By Dr. Judith Johnson
Printed in NewWomen, NewChurch, the quarterly magazine of the Women’s Ordination Conference, Vol. 27, No.4, winter 2004-2005.
Nine women will seek ordination in the Roman Catholic Church on July 25, 2005 in the international waters at the mouth of the St. Lawrence Seaway. If the planned ordinations spark memories of the "Danube Seven" women-priests ordained in 2002, it is no accident. Two of the women Catholic theologians, Christine Mayr-Lumetzberger of Austria, and Gisela Forster of Germany, are now the bishops who will come to the St. Lawrence to ordain nine North American women.
That historic moment in 2002 gave birth to the Danube Ordination Movement, now called the RC Womenpriests Program, generating a response from women around the world who aspire to a "truly Roman Catholic" (as they see it) ordination. Then in August 2003 at a secret ceremony in Spain, the newly consecrated bishops Mayr-Lumetzberger and Forster ordained Dominican Sister Patricia Fresen of South Africa. This generated public outcry from Rome, and in response to Vatican pressure, Dr. Fresen’s South African order ousted her after her ordination.
Continuing this movement towards women’s ordination, on June 26, 2004, on a second Danube boat, two North Americans were among six women anointed as deacons: Dr. Victoria Rue of California and Michele Birch-Conery of Canada. On July 25, 2005, deacons Rue and Birch-Conery will be among the women who will seek priestly ordination on the St. Lawrence, along with others who will enter the
diaconate.
"The response has been overwhelming, both from Europe and North America," admits Dr. Fresen, who now heads up RC Womenpriests Program, the priestly training program that Bishops Mayr-Lumetzberger and Forster organized, to prepare diaconate candidates for the 2004 "Danube" ordination. Roman Catholic women "called" to priestly ordination and spiritually caught between a Catholic tradition they cherish and a prophetic vision of what that “church” should be want to remain in the Church they love, Dr. Fresen notes. It is this respect for the essence of Catholic tradition, and for a sacramental theology wrapped in a divine mystery, that has inspired (and driven) the two new female bishops to follow in their ordinations the rites and procedures laid down by the Vatican. The RC Womenpriestshave not spawned a new Church. Rather, they have opened a door to a wave of women seeking Roman Catholic ordinations. And the movement of the Spirit—if the response of women around the world is any indication—is working to keep the potential ordinands coming.
What about the episcopal ordinations?
The first Danube ordination in June 2002 provided more than "hope" for Catholic women called to ordination. It also presented us with an historic key to how the process of ordaining women in the Roman Catholic Church might be affected. It was the time to move quickly. In Spring 2003, Forster and Mayr-Lumetzberger were secretly ordained by an undisclosed number of Roman Catholic bishops (still in
good standing with Rome, the new bishops assure us). This episcopal ordination turned that symbolic key of hope, to open the door for Roman Catholic women to become "valid" priests in the Roman Catholic Church.
Are their episcopal ordinations valid?
"Everything has been legally verified-" Bishop Forster assures us. "Our ordination was completely documented by an Austrian notary." This means that Mayr-Lumetzberger and Forster, as bishops, may have become the first Roman Catholic women in centuries to be ordained into the "apostolic line of succession” according to the rites and procedures approved by the papacy today, and as the bishops themselves define it. Perhaps in a few years or less, in a more visionary world, the originators of the Danube Ordination Movement — the RC Womenpriests — may be able to bring forth the documents validating their ordination.
The Women Priests of the St. Lawrence
The first ordinands on the St. Lawrence, in the new wave of such ordinations to arise outside Europe are the "daughters" of the Danube Movement. Mostly trained under Forster and Mayr-Lumetzberger (and now, Dr. Fresen), the candidates for July 2005 continue the tradition of the original "Danube Seven," by being ordained in the traditional rite of the universal Roman Catholic Church and on an international waterway. Their numbers are growing, and it appears the Vatican takes the actions of these women very seriously. In spite of the Vatican’s excommunication of the original "Danube Seven," the network of aspiring women-priests continues to swell as they seek to apply for training and eventual ordination.
The network believes there are strong precedents for their actions, including the "underground" ordinations of women in Eastern Europe during the Communist era—without a paper trail leading back to the papacy. The Vatican now forbids these women-priests (including Ludmila Javorova) to act as priests, denying that it ever sanctioned the ordinations in the first place, thus making them "illicit." But these underground ordinations were a start, even though their legality is arguably open to question. For, as the Vatican has also told us: "Once a priest, always a priest."
Valid? Licit? Canon Law is the judge.
In canon law terms, the question of validity refers to the effect of a sacrament. It asks: Does this ritual action "work" as a real, authentic sacrament? "Liceity" refers to the status of the "attempted" sacrament under canon law—its legality. In that frame, women, like leavened bread, are an "illicit" material, or matter. They cannot be "used" in the sacrament. But to receive consecrated—"leavened"—bread is still a valid sacramental act. This, perhaps too tersely, describes the focal sacramental issue at the root of the Danube Seven controversy. This is why the RC Womenpriests stress the "form" of their sacrament "of order." If they follow the rites and procedures of the Roman Catholic Church, the rites prescribed by canon law, the day may come when the institutional church will regard the "matter" of the sacrament, the female human being, as capable of representing the persona Christi.
But, to strengthen its arguments, the Vatican in recent years has gone beyond the matter-of-matter to identify Christ’s maleness as a "sign" of the sacrament—as integral to the form of the sacrament. With this slight twist, in true Scholastic fashion, the Vatican seeks to elevate the discussion to the level of spiritual truth.
However, in the first Vatican document issued less than two weeks after the original Danube ordinations in 2002 — record speed for the Vatican — the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) declared the ordinations a "simulation" of a sacrament and to be "invalid and null." By August 5, the Apostolic See, citing its power to do so under Canon 1331, had excommunicated the Danube Seven. That still did not end the furor and the CDF found it necessary to deliver still another decree in December. Strangely, issues of sacramental matter or form were again ignored; the CDF cited only that, since the women had been ordained by a "schismatic" priest, they had "formally" rejected a doctrine of the church and, since they were (unlike Ludmila) actively "gathering around them" communities of believers, the CFD was forced to "safeguard" these innocent believers by excommunicating their new priestly ministers, the denouncers of "true doctrine."
Through it all, the RC Womenpriests have clung to their vision of their vocational calling: to proclaim, by their act of receiving the sacrament of orders, the validity of women as equal participants with men in the priestly ministry of Christ, as handed down through the original apostles. The Womenpriests call for preserving Roman Catholic heritage and traditions and, not to leave the Church, but to renew it and its priestly ministry. This journey of renewal is for the entire church and, in North America, it continues on July 25, 2005 on the St. Lawrence Seaway.
Judith Johnson, Ph.D., is logistics coordinator of the 2005 St. Lawrence ordinations. Her doctorate in Religion from Claremont (CA) University focuses on cultural and women’s issues in religion, with an emphasis on Catholic women’s issues. Dr. Johnson also serves on WOC’s Board of Directors.