National Catholic Reporter Obsesses on "Women Priests"

Pamela Schaeffer reports for NCR on the recent "festivities" which occurred in St Louis:

“What a day. What an occasion. What a rabbi!”

The speaker was Patricia Fresen, a bishop in the Roman Catholic Womenpriests movement. The day, Nov. 11; the occasion, a jubilant ceremony at a Jewish synagogue, during which Fresen would ordain two women -- the latest of a series of such ceremonies, aimed at helping women to fulfill what they say is their calling: to serve the church as Catholic priests.

Ah, yes, what a day....a day a group of confused or delusional people got together to celebrate "self"! And there are plenty of pictures of participants!

Among Catholics generally, reactions to the movement range from elation to eye rolling; from tears of joy to expressions of disdain. Even church officials have reacted inconsistently to a trend that flies in the face of the church’s official stance that women cannot be priests. The first ordinations resulted in formal excommunication by the Vatican for the Danube Seven. The decree, signed by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) was dated July 22, 2004, ironically, some noted, the feast day of St. Mary Magdalene, sometimes called “apostle to the apostles.”

Subsequent ordinations have so far failed to elicit a Vatican response, leaving it to local dioceses to decide whether silence or public warning is the best approach. In St. Louis, Archbishop Raymond L. Burke warned of excommunication latae sententiae for Elsie Hainz McGrath and Rose Marie Dunn Hudson, the two scheduled to be ordained, along with their supporters, meaning that even without a formal decree, their actions put them outside the church. (Burke’s 1,750-word statement can be viewed at www.stlouisreview.com, archbishop’s column for Nov. 9.) After the ceremony, McGrath and Hudson were served with a summons to appear before a church tribunal Dec. 3. McGrath, a former editor at Liguori, a Catholic publishing house, labeled it “a canonical kangaroo court,” and both women said they would not appear.

LIGUORI IS STILL SELLING McGRATH's ITEMS! It was checked again this morning...

The women priests tend to regard such hierarchical rumblings with a mixture of amusement and regret. “Burke is a paper tiger,” said Gerry Rauch of St. Louis, a board member of the Women’s Ordination Conference, which supports a variety of forms of priestly roles for women, ranging from ordination to a “discipleship of equals,” in which all symbols of power, including ordination, would be obsolete....

The archbishop is a "paper tiger?"

Such pioneering [women priests] for some has come with a hefty price. Were women priests to compose a litany of emotional and financial costs, it would include the following: Fresen, fired from a prestigious teaching post and expelled from her religious order; Jane Marchant, forced to resign her position as head of health care ministry for the Boston archdiocese; Meehan, facing income losses now that Liguori, a Catholic publishing house, has removed her books from its lists.

She would prefer that a Catholic publishing house sell books and other materials by heretics and schismatics? Perhaps to celebrate diversity?

Schaeffer's article can be read here.

As a matter of fact, NCR is so enamored with these "priestesses" that it's run a special profile of five of these confused women...here, as well as these other two articles:

Reluctant bishop ordained for North America [Patricia Fresen]

Finished playing by the rules in which the editor concludes:

Whither women priests? Perhaps they will become yet another breakaway movement, as many church officials must drearily hope. Or, depending on the faithful’s response, these women could conceivably drag the church into the 21st century. We’ll pray for that.

It's clear that the views promoted by NCR are anything but Catholic. Isn't it time that it quits referring to itself as such?