Defying
canon law and a Vatican decree that promised excommunication, four
Roman Catholic women took vows as priests Saturday during an elaborate
ordination ceremony full of song and messages of inclusiveness at a
Protestant church in Catonsville.
Andrea Johnson, presiding as
bishop, ordained two women from Maryland, Ann Penick and Marellen
Mayers, one from Pennsylvania and one from New York in the sanctuary of
St. John's United Church of Christ.
The church was filled with family
members — including husbands of three of the ordinands — and friends,
including some who are employed by the Archdiocese of Baltimore but who
support the ordination of women.
Photography was limited to protect the
privacy of those attending the ceremony.
In 1994, Pope John Paul
II said the church has no authority to ordain women, "and this judgment
is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful."
In 2008, the
Vatican further decreed that women who seek ordination or any bishop who
attempts it immediately excommunicate themselves from the Roman
Catholic Church.
But the organization that arranged Saturday's ordinations, Roman
Catholic Womenpriests, believes Canon Law 1024, which limits priesthood
to men, is unjust and self-defeating.
"And we don't believe we
can excommunicate ourselves," said Mayers, who was employed as a campus
minister and religion instructor at a Catholic high school until her
superiors learned of her affiliation with RCWP last year.
By then, she
was well on her way toward the priesthood.
"We are still Catholic. We do
not choose to separate ourselves from the church."
Mayers, who
grew up in Chicago and Baltimore, worked for more than two decades in
campus ministry.
"About 10 years ago," she said, "I became very
conscious and aware of a new calling — to be in full ministry alongside
my brothers as a priest."
Mayers considered converting to the
Episcopal Church, which permits the ordination of women.
"But the more I
thought about it, I could not bring myself to leave the Catholic
Church," she said. "I was raised in the Catholic Church, and I wanted to
remain faithful to the traditions and the way my parents brought me up.
I was a child of Vatican II and Pope John XXIII."
Mayers, whose
parents are deceased, said her siblings and other relatives "had a lot
of questions" but were "very supportive" of her decision to seek the
priesthood.