In 2002, seven women were secretly ordained as priests by two Roman
Catholic bishops in Germany.
After their ordination, a kind of domino
effect ensued.
Those seven women went on to ordain other women, and a movement to ordain female priests all around the world was born.
The
movement, named Roman Catholic Womenpriests, says more than a hundred
women have been ordained since 2002, and two-thirds of them are in the
U.S.
On a recent June day in Maryland, four
more women were ordained as priests.
The gallery at St. John's United
Church of Christ was filled with Catholic priests and nuns, there to
support the women and the ordination movement — though visitors were
asked not to photograph them. Witnessing the ceremony was enough to risk
excommunication.
The audience turned to
watch as the women made their way down the aisle, beaming like brides.
The two-and-a-half-hour ceremony ended with Holy Communion — the moment
they'd been waiting for.
Each woman performed the rites for the first
time as a priest, breaking bread and serving wine as tears of joy flowed
down their faces.
Marellen Mayers was one of
the women ordained that day, and like her fellow ordinands, she was
raised in the Catholic Church. Her mother had an altar at home, and when
Mayers was a child, she would stand in front of it, wearing a cloth as
her vestments and saying the Latin Mass.
"My
brother and sister would be kneeling behind me, and if I said, 'Dominus
vobiscum,' I would turn around and say, 'You're supposed to say 'Et cum
spiritu tuo,'" Mayers recalls.
Fellow ordinand Patti LaRosa had a similar
experience growing up. She came from a close-knit Italian family and
always felt comfortable in the Catholic Church. In the late 70s she got
married, had two kids, and was working as an assistant at a law firm in
Rochester, N.Y.
Several times a week she would go to church during her lunch break, and one day she realized, "I'm supposed to be a priest."
As
members of the Roman Catholic Church, these women priests are all
breaking church rules, which allow ordination only to baptized males. No
member of the Roman Catholic
Womenpriests has been excommunicated by
the Church, but they have felt repercussions.
They've not only been
threatened, they've lost friends and colleagues within the Church — many
of whom fear they will lose their jobs if they support the women's
ordination movement openly.
LaRosa recognizes
they are breaking Church law — specifically Canon 10:24 — but says,
"when you have an unjust law, sometimes it needs to be broken before it
can be changed."