The ordination last month of Samuel Borbon Talamante was the inspiration for a June pastoral letter by Bishop John Steinbock of Fresno. The subject? Women’s ordination.“With the ordination,” wrote Steinbock, “I received a few comments about women not being able to be ordained. Every so often one will hear of persons within the Church seeking to promote the ordination of women to the priesthood.
This has greatly died down with the understanding that men and women are equal but have different roles in life, and are not at odds with one another, but complement one another.”
Related to the comments Steinbock received, perhaps, was a letter by Priscilla Guest, published in the May 18 Fresno Bee. Guest called the May 19 ordination at St. John’s Cathedral in Fresno a “joyous occasion” but said it brought to her mind “that the Roman Catholic hierarchy, even now in the 21st century, is still denying congregations the opportunity to experience the gifts of women being called by God to the priesthood.”
Guest said a group called Action Purple Stole of Fresno was asking households “to light a candle on May 19 at 10 a.m. in remembrance and support for all women being called by God to the priesthood, yet unable to answer that call in the Roman Catholic Church.”
Fresno’s Action Purple Stole, says it web site, is part of an international movement that “strongly believes and supports that there is a sacred place for women in the pastoral ministries of the Church.”
They show their support for women’s ordination by “wearing the Purple Scarf to all liturgical celebrations.” The group sent a letter with literature supporting women’s ordination to Bishop Steinbock in October 2005; the letter noted that the group had met with him in 2004.
The letter called on Steinbock to abandon “unquestioning obedience,” which is “not a Jesus tradition,” because, not only did Jesus question religious leaders but he “encouraged others to question him.”
Action Purple Stole has garnered support in the past from the St. Paul Newman Center, pastored by Father Perry Kavookjian at California State University, Fresno. The group hosted a St. Mary Magdalene celebration there in 2005, and in March 2006, the center’s bulletin advertised for the group and the Women’s Ordination Conference’s world day of prayer for women’s ordination.
Bishop Steinbock, however, appears uninfluenced by the promoters of women’s ordination in his diocese. While praising the influence of women on the Church, his pastoral letter quotes Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, in which Pope John Paul II declared that the Church has no authority to ordain women.
Steinbock said he reiterated Church teaching on ordaining women in his pastoral “so that people, often influenced by the modern understanding of the nature of man and woman as explained by ideologies of our time, are not misled by unfounded expectations and hopes, which can lead people eventually to reject the very magisterium of the Church, which is the beacon of truth in this world to lead to eternal salvation.”
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