Nine Women Unofficially Ordained in Canada

[Ekaterina]

July 25, 2005
Nine Women Unofficially Ordained in Canada
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:44 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/interna ... nted=print

TORONTO (AP) -- Nine Roman Catholic women were unofficially ordained Monday as priests and deacons, undeterred by the threat of excommunication from their church.

The women -- seven Americans, a Canadian and a German living in the United States -- were ordained by Christine Mayr-Lumetzberger of Austria and Gisela Forster of Germany, who were unofficially declared bishops in 2003. The ordinations are not valid within the Catholic Church and seven women who tried it in 2002 were excommunicated by the Vatican.

Four of Monday's nine were ordained as priests and five as deacons in the hymn-filled ceremony on a tour boat near Ottawa, Canada.

Regina Nicolosi, a German living in Minnesota, was ordained a deacon. Married with children and grandchildren she did not see a problem in being a woman and becoming a priest.

''I believe it's valid even if it's against the law of the Church, because it is an unjust law,'' she said. Nicolosi is also vice president of the Women's Ordination Conference, an organization founded in the U.S. in 1975.

She said she did ''not fear an excommunication, because I don't feel excommunicated.''

The first ordination of Catholic women took place in the summer of 2002 in Austria, on the Danube River. Seven women were ordained, including Forster and Mayr-Lumetzberger.

All seven were excommunicated by the Vatican, in a statement by the Offices of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, signed by its then-prefect Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, who became Pope Benedict XVI last April. It said the ordination was ''a grave offense to the divine constitution of the Church'' and an ''affront to the dignity of women.''

The Archbishop of Kingston, Rev. Anthony Meagher, said the women were ''stepping outside of the Church, and I believe it's an automatic excommunication.''

He added that he would be willing to see women get more involved in Church, but not ''wearing the colors of priesthood.''

[StephenG]

This is seemingly a matter for the Roman Catholic church and not for the Orthodox.

What 'jars' possibly are terms such as 'unofficially' ordained, this appears to be a nonsense but I suspect is the terminology of a journalist. And the quote, "I believe it's valid..........if its against the law of the Church, because its an unjust law", one of the 'ordained' is quoted as saying.

Even in worldly terms one cannot simply overturn the rules simply because one does not agree with them.

The whole thing smacks of a logical progression of Western thinking. Someone presumably put two women through an illegal ceremony (according to RC teaching) and created two women bishops, and these have subsequently performed another 'ceremony' and created several cleric of differing ranks. Really? It appears to suppose God, in the form of the Holy Spirit, is obliged to give a blessing because a particular ceremony was carried out. Is God, forgive the loose language, bound by such acts? And then we have the deluded soul who reports 'not fearing excommunication, because I don't feel excommunicated'!

Something hasn't happened because I don't feel it has happened. Oh, and where did any of the great Teachers and Fathers of the East and West ever teach such subjective notions of reality?

Our Lord, the God-man, Jesus Christ, called 12 to be his disciples and these were only men. This was not a culturally limited action bearing in mind that Our Lord is both God and man.

But according to their 'logic' in choosing only men this was an affront to the dignity of women? For such is the implication, and a truly blasphemous one at that.

[Joseph]

From an Orthodox perspective there are no true ordinations at all, male or female, outside of the Church.

[jobrien]

We traditional Roman Catholics, who are faithful to the Holy See and the dogmas of the Church call these invalid ordinations that cannot confer grace. It's just another example of progressivism stemming from Vatican II errors.

[romiosini]

Technically, from the Earlier Christian Church until the True Church today, The Orthodox Christian Christian, always has the valid orders of the Deaconess. Many Saints such as Saint Nectarius of Aegina,and Saint John Chrysostom had deaconess. Saint Nectarius had a Subdeaconess too.

Saint Olympia was the deaconess and spiritual daughter of Saint John Chrysostom. Saint Irene of Chrysovolantou was also deaconess of her Monastery.

Throughout Church History, the ordination of a Woman was common only in Monasteries, the Abbess. Only the 20th Century, the order of a deaconess started becoming out of place all of a sudden after the Repose of Saint Nectarius. But, today in Greece there are Abbesses who are Deaconesses. The Present Archbishop of Hellas, His Beatitude Christodoulus, has ordained several Deaconesses when he was then Metropolitan of Demetrias.

Before the Communist revolution, Saint Elizabeth the Grand Duchess, proposed the return of the order of the Deaconess. But sadly, many Members of the Holy Synod believed it was a protestantization of Orthodoxy, which after these Bishops regretted to have denied the return of an ancient practice.

In Roman Catholicism, if I am correct, the order of the Deaconess was completely removed when the idea of Celibacy to all Priesthood came into place.

[joasia]

jobrien,

We traditional Roman Catholics, who are faithful to the Holy See and the dogmas of the Church call these invalid ordinations that cannot confer grace.

Which Holy See is that and which dogmas??