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Friday, August 23, 2024

A Tribute to Sister Theresa Kane RSM - Memories of Her Welcoming Address of Pope John Paul 11- by Bridget Mary Meehan ARCWP


"As women we have heard the powerful messages of our church addressing the dignity and reverence for all persons. As women we have pondered upon these words. Our contemplation leads us to state that the church in its struggle to be faithful to its call for reverence and dignity for all persons must respond by providing the possibility of women as persons being included in all ministries of our church. I urge you, your Holiness to be open to and respond to the voices coming from women in this country who are desiring of serving in and though the Church as fully participating members." Sister Theresa Kane RSM


The Sisters of Mercy announced yesterday the passing of Sister Mary Theresa Kane who died August 22, 2024 in Watchung, New Jersey. A Sister of Mercy for 69 years, she was 87 years old."

I am deeply grateful for Theresa Kane’s life-long support of women’s ordination. She is a prophet of gender equality whose legacy lives today in the hearts of Catholic women called to ordination.


 I witnessed history being made on October 7, 1979 in the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington DC.


 As Sister Theresa Kane called on Pope John Paul 11 to open all of the church's ministries to women, It felt like an energy wave moved through me that sparked a new awakening of possibilities that I never before considered.


I had come with my dear  friend, Sister Regina Madonna Oliver.  Both of us -at that time -were Philadelphia IHM's on home leave. 


The Shrine was packed with women religious different orders - some in habit and some -like me- in secular dress.  Nuns stood on the pews (gasp, I never saw that before) and other nuns -not in habits -wore blue armbands in support of women's ordination. 


The air was electric -it felt like something really important was going to happen on this papal visit.  When Sister Theresa Kane addressed the Pope and  courageously called on him to open all ministries to women, you could hear a pin drop. 


I am sure that she was aware that the Pope had just stated his opposite to women’s ordination in a speech to seminarians the day before. 


Wow, we left wondering what would happen?  Would ordination ever happen?


Some media coverage portrayed her challenging words as an attack on the Pope. 


But, in my view, she started a Catholic revolution for gender equality and justice. Sister Theresa planted the seeds for a Women's Ordination world wide movement- that after 40 years- is still growing  in support  of women's call to ordination. 


Sister Theresa Kane also planted the seeds that led 7 women to be ordained on the Danube in 2002. 


Now there are 300 in the  worldwide Roman Catholic Women Priests Movement birthing an emerging Church for everyone in small inclusive communities in which all are welcome and there is gender equality ! 


Thank you Sister Theresa Kane, prophet of gender equality and supporter of women priests!


May you dance with angels!


https://documents.alexanderstreet.com › ...



Bridget Mary Meehan ARCWP


 












Tuesday, August 20, 2024

Roman Catholic Women Priests: Booka, Articles Links, Bridget Mary Meehan ARCWP

 



 Roman Catholic Women Priests are a "prophetic challenge to transform hierarchical and sexist structures that claim that males only can be ordained for priestly service to God and the community."

Women Called to Catholic Priesthood: From Ecclesial Challenge to Spiritual Renewal Paperback – March 19, 2024


Sharon Callahan and Jeanette Rodriguez explore the contexts, calls, journeys, spirituality, and theology of women called to priesthood in the Roman Catholic Church in this compelling and carefully crafted ethnographic work. Posing the questions of how womenpriests' stories illustrate both ecclesial challenges and spiritual renewal, the authors encourage readers to thoughtfully engage these women on their own terms.

Women Called to Catholic Priesthood draws on the stories of forty-two women serving in the United States, Canada, Colombia, Europe, and South Africa. Ranging in age from their early thirties to their late eighties, these women tell stories that help us understand the spirituality and deep sense of call womenpriests experience despite the challenges they face in challenging Roman Catholic canon law. Callahan and Rodriguez's work is both moving and timely as the global church engages in synod work aiming to discern where the Spirit of God is calling Roman Catholics in the twenty-first century.




Womanpriest: Tradition and Transgression in the Contemporary Roman Catholic Church (Catholic Practice in North America) 1st Edition Amazon

The Case for Women Priests

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGBlRvc6J2k

Women Priests Then and Now


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WTs3rhaZKw

Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests 2013 Update


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTBrJSZk5t0

Books:


Amazon.com: Women Find A Way: The Movement and Stories of Roman Catholic ... Elsie Hainz McGrath, Bridget Mary Meehan, Ida RamingBooks. ... 


Living Gospel Equality Now, Bridget Mary Meehan https://www.amazon.com/Living-Gospel-Equality-Now-Catholic/dp/B00854C39O




Amazon.com: Exclusion of Women from the Priesthood (9780810809574): Ida Raming, N.B. Adams:Books.
Ida Raming's book sheds much light on the canonical roots of the Roman ... to thoroughly understand the church's teachings on women and priesthood, this is a ...

Articles:
A /Brief Overview of Womenpriests in the History of the Roman Catholic Church https://www.romancatholicwomenpriests.org/RCWP_Resource.pdf

This book is openly available in digital formats thanks to a generous grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.


While some Catholics and even non-Catholics today are asking if priests are necessary, especially given the ongoing sex-abuse scandal, The Roman Catholic Womanpriests (RCWP) looks to reframe and reform Roman Catholic priesthood, starting with ordained women. 
Womanpriest is the first academic study of the RCWP movement. As an ethnography, Womanpriest analyzes the womenpriests’ actions and lived theologies in order to explore ongoing tensions in Roman Catholicism around gender and sexuality, priestly authority, and religious change.

In order to understand how womenpriests navigate tradition and transgression, this study situates RCWP within post–Vatican II Catholicism, apostolic succession, sacraments, ministerial action, and questions of embodiment. Womanpriest reveals RCWP to be a discrete religious movement in a distinct religious moment, with a small group of tenacious women defying the Catholic patriarchy, taking on the priestly role, and demanding reconsideration of Roman Catholic tradition. Doing so, the women inhabit and re-create the central tensions in Catholicism today.



National Catholic Reporter: https://www.ncronline.org/news/people/advocates-dismayed-reaffirming-ban-women-priests

Advocates dismayed by reaffirming ban on women priests




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Janice Sevre-Duszynska is engaged by Italian police as she approaches the Vatican during a demonstration for women's ordination in 2011. (CNS/Paul Haring)
Advocates for the ordination of women in the Roman Catholic Church said they are "deeply dismayed" by a newspaper article penned by the Vatican's doctrinal chief that reaffirmed the church's ban on women priests as "definitive" and "a truth belonging to the deposit of faith."
"Archbishop [Luis] Ladaria's arguments are unconvincing and simply nothing new," said a statement from the Women's Ordination Conference, following the release of Ladaria's article. "How long can the Vatican hide behind its sexist arguments that because Jesus was a man, he intended only men to become priests?" the statement read.
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Writing for the May 30 issue of the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, Ladaria, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said that Jesus decided to reserve the sacrament of priestly ordination "to the twelve apostles, all men, who, in turn, communicated it to other men."
"The church has always recognized herself bound by this decision of the Lord, which excludes that the ministerial priesthood can be validly conferred on women," Ladaria writes.
Ladaria's article, "The definitive character of the doctrine of 'Ordinatio sacerdotalis,' " re-examines Pope John Paul II's 1994 apostolic letter that outlined the reasoning behind the ban on the priestly ordination of women.
The archbishop said he decided to write "in response to doubt" about John Paul's teaching, adding that expressing doubt about the barring of women from the priesthood "creates serious confusion among the faithful."
"The only 'serious confusion' among the faithful is just how long the Vatican will continue to parade indefensible arguments that attempt to limit the reaches of God's call," Kate McElwee, executive director of the Women's Ordination Conference, told NCR.
According to British theologian John Wijngaards, "Yes, there is confusion among the faithful, but not because they doubt the validity of their inner sense of what is genuinely Christian and Catholic, but because the persons who are supposed to guide them keep ignoring their just concerns."
"Confusion is healthy if it leads to a process of honest reassessment," added Wijngaards, professor emeritus of Missionary Institute London and founder of the Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research.

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Archbishop Luis Ladaria (CNS/Paul Haring)
Statistics have shown that a majority of educated Catholics believe women should be ordained, he said. "Their belief stems not from theological studies but from their 'Catholic sense,' their considered judgment that Jesus, who always treated women like the men, would not ban women from ordination in our present world."
"This sensus fidei is at the foundation of the teaching authority of the whole church, a foundation hierarchical leaders should take note of in any magisterial decision," he said.
In his essay, Ladaria, who is to be made a cardinal by Pope Francis June 28, addresses the debate over the character of John Paul's Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, especially the question of whether it is to be considered an infallible papal teaching.
Ladaria argues that although John Paul did not formally proclaim the teaching ex cathedra — as outlined by the First Vatican Council document Pastor Aeternus as part of the process of a pope declaring something infallibly — the pope "formally confirmed ... what the ordinary and universal magisterium considered throughout the history of the Church as belonging to the deposit of faith."
"To hold that it is not definitive, it is argued that it was not defined ex cathedra and that, then, a later decision by a future Pope or council could overturn it," he stated. "Sowing these doubts creates serious confusion among the faithful, not only about the Sacrament of Orders as part of the divine constitution of the Church, but also about the ability of the ordinary magisterium to teach Catholic doctrine in an infallible way."
Wijngaards told NCR: "As history shows, many popes have made statements they believed to be 'definite,' which have turned out to be flawed. The 'definitive' character of a papal statement does not only derive from the intention of the pope in question. It is intimately linked to its context.
According to Wijngaards, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis does not fulfill the five criteria of an infallible decision by the "ordinary and universal magisterium," as outlined by the Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner.
"Ordinatio Sacerdotalis," he said, "first, was not a collegial exercise of the teaching authority. Second, the bishops of the world had not acted as judges. Third, they had not listened to the ordinary faithful. Fourth, the issue in question does not involve revealed faith or morals. Moreover, fifth, the bishops of the world had not wanted to impose a final judgment on the matter."
He continued, "The belief that only men can be priests because all the 12 apostles were men is scripturally unsound. The appeal to an 'unbroken tradition' of excluding women is as faulty as asserting that the world was created in six days because the fathers of the church, medieval theologians and all bishops thought so."
The statement from the Women's Ordination Conference also notes that even in his 1994 document John Paul acknowledged the question of women's ordination was "at the present time in some places … considered still open to debate."
"The continued presence of a strong movement clamoring for the ordination of women shows that Ordinatio Sacerdotalis is far from definitively held as doctrine by the faithful of the Church," the statement said.
McElwee told NCR, "While the institutional church continues to reject and dismiss the priestly vocations of women, communities of Catholics recognize women's gifts and walk with them on a path of radical inclusion." Kate McElwee is married to NCR Vatican correspondent, Joshua McElwee.
Among those walking "a path of radical inclusion," is Bridget Mary Meehan, one of four bishops in the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests and pastor of the Mary Mother of Jesus Inclusive Catholic Community in Sarasota, Florida. The international Roman Catholic women priests movement, of which the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests is one member, claims about 250 priests worldwide.*
"The Vatican's affirmation of its ban on women priests as 'definitive' teaching rests solely on patriarchal church authority," Meehan said. "In doing so, it denies the workings of the Spirit within the people of God."
"The Vatican's affirmation of its ban on women priests as 'definitive' teaching rests solely on patriarchal church authority. In doing so, it denies the workings of the Spirit within the people of God."
-- Bridget Mary Meehan
Janice Sevre-Duszynska, ordained a Roman Catholic Woman Priest in 2008, said, "Our movement is growing with enthusiasm among Catholics in grassroots communities, especially with marginalized LGBTI and divorced [Catholics], and all who seek a bigger table where God's beloved family gathers to celebrate sacraments and to serve their sisters and brothers in mutual love in a community of equals."
Both women priests noted that Ladaria's newspaper article coincides with the 10th anniversary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issuing a general decree excommunicating the members of their movement and its supporters. The decree stated, "Both the person who attempts to confer holy orders upon a woman, and the woman who attempts to receive holy orders, incur the excommunication latae sententiae [automatically]." 
The decree doesn't mention the group or its members by name, but it followed a number of high-profile ordinations of women that year and the year before.
"Why [bring this up] now, 10 years later?" Meehan asked NCR. "What's up with that? Maybe they want us to issue a progress report."
Tell them, she said, "Yes, we keep growing and flourishing."
[Dennis Coday is NCR editor. His email address is dcoday@ncronline.org. Vatican correspondent Joshua J. McElwee contributed to this report.]
*Editor's Note: This sentence has been changed to clarify that the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests is just one organizational member of the larger women priests movement. Other member organizations in the movement include, for example, Roman Catholic Womenpriests-USA and Roman Catholic Womenpriests Europe East. The full movement claims to have ordained 250 priests. 
This story appeared in the June 15-28, 2018 print issue under the headline: Vatican's doctrinal prefect reaffirms ban on women priests 

Contact : Bridget Mary Meehan ARCWP: sofiabmm@aol.com
703-505-0004
https://www.romancatholicwomenpriests.org/