Friday, November 9

Schism Watch: Catholics out there may remember the mess in Rochester a couple of years ago, in which a parish split because of the diocese (finally) putting a hault to a number of questionable activities going on: including homosexual couples in marriage preparation classes, allowing a woman to practically concelebrate Mass, etc.

Well, that woman, Mary Ramerman, will be ordained a "Catholic" priest this weekend. The bishop will be of the Old Catholic sect, of course.

I don't talk about my views on the ordination of women because it just gets people too ornery. I'll share this story, though: A few years ago, I taught school with a perfectly wonderful woman who was very Catholic (Roman, not Old), thoroughly committed to giving the kids under her care a traditional Catholic education, and was, as is fitting, quite committed to issues of justice. (Some people don't see this connection, preferring to lazily put people in boxes - "conservatives" don't do justice, etc...Well, it's not true. Odds are, the old people you see at Perpetual Adoration or the rosary will follow their prayer time with more work for the poor in a week than you've done all year). She was a feminist, replacing the "Him" pronoun with "God" in her Mass responses, and so on. But she was also very pro-Church authority. I asked her once how she worked it all out - here's what she said.

The Chuch is two thousand years old. Who am I, one little person with one little set of views, within that context, to set my opinions up as normative against the wisdom of the Church? It may not make a certain kind of sense to me to bar women from ordination, but so what? The Church knows better than I do, so I have to trust.

At the risk of bringing more wrath from a different set of people, I'll share what I read once, years ago, on the subject - I think it was from a piece by Michael Garvey, who was writing an imaginary letter to the Pope. Among his suggestions for change was, "Please ordain women. But please reject the first ten thousand applicants."