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The ordaining Bishop stands in valid Apostolic succession. This will be the second ordination of women to the priesthood in Minnesota. The first Midwest Region ordination of two women to priesthood and three to the diaconate was in Minneapolis on Aug. 12, 2007.
Roman Catholic Womenpriests are offering a renewed model of priestly ministry rooted in Jesus' example of inclusivity in the Gospels, not placing themselves outside the church. It is our hope that Roman Catholic women priests will one day be affirmed as faithful daughters of the church who offered the church a gift of a renewed priestly ministry in a community of equals modeled on Jesus in the Gospels. The first ordinations were held on the Danube River in Germany in 2002.
Recent scholarship affirms that women were ordained in the first 1,200 years of the church's history. The first half of the church's history provides us with images and accounts of the inclusion of women in Holy Orders that contradict the later prohibition. The evidence provides a tradition we reclaim.
We hold up heroic women in the church's tradition like Hildegard of Bingen, Joan of Arc and St. Theodora Guerin who obeyed God, followed their consciences and withstood hierarchical oppression including interdict, excommunication and death.
The Catholic Church teaches that a law of the church is authoritative only if it is "received" by the sensus fidelium, the community of faith. If the community of faith does not accept the law, it has no effect on us. All people have a moral obligation to disobey an unjust law. St. Augustine taught that an unjust law is no law at all. Because 70 percent of U.S. Catholics favor women's ordination and a growing majority of Catholics worldwide also favors women's ordination, we do not "receive" or accept the Church's prohibition against the ordination of women and the church's continued reliance on sexist metaphors, beliefs and assumptions for denying ordination to women. Contrary to the hierarchy's claim, there is no shortage of vocations to the priesthood, only shortsightedness about who has a vocation to priesthood.
The church teaching prohibiting women's ordination is not based on Scripture, tradition or the teaching authority (magisterium). In 1976, the Pontifical Biblical Commission concluded that there is no biblical reason to prohibit women's ordination. According to tradition, women were ordained deacons, priests and bishops in the first 1,200 hundred years of the church's history. The Roman Catholic Church teaches primacy of conscience. The prohibition against women's ordination is not infallible.
Roman Catholic Womenpriests are loyal members of the church who stand in the prophetic tradition of holy disobedience to an unjust law that discriminates against women. Roman Catholic Womenpriests reject the penalties of excommunication, interdict and any other punitive actions by church officials against Roman Catholic Womenpriests.
Pope Benedict XVI, wrote when he was Cardinal Ratzinger, in the commentary section of the Doctrine of Vatican II, volume V, page 134: "Over the Pope as the expression of the binding claim of ecclesiastical authority, there still stands one's own conscience, which must be obeyed before all else, if necessary even against the requirement of ecclesiastical authority."
Pope Benedict has not excommunicated any of the women who were ordained in Roman Catholic Womenpriests in North America.
Roman Catholic Church laws are often contradictory. In this instance, canon 1024 limits sacred orders to men, while canon 849 states that baptism is the gateway to the sacraments.
Scholar Bishop Ida Raming, doctor of theology, points out a prior church understanding: "Some medieval canonists hold that not maleness but baptism is the prerequisite for valid ordinations.
"After being baptized, anyone may be validly ordained," said the publication, "The Exclusion of Women from the Priesthood: Causes and Background."
Roman Catholic Womenpriests are leading the way to a renewed Roman Catholic Church in which the full equality of women will be a reality. Like Mary Magdalene, apostle to the apostles, and the women deacons, priests and bishops who served in the early centuries of our church, we are offering a model of a renewed priesthood in a community of equals.
Meehan is communications director for the Roman Catholic Womenpriest organization.
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