UPDATE, Tuesday, November 27, 10 a.m.:
We learned this morning that the Rev. Roy Bourgeois has been excommunicated by the Vatican and dismissed from the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers for his support for the ordination of women. He had been a member of the Maryknoll community for 45 years. We have a call into Bourgeois for reaction.
He is in Rochester today for a 7 p.m. showing of “Pink Smoke Over the Vatican,” at the Cinema Theater. Bourgeois is featured in the film, which examines women in the priesthood.
ORIGINAL STORY:
To say that the Rev. Roy Bourgeois is a thorn in the Vatican’s side is probably an understatement.
Bourgeois is a Roman Catholic priest with the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers, an order known for its missionary work in some of the most troubled parts of the world.
Bourgeois has a long history of social activism. But it is his support for the ordination of woman, in particular, that could get him excommunicated from the church. For priests, excommunication means they can no longer receive the sacraments, such as Holy Communion. And they can’t administer the sacraments or other duties of a priest.
Elderly priests who are excommunicated can also suffer financially, since they can be barred from receiving a pension.
Bourgeois will be in Rochester on Tuesday, November 27, for a showing of the documentary film by Jules Hart, “Pink Smoke Over the Vatican.” The showing is at 7 p.m. at the Cinema Theatre, 957 South Clinton Avenue. Tickets are $10 and can be purchased in advance at Spiritus Christi, or $12 at the door. The controversial award-winning film explores the Roman Catholic Womenpriest movement, an international effort that prepares and supports women called to the priesthood.
Bourgeois, who is featured in the documentary, will join panelists, the Rev. Mary Ramerman, a founding member of Spiritus Christi, and the Rev. Jean Marie Marchant, who is also featured in the documentary, for a discussion after the film. Both women, though not recognized by the Roman Catholic Church, are ordained priests. The discussion will be moderated by Lynne Starpoli Boucher, director for the Center for Spirituality at Nazareth College.
After spending several years in Bolivia working with the poor, Bourgeois was arrested and deported in the 1970’s after being accused of attempting to overthrow that country’s dictator, General Hugo Banzer.
He became an outspoken critic of US foreign policy in Latin America following the rape and murder of four American nuns by a Salvadoran death squad. He protested the activities of the School of the Americas after some of its military graduates were accused of committing human rights violations in Latin American countries. He’s the founder of SOA Watch, an anti-war and social justice movement, and he’s spent several years in federal prisons as a result of his many protests.
In addition to receiving the Purple Heart following a tour in Vietnam, Bourgeois received the Gandhi Peace Award and the Pax Christi USA Pope Paul VI Teacher of Peace Award, and he was nominated in 2009 for the Nobel Peace Prize.
In a recent telephone interview from his home in Columbus, Georgia, Bourgeois said the Catholic Church is in crisis. The Vatican’s stance on women’s ordination is discrimination, he said, and its recent crackdown on the Leadership Conference of Women Religious is “arrogant.” The Vatican was critical of the LCWR for not being more outspoken against issues like abortion and same-sex marriage.
Bourgeois said the Catholic Church needs to change to remain relevant. He’s saddened that more Catholics are not speaking out on behalf of women who are called to the priesthood, but he said he’s confident change will come eventually.
The following is an edited version of the discussion with Bourgeois.
CITY: You strongly support allowing women to become priests. Did you think this way when you joined the priesthood? Or did you arrive at the idea later in life?
Bourgeois: Growing up as a traditional Catholic in Louisiana, I never questioned our church’s teachings. But then I joined the military after college during the days of the Vietnam War. And that experience in Vietnam really was a turning point in my journey. Death and suffering was close to me, and my faith became more important.
I felt this call to the priesthood, but I didn’t know what to do with that feeling. So I talked to an Army chaplain and I asked him to help me discern what I should do. He told me about the Maryknoll order. And within a year, it became very clear that I wanted to pursue my calling.
So I went about my work in Bolivia, the US, and elsewhere. And for many years, I never questioned the teachings about women priests. But through my work, I was speaking out against what was happening in the School of the Americas, basically going to hundreds of Catholic churches, colleges, and peace groups about this injustice involving the SOA and US foreign policy in Latin America. And I started meeting these devout Catholic women who shared [with him] their call to the priesthood.
My first response was, “That’s our tradition [to exclude women].”
I look back on that, and I am embarrassed. But in the seminary, we never once questioned why women couldn’t be priests. It was our church’s teaching that only baptized males could be priests. And that was it.
And here’s what it came down to: I started thinking about that word “tradition.” And as I started listening to these women, I remembered my childhood. I went to 12 years of segregated school. In our little Catholic church, the last five pews were for our black members, and for some reason I saw a connection. It was racism, and I didn’t question it.
I kept meeting these women, and I started staying awake at night thinking about this connection.
My own evolution isn’t based on complicated theological theory. It comes down to two simple questions: First, don’t we as Catholics profess that we are created in the image and likeness of God, and that God created us, men and women, of equal worth and dignity?
And second, we all say from the pope on down that the call to be a priest is a gift that comes from God. And that was my experience in the middle of war-torn Vietnam. I somehow felt that I was being called to do this. And as a male, I could. But these women could not, even though the call they were experiencing was the same as mine.
And the question I will bring to Rochester is the same question I ask wherever I speak, and that is, “Who are we as men to say that our call from God is authentic, but your call as women is not?”
I began to see with real clarity how our church’s teaching is rooted in sexism. And for me, sexism, like racism and homophobia, is a sin. No matter how hard we may try to justify it, discrimination against others, whether it’s because of race, gender, or sexual orientation, is not of God. These teachings are of men.
So you see the exclusion of women as discrimination, and like all forms of discrimination, an abuse of power?
We say that we were created in the likeness of God, but the problem I see in the church, and this is not recent, is that we have created God in our image. And this all-powerful God who we profess to love becomes a little God, who somehow does not see everyone of equal worth and value.
Somehow this God prefers white men and straight men. And somehow women and others don’t quite equal us who are white priests, bishops, and cardinals. It’s been reversed, and really God is there to carry out our beliefs.
I saw this exclusion of women to the priesthood as a grave injustice against women, but also a grave injustice to the church and, of course, our all-loving God.
Then I had to ask, “What do I do?” And what I came to is this: Silence is the voice of complicity. And I’ve been calling on my fellow priests and Catholics to break their silence.
What helped me was that I began to see how I had become a member of a very privileged group, all male, mostly white. It’s a very powerful culture. And what I have learned in this struggle for gender equality is that we can’t talk about sexism, racism, or homophobia without addressing the issue of power. And in the church there are men who are very powerful figures in this clerical culture, and we’ve become addicted to power. The church that we live in and advocate is not really the model that Jesus talked about.
So I can’t be silent no matter the consequences.
Should priests, men and women, be allowed to marry?
Definitely. Even within my own Maryknoll community, we’ve had hundreds of our members who have left, a number of them very good friends, because they couldn’t marry.
My friend Paul, while in Bolivia, fell in love with a Bolivian woman. He made a decision to pursue this love and marry, and he was forced out of Maryknoll and out of the priesthood.
Marriage, too, has become a form of sexism; women have become the enemy. And we’ve lost some of our best missionaries and priests. We’re only punishing ourselves.
Should women be allowed to become bishops, cardinals, and popes, too?
Yes. I don’t see anything wrong with that at all.
Two nuns of the four who were raped and killed in El Salvador were [my] friends. And I thought if any of these courageous women who are true martyrs for the faith, who went to El Salvador knowing how dangerous it is, felt the call to the priesthood, they would have been rejected.
I think about how incredible that is. And I think of all the men who don’t compare to the compassion and witness that they gave to helping the poor, but could be priests simply because they are males.
Jesus is often portrayed as the original activist. Should priests be activists for social justice? Or should they be conformists and purveyors of the church doctrine, which some would argue is what keeps the faith alive?
It’s not about being an activist or a conformist. The answer to that question really involves conscience. Even as a young child, the priest would come in for an hour a week in our little segregated school and talk about the primacy of conscience. Our conscience is our lifeline to God; it urges us to discern and do the right thing.
When we see something that’s wrong, the question is: What do we do? Saint Paul said faith without action is dead.
A priest said to me, “Roy, I support the ordination of women, but I can’t go public.” I said, “My friend, your silence means nothing. You’ve blessed the injustice.”
About Jesus being an activist: He spoke the truth. He lived the life that love is supposed to be about: compassion, service to the poor, justice, and humility. You know that saying, “If you want to be first with God, then get in the back of the line.”
Humility in our society is getting lost. I don’t think we’re called to be activists. I think all we’re called to do is be men and women of integrity and to identify ourselves. If we believe, as many of my fellow priests and Catholics say, that women should be ordained, come out.
Many Catholic churches and schools have closed in this region and across the country over the last 30 years. Is there less interest in the Catholic Church in the US? And if so, is it because of the church’s position on issues like ordaining women and contraception?
Without a doubt. I hear this everywhere I go.
Catholics come up to me and say they have children who have gone to Catholic schools and sometimes colleges. And [the children] come home and say, “Mom, dad, how can you stay with the church? They are so anti-women and so anti-gay.”
You see, young people today are so much more educated, and they are less willing to accept teachings without questioning.
Does this also explain the shortage of priests?
My own sister, a traditional Catholic, said this doesn’t make sense. In New Orleans, they closed 30 churches last year, not because of the hurricane, but because they don’t have enough priests.
Next year at Maryknoll, we’re calling an emergency meeting. We’re gathering our members from Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the US at great expense, but we have to do it because we are in a crisis. And our order is not alone.
The sex scandals have shaken our church right to the foundation. But the crisis we’re in is not about the scandals alone. We’ve long had a drop in vocation to the priesthood.
The Vatican has cracked down on the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, a group representing many Catholic nuns in the US, for not speaking out against same-sex marriage, women’s ordination, and abortion. What’s the impact of efforts like that?
I think what happened to the nuns really clarifies the problem, in a sense. The problem is patriarchy and sexism, but it’s been going on for 2,000 years. This is nothing new.
This has been covered in the Catholic press, but there’s also an article, “The Sisters’ Crusade,” in the latest issue of Rolling Stone. And what you see in that article is the same as what I hear from my friends and in my travels: [the crackdown] was a turning point for nuns. It emboldened them.
First there was an investigation of the LCWR, an all-female organization, by a mostly male group from the Vatican. For three years [they] investigated the nuns.
They accused [the LCWR] of causing a scandal for the church. It was so offensive. It was so unjust and cruel, and what you saw was a lot of nuns for the first time break their silence. And many Catholics, too, didn’t like what they saw happening to these women.
When our Maryknoll community meets, we’ll be mostly older white men; our average is something like 75. And there’s no hope for that kind of church. We’re moving into a future that doesn’t look like that, and some of us can’t adjust.
You’ve been threatened with excommunication. Where does that stand?
I was notified by the Vatican three years ago. They said I had 30 days to recant my position in support of the ordination of women or I would be excommunicated automatically. I wrote back focusing on this issue of the sacredness of conscience and the problem of sexism that’s rooted in this teaching.
I never got a response back until a few months ago. The Vatican instructed Maryknoll to kick me out if I didn’t recant.
I’ve been in the community for 40 years, and it’s not clear what my standing is with the Vatican. But Maryknoll has assured me that I am a member priest. And I go about my work in ministry as I’ve done before, and speaking as I will speak in Rochester in support of women’s ordination.
I don’t know what the future holds for me as a priest in the Catholic Church. But I do know that my conscience will not allow me to recant what I truly believe. I do know that trying to stop the ordination of women is like trying to stop the abolition of slavery or the women’s suffrage movement. Many tried, but they failed.
I’ve been very disappointed at the silence of many of my fellow priests. I see how fear is dominating our church right now. They [priests] fear speaking out, fear excommunication, and fear losing the pension. And I’m very sad to see how our church is using that word “excommunication” as spiritual violence.
How did your experience with war prepare you to be a better priest?
I didn’t know it at the time, but Vietnam was preparation for living out my faith, including confronting my church’s teachings. I was wounded there, and I lost many friends there. But what I came to was sort of an ability to confront fear.
In Bolivia, it was very dangerous under dictatorship. Living there with the poor, where many were killed or imprisoned, the fears came again. I was arrested. Yes, I was afraid, but I didn’t allow my fear to paralyze me. I learned and grew from it.
Given your experience working with the poor in Latin America, do you think the US’s foreign policy during the last half of the 20th century has any relationship to the immigration problems we experience today?
Our foreign policy — the violence, the brutality of their military, which we’ve armed and trained at the SOA — has caused such suffering and death to the people in some of these countries. I mean, I too would want to flee. I would want to get out of there with or without my family. So many who have come here [and now have children born here] were forced to come here by our foreign policy.
We need to understand that if we lived under those conditions of extreme poverty, brutality, and fear, we would be fleeing.
Americans tend to say they are concerned about the poor, but we’re conflicted about how to reduce poverty. What do Americans not understand about poverty?
Two weeks ago I gave a lecture about three hours from [Atlanta], and before I left, they took me to a work camp. There were about 100 field workers, mostly from Mexico on a three-month visa, living eight to 12 in a trailer. They were picking peppers, getting up very early in the morning and working until dusk, six days a week.
Many of us don’t know what it means to work in the heat, hunched over in a field 12 hours a day, day after day earning very low wages. The challenge we face in America today is ignorance. Many of us don’t know the plight of the poor. We usually don’t meet them. And I think there is a connectedness to many of these issues, whether it’s the conditions in Latin America, immigration, and even women’s ordination. We don’t take the time to meet and talk to people, and to know what it’s like to be in their situation. If we did, I think many of us would be more understanding.
What is the future of the Catholic Church under Pope Benedict XVI, who is quite conservative?
That’s the big question. We don’t know.
I thought a few years ago of resigning. But I’m in the camp that refuses to leave. We are the church. God speaks through all of us. And I hate to say this, but many of our leaders are bullies. And I never did like a bully, not in Latin America or in the Catholic Church. They are not the owners of the church. They’ve kind of hijacked the Gospel, and if we leave bullies to abuse their power, nothing will change.
I feel a lot of hope. I’m blessed because wherever I go, I find kindred spirits who refuse to allow these men at the Vatican who keep claiming as they did recently to the nuns that “We are your bosses, and only we can speak for God.” I mean, what arrogance.
This article appears in Nov 21-27, 2012.
If Roy Bourgeois doesn’t like the rules of the Roman Catholic Church he is free to go. There are other denominations that ordain women and gays where he would feel more at home. As a Catholic I have no problems with the church and neither do many other,s and I don’t want people like Bourgeois trying to change it. The same goes for nosy liberals, non-Catholics and other petulant agitators. Don’t you have better things to do than trying to impose your “values” on my church? Go and lecture someone else or better yet mind your own business.
With all due respect to Roy Bourgeois, perhaps he should become an Epsicopal priest. They permit ordination of women, respect for ALL of God’s children, like same-sex couples, and they aren’t nearly as inflexible on just about every other issue I can think of. While millions of Catholics in the US do ignore the Church’s teachings (and ignore the Church), when you hold yourself to particular labels, you endorse (intentionally or not) the views of that label. If I were to join the KKK, but say I only disapprove of black people in certain instances, I’d be run out of town on a rail, and rightly so. Father Bourgeois, I encourage you to become Episcopalian. Your superiors will wholeheartedly support all of the great work you are trying to do, and you won’t be able to be called a hypocrite. While the Anglican church won’t support you, the Episcopal Church will.
Comments like these really make me wonder if the commenters read the article at all. They certainly didn’t reflect on any part of it. Not the sexism, bigotry, or bullying. They simply reject the possibility. I guess it’s simpler than soul-searching, but I think our responsibility as sentient beings is to knit the facts together into a meaningful worldview instead of existing in a state of willful cognitive dissonance.
Believe me, nobody in the Vatican is losing any sleep, nor are faithful Catholics. Those who engage in this overwrought politically correct claptrap have simply transmuted their political ideologies into a false religion that really has nothing to do with the faith or the Church.
I believe the Catholic church will begin excommunicating women for stating they are of equal worth and dignity. Honestly look at some of the posts here that discuss upholding the devaluing of women. Catholicism will soon join the ranks of the terms racism and sexism.
Actually, I agree. Firstly only gay people who are not in an active gay relationship can be ordained as priests and I don’t agree with gay people being ordained as priests at all. I know of many women who have been ordained as Ministers or Priests and rightly so as they have been called by God into their positions and do a wonderful job.
Personally I think women in all Churches who are called by God to be Priests/Ministers should be permitted to become Ministers, and rightly so.
The Anglican Church will support you as they also have women Ministers/Priests/Deacons in their Church and they do a wonderful job as well.
The Anglican Church does have women in many of their Churches and it is wonderful to see. There is a woman Minister in our Church and God uses her in a mighty way. I’m all for women priests, bishops, ministers. God gives each of us spiritual gifts, men and women and He expects us to use them as He calls us to! Amen.
The refusal of the Vatican to ordain woman and gays is not discrimination , it is institutional suicide. If the geezers in Rome don’t wake up soon (figuratively and literally) they’re going to find that their heading up a church with a rapidly declining First and Second World base. and faced with a Second Reformation and an alignment of the Episcopalians/Anglicans with those Catholics who understand that this is the 21st. Century, not the 17th.
Anyone who thinks this so-called “movement” is anything but radical paganism — replacing the Holy Trinity with the “Sacred Energy of Cosmos” — should find the following disabusing:
http://youtu.be/xuerEyKJdkk?t=5m45s
It is not the laity that needs reforming. The emotionally crippled, corrupt men of the Vatican who are in need of reforming, if that is even possible. There will come a time when the vision of John XXIII and the Second Vatican Council will be restored and fulfilled – the same Council who rightfully asserted that we the laity are every measure as much our Church as the priests, bishops, cardinals and popes.
Show me where in Matthew, Mark, Luke or John where women are unable or prohibited from performing the Eucharist.
It will be the women who will save our Church in the Twenty-First Century. As Gary Wills observed earlier this year, on our nuns being bullied by the Vatican, “Nuns have preserved the Gospel values while bishops have been perverting them.”
The current hierarchy is without a shred of moral credibility. We have witnessed, time and again, all that matters to the Church hierarchy is the preservation of the hierarchy’s power, no matter what the cost to their congregations, or to the children’s souls crushed by their sexual abuses and their cover-ups. This is Christ-like? It is not the laity that needs reforming. So we pray the Holy Spirit will guide our Church. Hold fast to the faith we confess.
j.a.m. – so a lesbian priest scares you? Strange. The rest of us are more concerned about child-molesting male priests.
1577 “Only a baptized man (vir) validly receives sacred ordination.”66 The Lord Jesus chose men (viri) to form the college of the twelve apostles, and the apostles did the same when they chose collaborators to succeed them in their ministry.67 The college of bishops, with whom the priests are united in the priesthood, makes the college of the twelve an ever-present and ever-active reality until Christ’s return. The Church recognizes herself to be bound by this choice made by the Lord himself. For this reason the ordination of women is not possible.68
Troll Whisperer, You tend to paint with quite a broad brush. It is certainly unfortunate that some pedophile priests committed such horrible acts, and worse that some bishops tried to cover it up, but to imply that everyone is an abuser is unfair. I’m not sure what your position/job is, but if a teacher has sex with a student, or the actor that plays ‘elmo’ abused young boys, does that make all teachers bad, or all actors bad? No. You have also clearly used Vatican II to support your position when in fact Vatican II did say we are all part of the active Church, it did not mean that everyone has to be a priest. Don’t confuse the so-called ‘spirit of Vatican II’ with the ‘letter of Vatican II’. The Catechism of the Catholic Church which is available online for free clearly states the beliefs of the Church and carefully explains them as well. It would be a really good resource for those commenting on this story to read. I’m also including a link to make it even easier to find. http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_INDEX.HTM
I am a young Catholic woman and I have no problem with the Church’s teaching regarding women ordination. I have read books and articles on both sides of the argument and after much thought and prayer have come to the conclusion that the Church knows what it’s doing and is following the path of Christ in this and all its teachings. And the Church is totally relevant today! Nothing gives me more peace and joy than my Catholic faith. And I have a large number of young friends who feel the same way. In fact two women friends of mine have recently followed their vocation to be nuns! And three young men are pursuing their vocation to the priesthood with another at Becket Hall!
I would encourage you to educate yourself on “WHY” the Catholic church cannot allow for women priests. Please listen to the following and then I would love to hear your response to this: http://www.peterkreeft.com/audio/09_priestesses.htm
( I emailed this to city newspaper, but figured I would post it here as well)
The reaction of City Newspaper and Roy Bourgeois, to Roy Bourgeois’ excommunication from the Catholic Church, is strange.
Both City and Bourgeois believe the Catholic Church’s teachings are rooted in sexism, patriarchy and homophobia.
Both condemn the “power” of the Catholic Church, the power of the Church hierarchy of priests, bishops, cardinals and the Pope as abusive.
Both have taken upon themselves a public ministry, to spread this Word, to lead people away from what the Catholic Church teaches.
And yet, they are surprised and bothered that the Catholic Church has finally and definitively, distanced Herself from Roy Bourgeois and his ministry.
One of the most notable aspects of Tim Macaluso’s interview with former “Rev.” Roy Bourgeois is the choice of words Bourgeois uses to refer to the Catholic Church. “Our Church, “ “my church” in contrast to what Bourgeois refers to as, “The Vatican”-in essence, the “other” Church, the one that for 2,000 years has been steeped in “patriarchy and sexism,” the one departed from the actual vision of love Jesus intended, the “hijacked” Church.
Bourgeois’ creation of two churches, reveals how the faith he is preaching is in direct opposition to the faith of the Catholic Church. Bourgeois’ vision of what the priesthood is, of what human dignity, value and worth are, is not the Catholic Church’s 2,000-year-old vision. Bourgeois’ faith and the Catholic Church’s faith are antithetical and by this logic, he should not expect his position as an ambassador of the Church, to be preserved. He is “protesting” the Catholic faith- he is a Protestant, not a Catholic.
In his interview with City, Bourgeois refuses to refer to the Catholic Church, the way the Catholic Church has always referred to Herself: in the feminine form. Notice, he never uses “She” or “Her” to refer to the Church. Ironically, while arguing against the Church as a sexist body, Bourgeois completely ignores Her longstanding femininity. He prefers a description of the Church, based on his own ownership.
The Catholic Church has since Her beginning, been believed by Her members to be a living body. She is a feminine and motherly figure- a literal Bride, whom priests marry, when they are ordained. This is based entirely on the Judeo-Christian revelation, that God is a Father and the Church is the body of souls who receive God’s grace and likeness. God, in the Trinitarian form, is a family- into which all of humanity has been invited to choose to participate.
Modern day Catholic apologist Peter Kreeft gives an insight into how God’s fatherhood can be known. “The soul is spiritually impregnated by God, not vice versa. That is the ultimate reason why God must always be he to us, never she… The new birth—our salvation—comes from above, from without, from transcendence. We do not spiritually impregnate ourselves with salvation or divine life any more than we physically impregnate ourselves… The Church can no more be fruitful without being impregnated by her Divine Husband than a woman can be impregnated with new life without a man.”
Christ instituted the priesthood to leave the world with “in persona Christi”- Little Christs, little fathers. Jesus was a man who was begotten by God the Father, meaning He is one in the same. He chose 12 men, whom the Holy Spirit descended upon, to plant the seeds of his Word and to give Divine Life (these being masculine actions) to His Church (receiving, being a feminine action) through the Eucharist to give God’s life to the world through the Church (giving life is feminine). The conjugal imagery here, resulting in fruit- is entirely intentional.
If Christ being a man and His first chosen priests having been all men, is an accident, or arbitrary, or based on human construction, then what within the Church is not accident, arbitrary or human construction? As Kreeft says, “if you can change God’s masculinity, why not change his morality?”
If your “natural” conclusion to God being a Father, and Jesus being a man, and his priesthood being for men, is that the Church has been upholding the sin of sexism, how can this be the Church that Jesus said the Gates of hell would not prevail against? Why choose to stay in this Church?
But then again, Bourgeois is arguing that this is his Church.
He is determining what is from God and what is not. He is replacing the Church, with himself. He believes that he can be impregnated by new revelation- revelation that has not come since it first came to the Apostles 2,000 years ago, which closed after their deaths, revelation that contradicts the entire history of the Church, the history of God’s identity and what the Church sees as physically impossible.
And he does all this without referring to what the Church truly teaches and believes. He admits that as a priest he never asked any questions- he keeps it “simple”- either you love women and you allow them to be priests, or you think they are inferior and you don’t.
Bourgeois’ faith promotes a redefinition of the role of the sexes; a concept entrenched in today’s Liberal/Progressive worldview. This is the view that is dominating the Catholic Church in America (which without coincidence is in decline. In the rest of the world, traditional religion, in all its forms, including Catholicism is growing leaps and bounds. By 2025, there are expected to be 230 million Catholics living in Africa.). The hierarchy and faithful of the Roman Catholic Church are fighting this Liberal/Progressive view, because it is incompatible with Catholic teaching. Bourgeois’ redefinition, does however, accurately highlight that there is an overlap of the issues of a male priesthood, marriage as defined as a union of a man and a woman, the role of women in the church, what sex is, and what “power” is within the Catholic Church.
This worldview says that to highlight the differences between men and women, you are a sexist. You must be reasoning out of hate, that you are placing value on one sex above the other. To say both sexes are equal, we must say they are the same, that they are interchangeable. Men and women must be allowed to do everything that the other can do. A woman can replace a man in any role, with equal ability. Two fathers or two mothers are the same as a mother and a father. Actions and categorical roles, define a person’s value. You are what you do. You are what you are “allowed” to do.
There is, however, an underlying irony in this position (actually, many), because the same insistence that men and women are the same also demands women be able to do all that men do for the sake of diversity- admitting that women have something unique to offer from men.
The problem with this worldview is that it is not based in our physical reality.
The Catholic Church believes that God has two books in which He reveals who He is and who humanity is in relation to Him- the Book of Nature and the Bible. In the Book of Nature, in what we can observe around us, men and women do not do everything the same- the best example being, only women can be mothers and only men can be fathers.
Does this mean that they are not both necessary or of equal value? Without each, a new life is not possible; the world is not possible, so irrefutably they are both of equal importance. However, the role each plays in the creation of a new life is very different.
Is God a sexist because only women can have babies and only men can impregnate them? Was this a mistake? Many feminists seem to argue this –advocating for the State to “right” Mother Nature’s “wrong”- to give out free contraceptives and to force the Church to participate in seeing womanhood’s maternal nature as flawed and burdensome.
(Let me be clear in saying that I am not anywhere near opposed to women working or not being the caretaker who stays at home, or any other assumptions that could possibly be made here. I am simply referring to the physical limits of what men and women can do, and how the Church sees a physical limitation to the priesthood being a role that only men can do- namely the Consecration-which requires Fatherhood. I believe in equal rights, I am a woman, but I also believe that a woman can follow the Church’s teachings, particularly those on sex and still be “liberated” in the sense that she can play any number of valuable roles and practices in society. If you know true Catholic teaching, then you should know that the Church doesn’t demand that you have a certain number of children or that you limit your career options- the point here is that the priesthood is not a career- it is a vocation.)
Bourgeois and the Liberal Progressive “Catholics,” seem to equate the priesthood (and masculinity) with privilege. This is based in part, on hostility toward what is unique to womanhood and on a false notion that priests control the content of what the Church believes.
Is it any surprise, that a Progressive culture, that diminishes motherhood as enslavement, new life as disposable, and children as barriers to personal fulfillment, would not understand, that to the Church, motherhood is uniquely holy? As uniquely holy as the priesthood? Because humanity is made in the image and likeness of God, we are all like God; we are all sacred (even criminals-note: actions do not give or remove your value!). Mothers bring God into the world. Jesus was here because of Mary! Many Protestants think Catholics worship Mary because she is so venerated by the Church. The Church does not view motherhood or being a woman as enslavement, but as supremely holy and powerful work. The hand that rocks the cradle, rules the world! Motherhood is a unique relationship with the Creator because it deeply involves women in the creation of a new and invaluable human life. God is life. He needs women to say yes to this role, so that life can be brought into the world.
And women care for this life with a distinctly maternal nature. Look at Mother Teresa- she was beautifully maternal- holding and touching and mothering the sick, the smallest and the weakest, the cast offs of society, in a way that only a mother could. And she loved the Church, for all She is, for ALL Her traditions- employing her role in the Church’s mission, to her fullest. Would priesthood have endowed her with more “power”? What does that even mean? Her closeness to God was palpable. She didn’t need to be a priest to know and be like God. And no priest or man could have filled her role the way she did.
Is it also any surprise, that if you do not believe that God exists in the Eucharist, that you would not understand that the Consecration is an action that is definitively masculine? If you do not believe that the bread and wine are physically being “impregnated” by God (through the priest in persona Christi), that the bread and wine becomes God through this transference, then of course you will assume that anybody should be able to pretend to do this.
The Church says that every human being has the capacity to be a saint, regardless of the position in life they hold. Equality is that, even if our talents, abilities or roles are not the same, they all hold the same potential for life’s purpose of “spiritual marriage” with God through His Bride, the Church. (And no, this does not mean only Catholics can go to Heaven). Equality is, that God wants this marriage with all of us because we are all His children. God is the only one, who sees the individual for exactly who they are. You achieve your purpose in life by connecting with your Creator and having His life/grace work through you, to call you to more than you could be capable of on your own. “Power” or “winning” comes from obedience to God, so you may become like God- a God who died for all of humanity- to know, love and serve Him.
The Catholic Church believes that God left Her with this “recipe” 2,000 years ago. He revealed it to Her and works through Her for this end. Women do not need the priesthood to know and to be like God. Men do not need to do the physically impossible- to bear children, in order to know God. Each role, to be a man or to be a woman, reveals a part of God- each plays an important part of a whole, of a family. To say that to be a man or to be a woman is interchangeable is to say there is no significance in either role. The Church says the opposite- elevating what is unique to each to extreme significance.
Both City and Bourgeois seem to argue that Roy Bourgeois has a right of reinterpretation of Catholic teaching because Bourgeois has done his fair share of good deeds. His missionary work, his actions, qualifies him to rewrite what the Church teaches. He can assume this authority, because according to this “new Catholic” standard with Progressive roots, he is more Christ like than the old white male bullies in the Catholic Church hierarchy, who seem to blindly bark the rules.
This belief is also found in Bourgeois’ example of the martyred nuns, who by their demonstration of obvious faith, by his reasoning, should be entitled to assume the role of priesthood if they had so desired. The “priesthood” is to Bourgeois, a kind of prize, an endowment of value as opposed to the Church’s view that it is literal fatherhood, a role that only God can ordain, a role of servitude. He chose for this role to be a man’s role because it involves the actions of a “father” and through this to reveal certain aspects of who He is as our Father and who Christ is as a Man.
Have there been priests who have been evil? Wholly deficient, patriarchal, abusive of this role? Sadly, yes. Thank God, that for all the bad priests, bishops and Popes we have had that they did not have the power to change what the church teaches! Because that power, those rules have come from outside of the Church, 2,000 years ago through the Apostles- a Church that Jesus promised to protect. It is a miracle that the teachings of the Church have been documented, and remain unchanged since their founding! The Church received these teachings- She did not create them. Priests transmit them, they cannot manipulate them, just as they cannot change any reality created by God.
City Newspaper continually runs pieces and opinions, which misrepresent what the Catholic Church teaches. It is a lie, to preach that the Church is based in hate, when the very reason the Church acknowledges that men and women are different is in order to elevate these roles beyond any Earthly value.
For all the “power” City Newspaper attributes to the Church, it is ironic, that if you were to enter a public sphere in Rochester, that it would be City’s literature you would find, promoting hate, promoting a bigoted view of a group of people, not the Church’s teachings. The Church cannot and does not force Her opinion on anyone. She cannot force anyone to do anything. The excommunication of Roy Bourgeois was the Church declaring, in the only power She has, that Roy Bourgeois does not speak for Her.
City is promoting the equation of the Catholic Church, of Catholic people, with racism, sexism and homophobia- with hate. Meanwhile, this Church is responsible for some of the greatest human beings who have ever lived- like Mother Teresa. Every faith, from the outside looking in, has its oddities. That is why tolerance is important. To equate the Catholic Church with groups that outwardly espouse hate, as if She is akin to the Westboro Baptists, is prejudicial- it is grouping people together based on your own assumptions, not on truth or actual research into the Church’s age old philosophy.
For those of us who love and believe what the Church teaches, we take comfort in the fact that She has remained the same for 2,000 years. For those who do not believe this, there are many who have come before you and they have founded their own faiths and churches. I respect those decisions. I respect their free will. I will not, however sit silently and listen to the faith that I base my life on, the faith that instructs me to love everyone- even and especially those who do not live by this same faith- is belittled and debased and flat out lied about. You have bullied those of us who believe because you are able to be louder, because you have a platform that we don’t. I would respect Tim Macaluso’s piece had it actually attempted to first understand what the Church teaches and then respectfully disagreed through more than just name calling. Instead, it tried to tell me, that I hate people. It told every City Reader that Catholics hate people.
As a publication, you have lied, misrepresented and mislead. You should practice the tolerance that you preach.
Amen, chl.
1 Thessalonians 2:10-13
You are witnesses, and so is God, how devoutly and justly and blamelessly we behave toward you believers.
As you know, we treated each one of you as a father treats his children, exhorting and encouraging you and insisting that you conduct yourselves as worthy of the God who calls you into his kingdom and glory.
And for this reason we too give thanks to God unceasingly, that, in receiving the word of God from hearing us, you received not a human word, but as it truly is, the word of God, which is now at work in you who believe.
As a catholic woman, I’m thrilled about the women’s ordination movement. This is an exciting time as more and more Catholics (men, women, youth and seniors) are speaking out. Visit the Women’s Ordination Conference (WOC) website at http://www.womensordination.org to learn more about the movement and resources and tools available for participation and action. Learn about the purple stole– the international symbol for the women’s ordination movement. If you love your church but are frustrated with the hierarchy’s sexist attitudes, you can do something. Wear a purple stole to mass. Wear shirts, buttons and symbols to Catholic functions, gatherings, and liturgies to show your active role in the church and your desire for change. These are available from WOC. Withhold money from the collection box once or twice a month and replace it with a note expressing your support for women’s ordination. Demonstrate in front of the cathedral. Let’s take back our church!