The Vatican deadline for Maryknoll priest, Fr. Roy Bourgeois, to withdraw his support for the ordination of women priests expired overnight as a storm of blogosphere commentary continued.The National Catholic Reporter's Tom Roberts says that if the issue is settled for Rome, it is still wide open in some Catholic circles.
In addition to the expected sharp division between those who applaud Bourgeois' action and those who find it scandalous, people have posed thoughtful questions about conscience, and how and whether the church can force someone to violate his conscience.
Others, in what amounts to a fairly robust discussion of the question of women's ordination, raise issues of history and women's place in the early church based on an understanding of scripture and archaeological evidence.
Another thread that runs through much of the commentary, Roberts says, asks how the church could act so swiftly against Bourgeois when decades passed before the church even began to investigate cases of sex abuse of children by priests.
Meanwhile, Bourgeois, a Maryknoll priest of 36 years, is trying to meld issues that normally operate in separate spheres by claiming that the ban on ordaining women is as serious an injustice within the church as the injustices he has confronted in the realms of the political and military.
Bourgeois, who concelebrated an ordination of women in Kentucky in August, responded to the Vatican's warning that he recant his position or face excommunication with a letter stating that he considered the ban on ordination of women an injustice within the church and that he could not recant what he considered a matter of conscience.
He expects to receive final notice of excommunication from the Vatican in the very near future.
Catholic Womenpriests, who sponsored the ordination that precipitated the Vatican action against Bourgeois, asked in a release how the Vatican could "excommunicate women who honor their call to the priesthood and, in the case of Fr. Roy, the men who support them, but not the priests and bishops who have perpetrated sexual abuse of children?"
In a series of questions, the group also asked why the Vatican continued to ignore "the voice of the community," citing surveys that regularly show a heavy majority of Catholics would approve of women priests.
"Why do you continue to deny the documented archaeological evidence that supports the spiritual leadership of women as deaconesses, priests and bishops for the first 1200 years of church history?" the group asked.
One of the most high profile clerics to weigh in on the Vatican discipline is Jesuit Fr. James Martin, an author and frequent contributor to America magazine, the weekly Jesuit publication.
In a Nov. 11 blog posting, Martin essentially explained the collision course that was inevitable when Bourgeois clearly violated church teaching by participating in the ordination, no matter that on another level, he was following his conscience, an inviolable activity.
Martin cites several references to conscience in Vatican II documents and the Catechism of the Catholic Church, including the line from Gaudiem et Spes: "Conscience is man's most secret core, and his sanctuary. There he is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths."
"Would that the church had acted with equal swiftness against sexually abusive priests. Would that bishops who had moved abusive priests from parish to parish were met with the same severity of justice," Fr. Martin says.
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