Since last fall, I, Rev. AndreaGrace, have been prayerfully pondering racism, women’s ordination in the Catholic Church as well as truth and the suppression of facts.
Erasing Evidence
During a class on racism and spirituality, I learned about the many ways that racism is perpetuated – including erasing evidence and telling the oppressed that they are not good enough to be empowered. Because there is a level of trust in the leaders, the people who are being oppressed often believe the oppressor.
Using Power to Spread Lies
In racism, and in politics, we sometimes witness people using their power to spread lies. This is so evident in Jane Elliott’s “Blue Eyes-Brown Eyes” experiment. Watch this short video that showcases how children believe their teacher when she says one group of students is better than the other because of their eye colo. This affects their self-image AND educational outcomes.
Two books explore: What is truth?
This winter, I was led to read two books that explored truth. Mitch Albom’s, The Little Liar, follows a few different characters through the Holocaust. What touched me was how each person was confident that they knew “the truth” – and how sometimes, “the truth” was not based on facts; it was really lies.
Jodi Piccoult’s book, small great things, follows three characters through the death of a newborn baby and the resulting murder trial. We come to understand “truth” from the perspective of the baby’s white supremacist dad, the esteemed Black labor and delivery nurse, and the nurse’s white public defender lawyer. I was profoundly touched by how the white supremacist came to be and how he was raising his own children.
Both books depict how we believe and trust our parents, our educators and those in charge until… hopefully, our minds are opened by being presented with the facts, life experiences, a willingness to learn, or a spiritual experience.
Truth in politics and the Catholic Church
I’ve been prayerfully pondering all of this in terms of our country’s politics… and in terms of the Catholic Church.
In July, the New York Times featured an article entitled: America’s New Catholic Priests: Young, Confident and Conservatives The tagline read: In an era of deep divisions in the church, newly ordained priests overwhelmingly lean right in their theology, practices and politics. The story echoed what I’m hearing from my colleagues across the country. These young male priests went through a seminary that was shaped by Pope John Paull II and Pope Benedict – both of whom were very conservative. The result of these conservative seminaries: “More than 80% of priests ordained since 2020 consider themselves as theologically ‘conservative/orthodox’ or ‘very conservative/ orthodox.’”
In conservative Catholicism, there is a focus on following the rules versus loving the people. There are very clear lines of who is right and who is wrong, who is in and who is out.
On the same day that the article was published, I gathered with more than 40 Roman Catholic Women Priests and some of our community members for the ordination of five women to the diaconate including Rev. Cathy. Included among us were two of the Danube Seven, Christine Mayr-Lumetzberger and Dagmar Celeste, who were ordained priests by bishops from the Vatican in 2002. Since then, more than 300 women and some men have been ordained deacons, priests and bishops in more than a dozen countries.
Twelve Facts about Catholic Ordinations
Rev. Cathy wrote the following for one of her seminary papers:
Twelve Things Every Catholic Should Know About Ordination
1. Jesus did not ordain anyone, not even the Apostles. In the early church all people who believed in Jesus Christ were said to be a priestly people by their baptism.
2. The first people to lead prayers, bless and break the bread were Jewish women who led house churches.
3. Read Paul’s letter to the Romans chapter 16, verses 1 to 16. You will have to read it because it is not included anywhere in our lectionary. There Paul identifies Phoebe as a deacon or minister, which is the English translation of the Greek “diakonia” or deacon. Paul had self-identified as an apostle. In that same chapter he identifies Junia, a woman, as an apostle. Junia is recognized and celebrated in the orthodox church. Her feast day is May 17.
4. The first record of an ordination ritual is in the second century. An ancient document, “The Apostolic Tradition” refers to an ordination ritual for bishops, priests, and deacons. There was no gender specification.
5. After the Edict of Milan in 313 CE, and an exponential growth in followers of Jesus, people began to worship in public buildings; these were men’s areas of influence. Women leading prayer in public spaces violated the cultural norms of the Greco-Roman world.
6. In 352 CE, the Council of Laodicea forbade women to be ordained. From this point on people systematically eliminated proofs of the ordination of women. As new liturgical books were copied, they eliminated previous references to females. Some evidence just quietly disappeared. Epigraphs were defaced to erase the feminine endings.
7. However, there remains more than enough evidence, using papal letters, epigraphs and liturgical books, to show that women were ordained as bishops, priests and deacons into the twelfth century. And in one case well beyond the 12thcentury.
8. For example, here are six women bishops:
ü Bishop “Q”, tentatively identified as the mother or wife of Pope Siricius (384-399), found on an epigraph in a 4thcentury tomb in Rome.
ü St. Brigid of Ireland, 5th century
ü St. Hilda of Whitby, 7th century, England
ü Bishop Theodora, 9th century. She is pictured in a mosaic in St. Praxedis Church, Rome – one that Rev. Cathy, Bishop Bridget Mary and I visited last fall.
ü St. Hildeburga, 10th century, Le Mans, wife of Bishop Segenfrid
ü The most famous is the Abbess of Las Huelgas in Burgos, Spain who continued to wear her mitre and exercise her episcopal power until 1874! She celebrated the Mass, preached, and heard confessions. She was in charge of 36 parishes, appointed all the priests, and more.
9. In 1980, Dorothy Irvin published a series of calendars with archaeological and epigraphic evidence of ordained women, collected from gravestones, frescoes and art in churches and catacombs dated from 125 to 830 CE in France, Belgium, Croatia, Italy, Algeria, Greece, Turkey, Egypt and Jordan. She names them: Chrodoara, Maria, Venerabilis, Flavia, Vitalia, Olympias, Grata, Aleksandra, Leta, Maria, Timothea, Basilissa, Phoebe, Giuilia, Runa, Kale, Epikto, Maria, Sophia, Apollonia, Artemidora and Theodora.
10. Papal letters as evidence of women priests.
ü In 494 Pope Gelasius I wrote a letter to the bishops condemning the practice of bishops allowing women to officiate.
ü In 599 Pope Gregory the Great wrote to the bishop of Caligliari, concerned about Abbess Sirica not wearing the monastic habit but continued to dress like a priest. Evidently, Sirica had been a priest before entering the monastery.
ü In 747 Pope Zachary wrote to authorities: “We have heard to our dismay, the divine worship has fallen into such disdain that women have presumed to serve at altars and that the female sex, to whom it does not belong, perform all the things that are assigned exclusively to men.”
ü In the tenth century, Bishop Atto of Vercelli was asked why ancient laws speak about women priests and deacons. His response: “In the ancient church not only men but also women were ordained and officiated as the leaders of communities; they were called priests and they assumed the duty of preaching, directing and teaching.”
11. Celibacy was declared at the Second Lateran Council in 1139. Pope Innocent II determined priests must remain unmarried and celibate in order to protect church property that otherwise might be lost to the wives or children of priests. All four Lateran Councils worked to get women out of the clergy: no deaconesses, no priests, no bishops, no abbesses, no wives for priests.
12. For centuries women and men were ordained for a particular function in service to their community. It was what they did, not who they were that made them, bishops, priests or deacons. Toward the end of the twelfth century the theology changed dramatically:
ü It was exclusively male
ü Ordination put an indelible character on the soul, making clergy distinct from all other human beings
ü Ordination was about power to change the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ
ü Ordination was about power to forgive sins
ü Ordination became a ceremony that granted power and an elevated spiritual status to a man
Cathy’s Concluding Thoughts
God’s grace is by nature generous, full, abundant and overflowing. But greed, fear and arrogance impede that flow. The Holy Spirit needs a humble, generous heart to fully share all the gifts she has to offer. For millennia the Roman Catholic Church has obstructed the fullness of the Holy Spirit by its greed, lust for power, fear of women and arrogant treatment of the laity.
With very little reading on the subject, the evidence for the ordination of women as priests, bishops and deacons is overwhelming; it’s undeniable. But the church has made up its mind that women cannot be ordained, to the impoverishment of the worldwide church. The hierarchy needs our prayers.
The Call to the Priesthood
Like with racism, when a woman – like me or Cathy – has the courage to come forward and declare that the Holy Spirit is calling her to a vocation in the priesthood, when she can give clear events in her discernment process, her story is negated. Women are held up to a different kind of lens and standard than the men who say they have a vocation to the priesthood – solely because of our gender. We are told we are not good enough, worthy enough, able enough – solely because we are not male. Why? Because of the “truth” people believe about priests needing to be men. But, the facts, as Rev. Cathy showed – tell a very different story. The truth is: theHoly Spirit Is calling women!
Christine Rodgers writes:
“So ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for this harvest.” Luke 10:3
Just suppose the Master of the Harvest has already sent us everything we need – what if we are the ones who allow women to stand idle – their own calls rusting inside them? What then?
Excommunication for trying to change the system
We see with systemic racism, oppressors often hold so much control and power and can incite serious ramifications – including jailing or lynching.
The same is true in the Catholic Church. In 2002, Bishop X (whose remains anonymous for his protection) began ordaining women – affirming the Holy Spirit and women’s vocations while trying to change an oppressive system. But – like with racism – the powers that be clamped down. Pope Benedict put in a rule that any woman who is ordained and the person who ordained her is automatically excommunicated. (Note: few if any of the pedophile priests have been excommunicated.)
According to Cannon Law, excommunicated people cannot:
· Receive the sacraments in institutional churches – so if I go to my niece’s confirmation, the priest could refuse to give me communion.
· Work for any Catholic Church, Catholic school or even as a Catholic chaplain at a non-Catholic institution – recently, I was denied a job as a Catholic chaplain at a business university because of this rule.
· Be buried in a Catholic cemetery – so if a widow becomes a woman priest and her husband is buried in a Catholic cemetery – it is likely that she will not be able to be buried with him.
Within the Catholic community:
· The male priests and bishops who support the women priests can lose their jobs and retirement benefits which is why they don’t speak up and don’t fight for the women priests.
· Any Catholic church or chapel that allows a woman priest to hold services on their premises can also lose their license to hold their own Masses – so the progressive-thinking religious sisters cannot allow women priests to celebrate liturgies in their beautiful chapels.
It is a tremendous risk for the “oppressed” who come forward to be ordained. And yet we do it – with courage – because we can’t deny what God has put on our heart and what God is calling us to do. We recognize that God has prepared us. We come forward to be ordained in the Catholic Church – instead of leaving for another church - because we are as Catholic as we are American. I don’t leave the country because of the politics. Catholicism is woven into the fabric of my being.
Remembering Rosa Parks and Bishop Patricia Freson
I remember Rosa Parks whom God asked to sit courageously on the front of the bus and the people who marched and sat at the deli counters to end racial segregation. While paying the price with jail and worse – they helped usher in a more racially integrated society with more freedoms for people with brown skin.https://youtu.be/Bg7dacgrQyA
Bishop Patricia Freson worked in South Africa to dismantle apartheid. As the first English-speaking Catholic woman bishop, she ordained the first women in North America. Patricia passed away this month. She was featured in the movie, Pink Smoke Over the Vatican, a documentary about the Catholic women priest movement. In the movie, Patricia links apartheid and the Catholic Church's approach to women's ordination. I am blessed by Patricia's courageous YES and by the fact that she ordained Bridget Mary a bishop - and Bridge Mary ordained me. I am also blessed to have been able to virtually attend her Mass of Christian Burial last week. What a remarkable woman…. a true change-agent called by God. You may watrch her Mass here.
What can YOU do to help affect change?
There are so many ways you can support and "be the change you wish to see in this world."
Spread the facts about women's ordination in the Catholic Church
Encourage women priests - in conversations, emails, social media and more
Attend prayer services led by women priests
Financially support communities led by women priests
Advocate for change in the Institutional Church by writing to your bishop and stopping donations until changes are made
Support the lobbying done by Women's Ordination Conference
Learn more and suppor the efforts by FutureChurch
If you have a call to the priesthood, explore it!
I'd be happy to discuss any of this! Reach out...
Let's Pray:
Oh Loving God – be with us. Please open our hearts and minds to Your Truth. Help all of the members of the Catholic Church to trust her people (of all genders and marital statuses) when they say they have a vocation to the priesthood and lay out a lifetime of examples of their service. May each of your children be cherished and have the resources and opportunities to live out our Divine Vocation – whatever it is. May our Church return to Jesus’ way of love and of empowering women – as he showed us in appearing first to Mary Magdalene and telling her to go tell the others. May your Truth of Love and inclusion reign. Amen.
PS
One of the best ways you can help affect change in the Catholic Church is by attending services led by Women Priests. Learn more about my Beloved Inclusive Catholic Community here, as well as the ARCPW and RCWP communities.
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