Judith A.B. Lee of Fort Myers wanted to be a minister since her teenage years, when she would visit the sick and elderly with her Methodist pastor in Brooklyn after youth group meetings.She said she saw two choices -- seek ordination in a Protestant sect where female pastors are accepted, or in the Roman Catholic Church, whose teachings on social work she values, but which forbids ordination of women.
She went for the second option last Sunday.
''I'll get that stained glass ceiling anywhere,'' Lee, 65, said of the difficulty becoming a female pastor in any sect. ``I might as well do something meaningful for future generations.''
She was ordained in Boston as what she calls a Roman Catholic priest -- even though the service at a Protestant church was performed by priests not recognized by the Vatican.
Lee's ministry in Fort Myers is called Church in the Park, which offers a meal and worship service to the homeless and others in Lions Park on Friday nights. About a third of her congregation identify themselves as Catholic, she said, and they were excited to hear ''Pastor Judy'' was becoming a priest.
''When God calls you, you can't say no because someone else says no,'' Lee said.
In a statement, the vicar general of the Boston Archdiocese said the church believes only men can be priests and that Roman Catholic Womenpriests, the group that organized Sunday's ceremony, is not an entity of the Roman Catholic Church.
In May, the Vatican reaffirmed that women who attempt ordination or bishops who attempt to ordain them will be excommunicated from the church, according to the Catholic News Agency.
But Bridget Mary Meehan, a spokeswoman for Womenpriests who was ordained through the group, said the church's opposition won't stop them and that they already have ordained women as 30 priests, 12 deacons and one bishop in North America. The first ceremony in the United States was in Pittsburgh in July 2006.
''Women are no longer going to sit in the back of the bus, like our sister Rosa Parks. We're following her example,'' Meehan said. ``You have an obligation to disobey an unjust law.''
Meehan said women were leaders in the early church, citing Phoebe. In Romans 16:1 the writer Paul salutes her as ''our sister'' and a deaconess of the church in some translations.
University of Miami Professor Michelle Maldonado, whose specialty is feminist theology, also said that female church leaders are mentioned in the epistles of the New Testament but that when the early church began to institutionalize, the priesthood soon became ``masculinized.''
During the 1970s and '80s, Catholics increasingly questioned why priests could only be men, Maldonado said, as they saw Protestant churches ordain women. She added that lasting change on the issue would require a revival of the whole system rather than alternative ordination ceremonies.
''You can't just add women to an institution that for [centuries] has excluded them,'' Maldonado said.
Meehan said the group's ordinations are legitimate because in 2002 two of their female priests were ordained in secret by male bishops who feared reprisal from the Vatican but were sympathetic with their cause. Those women can now ordain others, she said.
''I don't have to wait for the Pope to change his mind on this, because God knows they are dragging their feet,'' she said.
Lee, who earned a doctorate in social welfare in 1980 and has been working with homeless ministries for more than two decades, decided to pursue ordination last year after seeing Meehan lead a service in Bonita Springs and ``caught the vision that she was also presenting.''
Lee spent a year preparing to become a priest, completing a doctorate in ministry and studying sacramental theology.
Meehan said the group's ordination process is similar to what male priests go through. Women priests can ''absolutely'' be married, and the group is open to gays and lesbians.
The women choose to work under the name of the Roman Catholic Church, despite the Vatican's protests, because they value the Church's traditions, she said.
''We are really devoted to the Roman Catholic tradition,'' Meehan said, adding, ``We are just as much Catholic as the Pope and male bishops are Catholic.''
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