The Rev. Roy Bourgeois of Columbus has received a second warning
from his religious order, the Maryknolls, and faces expulsion from the
order if he doesn’t recant his position on women’s ordination in the
Catholic Church.
In recent years, Bourgeois -- founder of the SOA
Watch -- has been an advocate for women priests, while the Church
ordains only men.
“We’re poking the beehive again,” Bourgeois told the Ledger-Enquirer this week.
In a letter to Bourgeois dated July 27, Maryknoll Superior General
the Rev. Edward M. Dougherty repeated an earlier warning that Bourgeois
faced dismissal if he “continued (his) campaign in favor of women
priests and failed to recant publicly (his) position on the matter.”
Bourgeois, a priest for 39 years, sent a one-page response on Monday.
“After
much reflection, study, and prayer, I believe that our Church’s
teaching that excludes women from the priesthood defies both faith and
reason and cannot stand up to scrutiny,” Bourgeois wrote.
“The Vatican wants to hear those two words: ‘I recant,’” he said Tuesday. “For me, that would be to lie.”
Bourgeois’
attorneys are Bill Quigley, a professor at University of Loyola School
of Law and canon lawyer Dominican Fr. Thomas Doyle, an advocate for
victims of clergy sexual abuse. Quigley was presenting Bourgeois’ case.
Bourgeois
said the “primacy of conscience” teaching in the Church allows him to
follow his conscience about women’s ordination, thus trumping Church
teaching.
“They’re saying it’s an infallible teaching” that only
men can be ordained, Bourgeois said of the Vatican. A 1994 Apostolic
Letter issued by then-Pope John Paul II states: “I declare that the
Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on
women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the
Church’s faithful.”
In 2008, Bourgeois participated in a ceremony
in Kentucky in which a purported ordination took place for a Catholic
woman named Janice Sevre-Duszynska.
Following this event, the Catholic
Church declared both he and Sevre-Duszynska were automatically
excommunicated, and that Bourgeois was barred from priestly ministry in
public.
Still, the Maryknolls allowed him to stay on, and for now he
continues to be paid.
Dougherty’s letter is firm.
Stating that
Bourgeois has “remained unmoved” despite being asked by other
Maryknollers “to consider the effects of your actions on the Society and
the Church,” Dougherty’s decision is “based on your defiant stance as a
Catholic priest who publicly rejects the Magisterium of the Church on
the matter of priestly ordination.”
As he was warned in the
previous letter, if Bourgeois fails to recant within 15 days of receipt
of the second letter, Dougherty said he would “proceed with the process
of dismissal.”