Grand Forks Herald

July 18, 2005

Women to be "ordained" as Catholic priests

BY RACHEL KANE
Knight Ridder Newspapers

MONTEREY, Calif. - (KRT) - In an effort to break through the stained-glass ceiling of the Catholic Church, two Central Coast women will be among a group of nine being "ordained" later this month in the international waters of the St. Lawrence Seaway.

Dana Reynolds, 58, of Carmel, Calif., and Victoria Rue, 58, of Watsonville, Calif., will be challenging the church's refusal to ordain women as priests or deacons. The Canon Laws of the Roman Catholic Church pointedly refer to all priests and potential priests as men or young men.

"I don't see it as defiance," said Reynolds. "I see it as making a statement. As the other half of the human race, as women, we should be a part of this."

Reynolds said 300 people are expected to attend the private event.

Marcel Gervais, the archbishop of Ottawa, has led criticism of the protest ceremony and has issued a gag order preventing church workers from discussing it publicly.

"We don't feel women would be ordained priests just like men don't have babies. It's just not the way God made things. It's not part of a woman's capacity to be a father," he said in a statement earlier this month.

Gervais has asked that all Ottawa clergymen remain silent regarding the proceedings "as the gathering is taking place completely outside the realm of our faith."

Such declarations have not dissuaded Reynolds or Rue.

Reynolds, a mother of two and a grandmother, was raised Episcopalian but said she always felt Catholic. In her early teens she "started begging (her) mother to go to the convent," she said. "But she wouldn't let me."

After Reynolds met her high school sweetheart and future husband, she changed her mind about the convent but maintained her love of the Catholic Church. She converted when her children were out of the house and she had time to properly devote herself to theological study.

Rue, who teaches comparative religions and women's studies at San Jose State University, said she is "what they call a `cradle Catholic,'" born into the religion. She remembers "handing out Necco wafers to the kids on our block," pretending to be a priest when she was in second or third grade.

Rue was teaching at Saint Lawrence University in New York in 2003 when she attended an ordination of a woman at Spiritus Christi Church in Rochester and met a woman priest. That summer she got an e-mail from a priest from the Roman Catholic Womenpriests group about a woman being ordained as a bishop.

"I got an image of a woman ordaining another woman," said Rue. "And that woman was me." A year later she was being ordained as a deacon.

All the women being ordained July 25 are members of Roman Catholic Womenpriests, an organization of Catholic women whose goal "is to bring about the full equality of women in the Roman Catholic Church," said the group's Web site. Seven women were ordained in the organization's first ceremony in 2002.

This year's ceremony follows an international conference in Ottawa sponsored by Women's Ordination Worldwide, which encourages the ordinations of women priests and bishops.

"We consider these ordinations to be valid but illicit," said Rue, who was ordained as a deacon last year and will move a step up to priest this year. Despite the Catholic Church excommunicating several of the women who have participated in these illegal ordinations, "there are some 70 women in the preparation program, globally. Forty of those women are in the United States," Rue said.

The two bishops performing the ordinations are women who, said Rue, have been secretly ordained on land by male bishops. Even with the support of male and female clergy members, excommunication is a real threat.

"There are a number of women being ordained using other names," said Rue. "They work inside the church and might lose their jobs."

"Anything is possible," said Reynolds. "We don't know what is going to happen as far as retaliation or protesters."

Even after the women are ordained as priests and deacons, they would not be allowed to function in those roles within established churches.

"The Vatican would not allow that to happen because we are illicit," said Rue.

The ordinations are more spiritual than official. "We don't take titles," said Reynolds. "Nobody is going to call me `Mother something.'"

Rue and Reynolds are participating in and hosting house churches, small groups of people who conduct church meetings in the homes of community members. Both are also volunteering as chaplains in a hospice.

Despite the possibility of Vatican backlash, Reynolds and Rue are more concerned with the statement their ordinations make than with the consequences.

"I feel that a piece of paper or an excommunication can not take away the fact that I am Catholic in my heart and soul," said Reynolds. "It cannot obliterate my truth."

Reynolds is focusing her religious studies on Aramaic language and Catholic mysticism. She's also working with a spiritual and scriptural mentor to prepare for her ordination.

Rue already has a Ph.D. in theology and a master of divinity degree and is working with a mentor, a Jesuit priest from the association for the National Association for an Inclusive Priesthood, or CORPUS, studying sacraments. CORPUS officially supports the Roman Catholic Womenpriests as well as married priests and church reform.

"I want to see inclusiveness in the church," said Reynolds. "Where everyone is welcomed." With new charges of sexual abuse on the part of Catholic priests cropping up all over the country, there may soon be a shortage in the clergy that women priests hope to fill.

"Priests are needed," said Rue. "And women are ready."

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© 2005, The Monterey County Herald (Monterey, Calif.).

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