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Womenpriests in the Roman Catholic Church *
Victoria Rue, Ph.D.
Lincoln Theological Institute for the Study of Religion and Society, University of Manchester, UK
July 12-14, 2006
I am a Roman Catholic womanpriest. My priesthood is called valid but illicit. I have no parish. I have no officially sanctioned ministry. I am “contralegem” --against the law.
For the last four months I have been presiding at two weekly Masses and healing services at San Jose State University where I teach. Students, faculty and staff attend as well as people from the larger community. On Sundays I co-preside with Don Cordero a married priest and two women deacons. We celebrate these liturgies in a non-denominational chapel---on the university campus. It’s a liminal space where the possible becomes a reality. A short time after we began these liturgies, the Roman Catholic bishop of San Jose issued a statement in every parish bulletin. A friend emailed it to me: “Victoria Rue is not a validly ordained priest of the Roman Catholic Church. Members of the Roman Catholic Church should not participate in celebrations of the sacraments that are conducted by Victoria Rue, as those celebrations are not in union with the local or universal Church.” I requested dialog with the bishop. It was refused. But we go on-- the liturgies, the healings, the witness-- serving the people of God, answering the call of the majority of Roman Catholics in the USA who want womenpriests.
I am keenly aware that my Protestant sister ministers encounter hierarchy and sexism daily. Where my experience might be different is in being “contra legem,” we create our ministries on the margins of the official church. We remain Roman Catholic. And we are not schismatic.
In North America, as well as Europe, we are at a beginning stage, we are developing our networks, our infrastructures of support. Two months ago Roman Catholic Womenpriests-USA became our own non-profit organization. We have a website www.romancatholicwomenpriests.org.
As Roman Catholic womenpriests, we live inside the not yet, right now. Each of us is passionate about re-imagining our church. At the same time, we also hold within us the struggle to balance the old with the new. Thus we are a crossroads for the past, and present—pointing to the future. On the one hand, as womenpriests, we hold within us rich Roman Catholic spiritual traditions. On the other, we hold within us as Roman Catholic women the effects of the church’s long patriarchal abuse and suffocation of women. On the one hand, we hold within us a clear vision of returning the church to its origins of inclusivity and relationship. And on the other, we hold within each of us centuries of a male system that does not recognize women’s leadership, much less value it. As womenpriests, these tensions have been encoded in our bodies, in our psyches.
This presentation asks a question inspired by African American poet Audre Lorde: “Can the master’s tools dismantle the master’s house?” In the case of Roman Catholic womenpriests it translates to questions of ecclesiology: using the titles deacons, priests, and bishops, we replicate the hierarchical model, but don’t want to follow it. How do we redefine these models and their attendant theologies and still stay within the Roman Catholic Church?
To extend the question further, why do we think that the master’s tools and the master’s house are experienced as something outside of us? Often when those who have been marginalized for so long begin to create their own structures, they duplicate the oppression and the brokenness that they have known. The seeds of the hierarchy have been planted deep within us as Catholic women. Clericalism is the only model we have grown up with. Can we ourselves become the “master’s tools” and duplicate the patriarchy as we seek to transform it? How can womenpriests and bishops use these historically burdened titles, the “master’s tools,” to transform our church?
In this paper I will focus primarily on what effect Roman Catholic womenpriests have and will have on ecclesiology. Secondly, I will look at transnational networking. As our movement of womenpriests grows, how do we create support and governance across the Atlantic and Pacific, across borders, across cultures?
Ecclesiology:
Roman Catholic womenpriests replicate the traditional model of priest in several ways:
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We invoke apostolic succession as our bishops ordain deacons and priests
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our ordination rite replicates the key moments of the traditional liturgy except that in the diaconate ordination we omit the promise of obedience to the bishop and also the promise of celibacy; we also add inclusive language
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women are called deacons, priests or bishops
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we respond to the needs of God’s people with the sacraments
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we wear traditional vestments but some of us are in the process of redesigning them
After hearing this list, if it weren’t for the fact that there is a feminist agenda afoot in our movement, some might accuse us of being priests in drag. But we are much more subversive than that. And let me say right here, that the views I hold in this talk are not necessarily the views of all of our womenpriests. We all agree that the church needs to change. But there are differences among us as to the degree.
In persona Christi
The first step in re-imagining the priesthood is enlarging the idea of in persona Christi. What is it? When the Church points to why women cannot be priests they point to two reasons:
When people come to the Masses where I preside, they do so against the warning issued by the bishop San Jose. It’s subversive to even show up for the Mass, let alone for a woman to wear vestments. At one of our nearby Catholic colleges, a student minister who has attended our Masses regularly has been silenced by the Provincial of that Order. So you see using the master’s tools to redesign the master’s house inflame the master, and eventually, we’re betting, will change the church. Here is the real crux of the matter: when it is stated that women cannot represent Christ, this reduces Christ to the physical male characteristics of the man Jesus, and also reduces representation to something physical. If that were the case, only Jewish males could represent Christ. But if womenpriests claim to be in persona Christi, then why not everybody? This is the radical inclusivity in the parable of the wedding banquet where the guests are invited from the streets. Everyone is invited. This must be a terrifying inclusivity to those who have been exclusive.
Certainly women as priests alter in persona Christi enormously---but a change of gender is not enough. The real issue is the concept of a sacrifical priesthood.
Marie Bouclin in her thoughtful new book Seeking Wholeness: Women dealing with Abusive Power in the Catholic Church clarifies the source of clerical power in a sacrificial priesthood :
"According to church teaching, sacrificial priesthood means that the priest offers, through the agency of bread and wine, the Body and Blood of Christ for the salvation of humanity. In doing so, the priest is not acting as an ordinary man, but supernaturally, in the person of Christ as a mediator between God and the faithful.”
This teaching of the RCC, is a construct upon which is hung authority, power, even the notion of who God is. In this theology, the church elevates a sacrifical priesthood with the priest’s“power of offering the sacrifice of the Mass.” But a sleight of hand takes place---the priest himself becomes the sacred reality. At the last supper, Jesus asked the women and men gathered at table with him to break bread and lift the cup of wine, to eat and drink in thanksgiving. When I preside at a Mass, a Eucharist, it is just that—a thanksgiving, a meal that will strengthen us on our daily journey. It is the real presence of Christ called into our presence by all the participants around the table, the real presence of Christ both in the bread and wine and in the people. We are the body of Christ. I am not the only one who is in persona Christi—we all are.
Bouclin goes on to say that this hierarchical and sacrificial priesthood in Roman Catholic teaching “takes precedence over the baptismal priesthood of all the faithful.” A feminist critque of Catholic priesthood must question the foundation of the “sacred power” of the priest. Sacred power belongs to all the baptized. Both male and female can represent, and must represent Christ. A priesthood based on radical inclusivity transforms the theology of the Mass.
If you take away the sacred power of a sacrificial priesthood and instead offer a model of priest as community member, and liturgical leader, then theology begins to shift as well as the structures that support it. Even the face of God begins to change. If the Mass is not a ritual sacrifice then we no longer invoke the image of a father who requires the death of his only son. Instead we offer thanksgiving to a God that suffers with us in the person of Christ, births with us, walks with us. And if the priest is a member of the community and liturgical leader, she or he is not necessarily celibate but is married or lives with a domestic partner, is heterosexual, or homosexual.
The Call Preparation and Ministry of Womenpriests
In the first few years of the emergence of Roman Catholic Womenpriests (RCWP) the goal was to ordain women. The focus was not on their ministry, but on ordination. This has become for us in the USA a great source of discussion---who calls a woman forward to be ordained? Herself? A community? Both? What is ministry, when you are ministering from the margins? We’ve asked a Structure Committee made up of womenpriests and deacons to look at these questions. A primary resource is South African Bishop Fritz Lobinger from his book Like His Brothers and Sisters: Ordaining Community Leaders. He offers the model of a Church of Communion, a participatory model where leadership is not limited to the ordained. Lobinger’s model suggests Ordained Community Leaders (OCL’s) that are part of a team with an ordained minister who deals exclusively with liturgy.
While the inherent problem of “the holy priest” the sacred priest still exists in this model, what is of interest from Bishop Lobinger’s work are two ideas: first, that ordination is offered by the community to leaders of various ministries, such as visiting the sick, or education; second, that priests should be called forward by their communities. This is the model of the early church. If the gifts emerge from the community, then the community calls forth the gifts of individuals and supports the gifts of those called forth. The community becomes the source of discernment.
What we’ve found in the USA, for the most part, is that women are ordained and then are compelled to start worshipping communities. This is what’s happened to me. As a deacon, Jane Via and her husband Phil called forth those marginalized by the RCC in San Diego. The worshiping community decided to call themselves, Mary Magdalene, Apostle. For a year, Jane and an out gay priest presided at Masses. Then the community called Jane forth to priesthood. Just prior to Jane’s ordination last month in Switzerland, the entire community went on retreat with her. Womanpriest Marie David and her priest husband Jim run a retreat center, Evensong, in Massachussets. In addition to offering retreats, a worshipping community has now formed.
We are all worker priests—we all have jobs, and, like the worker priests of France at the turn of the twentieth century, in our workplaces we walk along side those to whom we minister. We are worker priests who accompany people on their spiritual life journeys.
However a woman expresses her ministry, the training of candidates is a crucial area. There have been several proposed models. At present the training program of RCWP is both a screening and a preparation for ordination. While every woman is considered an individual case in terms of requirements, for the most part, candidates complete a Masters of Divinity or equivalent theological degree as well as a course of study online with one of our bishops, Dr. Patricia Fresen and several program assistants that guide her. Additionally, in the USA, women are mentored by priests, some by married priests who are members of CORPUS. We are also evaluating whether we need to introduce psychological testing to insure that the women ordained by us are psychologically and emotionally stable and mature.
The Role of the Bishop
One of the very rich areas for dialog for us has been about authority and obedience and the nature of hierarchy. Here is a place where there has been a significant difference between our movement and the traditional role of priests and bishops in the RCC. How do we unlearn decisionmaking that has been by hierarchy. As womenpriests we do not promise obedience to a bishop. Instead we live in “prophetic obedience” to the Spirit, individually and as a community of womenpriests. One of our women bishops, Patricia Fresen explains:
"The word obedience comes from the Latin ob-audire, to listen attentively: to myself, to the signs of the times, and listening with others for the Spirit, who we believe is always moving and awakening (yes, calling) us to new levels of awareness. As Isaiah says so often: Listen to me, pay attention and your soul will live.”(e.g. Is. 55:3).
Presently there are now 4 womenbishops in Europe and none yet in the USA or Canada. Again Bishop Fresen has said:
“the reason for ordaining women as bishops was only so that they in turn can ordain priests which is the traditional method for ordination in the Roman Catholic Church. The ordination of women bishops is not to get locked into the hierarchical structures of the church.”
The role of our womenbishops at this point in our brief history is about a primary relationship with our ordinands, those they will ordain. But in North America, we are asking what is a bishop? Our structure committee composed of womenpriests and deacons from five regions of North America are exploring other models of episcopacy---including Episcopalian, Methodist, and Lutheran. Recently all of us in North America, were on a conference call with Dr. Gary Macy, a church historian at the University of San Diego. He offered several historical models of bishop. Thus we are considering various models to answer the question “what is a bishop?”
Some of our answers so far are the following. Perhaps a bishop’s role is to ordain and be a pastoral bridge connecting communities. Perhaps she has no administrative role but is instead a pastor to all. Perhaps she is an ecumenical representative. Or, perhaps a bishop sits on the leadership team of a particular worshipping community, a co-equal with other members in voting. Perhaps she sits on a governance team for the North American organization of Roman Catholic Womenpriests. Whatever the roles, womenbishops in North America will most probably be elected and have term limits of five years. What if a bishop abuses her position---what if she becomes “the master’s tools?” As women we are all quite clear that dominating behavior is abuse and causes violence to one another. And so we are discerning how to put in place policies that can protect the people of God from a bishop who might abuse her power and influence.
After this summer’s ordinations in Pittsburgh, there will be 15 womenpriests and 5 womendeacons in North America. In Europe, there are nearly the same number. Presently, in the preparation program there are over 100 women in Europe and North America. In the USA and Canada the group is very large with over 80 women who are preparing to be ordained.
To whom are deacons, priests and bishops accountable? First, to the communities from whence we come. Second, to the still forming community of Roman Catholic womenpriests. Could we repeat the clerical club of the traditional church? Yes we could if we are not conscious at every juncture that we are here to transform our church, as well as ourselves and to deconstruct the cleric-lay divide.
The Challenges of a Global Network
At the moment, Roman Catholic Womenpriests is a movement in Europe and North America. Some women are also coming forward from India and Mexico. One of our womenbishops has just returned from speaking to Catholics in South Korea. We will increasingly become a global network.
Up to now, it has been very difficult for us in the USA and Canada to manage face to face encounters with our European sister priests in order to build relationship and collaboration, key factors in women’s leadership. Because of this there are inevitable misunderstandings due to language and cultural/national differences, such as Europe’s fear of American schism, or American fear of European authoritarianism. Geographical separation and our own cultural history has perhaps assisted North American womenpriests and deacons to realize that we may organize ourselves differently from Europe. Yet the need for relationship continues. Being part of larger networks has been helpful, such as Women’s Ordination Worldwide (WOW) and Women’s Ordination Conference (WOC) as other forums in which we can encounter our sister priests. Yet organizations such as WOW have their own agendas. One of our strategies in the USA, as I mentioned earlier, is that we have formed a non-profit organization able to receive donations and grants. With more economic clout, we hope to be able to offer assistance to our womenpriests for their ministries and also for travel to gatherings of other womenpriests both nationally and internationally.
There are so many unanswered questions at the moment. Within the next few years, there will be candidates and ordinands in Central and South America as well as Asia and Africa. What kinds of worshipping communites will blossom in each country, each culture? How will they organize themselves? Who will the womenpriests be who will serve God’s people? How will we all build relationships and collaborations with one another? The Spirit awaits our questions with answers of her own.
In closing, let me be clear. As womenpriests, we seek to assist the RCC in returning to the simple table of Jesus, where are all are welcome. No one is left behind. No one is left out. All are welcome.
As Roman Catholic Womenpriests, we are not just interested in gender equity. We are focused on a more sweeping landscape, the transformation of the Roman Catholic Church. Womenpriests are one step in the changes that need to take place. And the need for changes are legion--- as John the XXIII said---“we need to open wide the windows” to a new inclusivity---transform the hierarchy, priests, theology, rituals--all of it. Standing at the crossroads of the past, present and future, we womenpriests feel the winds of the Spirit at our backs.
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* I am indebted to Bishop Patricia Fresen for her editorial comments on this paper.
http://www.dsj.org website for the Diocese of San Jose
Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider (New York, 1984) 123.
Phone conversation with Carmen Lane, June 2006. She is a candidate in the Preparation Program of Roman Catholic Womenpriests.
Flannery, “Presbyterorum Ordinis” in The basic sixteen documents of the Vatican Council II, Constitutions, decrees, declarations (New York, 1996), 317-364.
Marie Evans Bouclin, Seeking Wholeness: Women Dealing with Abuse of Power in the Catholic Church (Collegeville, 2006) 29.
Ibid., 31.
www.romancatholicwomenpriests.org
Patricia Fresen: “Prophetic Obedience.” Speech delivered at Women’s Ordination Conference 30 th Year Celebration, Philadelphia, March 2005.
www.romancatholicwomenpriests.org (Patricia Fresen: “Prophetic Obedience.” Speech delivered at Women’s Ordination Conference 30th Annivesary Celebration, Philadelphia, March 2005.)
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