Moving into a New Millennium

In 2000, WOC celebrated “WOC 2000: If Roman Catholic Women Were Ordained Today” in Milwaukee, Wisc., and celebrated 25 years of working for justice by honoring the foremothers of the women’s ordination movement. At the conference, issues of diversity and inclusion emerged, with participants asking the question, why aren’t more women of color involved? Sheila Briggs, an African American Catholic religious studies scholar, stated that ordination is by its very nature an elitist practice, one that by definition excludes women (and men) who are not highly educated. She asked, “when will the poor begin to celebrate the Eucharist?”

Two key events took place shortly thereafter. In Rochester, N.Y., Corpus Christi (now Spiritus Christi) Church, an exemplary parish of the diocese, decided to form its own Catholic community apart from the diocese, due to the removal in 1998 of Fr. Jim Callan and the firing of seven staff members, including Mary Ramerman. Ramerman, who was the associate pastor, was fired because she refused to obey Bishop Matthew Clark’s demands that she remove her alb and stole and not go near the altar during church services. Bishop Clark was under pressure from Rome because the Vatican had trouble with three practices dear to the heart of Corpus Christi parishioners: the prominent role of women on the altar, the blessing of gay unions, and the offering of communion to those who were not Catholic.

Disillusioned by the firings, parishioners wanted to move on and stop battling the diocese. On January 30, 1999, 500 parishioners gathered and decided to form a new faith community, calling it Spiritus Christi Church. They called Mary Ramerman, Fr. Jim Callan, and Enrique Cadena to be their spiritual leaders. Spiritus Christi held its first weekend masses on February 13-14, 1999, and over 1,100 people attended. Ten days later, the diocese declared that the members of the new community had excommunicated themselves.

Mary Ramerman was ordained on November 17, 2001 by Bishop Peter Hickman, representatives of Spiritus Christi, and Catholic and interfaith clergy from around the world. Nearly 3,000 people attended, including WOC’s then-program director Joy Barnes. In the spring of 2002, Denise Donato was ordained a deacon. After a year of preparation, she was ordained a priest on February 22, 2003 — again by Bishop Peter Hickman, the Spiritus Christi community, and interfaith clergy. Here was an exemplary parish’s statement of faith in an inclusive priesthood.

The other happening was the “illicit” ordinations of seven women as priests on the Danube River between Austria and Germany on June 29, 2002. Bishop Romulo A. Braschi of Argentina ordained Christine Mayr-Lumetzberger and Sr. Adelinde Theresia Roitinger (of Austria), Dr. Gisela Forster, Dr. Iris Müller, Dr. Ida Raming and Pia Brunner (of Germany) and Dagmar Celeste (under the pseudonym Angela White, of Austria and the U.S.A) .

As a young priest, Braschi had broken with the hierarchy because it supported dictatorships. He ministered independently, eventually marrying. He was consecrated a bishop on January 30, 1999 by Gerónimo José Podesta, Liberation Theologian and Roman Catholic Bishop Emeritus of Avellaneda.Although Braschi was not in good standing with Vatican, the sacraments he performs are still valid. Historical precedent dictates that the validity of sacraments does not depend on the standing of priests or bishops. Marriages, baptisms, and all sacraments are valid even if the priest or bishop is not in good standing with Vatican. Therefore, it doesn’t matter that Braschi was not in good standing with the Vatican in terms of the validity of the sacrament of ordination conferred on the seven women. The point is, Braschi stands in the line of apostolic succession and so do the Danube Seven.

On July 10, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, as the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a monitum (canonical warning) that the women would be excommunicated unless they say their ordinations were invalid and repent by July 22, the Feast of St. Mary Magdalene. All seven women ordained on the Danube were formally excommunicated by January 2003.

WOC was among the few organizations that were immediately publicly supportive of the group that coordinates these ordinations, which is now called the Roman Catholic Womenpriests. WOC reported the ordinations in NewWomen, NewChurch and released press statements in support of the brave women (read WOC's Press Release from July 3, 2002).

The following summer, Christine Mayr-Lumtzberger and Gisela Forster were ordained bishops in a secret ceremony by three male bishops in good standing with the Vatican. Their names are kept secret in order to avoid severe punishment by the Vatican; however, RCWP has documentation for the event from the notary and eye-witnesses that were present.

A year later, on June 26, 2004, six women were ordained to the diaconate by Forster and Mayr-Lumetzberger on the Danube River, the location of the first ordinations. The next year, on July 25, 2005, the first ordinations in North America took place on the St. Lawrence Seaway. Four women were ordained as priests, and five as deacons by Forster, Mayr-Lumtzberger and Patricia Fresen, a South African woman who had been ordained a priest in August of 2003, then a bishop in January 2005.

The first ordinations in the U.S.A. took place in Pittsburgh, Penn., on July 31, 2006, with Forster, Fresen, and Ida Raming, one of the Danube Seven who was ordained a bishop in June 2006, presiding. The ordinations included eight women as priests and four as deacons, and they received unprecedented coverage in the media. The ordinands and WOC leaders were quoted in most major U.S. newspapers, including the San Francisco Chronicle, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and many more.

The RCWP ordinations continued in 2007, with 21 people (nineteen women and two men) being ordained in seven different ordination ceremonies throughout the U.S., from Quebec, Canada, to Santa Barbara, Calif. As of October 2007, there are 37 people ordained in the RCWP program in North America (24 priests and 13 deacons).   The are currently over 150 people in the program worldwide, including those already ordained. RCWP is supported by over five European Roman Catholic male bishops in good standing with the Vatican who decided to cross the line on this issue. For more information, visit www.romancatholicwomenpriests.org

While RCWP has ordained the largest number of women, during the same time, the Ecumenical Catholic Communion, the Catholic Diocese of One Spirit, and many small faith communities have ordained women as priests and deacons as well. These ordinations have added an entirely new dimension to WOC’s work, and in response to the changing terrain of the movement, WOC developed the Three Ministries.