Overheard in the Sacristy

Elaine Groppenbacher, right, is ordained in the Guardian Angels Catholic Community by Bishop Peter Elder Hickman, left, and Reverend Sue Ringler at Community Christian Church in Tempe. Photo by  Deirdre Hamill / The Arizona Republic

Independent Catholic church ordains woman as priest  by Michael Clancy The Arizona Republic

A woman was ordained as a Catholic priest in the Valley on Saturday in the kind of ceremony the Vatican recently condemned as one of the church’s most serious crimes.

Elaine Groppenbacher received holy orders from Bishop Peter Hickman of the Ecumenical Catholic Communion, one of several liberal Catholic offshoots in the Valley. The ceremony took place at Guardian Angels Catholic Community, which meets in Tempe.

Groppenbacher is the fourth woman to be ordained as a Catholic priest in the Valley.

The issue of women’s ordination has been the subject of debate in recent years. The Vatican recently condemned the action as a grave sin, on par with the sexual abuse of children.

“The Catholic Church teaches that only a baptized man can be validly ordained to the ministerial priesthood,” said Rob DeFrancesco, spokesman for the Diocese of Phoenix. “The Catholic priesthood mirrors the actions of Christ, who lived as a celibate male and sought to ordain only men. Therefore, the attempted ordination of a woman to the priesthood in the Catholic Church constitutes a grave offense.”

Saturday’s ceremony also confirmed another woman priest, the Rev. Sue Ringler, and her parish as part of the Ecumenical Catholic Communion.

Participating in the ceremony were five bishops of independent churches, including Hickman, as well as the Rev. Vernon Meyer, a Catholic priest who resigned from the diocese this month.

DeFrancesco said independent churches “are not in communion with the Roman Catholic Church and should not identify themselves as Catholic” because of potential confusion. He had no comment on Meyer’s participation.

Elsewhere, the church has excommunicated the person ordained and those who took part in the ordination. But neither Groppenbacher nor Ringler said she considered herself subject to the rules of the Roman Catholic Church, and therefore could not be excommunicated.

Groppenbacher, who has had a career as a social worker, said before the ordination, “I have always been a person who approached my life as ministry.” As for the ordination, she said, “People who know me say it is about time.”

A cradle Catholic, Groppenbacher said she began to drift from the Roman Catholic Church in college. She tried a non-denominational Bible church for a while, but realized, “Tradition is in my blood.”

“I missed the sacramental, liturgical nature of the Catholic Church,” she said.

Once she found alternatives to the standard Roman church, her path to the priesthood became clear.

Ringler, also born Catholic, said she and Groppenbacher are not part of the Roman Catholic Womenpriests organization, which has attracted the attention of Catholic bishops in the United States and in Rome.

“We have more problems with the church than just its treatment of women,” Ringler said.

Among those issues are lay participation, active membership for gay and lesbian members, and openness on women’s health concerns, notably birth control and abortion. The churches typically invite everyone to take communion, church members or not.

Ringler said Guardian Angels attracts about 40 people to Mass every week – a Mass that closely follows the Roman Catholic version.

Hickman was direct in discussing the ordination of a woman.

“A great movement of the Holy Spirit is at work among us,” he said. “The Blessed Virgin Mary has been praying for acceptance of women all these centuries. It is the just and right thing to do.”

Both Ringler’s and Groppenbacher’s beliefs track with much of Catholic theology, the women said.

“God’s love is actively engaged with humanity,” Groppenbacher said. “My ordination is a public acknowledgement that this is first and foremost for me.”

Ringler said: “I am Catholic. There is something about that worth holding on to. Other groups are not the same. The Episcopalian Church comes close. But we feel we are a part of the long history of the Catholic Church, and we want to carry it into the future.”

Latae sententiae: automatic excommunication, incurred at the moment the offensive act takes place.

Excommunication is never a merely “vindictive penalty” (designed solely to punish), but is always used as a “medicinal penalty” intended to pressure the person into changing their behavior or statements, repent and return to full communion.

Maria Vittoria Longhitano, a 35 year-old married teacher from Milan, lies on the ground during a mass for her ordination as Italy’s first women “priest,” in the All Saints Anglican Church near Rome’s famous Spanish Steps, on May 22, 2010. Longhitano is a member of a small Catholic order called the Old Catholics, and the ordination is carried out by Monsignor Fritz Rene-Muller, a bishop from the Union of Utrecht of Old Catholic Churches.

Offering insight, Pope Benedict XVI was spot on during a press conference aboard the airplane, Tuesday, May 11, 2010, on the way to Lisbon for his four day visit to Portugal.

“Attacks on the pope and the church come not only from outside the church, but the suffering of the church comes from inside the church, from sin that exists inside the church,”

“This we have always known, but today we see it in a really terrifying way, that the greatest persecution of the church does not come from the enemies outside but is born from the sin in the church.”

The following appears in an upcoming bulletin of a mid-western parish:

Dear Parishioners,

Happy Pentecost! The Easter Season comes to a final crescendo with this glorious feast! The Holy Spirit is the Person of the Holy Trinity which we seem to neglect.  But still, the age we live in since the Ascension is the AGE of the Spirit. It was under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit that Vatican Council II happened. History making and world shaking, the Church came up to date under the Spirit’s guidance. The history of the Church since those moments is the successful or unsuccessful implementation of that wonderful coming together of the Church. Those who have resisted the Council have resisted the Spirit. It is sad that the implementation did not take place in many places and that has led to a great decline in true membership in the church and the increase of the powers of divergence from the Kingdom of God. In the United States, however, for the most part the implementation took root and has made the U.S. Catholic Church very vital and a shining example of true Christianity. The recent efforts of faithless and hypocritical people to make the church go backward are ill conceived and will fail. What a mistake it was for the Pope (who had the best of intentions) to lift a ban on those reactionary groups who want a dead church of Latin language and a rejection of Vatican II. One of the Bishops of one group even publicly takes a stand saying that the Holocaust is a myth. These people who may appear very pious (as the Pharisees did!) are really whitewashed sepulchers (to use the words of Jesus).  The Holy Spirit always leads us into the future, not into the past. [As we celebrate this faith-moment honoring God, the Holy Spirit let us be aware that trust as well as faith is needed…trust in the leadership of the Holy Spirit, trust in the Spirit’s healing powers as well as creativity under the Spirit’s egis.

It is the Spirit who guards the church from the powers of hell. [Jesus tells us: fear not, the Father will send you the Spirit… The great and powerful God the Spirit blows throughout the universe seeking souls open to the new creation, seeking hearts open to its promptings, seeking to uphold those whose knees are weak and confirming those who seek God. And it is not just the Catholic Church that is gifted with the Holy Spirit.  Every good inspiration, every good act, every humble prayer has as its source the one and same Spirit. All religions ancient and new are impacted by the Spirit and are made ready for advancement toward truth, unity and peace.

Please allow me to comment, quoting (with liberties) from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment.

“He sank more and more into uneasy delirium. At times he shuddered, turned his eyes from side to side, recognised everyone for a minute, but at once sank into delirium again. His breathing was hoarse and difficult, there was a sort of rattle in his throat.”

This is the death rattle of the “Spirit of Vatican II” types.

Women priests will no longer be contained By Janice Sevre-Duszynska • January 4, 2010

Several months ago, former Cincinnati Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk barred Sister Louise Akers from teaching in archdiocesean schools because she supported the ordination of women. Recently, when a reporter asked him why he did this, the archbishop said: “The formal teaching of the church is women cannot be ordained to the priesthood. I am bound by that … She was representing the church. You can’t represent the church and teach things that the church doesn’t teach. I believe I was forced to take some action.” (The Enquirer, Dec 21, 2009)

There are numerous publications by theologians which attest to the history and tradition of women’s leadership in early Christianity and up until the 12th century – as deacons, priests and bishops. See, for example, the calendars of archaeologist/theologian Dorothy Irvin and books by scholars Gary Macy, Karen Jo Torjesen, John Wijngaards, Lavinia Byrne, Ida Raming, Ute Eisen, Joan Morris, Kevin Madigan and Carolyn Osiek.

Catholics must search for the above information by themselves because male priests do not mention the words “women’s ordination” from the pulpit at Sunday Masses. Those who follow their conscience and have spoken out for women’s justice within our church and world community have been severely reprimanded by the Vatican. One such person is Father Roy Bourgeois, Maryknoll priest of 38 years and founder of the School of the Americas Watch. He and SOAWatch have been nominated for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize.

Theologian Dorothy Irvin, who has a pontifical doctorate in Catholic studies from the University of Tübingen, Germany, with specialization in Bible, ancient Near-Eastern studies and archaeology, has found archaeological evidence that women were priests.

I traveled with her to Rome, Naples and North Africa. We visited catacombs and churches. We studied frescoes, mosaics and tombstones. I have seen firsthand frescoes of a woman at the altar celebrating Mass and women celebrating Eucharist. I have seen the Roman mosaic of four women ministers, including a woman bishop, which attests to a continuous succession in church office from Mary through Praxedis and Pudentiana to Theodora.

Above her head is her title, “Episcopa,” with the feminine ending, meaning a bishop who is a woman.

Jesus treated women and men as equals and partners in ministry. Among his disciples were many women. Mary Magdalene, the first to encounter the risen Christ, was commissioned by Christ to be the “Apostle to the Apostles.” St. Paul called Junia “an outstanding apostle.” In 1976, the Pontifical Biblical Commission concluded that there is no biblical reason to prohibit women’s ordination.

This past July former President Jimmy Carter severed his ties with the Southern Baptist Convention because he believes that “we are all equal in the eyes of God – as confirmed in the Holy Scriptures.”

His July 12, 2009, statement entitled “The Words of God Do Not Justify Cruelty to Women” was published in the Sunday Observer in the United Kingdom. (See CommonDreams.org) In this powerful essay, he challenges male religious authorities saying that “discrimination and abuse wrongly backed by doctrine are damaging society. This discrimination, unjustifiably attributed to a Higher Authority, has provided a reason or excuse for the deprivation of women’s equal rights across the world for centuries.”

In polls conducted by the National Catholic Reporter, the sensus fidelium – the voices of the faithful – believe that women are called to the servant priesthood.

Many Catholics have left the Church because they consider it unbalanced without women on the altar to interpret the Gospels from their feminine living and dying.

The Holy Spirit moves in grace and truth among the grassroots and cannot be deterred – even by the Vatican. In recent years, women have reclaimed their ancient heritage within the Church. Today there are about 100 women ordained as Roman Catholic Womenpriests.

Your farewell article on Archbishop Pilarczyk contained a chart indicating that there are 482 Roman Catholic priests in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati. That is an error you may want to correct for the incoming archbishop, Dennis Schnurr.

As an ordained Roman Catholic Womanpriest, I make the total 483.

A VOTF Kind of Hero  by Diogenes

Voice of the Faithful has nominated Father Roy Bourgeois, for its “Priest of Integrity” award.

The Vatican has nominated Father Bourgeois for excommunication.

VOTF praises the Maryknoll priest for his “dedication to changing structures that are unjust.” Father Bourgeois incurred latae sententiae excommunication for participating in the attempted ordination of a woman. Undaunted by the threat of canonical penalty, he says that the Church’s failure to ordain women as priests amounts to “spiritual assassination.”

So evidently one of the “structures that are unjust” in the eyes of VOTF is the Catholic Church. Which causes us to wonder—not for the first time—about the “faithful” for whom this organization provides a voice. What is it, exactly, that they are faithful to?

…I’ll get the stake.

Pro-choice nun still fighting for women’s care

Despite a public reprimand from her religious order last month, Chicago’s pro-choice Roman Catholic nun, Sister Donna Quinn, is not backing down from her support of abortion rights, applauding the defeat of an amendment today that would have added restrictions to the health care bill for women seeking abortions.

On the day the church honors the Immaculate Conception, or conception of the Virgin Mary, Quinn sent a thank you note to those who lobbied their senators to vote against the Nelson-Hatch Amendment, which lost in a 54-45 Senate vote earlier today.

The amendment would have prohibited funds authorized or appropriated under the health care bill, including the tax credits used to help individuals purchase health coverage, from being used for abortions, or for benefits packages that include abortion. America’s Catholic bishops had pushed for the amendment.

“The Amendment lost today but now the work will be to take this Bill and come out with the same good news when the Senate and House work together,” Quinn said.

Citing a poem about the Virgin Mary, Quinn noted the providential date of the amendment’s defeat.

“I was reminded of being with men and women from the Unitarian faith tradition last year as they celebrated Mary who by her assent, they believed, was one of the first women in the New Testament to express Choice,” Quinn said.

She also referenced the Vatican’s crackdown on dissenting voices, citing an article in the magazine “Conscience” published by the organization Catholics for Choice.

Quoting writer Jeannine Gramick, Quinn wrote: “Faithful and respectful dissent is vital to the life of the church. It enables the church community to think, to deliberate, to debate and to grow in relationship to one another and in relationship to God. We cannot afford to let our dissenters be silenced. They are a gift to our church.”

Last month, Quinn’s Wisconsin-based Sinsinawa Dominican order announced that she had been rebuked for escorting patients into a Hinsdale clinic that provides abortions. Quinn said patients needed her protection because of the threat posed by anti-abortion protesters.

A few weeks later, a previously approved “bubble zone” ordinance went into effect in Chicago, creating 8-foot zones around people within 50 feet of a medical facility.

Study of Catholic sisters focuses on religious role of women By Patty Machelor ARIZONA DAILY STAR

A Vatican study of Roman Catholic sisters in the United States is discouraging and intrusive to some local women while others say it is a chance to emphasize good works and call more women to religious life.

The $1.1 million study — which some view as more of an investigation — includes hundreds of questions on the spiritual and personal lives of this country’s 59,000 Catholic sisters. U.S. bishops are being asked to fund the three-year undertaking. Topics range from finances to attracting new members to nuns who dissent publicly from church teachings in such areas as civil disobedience and sexuality.

“We are closing schools and churches and they are asking the diocese to spend money on this type of thing?” said Sister Lil Mattingly, a Maryknoll Missioner who said she is speaking for herself and not as a Maryknoll. Mattingly said she has a hard time reconciling the wealth in Rome with funding problems here.

“We try very hard to review our own lives and how Jesus is calling us to live, but I’d like to call on Rome to work on that,” she said.

The women being studied are those who work in “apostolic activities,” as opposed to cloistered nuns who live in relative seclusion and lead lives of prayer and contemplation.

Tucson Bishop Gerald F. Kicanas said there are far more apostolic nuns than cloistered nuns in the U.S. today, which might be the reason for the Vatican’s focus. He said the study is being done to “strengthen religious life, and to explore ways our religious communities in the United States can … increase in numbers.”

Sister Elizabeth Ohmann, a Franciscan nun who works for Humane Borders, believes there’s a different reason the focus is on apostolic nuns.

“I think — and this is my opinion — that they are saying they believe it’s the active communities that are really encouraging, say, women priests and are also upholding the rights of homosexuals and even homosexual marriage,” she said.

Ohmann said some of her personal beliefs, and those of some of her fellow sisters, are not in keeping with what the church proclaims.

“Are we going contrary to Rome’s teachings? I say, ‘Yes, it is contrary to Rome’s teachings.’ But it is not contrary to my own conscience,” she said.

Kicanas said the bishops are being invited to pay for the study, but it is not required. He doesn’t know if they will help with the cost. The Diocese of Tucson filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2004.

The nun study was announced last January and written portions were due last week. Next, there will be on-site visitations to some congregations.

A Vatican-approved Web site on the study (www.apostolic visitation.org) includes information from Cardinal Franc Rodé on the reasons for the study.

“Like other vocations in the church, religious life has passed through challenging times,” Rodé wrote. “Apostolic works have also changed significantly because of societal changes. These and other areas need to be better understood and assessed in order to safeguard and promote consecrated life in the United States.”

Kicanas said people often react to inquiries like this with fear.

“There’s always a level of trepidation that comes with a review and yet it has always been extremely beneficial,” he said. “I think our religious communities will have an opportunity, through this study, to identify the significant contributions they have made to the mission of the church.”

Laurie Olson, a local member of Call to Action, a national Catholic reform movement, said other Vatican studies have been conducted following a crisis or scandal, which is not the case this time.

“One can only conclude it’s an attack on the sisters, that they are trying to rein them in in some fashion,” she said. “It seems to be the pattern of the hierarchy, to attack and further diminish the role of women in the church.”

Sister Rina Cappellazzo, the Tucson Diocese’s vicar for religious, said the study is a chance to look at all the contributions nuns are making, and how things can be done better in the future.

“It’s another review of who we are, what we do and why we do it,” she said. “After any kind of study, there is a new direction, a clarified vision and sometimes you take a new direction.”

She hopes the study will help attract more women to religious life. There are 194 sisters in the Diocese of Tucson.

“One of the things that we’re hoping is that women will look at this and say, ‘This is what I want to join. I want to be a part of this,’ ” she said.

Contact reporter Patty Machelor at 235-0308 or pmachelor@azstarnet.com

Shameful. Simply shameful.

LCWR says Vatican has not fully disclosed reasons for US visitation by Dennis Sadowski, Catholic News Service

WASHINGTON (CNS) — Leaders representing 59,000 women religious are questioning what they say is a lack of full disclosure about what is motivating the Vatican’s apostolic visitation that will study the contemporary practices of U.S. women’s religious orders.

In an Aug. 17 press statement, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious also said the leaders “object to the fact that their orders will not be permitted to see the investigative reports about them” when they are submitted in 2011 to the Vatican’s Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life and its prefect, Cardinal Franc Rode.

In addition, the women religious expressed concern about secrecy they say is surrounding the funding of the study, said Sister Annmarie Sanders, director of communications for LCWR. …

What is this obsession Democrats have with transforming their heroes into religious icons?

First it was the messianic depictions of Obama’s head surrounded by a halo or pasted onto pictures of Jesus or depicted in a white, glowing robe…a quick search of “Obama Jesus” on Google Images finds numerous examples of this (of course some of these are mocking the messianic complex the Left has about their hero).  Now a prominent Democrat has decided that President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor deserves the same treatment.

Felix Sanchez, the Chief Executive Officer of TerraCom, a government and public relations firm in Washington, DC and Chairman of the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts has decided that Sotomayor is the second coming of the Virgin Mary.

…

Blasphemy: The act of claiming the attributes and rights of God.

“I mean in a way Obama’s standing above the country, above – above the world; he’s sort of god!”” — Newsweek editor Evan Thomas June 5, 2009 in an MSNBC interview

This shows how far some “Christians” have strayed from the Truth:

The “Very Rev.” Katherine Ragsdale, president of Episcopal Divinity School said in an interview about George Tiller: “This is about the loss of a man who was a saint and a martyr. He was a prayerful man who put his life at risk to protect others and died for it.”

Blessing ND Grads