Friday, September 01, 2006

Roman Catholic Acceptance of 'Womenpriests'

http://www.stjoan.com/bulletinfr.htm

Saint Joan of Arc parish of Minneapolis Minnesota, a parish ostensibly in full communion with Pope Benedict XVI, is sponsoring a 'Eucharistic Celebration' offered by Ms. Regina Nicolosi – one of six women who in June of this year claim – contrary to church dogma - to have received sacramental ordination to the Catholic priesthood. The 'Eucharist' will be celebrated on 23 September at the parish, according to the parish bulletin for the 27-28 August weekend. Call to Action, a group of Roman Catholic laity and clergy that proclaims a need for fundamental change in the governance and belief-system of the Roman Church, issued the invitation to participate through the parish.

The actual advertisement:

Call to Action Minnesota: Womenpriests Celebrate the Eucharist. On Saturday, September 23, 4-8 pm. Call to Action invites you to a Eucharistic Celebration with Regina Nicolosi presiding. Rev. Nicolosi was ordained as a womanpriest this summer. Following the Eucharist is a presentation by SJA parishioner Dr. Dorothy Irvin on 'Ancient and Contemporary Models of Womenpriests and Deacons'.

Is this the beginning of a new revolution in the American branch of the Roman Communion? The echoes of the simulacrum which transpired in the Church of the Advocate Philadelphia on 29 July 1974, and subsequent events in the Episcopal Church leading up to 1976 and 2003, are ominously unmistakable.

3 comments:

Ecgbert said...

That there are dissenting RCs isn't news.

Yes, this parallels the Philadelphia 11 - on the ground level many RCs are just as virulently Modernist as the dominant party of Episcopalians; the only real differences functionally are cultural and yes, social-class ones.

If a few dissenters go off on their own and are ordained by vagantes, which is what happened here, it's best not to call attention to them. No need to excommunicate - they've done that to themselves.

That a parishioner is speaking at this thing is horrendous but it's good to remember that the church doesn't micro-manage - it doesn't declare every Joe Gubbins with wrong ideas a formal heretic and excommunicate him!

The bulletin doesn't say where this service is being held but if it is at SJA they deserve every canonical thing they've got coming. Time for the Archbishop of St Paul and Minneapolis to throw the book at them if he is in fact Catholic.

IIRC in England if a cleric not licensed in the Anglican diocese tries to officiate in one of its parish churches you can have him arrested.

Printing this in the bulletin deserves at least a talking to from the archbishop! And probably more than that.

Anonymous said...

Why don't these 'womenpriests' join the episcopal church or the liberal catholic church, after all, by playing priest they are effectivly stating they are no longer Roman Catholics

Ecgbert said...

Because for cultural and social-class reasons they don't identify as Episcopalians and want to make a statement thinking that by so doing they'll change the teaching of their old church. So they're not interested in joining another real denomination.

(Even though by so doing they are no longer RC. You're right.)

And with a lot of them it is just a statement - I understand that few have actual congregations. The latter get my respect but not my approval.

The Liberal Catholic Church is actually two microscopic denominations now, one of which ordains women. (Yes, they split over that.) Interestingly their practice, like many Anglicans, is 'higher' and more traditional than many RCs! (Which these women aren't interested in.) The theology is what's strange - it's New Age ritual magic not Christianity. Unlike these women's new church they're not a spite church obsessed with changing the RC one. They're honestly their own thing.

(They got started about 100 years ago as an offshoot of Theosophy when a couple of Theosophists fooled ex-Old Catholic bishop Arnold Mathew in England into consecrating them as bishops.)

Also noteworthy is the age group the 'womanpriest' thing appeals too - lots of grannies. People our age and younger don't care. They either want to be conservative or, more often, are out-and-out secular. They can't be bothered to drag themselves to some church to listen to the womanpriest generation spout hippy platitudes.

(Think of Mr Van Driessen on 'Beavis and Butt-Head' and what the title characters thought of him!)

To be fair to the new vagante priests, they've simply taken all the wrong catechesis they've learnt from the RCs for 30+ years, at places like St Joan of Arc, to a logical conclusion.

Archbishop Donald Arden

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