FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 19, 2012

Media Contact: Kate Conmy             (202) 675-1006      

Yesterday, the Congregation of Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) launched a crackdown on the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), an umbrella group that represents more than 80 percent of the 57,000 women religious in the United States.

The following is a statement from Erin Saiz Hanna, Executive Director  

WASHINGTON, DC - When the Vatican first launched its investigation of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) in 2009, we were warned that the outcome could be severe. Yet nothing could brace me for the shock that I would feel actually seeing theirdocument in writing yesterday.  This most serious attack on the women who have been thebackbone of the Church in this country for centuries has obliterated what little moral credibility the hierarchy once had with the people of God.

Once again, the Roman Catholic hierarchy's bullying has intentionally created an atmosphere of fear and intimidation, and has proved that they will stop at nothing to attempt to control the lives of women--threatening justice, charity, and service in their wake.

The CDF (formerly the Office of the Inquisition) accuses the LCWR of "radical feminist themes" and "corporate dissent" as the need for this "call for renewal." Their agenda is very clear: they are declaring war on the right of conscience and the right of women to be agents in their own lives. These fear tactics will not work nor will it distract us from the hierarchy's own corruption and scandal that is devastating our Church.

Having had the privilege of being educated by women religious, there is one thing I am certain of - the power of community. Over the centuries, Catholic sisters have responded to some of our nationʼs most difficult trials and when faced with adversity, women religious have stood courageously together with faith as their shield. I am confident that they will respond to this recent trial with courage and grace.

As the leaders of LCWR process this announcement and take time to discern, the Women's Ordination Conference (WOC) membership will hold them in prayer. WOC affirms and celebrates the prophetic works of women religious. We stand in solidarity with the millions of Catholics in this country who acknowledge women religious as pioneers of social justice, advocates for peace, and women of dignity.  

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Women's Ordination Conference (WOC), founded in 1975 and based in Washington, D.C., is  the is the oldest and largest national organization working for the ordination of women as priests, deacons, and bishops into an inclusive and accountable Roman Catholic Church. WOC also promotes new perspectives on ordination that call for less separation between the clergy and laity.      

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 5, 2012

Contact: Erin Saiz Hanna, ehanna@womensordination.org

202.675.1006 

On holiest of days, Pope slams women's ordination supporters

Response from Erin Saiz Hanna, Executive Director   

WASHINGTON, DC - Today, Roman Catholics globally joined together for the feast of Holy Thursday, to commemorate the Last Supper of Jesus the Christ and welcome the Easter Triduum, the holiest days for Catholics.  It was during the Last Supper that Jesus gave those gathered a new commandment -- to "love one another, as I have loved you, that you also love one another."

While during these holy days we would presume to hear Pope Benedict XVI echoing Jesus' call for love and inclusion, instead the Pope put forth a message of fear, intimidation, and oppression. In his homily earlier today, he denounced "disobedience" within the church and strongly reprimanded priests who support women's ordination.

The Women's Ordination Conference (WOC) is discouraged that the Pope would use this sacred time in our religious tradition to attack his fellow priests, who in good conscience, support women's full inclusion in the Roman Catholic Church. It is not these priests who are disobedient, it is the hierarchy who has lost touch with the people of God.

Out of fear of the growing numbers of ordained women and the overwhelming support they receive, the Vatican is trying to preserve what little power they have left by attempting to extinguish the widespread call for women's equality in the church. It will not work.

More than 63 percent of U.S. Catholics, and millions of Catholics worldwide, support the ordination of women. The Vatican's own Pontifical Biblical Commission found in 1976 that there is no scriptural reason to prohibit the ordination of women.  The Bible describes how women were prominent leaders in Jesus' ministry and early Christianity.  In all four gospels, Mary Magdalene was the primary witness to the central event of Christianity-Christ's resurrection. 

It is long overdue for the Vatican to listen to its own research, its own theologians and its own people who say that women are equally created in the image of God and are called to serve as priests in a renewed and inclusive Roman Catholic Church.  

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November 15, 2011 

SOA Watch Contact:                                                        

Hendrik Voss                                                                                        

202-234-3440

hvoss@soaw.org

Women's Ordination Conference Contact:

Kate Conmy

202-675-1006

kconmy@womensordination.org

SHUT DOWN THE SCHOOL OF AMERICAS
Women's Ordination Conference to Occupy Fort Benning

On November 18-20, 2011 the Women's Ordination Conference (WOC) with the Progressive Catholic Coalition (PCC) will join thousands of social justice activists and organizations from across the Americas in occupying the main gates of Fort Benning, Georgia to call for an end to U.S. militarization and for the closure of the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, formerly the School of Americas.

The three-day convergence will include a massive rally, where thousands will occupy the main gates of the Fort Benning military base in order to transform it from a place that trains assassins to a place of initiation into political awareness. On Sunday, November 20, the chain-linked barbed wire fence will be transformed with images of the martyrs, crosses, stars and flowers into a memorial for the victims of SOA violence and U.S. intervention. Human rights activists will carry their protest onto the grounds of the military base, risking arrest and up to six months in federal prison. The mobilization will include speakers from the NAACP, the Sisters of Mercy, the Georgia Undocumented Youth Alliance (GUYA), torture survivors and human rights activists from Latin America as well as plenaries, workshops, concerts, strategy sessions and more.

"The SOA provides the military muscle to protect the greed of the 1% at the expense of the 99% throughout the Americas." said Father Roy Bourgeois, the founder of SOA Watch. "The surge of social justice activism in the U.S. is fueling the call for the closure of this notorious institution."

The SOA/WHINSEC is a U.S. taxpayer-funded military training school for Latin American soldiers, located at Fort Benning, Georgia. The school made headlines in 1996 when the Pentagon released training manuals used at the school that advocated torture, extortion and execution. Despite this shocking admission and hundreds of documented human rights abuses connected to soldiers trained at the school, no independent investigation into the training facility has ever taken place. SOA violence continues in Mexico, where 1/3 of the original members of the Zetas drug cartel were trained at the SOA, and where the U.S. is promoting military solutions to the drug problem. SOA violence continues in Colombia, which has sent more than 10,000 soldiers to train at the SOA, and where SOA graduates are involved with extrajudicial killings and other serious human rights violations. SOA violence continues in Honduras, where SOA graduates overthrew the democratically elected government in 2009. SOA violence continues in Guatemala, where SOA graduate Otto Pérez Molina just won the presidential elections, and throughout the Americas. In October 2011, Time Magazine published the article "Is It Time to Shutter the Americas' 'Coup Academy'?:" http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2097124,00.html#ixzz1b9Rvmcbu

In August 2011, 69 Members of the House of Representatives delivered a letter to President Obama, calling on the President to shut down the Western Hemispheric Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formerly the School of Americas (SOA) by executive order. The 69 Representatives include Representative John Lewis from Georgia, Representative Ron Paul from Texas and Representative James McGovern from Massachusetts. To read the letter, visit http://soaw.org/docs/ObamaLetter.pdf

On November 4, Representative McGovern introduced H.R. 3368, the Latin America Military Training Review Act, in the House of Representatives. The bill calls for the suspension of the SOA/ WHINSEC and an investigation into the connection between U.S. military training and human rights abuses in Latin America.

SOA Watch is a nonviolent grassroots movement that works for the closing the School of the Americas and a change in U.S. foreign policy - www.SOAW.org

The PCC is made up of reform-minded organizations working for justice: the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests, Call to Action, CORPUS, FCM, Roll Away the Stone and Women's Ordination Conference .

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: October 17, 2011

Contact: Erin Saiz Hanna, 401.588.0457     

Fr. Roy Bourgeois and international delegation of women's ordination leaders hold press conference; march on Vatican to deliver petition signed by 15,000 supporters

ROME, ITALY - Today, at 12:00 noon at Casa Del Cinema (Sala Kodak), Largo Marcello Mastroianni, representatives of Catholic organizations from around the world challenged the "grave scandal" of women's ordination in the Roman Catholic Church, calling for the full and equal participation of women as deacons, priests, and bishops in a renewed church.

The remarks came following the Italian premiere of the award-winning documentary film, "Pink Smoke Over the Vatican," during a press conference held by Women's Ordination Worldwide and other pro-ordination organizations. The activists traveled to Rome with Fr. Roy Bourgeois-an outspoken priest on the issue of women's ordination-to hand-deliver a petition signed by 15,000 supporters on the issue. After the press conference, the groups staged a vigil in St. Peter's Square.

Fr. Roy Bourgeois, a Roman Catholic priest, peace activist, US veteran, and founder of the human rights group, School of the Americas Watch, currently faces potential dismissal from his Maryknoll order for his public support of women's ordination. "I have come to Rome with a basic question for our church leaders at the Vatican: how can we, as men, say that our call from God is authentic, but God's call of women is not?"

"The scandal of demanding silence on the issue of women's ordination reflects the absolute arrogance of the hierarchy and their tragic failure to accept women as equals in dignity and discipleship in the eyes of God," said Erin Hanna, executive director of the U.S. based Women's Ordination Conference. Therese Koturbash, lawyer and National Coordinator of Canada's Catholic Network for Women's Equality continued: "Even though canon law invites our Church leaders to hear from the faithful, our leaders are silent when we try to engage."

Firm in his conscience, Fr. Roy Bourgeois has broken through the Vatican's culture of fear to stand with the 63% of Catholics who support women's ordination in the United States. "Increasingly priests around the world are rising up for women's equality and ordination in the Catholic Church," stated Nicole Sotelo, from Call To Action (USA). "Just this summer in the United States alone, 200 priests signed the Clergy for Conscience letter supporting Fr. Roy and his right to speak his conscience. Together, we are creating a stronger, unified movement that carries high the scriptural mandate to preach the good news, without censure, but rather, firmly rooted in one's conscience:  'there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus'" (Galatians 3:28).

"A holy shake-up is taking place here," said woman priest Janice Sevre-Duszynska, "that is challenging the institutional church's sexism which treats women as second class members of their own church and contributes to violence toward women in society. Women priests remind us that women are equal images of God and therefore worthy to preside at liturgy and the sacred rituals of our church."

"We love our family, the Catholic Church," stated Miriam Duignan of Housetop's womenpriests.org. "We feel obliged in conscience to make our carefully considered reasons known. In doing so, we fulfill our canon law duty to speak out, as our present Pope has encouraged us to do."  

In 1976, the Biblical Commission of Pope Paul VI determined there was no scriptural reason to prohibit women's ordination. Despite the Commission's finding, the Pope issued a statement later that year declaring the Vatican is not authorized to ordain women. "Christian history documents that women were deacons, priests and bishops in the early church. As a result, we know that Canon 1024, which states that only men can validly receive the sacrament of ordination, is blatantly sexist," concluded Hanna.

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Call To Action (CTA) educates, inspires and activates Catholics to act for justice and build inclusive communities through a lens of anti-racism and anti-oppression principles. An independent national organization of over 25,000 people and 53 local chapters, CTA believes that the Spirit of God is at work in the whole church, not just in its appointed leaders. For more information, visit www.cta-usa.org  Contact: Nicole Sotelo, Director of Communications,  nicole@cta-usa.org +1(773) 404-0004   x285

Catholic Network for Women's Equality (CNWE), based in Canada, is a feminist-focused support and advocacy group for women and men in the Roman Catholic tradition, seeking to effect structural change in the institutional church that reflects the mutuality and integrity of a community of co-equal disciples, and to create life-giving alternatives to the present institutional structures. Therese Koturbash shaburtok@yahoo.ca 

Housetop's www.womencanbepriests.org is the largest internet site providing information and documentation on the ordination of women. Though its focus is on the Catholic Church, its work benefits all Christian Churches. Offering thousands of documents in English and 24 other languages, the website covers decrees of councils and synods, the teaching of the Fathers of the Church, medieval theologians, recent papal decrees, contemporary articles and ongoing discussions on scripture, tradition and the teaching authority of the Church. Contact: Miriam Duignan, +44(0)1923 779 446, m_duignan@hotmail.com 

International Movement We are Church (IMWAC), Founded in Rome in 1996, is committed to the renewal of the Roman Catholic Church on the basis of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) and the theological spirit developed from it. We are Church evolved from the Church Referendum in Austria in 1995 that was started after the paedophilia scandal around Vienna's former Cardinal Groer. We are Church is represented in more than twenty countries on all continents and is networking world-wide with similar-minded reform groups. Contact: Nicole Sotelo, +1(773) 404-0004   x285 nicole@cta-usa.org 

Roman Catholic Womenpriests (RCWP)/ Association of Roman Catholic Womanpriests, an international initiative within the Roman Catholic Church, advocates for a new model of priestly ministry united with the people with whom they serve.  The movement is an initiative within the Church that began with the ordination of seven women on the Danube River in 2002. Women bishops ordained in apostolic succession continue to carry on the work of ordaining women in the Roman Catholic Church. Contact Janice Sevre-Duszynska, rhythmsofthedance@msn.com or Ree Hudson, reehud@sbcglobal.net  

Women's Ordination Conference, founded in 1975 and based in Washington, D.C., the is the oldest and largest national organization working for the ordination of women as priests, deacons, and bishops into an inclusive and accountable Roman Catholic Church. WOC also promotes new perspectives on ordination that call for less separation between the clergy and laity. Contact: Erin Saiz Hanna, ehanna@womensordination.org +1(401) 588-0457