Women's Ordination on the Docket Again

The Vatican
recently threatened to excommunicate Father Roy Bourgeois for his position that
women be ordained priests. This
out-of-the-blue, extreme measure against a prominent social justice advocate
seems strange and ill-conceived. On the
other hand, it serves as an opportunity to re-visit the issue since Pope John
Paul II suspended all talk on it in 1994.

Father Bourgeois, 70, who began his 36-year ministry as a
Maryknoll priest in Bolivia,
has been an outspoken critic of U.S.
foreign policy in Latin America since 1980 after a
Salvadoran death squad raped and killed four American churchwomen. In 1990 he
founded the School of the Americas Watch (https://www.soaw.org),
which has been holding weekend vigils annually at Fort
Benning, Ga., to demand closure
of the U.S. Army's combat training school for Latin American soldiers. The School of the Americas (renamed "Western
Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation" in 2001) "has trained over
60,000 Latin American soldiers in counterinsurgency techniques, sniper
training, commando and psychological warfare, military intelligence and
interrogation tactics," according to the SOAW (https://www.soaw.org/type.php?type=8).

What led to the altercation between the Vatican
and Father Bourgeois was the fact that he showed his support for women's
ordination by delivering a homily at the ordination of Janice Sevre-Duszynska,
58, on August 9 in Lexington, Ky.
She was the sixth woman ordained this year in the United
States, according to the National Catholic
Reporter (https://ncronline3.org/drupal/?q=node/1568).

Actually, Sevre-Duszynska
is among 60 other women who have been ordained since June 29, 2002, when the first seven women stepped
forward, according to the Women's Ordination Conference (www.womensordination.org/content/view/229/104/). Four of these women priests have become bishops
and nearly 100 more are in preparation programs sponsored by the Roman Catholic
Women Priests (www.romancatholicwomenpriests.org).

It is no small matter that these women seek ordination. As priests they are demanding that women be
seen as equals to men in the eyes of the Church. Women's ordination reflects secular society's
movement toward gender equality that sprouted in the late 1960s and which we largely
take for granted today. During this time
women all over the world have made bold strides in taking on various roles to
show that they ARE equal to men. One who
was well-schooled in that idea almost made it to the White House!

However, the process for change in the Church is long and difficult
because theology and tradition hold a lot of sway. For example, the Church's case that the
priesthood remain male is summed up this way:
Jesus was a man, his 12 apostles were all men and the Church has never
had women priests. Many theologians and
Church historians have differed on this judgment and on Thanksgiving weekend
1975, hundreds of people met for the first Women's Ordination Conference (WOC) in
Detroit to hear them respectfully
and logically make the case that women be ordained.

The work of the WOC
has continued since then and the idea of women priests is no longer an
aberration. According to a September
2005 Gallup Organization survey, 63 percent of U.S. Catholics said they
supported ordaining women and only 29 percent indicated that an exclusive male,
celibate clergy was "very important."
The Associated Press-Ipsos poll taken in April 2005 found the same
result.

The Episcopalian
Church can probably be thanked for
much of this attitude change. On July 29, 1974, eleven women forced
the issue by finding three bishops willing to ordain them. Although the Church immediately and vociferously
declared the ordinations invalid, two years later, the 72nd General Convention
in Philadelphia passed a resolution declaring that"no one shall be denied access" to
ordination on the basis of their sex. In
2006 the American Episcopalians elected their first woman presiding bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori.

The Vatican
is undoubtedly fearful that women's ordination will further divide the
Church. The dissension suffered since
the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) has been enormous and no one is in the
mood for much more. Back then Catholics
left the Church in droves. Priests and
nuns quit. Vocations plummeted. Recently, the priest shortage has
precipitated numerous and heart-wrenching parish closings and mergers in most
dioceses and, of course, the pedophilia scandals have caused much mistrust and
anger among regular parishioners.

The most revealing
statistics from all of this fallout is the Pew Forum on Religion & Public
Life, which reported last February that 28 percent of adults have left the
faith of their youth with Catholics coming out as the largest group-about 10
percent out of a population of 305 million Americans.

Admittedly, it's
difficult for an institution to change, especially one as huge, as old and as
steeped in tradition as the Catholic Church.
But traditions are man-made, not God-made. And one might conclude that this confluence
of events in both secular and religious society signals God's call for the
Church to change.

The Church has endured
difficulties in the past and it has adjusted.
Quite frankly, today's problems are so great, we need every leader we
can get. To eliminate half of the
population from priestly ministry is to see the world with only one eye or to
fix it with only one arm.

Gender shouldn't
determine whether or not a person is fit to be a priest. Neither should class, race, ethnicity or
sexual orientation for that matter. The
priesthood should be open to men and women who are called to it. We need to concentrate our energies on the
things that matter!