Three women were to be ordained as priests yesterday in one of the US most Catholic cities, but they will face automatic excommunication by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese.
The trio is to be ordained in a ceremony performed by a woman at a Protestant church affiliated to the US Presbyterian Church and the United Church of Christ, in Boston’s first female ordination.
The move has angered the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, which has sent out an e-mail to local priests reminding them of Vatican law that women are allowed to have key roles within the church, but cannot become priests.
The archdiocese said the three women would be automatically excommunicated. Historically, the Vatican’s position has been that women cannot become priests because Jesus did not have female apostles.
However, the women said they were united in the belief of being called to the priesthood and compelled to resist what they believed to be wrong church teaching.
“We’re part of a prophetic tradition of disobeying unjust law,” said Gabriella Velardi Ward, 61, a New York based architect.
“Excommunication or not, I will still be able to serve the people of God,” she told the Boston Globe.
The two others are Gloria Carpeneto of Maryland and Mary Ann McCarthy Schoettly of New Jersey.
Dana Reynolds of California, a women consecrated as a bishop in Germany earlier this year, will perform the ceremony.
Reynolds and the others are members of the organization Roman Catholic Women priests, holding ordinations for women since 2002. The organization reports 28 women Catholic priests in the US.
The organization claims its ordinations are valid because its first bishops were ordained by Catholic bishops in good standing. The identity of the bishops is kept secret to protect them from being sanctioned by the Vatican.
The Church of the Covenant on Newbury Street in Boston’s Back Bay, led by Reverend Jennifer Wegler-McNelly, offered support by renting its historic edifice with Tiffany windows depicting women of the Bible.
However, the archdiocese was stern in its e-mail warning.
“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 e-mail said.
Referring to “the loving ministry of Jesus Christ, we pray for those who have willingly fallen away from the church by participating in such activities,” the e-mail said.
The Boston ordination ceremony is scheduled to coincide with the first joint conference of four organizations advocating for the admission of married men and also women into the priesthood. The meeting is expected to draw 200 participants.
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious
Thailand has netted more than 1.3 million kilograms of highly destructive blackchin tilapia fish, the government said yesterday, as it battles to stamp out the invasive species. Shoals of blackchin tilapia, which can produce up to 500 young at a time, have been found in 19 provinces, damaging ecosystems in rivers, swamps and canals by preying on small fish, shrimp and snail larvae. As well as the ecological impact, the government is worried about the effect on the kingdom’s crucial fish-farming industry. Fishing authorities caught 1,332,000kg of blackchin tilapia from February to Wednesday last week, said Nattacha Boonchaiinsawat, vice president of a parliamentary
RSS