On a late winter Sunday in San Diego, Jane Via, dressed in the traditional garb of a Roman Catholic priest — a white alb, a gold stole draped over her narrow shoulders and a green, flowing robe called a chasuble — led the 100 or so congregants of the Mary Magdalene Apostle Catholic Community in a forbidden Mass.Via is 59, and if it were not for the accident of her sex and the fact that she is married with two sons, she would be an ideal candidate for the priesthood. Via converted to Catholicism as a freshman in college and has a Ph.D. in religious studies and a law degree.
A deputy district attorney in San Diego, she has worked as a prosecutor for 17 years, putting thieves, murderers and child abusers behind bars. In her other job as a Catholic priest, however, she is purposefully breaking canon law 1024.
That law says that only baptized men can be ordained as priests. “I have long believed in the legal principle of civil disobedience,” Via said. “The canon law that bans women from the priesthood is unjust. We have to break it in order to change it.”
Since 2002 about 40 Catholic women have been ordained as priests in defiance of Vatican law.
While a small number of renegade female priests may seem like more of an irritant to the Vatican than a threat, their numbers are growing.
More than 120 women, many with long ties to the church as nuns, college professors, chaplains and lay leaders, are currently in training for ordination. Eleven North American women are expected to be ordained by the end of the summer.
Church leaders view the women as heretics or, perhaps worse, as mere impersonators. “For an analogy in the secular sphere you might imagine that I could get a friend to swear me in as governor of New York,” said Cardinal Avery Dulles, a professor at Fordham University in New York City. “Would that make me governor?”
As a graduate student in the early 1970s, Via was influenced by feminist theologians like Rosemary Ruether and Mary Daly. In 1977, she joined the faculty of the University of San Diego to teach New Testament studies.
A year earlier, the Pontifical Biblical Commission determined that there were no scriptural impediments to women priests, and Via was one of many Catholic women who thought a female priesthood was only a matter of time. But for more than 30 years, the Vatican has held firm: priests must be male in order to symbolically represent Jesus.
Then on June 29, 2002, frustrated with the lack of progress, six European and one American woman were ordained as priests by Romulo Braschi, a controversial former priest, who claimed to have been ordained a bishop. In the women’s view, Braschi’s presence secured their standing in “apostolic succession,” which links them to the original apostles.
They placed a notarized copy of Braschi’s ordination in a safe deposit box in a European bank.
To the Vatican, the attempt to scrupulously document episcopal status was irrelevant. Within eight months, all seven were excommunicated in a document signed by Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI. Since that first ordination, however, no other female priests have been formally excommunicated.
Via, who had left academia for the law but never lost her strong religious feeling, wrote to one of the original seven women and, after undertaking preparatory study, was ordained on June 24, 2006.
She rented space from a Methodist Church and started holding Catholic Mass every Sunday evening. On Aug. 8, 2006, Via was informed by Robert Brom, the current bishop of San Diego, that because of her illegal ordination she had incurred “interdiction” — a formal censure that prohibits her from receiving the sacraments of the church. He also said he would report her case to the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith for review.
Via will not renounce her actions and understands that excommunication, the church’s most severe penalty, is now a real possibility. “The church is not a democracy,” said Jerry Coughlan, Via’s lawyer. “Short of a sex-change operation, it’s clear. Jane has no defense.”
Via doesn’t know when — or if — Rome will act. “I accept the consequences,” she said. “If it happens, it will be painful.” The pain is a consequence of her conflicting desires to stay Catholic and to change what she sees as a profound flaw in the church’s orthodoxy.
As a child in St. Louis, Via was mesmerized by a large statue of St. Joan of Arc. It was Joan’s demeanor, head and sword held high, that captivated the young Via.
Now she sees the story as a parable of a different sort: Joan was burned at the stake as a heretic in 1431 only to later be canonized a saint.
The church, after all, can change.
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