "I come from a large, good Catholic family and the boys were allowed to do things that we couldn't because we were girls. I'm bucking that."
'Helping people wherever they are'
Women in the movement argue they're on firm theological ground to be ordained, noting that Christ appeared first to women after the resurrection and that St. Paul affirmed a woman named Junia. They also point out that Mary Magdalene is revered as an apostle to the apostles.
Representatives from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops did not return requests for comment for this story. Cecelia Price, a spokeswoman for the Archdiocese of Louisville, said it has nothing to add to the church's broader teaching.
The woman priest movement started in 2002 with seven women ordained by a Roman Catholic bishop on a ship cruising Europe's Danube River.
The bishop's identity remains a closely guarded secret, but his involvement lends legitimacy to the movement. Catholics believe in "apostolic succession" — the uninterrupted transmission of spiritual authority from the apostles through successive popes and bishops. The women priests say the unidentified bishop had the authority to include them in that lineage.
The women also assert they remain a part of the Roman Catholic Church, rather than being a separate sect, because they were baptized Roman Catholic and always will consider themselves as such. Just as Lutherans or Anglicans who broke away from the church do, they use terms such as Mass and Holy Communion to describe their rites and sacraments.
And, as the Rev. Debra Meyers of Cincinnati puts it, the movement seeks to aid the church in "helping people wherever they are."
"I have an obligation to help bring the church back to what it is supposed to be and not become an Episcopalian, or a member of the Church of God," Meyers said. "They're doing great things to make the world a better place. But I was baptized into this group, and I'm trying my best to make it better."
But they diverge from the Catholic Church on key issues: supporting same-sex marriage; supporting access to contraception; and allowing everyone to take Holy Communion.
The women priests don't have a unified stance against abortion.
The women also reject the hierarchical structure of the Catholic Church and rely on their bishops for support and ordination rather than direction, decision-making or selecting their ministry.
The movement puts a heavy emphasis on activism and protecting the vulnerable, such as marginalized women and children. Like Barnett, they stand with people abused by priests in demanding more accountability from Roman Catholic leaders.
Their message, Barnett said, is more relevant than ever in light of recent revelations about sex abuse in Pennsylvania Catholic dioceses and the role of church leaders in covering up crimes.
The Kentucky attorney general's office has proposed legislation that would allow an investigation similar to Pennsylvania's sweeping grand jury review. Lawmakers will decide in the 2019 legislative session whether to authorize it.
"The all-male hierarchical institution nationally and worldwide, which has severely abused so many children and continues to lie about it, is an institution sick at its core and has to be transformed," Barnett said.
It's not that women don't abuse — some nuns have been accused of crimes. But many who favor women clergy argue they bring a perspective men cannot.
People abused by men, or girls with sensitive personal issues, may not feel comfortable confiding in male priests, Foster said.
"Women know what it’s like to not be valued by the powers that be and that puts us in a unique position to be a voice for children who are not valued," Foster said.
'Illicit ordinations'
Barnett and others say they want to lead the Catholic Church into a new era, but their message isn't always welcome.
A priest once called Barnett "the embodiment of the enemy."
Among the reasons cited by Roman Catholic leaders in limiting ordination is that Jesus chose only male apostles and that the church has consistently imitated Christ in choosing only men.
Pope Francis told the National Catholic Reporter in 2016 that women "can do many other things better than men" and that Mary is more important than the apostles on Pentecost. But he said he thinks the ban on female ordination is eternal.
He cited a 1994 letter by Pope John Paul II asserting that the exclusion of women follows "God's plan for the Church," according to the article.
This "cannot mean that women are of lesser dignity, nor can it be construed as discrimination against them. Rather, it is to be seen as the faithful observance of a plan to be ascribed to the wisdom of the Lord of the universe," John Paul wrote.
He cited the Virgin Mary's significance as the mother of the church though she was never ordained a priest.
Angelo Stagnaro, a National Catholic Register columnist, wrote this March that "illicit ordinations ... destroy the Church's unity by creating a competing authority structure."
Stagnaro cited a 2010 poll by the New York Times and CBS News that found 59 percent of American Catholics favored female ordination, then dismissed the idea, saying "morality and theology are not matters of democratic popularity."
"The reason I'm content with being Catholic is because the Church understands and accepts that Truth is eternal and not dependent upon fads, trends, polls, arbitrary whims, rarified tastes and 'personal revelation,' ” Stagnaro wrote.
Kathy Schiffer, a blogger published in the National Catholic Register, asserted in a 2017 column that there is no "right" to the priesthood. She called it a gift from God.
"The group that calls itself Roman Catholic Womenpriests are not priests," she wrote. "They are, by virtue of their having attempted ordination, merely excommunicated women."
In some instances, diocesan leaders have tried to block their efforts. The Diocese of Venice in Florida in 2008 asked the Herald-Tribune to stop running ads for Rev. Bridget Mary Meehan's services. A spokesman told the newspaper it was against church law for Meehan to claim to be a priest and celebrate Mass.
The Diocese of Cincinnati in 2014 withdrew a grant for a shelter for homeless mothers after it was announced that Meyers planned to offer a prayer service there.
Both moves backfired. Meehan's congregation tripled in size. Meyers in three weeks received donations far exceeding the canceled grant.
"Women across the country were just outraged that somehow an archbishop takes precedence over the needs of single moms," Meyers said.
Women priests interviewed by the Courier Journal were not particularly concerned by their excommunication. Sherman said they find it interesting that the church feels threatened by "a bunch of gray-haired ladies."
Yet some have felt the sting of the rejection. Meyers said it took months to get over it.
"There was a period of grieving. It was almost as if the institution I dedicated my life to didn't want me and didn't want me to be doing all of these things for single moms," she said. "But since then, I have moved on. The things that I do with the people that follow me are so much more important than not being able to be buried in a Catholic cemetery."
'Prophetic bones'
The Rev. Jennifer Marie Marcus, who lives near Detroit, said she was 8 years old when Jesus came to her on Christmas Eve and told her she would be "his priest."
"I wanted to be closer to God and I thought by being a priest I would be," she said. "When I was being ordained, when I was lying prostrate, I was sobbing. I felt this incredible energy going through me. This awe."
Yes, she could be a nun — but nuns are forbidden from certain priestly duties.
"Being a nun doesn't cut it. Most of the nuns I knew really wanted to be priests, but they knew they couldn't," Marcus said. "It seems unfair to many of them. Being behind the scenes, doing all the work and not being able to ... have a full ministry."
For many women priests, ministry looks different than a typical parish assignment.
The Rev. Janice Sevre-Duszynska, ordained in Lexington in 2008, has been arrested at sit-ins and protests. She recently offered liturgy in Nogales, Mexico, in solidarity with migrants.
The Rev. Kathleen Bellefeuille-Rice, from Olympia, Washington, bathes the feet of the homeless and poor on skid row in Los Angeles.
And the Rev. Beverly Bingle of Toledo, Ohio, launched an initiative to plant one tree for every Toledo resident. Her congregation rents space in a nondenominational church.
"We never intend to have a building,'' she said. "We think one of the problems with the church is that they're so involved in keeping up the building ... they don't serve the poor; they serve the building."
Unlike men ordained by the Catholic Church and financially supported in their assignments, women priests often must support themselves and find creative ways to minister.
"When you take on the Catholic Church, doors will be closed," Meehan said. "At the end of the day, you have to have prophetic bones in your body and say, 'This is who I am. I am doing this as an act for gender justice in the church and in the world.' "
Barnett ministers as a paid chaplain for a secular hospital and volunteers as director of the Louisville chapter of the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women, a United Nations treaty initiative.
When she has time, she celebrates Mass, as she did last month in downtown Louisville.
At that service, Barnett and deacon Betty Smith sat in the circle with their parishioners — a deliberate break from traditional elevation of priests and deacons at altars above the congregation, Barnett noted.
Barnett's service, including her homily, or sermon, was interactive. Members took turns reading Scripture, leading prayers and even answering questions she posed.
They celebrated communion using homemade bread from a recipe developed by nuns.
Cindy Starr, finally at her spiritual home, did the baking.
TO LEARN MORE:
Additional information and locations of services offered by women priests:
Roman Catholic Womenpriests: romancatholicwomenpriests.org
Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests: arcwp.org
Caitlin McGlade: 502-582-4144; cmcglade@gannett.com; Twitter: @caitmcglade. Support strong local journalism by subscribing today: courier-journal.com/caitlinm.
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