Overheard in the Sacristy

Woman hears call to priesthood

But in Catholic Church, price is excommunication

By Margaret Ramirez | Tribune reporter

On the window ledge of her Edgewater apartment, where she prays, Barbara Zeman keeps a cross, a pile of sacred books and a small, plush black sheep. Zeman said the sheep is a symbol of women’s exclusion from priesthood in the Roman Catholic Church.

But Zeman and others are fighting to change their black-sheep status by taking the bold step of ordaining themselves.

On Saturday, an activist group hoping to pressure the church into dropping the ban on women’s ordination will hold a ceremony at a Protestant church where they will declare Zeman a Catholic priest. The Vatican has warned that participants in such ordinations are automatically excommunicated.

“I am disobeying an unjust law. I am following my conscience, and I am obeying God’s call,” said Zeman, 60, who also is studying to become a hospital chaplain. “I’m not doing this for myself. I’m doing this for the generations of women to come, because I don’t want those women to have the fight that I’ve had.” [...]

Please go to WDTPRS? Blog and Bridget Mary’s Blog for diametrically opposing views.

“Roman Catholic Womanpriest” Janice Sevre-Duszynska Celebrates First Mass

in Dorothy Day Catholic Worker House in Washington DC, September 5, 2008.

The Epitome of Self-Worship and Dogma of the Left

‘Mirror Room’ Helps People Discover Divinity Within Themselves

NDORE, India (UCAN) — Sister C. Lissy could not help laughing when she first entered the meditation room of the Universal Solidarity Movement (USM).

“I looked all around for the tabernacle in the dim light,” the Congregation of Jesus nun admitted to UCA News, “but all I could see was a small ceiling fan, a tube light and a gigantic mirror on a wall.”

The sari-clad nun, 32, began wondering why the room did not even have a crucifix, but then her eye caught a black, wooden sign above the two-square-meter mirror. Written on it were the English words “God within” and a phrase in Sanskrit, “Aham brahmasmi (I am God).”

[More Paganism Follows...]

Heretical “sister” hasn’t a clue on Sacred Scripture, Patristics, or sexual morality.

“A Good Way to Scare and Control People”

San Damiano Retreat center in Danville — 42 miles east of San Francisco — hosted a retreat this month with a Franciscan sister who, with her priest team-teacher, has addressed numerous Catholic audiences on the subject of sex. Sr. Fran Ferder led a women’s retreat, “Awaken to the Sacred,” at the center Aug. 8-10, according to the “Administrative Weekly,” an official communication of the Oakland diocese.

Ferder is a frequent presenter at conferences held by Call to Action, a group that dissents from Church teachings on women’s ordination, contraception, homosexuality, and other matters. With Fr. John Heagle, a priest for the Diocese of La Crosse, Wisconsin, she co-directs Therapy and Renewal Associates in Seattle.

In an interview on The Social Edge.com, Heagle said that his and Sister Fran’s hope “is that the institutional Church will only come to this deeper and richer understanding of human sexuality if it listens to the love stories of all the people… to people for whom loving is their life.” The Church, he said, should hear the “voices of married persons, single people, or the gay and lesbian community as well. We not only need to expand our vision of sexuality, but we also need to expand the inclusivity with which we listen to their stories.” [...]