Same old same old

This piece is quite interesting in the confusion it reveals concerning women's ordination. It's about Susan Ringler who was ordained to the deaconate in the United Catholic Church (which is not valid, licit, or recognised in any way by Rome). She sends up the usual wail:

Until a couple of years ago, she held out hope that lay Catholics and women would gain roles of importance, but the church, she says, has turned hard-line and any dream of eking out more change from Vatican Council II of 40 years ago long faded.

"As a Roman Catholic woman, to think that you have a calling to a deeper ministry from God is almost blasphemy, and the guilt associated with that is huge," says the mother of three grown children who trained as a registered nurse. "It took me a long time to realize that my calling was from God." She says the affirmation she received from family, friends and others redoubled her desire to serve more deeply in ministry and assuaged "guilt that comes naturally to Catholics."

So in that blurb, she basically told the rest of her flock: you're unimportant and shallow. I'm sure they appreciated that. Then it tells of what she had accomplished to date:

In 1987, she was tapped by her then-pastor at St. Timothy’s Catholic Church, Monsignor Dale Fushek, to develop a major outreach ministry to the East Valley’s homeless and poor in the tradition of Phoenix’s Andre House ministry. When Paz de Cristo food kitchen in Mesa served its first meal on Sept. 15, 1988, "we had more volunteers than people to serve," recalls Ringler, who was Paz’s executive director until 1995.

Today, the homeless program, with broad ecumenical support, serves more than 200 meals per night and provides a range of social services. Fighting neighborhood and political opposition to Paz de Cristo’s move to its site and winning Mesa’s approval was the highlight of her work there.

Great guns -- what an accomplishment! Was that unimportant? Highly doubtful. But here's the kicker:

When she became cocoordinator of liturgy at St. Timothy’s, "it just blew me away," she says. For five years, until 2002, she had "the honor to work with one of the best liturgical churches in the country."

"I always was fascinated by liturgy. I went in not knowing anything," she says, but she found she was able to help shape it to resonate with women and the poor.

Her pastor tapped a layman who knew nothing about the liturgy to be its coordinator? There's the silliness: two thousand years of sacred tradition, deep and layered meanings over the centuries, revealed truth entrusted to an established hierarchy, and this priest hands it over to a woman who knows nothing? And she takes that invitation as an initiative to create her own style? We wonder why there's disunity and scandal from the altar.

Actually, bless her heart, she did stumble on some long-neglected needs and prayer intentions:

"I am one of those people who really truly believed for a long time that if you’ve got a position where you can be a voice for the voiceless, then you work within to make changes. The reaction I got from women who saw me up there was, ‘Oh, my gosh.’ They were so grateful seeing me up there telling those guys what to do." In that role, she says, she pushed the envelope to ensure that prayers included "the homeless and the hungry and all the social justice issues and talking about peace."

Oh, my gosh. Maybe we should alert the Vatican: we need to pray for the homeless, the hungry, and victims of injustice. I'm sure Benedict will want to know.

The last paragraph connects the dots:

Ringler is the third female deacon in the United Catholic Church, said the Most Rev. William Christen, Southwest Diocese bishop, who ordained her. His wife, Mary, is one of three female priests, and there is a female bishop. "We have a lot of couples that left (the Roman Catholic Church) a long time ago because of divorce and remarriages," he says. "Now they have found a community where that doesn’t matter."

Dissent is all of a piece. The teachings on marriage and chastity, which are the guarantors of human dignity -- especially the children -- "don't matter." Thus, neither does the liturgy of the ages, the "priest as bridegroom" image, the quiet holiness of the lay state, or the visible unity under the Vicar of Christ. Take a number, get in line. Despite clinging to "catholic" in your name, you're just one more frenetic moth immolating yourself on the wrong light.

Comments

[Donna]

I know this is sad and wrong, but I find it hard to read this piece and not feel relieved that there is a place for the dissenting Catholics to go that caters to their whims and allows them to believe that they are somehow revolutionizing the Faith. While I pray that they will be led back to the Truth, I earnestly wish their movement success in drawing all those dissenting Catholics away from the faithful so what we can focus on Christ's Kingdom and not on defending the Church from those whose primary concern seems to be who gets to do what!!