www.byzcath.org Forums News & Events Church News Activist group to ordain Cleveland native a priest

TYF:

When I see this sort of thing in the media, I start asking myself

1. What is "an activist group"? My own experience, coming out of the 1960s, translates that to mean "rabble rouser," "trouble maker," or "someone who actively tries to undermine some social or political structure."
2. Is this "group" part of the Church or not? There are lots of groups both inside and outside the Church with their own agenda: an agenda that usually involves changing or eliminating a teaching or practice that the group finds oppressive or burdensome or "not up with the times." We can find any number of people and groups in history that have wanted the same thing. Hillary Belloc rightly notes that heresy usually begins with the idea of simplifying the Faith.
3. The Church has no "ban" on women becoming priests. The issue was settled for Catholics in 1994 when Pope JP2 of blessed memory stated definitively that the Church does not believe she can do something that the Lord did not give her permission to do. There is no place where there is a "ban" stated. It's simply something that cannot be done. It's akin to saying that God has banned men from becoming mothers. It's simply something that wasn't meant to happen in the Divine Plan.
4. " . . . declare . . . a priest . . ." I love this one. One is not "declared" a priest. One is trained, examined, and called by a bishop (finally) to be a priest. The Church nurtures the latent vocation, tests it, and finally brings it to fruition through ordination for service. If it were about declaration, the man outside of Philadelphia in the late 1970s--an Episcopal priest--who declared himself Pope would be in the See of Peter. Somehow it doesn't work that way--and thank God that it doesn't; imagine the chaos.

I see your reference to the age group, too. Some of the 1960s radical flower children are still around trying to usher in the Age of Aquarius. If you haven't already noticed, some of the flower children are behind the banking debacle, because we're all broken and we're all weak enough to fall for the temptation to personal greed at the expense of others. And we're all tempted to break up or destroy what doesn't go our way or conform to our way of thinking or doing. That, it seems to me, is part of our fallen nature.

In Christ,

BOB

I have been reading this same story for 20 years... As often as not in the National Catholic Reporter...

Only the names and locations change... but dissident groups have been pulling these stunts and getting far more column inches (and pixels) than they deserve.

Invariably, the naive (or designing) journalists who cover these stories seem to spin it as "Boy watch out, this group is REALLY showing Rome! Take that Pope!"... But what comes of these folks?

An 80's era governor of my fair state has an ex-wife who went on a "Euro-oridnation-cruise" some years ago. Every so often the local paper (which serves a city now larger than SanFran, CA) devotes some (apparently otherwise unfillable) column inches to the comings and goings of "Mother Dagmar" which as often as not include "celebrating Mass" at some protestant church building for some (mostly gay, re-married, or pro-abortion) activists who - all told - could fit into a good sized van. Maybe even a sedan.

Where do these all these oodles and oodles and oodles of "womym-preests" go after their 15 min of fame? Shouldn't they have stable diocese and a network of churches, seminaries and bricks and mortar by now?

>>YAWN<<

Wake me up when the story is half-ways interesting and it isn't the same old tired re-run of a has-been story.