"Eucharistic" Ceremony Highlights Local Women Ordained as Priests

From Baltimore we read:

Priest[ess] Andrea Johnson of Annapolis, dressed in a white robe, the red swirls on her sash rippling like water, lifts a goblet of wine to offer [un]Holy Communion at the Stony Run Friends meetinghouse in North Baltimore on Nov. 12. Behind her, Deacon Gloria Carpeneto of Catonsville offers grape juice and gluten-free rice cakes to those on restricted diets...

"Discrimination, hierarchical power, and exclusion are being challenged here today," Carpeneto says in her homily.

Of course! Having a wiccan-type retreat, playing dress-up and pretending to celebrate Mass was a real challenge to the Bishops gathered for their bi-annual meeting. Wasn't that covered on EWTN?

At the Stony Run liturgy, Womenpriests gave out polished stones of stained glass containing mustard seeds to symbolize the growth they expect from small beginnings.

A new type of power crystal...?

"It's a bit of a misnomer for them to call themselves Roman Catholics," says Mark Gray of the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown University, which gathers data on the Catholic Church. "They're not recognized by the official Roman Catholic Church."

They're not recognized by anyone except themselves or others whose oppose the Catholic Church.

The women are no longer trying to gain Vatican approval. "We're not complaining, we're modeling," [Bridget Mary] Meehan, [national spokeswoman for Roman Catholic Womenpriests] says. The law forbidding female ordination is discriminatory, and church tradition allows for holy disobedience in the face of injustice, she says. She quotes St. Thomas Aquinas to back up her assertion: "I would rather die excommunicated than violate my conscience."

Translation, echoing the words of Lucifer, "I will not serve!" and "I would rather die and go to hell than conform my will to that of God."

Meehan dismisses the excommunications. Once baptized a Catholic, always a Catholic, she says. "We are passionately Roman Catholic Church," she says. "What can they do, burn us at the stake?"

It's amazing - they all use the same talking points - recently Rose Hudson from the St Louis area said the same thing. A few hundred years ago, they would not even consider doing what they are doing today, precisely because they would not have the courage to submit themselves to such a death.

Joan of Arc, who was burned to death for heresy in 1431, is a role model for the group. A few decades after her death, the church declared Joan an innocent martyr and, in 1920, made her a saint. The women priests hope the church has a similar change of heart about them and welcome dialogue.

St Joan never attempted to pretend to be a priestess - and since 'women priests' are a theological impossibility, these lost women will be waiting an eternity for something which will never happen.