Jeremiah 6:16

Thus saith the Lord: Stand ye on the ways, and see and ask for the old paths which is the good way, and walk ye in it: and you shall find refreshment for your souls.

7.20.2008

Feminae! Quid Nunc Cupiant?

Okay, well you had to know that I would come out of summer-hibernation for this one.

This afternoon/evening the AP and Boston Globe (what a rag of a paper) reported that the excommunicant organization "Womenpriests" announced the "ordination" of three women as priests and a fourth as a deacon. I'll try the Fr. Z style and just give you an article with my emphases and [my comments].

Group says it ordains 3 women Catholic priests

Jul 20, 8:06 PM (ET)

By STEVE LeBLANC


BOSTON (AP) - An activist group hoping to pressure the Roman Catholic church into dropping its long-standing prohibition [It's not a prohibition, it's a recognition that the Church doesn't have the authority.] barring women from the priesthood says it ordained three women on Sunday. [Can 1024 Sacram ordinationem valide recipit solus vir baptizatus.]

Church officials did not recognize the ordination, and the Vatican has previously warned that women taking part in ordination ceremonies will be excommunicated. [Actually what the Holy See has said is that these participants are already excommunicated, and have become so by their own actions. The Church, in this instance, only announces the excommunicated state, and enforces the penalty, she does not place them in it. They have done that themselves.]

The group known as Roman Catholic Womenpriests held the ceremony at the Church of the Covenant, a Protestant Church in Boston. [Please note that they hely it at a protestant Church, yet another sign of their departure from Rome.]

The group said the three women - Gloria Carpeneto of Baltimore, Judy Lee of Fort Myers, Fla., and Gabriella Velardi Ward of New York City - are responding to a heartfelt call to serve the church as priests. [Who are they to insert themselves into God's plan? He does not call the "qualified" but qualifies the called.]

A fourth woman, Mary Ann McCarthy Schoettly of Newton, N.J., was ordained as a deacon, the group said.

The Archdiocese of Boston issued a statement decrying the ceremony.

"Catholics who attempt to confer a sacred order on a woman, and the women who attempt to receive a sacred order, are by their own actions separating themselves from the church," the archdiocese said. [At least something orthodox is coming out of Boston now-a-days.]

The group says the women who are ordained remain loyal members of the church and [/yet] will act as priests whether they are excommunicated or not. [Let's get this straight. They're loyal to Mother Church, yet when she, in her wisdom, orders them not to do something, their loyalty will compel them to go ahead and disobey. Gotta love loyalty.]

Sunday's ordination ceremony was performed by two women the group describes as bishops - Ida Raming of Struttgart, Germany, and Dana Reynolds from California.

The ceremony "is not in compliance with their man-made rules,[...which stipulate men...] but it's certainly in compliance with the Roman Catholic ordination rituals[...which stipulate men...] because our bishops were ordained by all-male Roman Catholic bishops [stop the presses here... Not only are they using the argumentum ad verecundiam, the logical fallacy which invokes false authority, but we're referencing something which begs the question, how did this go unchecked?] who are in good standing with the church," [WRONG. Just because we don't KNOW who they are, doesn't mean that the Church, as the Bride of Christ is not wounded and betrayed by these deceitful and venemous Sucessors to the Apostles.] as provided by the church's ordination rituals, said Bridget Mary Meehan, the group's spokeswoman.

The group, which was formed in 2002, has conducted similar ceremonies in the U.S. and other parts of the world.

In March, the archbishop of St. Louis [Yay, Burke! Can we just petition the Vatican to make him the Ordinary of America?] excommunicated three women - two Americans and a South African who were part of the Womenpriests movement - for participating in a woman's ordination.

Pope Benedict XVI, like his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, has rebuffed calls to change traditional church teachings [Again, because he simplt does not have the authority to do such a thing!] on the requirement that priests be male.

Catholics who are excommunicated cannot receive sacraments. The penalty can be lifted if those who have been punished are sincerely repentant.

So I don't understand how these women, and not a few men seem to get confused with the limitations of their authority, and the limitations of the Church's authority. We (the Church) were given very strict parameters under which to operate, and to deviate from them, the orders of Christ, direct or implied and discerned, is an offense against God and His people. When you wound the Church, you wound all of us.

This is the further extent of the Free-Church movement. It expresses itself in liberal (read: non-traditional, innovative, new) liturgies, music and words within it; in wishy-washy spirituality, which leaves itself in the profane, merely human realm and avoids the inner depths of the spiritual life in favour of emotions and good feelings.

The personal seizure of religion and communion with the Divine manifests itself in congregationalism and Unitarian Universalism, neither of which are true religion in my estimation, is seeping into the Church of Rome. Our Anglican cousins are bleeding out from being wounded by this very issue. Let's take a page from their book and continue to avoid this divisive scandal, and pray, pray, pray that God will deliver us. His Grace is sufficient!

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