Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Garrigan Another Event You Won't Read About in Your Diocesan Church Bulletin
Posted by Liz Garrigan on Wed, Feb 10, 2010 at 11:09 AM
But having been here before, Anawin didn't even try to book a local parish for the meeting venue. Instead, the talk titled "Prophetic Obedience: The Experience and Vision of Roman Catholic Womanpriests" will be at the Vanderbilt Divinity School (in the arts room on the ground floor) at 8 p.m.
Bishop Joan Houk will be subbing for Andrea Johnson, who is
snowbound in Annapolis. Both are women who have been ordained by Catholic bishops, but neither are recognized by Rome as rightful priests or church leaders. Quite obviously, Houk's talk will focus on why the church's hidebound adherence to celibate male priests serves only to limit Catholicism's reach and charitable influence in a country (and world) where there is a troubling shortage of clergy and where more and more community parishes are priestless.
"We feel that canon law, which does not represent the people at all -- only a few guys in Rome -- is unjust," Johnson tells Pith. "We're breaking canon 1024. Like Rosa Parks, we're saying, 'No, we are not going to sit on the back of the bus.' "
A student of church history with all manner of impressive degrees, Johnson (like her comrade-in-arms, Houk) notes that in the church's early days, then starting again in the 1940s and during the Cold War, the Catholic Church sponsored clandestine churches and clergy that were not known above ground -- simply as a means to continue the church.
"The Vatican was aware of all this stuff," Johnson says. "They began to ordain a lot of people that current canonical regulations do not permit, like married men and women. So we know that this has happened in the 20th century.... They're still doing it in China as we speak."
What Johnson, Houk and many other women are trying to do is build a new model of priesthood so that more people can give the Eucharist and serve both the faith and social justice, which are central to Catholicism.
"The movement is not just about getting women ordained, although that is a very important issue -- not just as a matter of fairness but because there aren't enough priests to go around. It's about the fact that the structures need to change."
Some might wonder why people who loathe the institution's strictures would even want to continue being part of the church.
"We are inside the church because we believe the church is good," Johnson says. "It is all of us, and it it our commitment to living the gospel. We just want to make it better. We want to show a new way of ordained ministry."
The event is being co-sponsored by the Vanderbilt Office of Women's Concerns, the Vanderbilt Carpenter Program in Religion, Gender and Sexuality, the Vanderbilt Office of Religious Life and the Society of St. Cornelius. Next Thursday, Feb. 18, there will be a panel discussion about recent ordination controversies in Christian denominations. It will be 4-5:30 p.m. in Room G-23 of the Vanderbilt Divinity School. Panelists will include Patout Burns (Edward A. Malloy Professor of Catholic Studies, VDS), M. Douglas Meeks (Cal Turner Chancellor's Chair of Wesleyan Studies, VDS), Ted Smith (Assistant Professor of Ethics and Society, VDS) and Eileen Campbell-Reed (Associate Director, Learning Pastoral Imagination Project, Luther Seminary). Ellen T. Armour (E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Chair in Feminist Theology, VDS) will moderate.
Comments (5)
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Don't everyone talk at once! Damn it: If only I'd put "Moonbeam" in the headline."
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What is there to say to such inane debate? It is widely held when John Paul II wrote his 1994 apostolic letter, "On Reserving Priestly Ordination to Men Alone," he was speaking “from the chair” and the subject is closed. Under the Code of Canon Law of the Roman Catholic Church, canon 751 says Heresy is the obstinate denial or obstinate doubt after the reception of baptism of some truth which is to be believed by divine and Catholic faith; schism is the refusal of submission to the Supreme Pontiff or of communion with the members of the Church subject to him.
According to 1364, an apostate from the faith, a heretic, or a schismatic incurs a latae sententiae excommunication. Not only are these women NOT priests I believe they have brought upon themselves excommunication therefore they are not even Catholic!
And of course a POPE has never been wrong (ask Galileo), nor has a POPE ever utilized his position to further personal agendas and preferences (not even the Medicis), nor objected to a prior Pope's judgements (oh, there was that litle Inquisition thing)...
I am one who has turned and walked away from the RCC. If Christ was on earth today he would have absolutely nothing to do with the heirarchy of the RCC unless he were to throw them out of the churches. The heirarchy is rotten to the core and support only their own power and their own high living.
I was at Bishop Joan’s talk last evening at Vanderbilt. It was really my first up close experience of the issue of the ordination of women in the Roman Catholic Church. I came away very impressed.
Bishop Joan impressed me, first of all, as a woman with both feet firmly planted on the ground. She seems to have done all things well. She is still very happily married at fifty years. She talked about her six children and grandchildren and now two great grandchildren. She taught grade school. She has been involved in the mission of the Roman Catholic Church working in priestless counties in Kentucky.
I think I was most impressed when she departed from the prepared text and talked of her own passion for the equality of women. She spoke of her experience with battered, abused and raped women connected with her work in a woman’s shelter. She linked this to the Roman Catholic Church and the many ways in which it directly and indirectly treats women as inferior and so is implicated in the abuse of women.
Joan seemed challenged and said she would think about the comment to her from a man who is a lawyer and suggested she needed to get tougher in her approach to the church. You know, maybe knocking the bishop’s hat off. She offered that this was not her approach. What she did say, and what resonated with me, is that what really needs to be done is to get the story out. Bishop Joan and the other womenbishops and womenpriests are doing a ministry rooted in the gospel.
This is what also impressed me. Bishop Joan talked about how she already was doing the things a priest would do before she was ordained. And those things were rooted in her day to day experience, like the day she went to visit one of her sick sixth grader’s in the hospital and prayed for him and laid hands on him even though a “real” priest was in the background. She is the one who had the personal connection with the student. I think our present idea of ordination and who can do priestly things is too constricted.
Benedict and some of his bishops can try to build higher and higher walls to keep women like Bishop Joan Houk out. I see a rising tide against all these walls. I’d like to call it grace or the work of the Holy Spirit. This was a very good, even historic evening, at least for me.
