Ten years after her historic ordination, Mary Ramerman rarely makes it into the papers anymore.
Watching her minister as a priest today, it may be hard to believe that she was at the center of a highly publicized, painful battle between the diocese of Rochester, N.Y., and the parish then known as Corpus Christi in the late 1990s.
Back then, Corpus Christi was a Roman Catholic parish on the fringe. Led by Fr. Jim Callan, a charismatic priest with a radical commitment to the poor and marginalized, the church was known for taking risks.
They invited everyone to Communion, they blessed the unions of gay and lesbian couples (though never on diocesan property) and they allowed Mary Ramerman, the parish's lay associate pastor, to preach and to stand with Callan at the altar during the Eucharistic prayer.
Eventually, she was also invited to raise the chalice during the consecration.
In time, all of this radical inclusiveness caught up with them. Diocesan officials moved Callan to another parish. They replaced him with a group of pastoral administrators, including two women, who fired Ramerman in October 1998. Most of the rest of the staff were let go just before Christmas of that year.
A large part of the community regrouped and, with Ramerman's leadership, renamed themselves Spiritus Christi. Callan joined them for a service and, as a result, was automatically barred from serving the Rochester diocese. After that, he joined the community, too.
The 400 people who gathered for Ramerman's 10-year anniversary Mass and dinner on the evening of Nov. 17, 2011, have moved far beyond those difficult memories. They cherish their identity as Catholics, love the sacramental tradition and are grounded in the theology of the preferential option for the poor. They don't think much about Rome or the hierarchy of the diocese of Rochester anymore.
"I have found it so immensely freeing to not have to hang on to that mode of thinking that says, 'We are Catholic, you are not Catholic,'" Ramerman told me in an interview earlier this week. "When I became free of that system, it opened up such a greater understanding of God and the people around me."
Ramerman admits that, initially, Spiritus Christi did hope to be welcomed back into the institutional church. "A lot of people don't realize that after our split with the diocese, we continued as a parish led by a celibate, male priest. We thought that maybe in a year or two they would miss us and welcome us back."
As the parish gradually realized that this invitation would not be forthcoming, they also realized that they had a newfound freedom to create the church for which they had longed.
They began to contemplate whether Ramerman should become an ordained member of the community.
The discernment began in late 1998. Ramerman was ordained in November 2001.
This form of parishwide dialogue and decision-making has always been the hallmark of this group's process, even before they split from the diocese. It was the style of leadership envisioned by Callan, who had a remarkable gift for empowering the laity to develop ministries that responded to the needs of the community.
When Ramerman and her husband, Jim, arrived at the vibrant but dirt-poor Corpus Christi Church in 1983, they found a kindred spirit in Callan. He had a uniquely nonclerical willingness to allow the Spirit to flow through the work of the laity. He understood and accepted his own limitations. He trusted the staff and encouraged their gifts.
That spirit of mutual trust and the commitment to creating a loving, supportive environment continues to guide the members of Spiritus Christi to this day. Ramerman serves as pastoral administrator and Callan is associate pastor. The community's senior pastor, according to the church's bulletin and website, is Jesus Christ.
The pastoral team meets weekly for staff meetings and, each month, gathers for a "state of the heart" session where they speak openly about the happenings in their personal lives, their families and the effect of their ministries on their own emotions and spirits. These sessions foster mutual affirmation among the pastoral team.
"We have a lot of lay people who preach and lead lay Communion services," Ramerman explains. "The laity take over all of the liturgies when Jim and I are away. It's not something they want to do every week, but they love telling us how great it was. We are thrilled by that."
But it is the cutting-edge ministry to the poor and marginalized that has defined this community since Callan arrived in the mid-1970s. What began then as a small ministry dedicated to responding to the community's most pressing needs for food and clothing today looks more like a moderately sized social service agency.
Spiritus runs a mental health center; two rehabilitation houses for formerly incarcerated women and men; a safe home for men recovering from drug and alcohol addiction; an active prison ministry; and outreach centers in Borgne, Haiti, and Chiapas, Mexico.
Construction is currently under way on their latest endeavor, a supportive housing apartment building with 37 units.
In addition to their own ministries, the community has also remained committed to supporting outside organizations. Since the 1980s, the parish staff has allotted a certain percentage of their parish collections to be given to other outreach programs. Over the past three decades, this tithe has grown from 5 percent to 15 percent.
In the midst of so much extraordinary work, Ramerman's day seems strikingly similar to the average day of an ordinary priest or pastor. Throughout the week, she celebrates several of the daily Masses offered by Spiritus. These liturgies are held either at the site of their offices at Downtown United Presbyterian Church or at a local Baptist church.
Much of the rest of her week involves hospital and home visits, anointing the sick, planning and officiating weddings, and performing funerals.
"Those are really defining moments in people's lives," Ramerman says. "In the structure of the church, the sacraments are very important to what a priest does, and I've found that's even more important than I thought it would be."
"I think I've grown in my understanding of the role of the priest," Ramerman reflects. "Fundamentally, my role is to love people and to forgive people. I don't think there is anything more powerful than when I do that. And if I don't do that well, it is harmful to people. They need to know that they are loved and they need to know that they are forgiven."
Ramerman admits that Spiritus is sometimes criticized for being too traditional.
"They ask me, 'Why do you wear an alb?' or 'Why do you allow people to call you reverend?'" she said. "Given our size, we can grow quickly in terms of preaching or social action, but other areas, like changing these traditions, have to move a lot more slowly."
Spiritus currently has 1,500 active parishioners, including 250 families, with 1,100 people attending one of the parish's three weekend Masses every week. They are the largest non-Roman Catholic-identifying congregation in the country.
To those who believe that change in the Roman Catholic Church can only come from within the institution, Mary Ramerman would like to offer an invitation view the work and witness of the Spiritus Christi community.
Ramerman believes the parish offers a paradigm of what an inclusive, renewed Catholic parish might look like.
"After my ordination, some people thought I should be a speaker," Ramerman recalls, "and go around speaking about the church reform movement. But the better fit for me was to have a wonderful parish that people could see as a model."
While Ramerman has been working as a priest in her community for the past 10 years, an increasing number of movements to ordain women and build independent Catholic communities have gained momentum.
Some Catholics have pursued ordination through bishops of the Old Catholic tradition, while others have come under the care of the bishops of the Ecumenical Catholic Communion. A large segment of the newly ordained have entered ministry formally through the expanding Roman Catholic Womenpriests organization.
Ramerman experiences a deep solidarity with all of these emerging forms of priesthood and church.
"This is still a new movement, so there are going to be all different ways that people find to be ordained. I see us as all together in this, just finding different ways to get through a broken system."
Unlike some in the RCWP movement, however, she no longer feels tied to the Roman Catholic system and does not share the goal of being reintegrated into the institutional church.
As much as Ramerman supports and respects movements to reform the Roman Catholic Church, she worries that some Catholics might become immobilized by their anger and disappointment with the institutional church.
"People are frustrated that liturgy is boring. That's not going to change overnight, so why not create your own liturgy? Or, if you want to continue to go to the same liturgy, then do something meaningful in addition to that."
Ramerman believes that others can learn as much from Spiritus' mistakes as they can from the community's successes. "We're big on experiments here. But at least we're doing something different, rather than continuing to do the same thing that no one is happy with."
Working in a parish setting, encountering those in need every day, has shown her that there is crucial work to be done beyond the reform movement.
"It is important to be inner-centered and focus on what is essential to our spirituality," she said. "It is also important to be outward-centered, and concern ourselves with the homeless, war and the environment."
As for her own participation in outward-centered work, Ramerman feels particularly connected to Spiritus' ministry to Haiti, which began in 1996 with the building of a health clinic in Borgne. Eleven years later, in 2007, they were able to build a hospital in the town.
No one knew then how crucial that facility would be in the wake of Haiti's catastrophic earthquake in 2010.
Since Borgne is on the north coast, it wasn't directly impacted by the disaster. "But people were fleeing Port-au-Prince and heading for our hospital," Ramerman said. "Men and women with serious injuries traveled in the backs of pickup trucks for seven hours to get there. Of course, almost all of the supplies were going to Port-au-Prince. So, we decided that our resources would be best spent supporting the north coast."
Once the hospital assessed its needs, Ramerman took the list to Sunday Mass.
"I told the parish, 'I know you're going to laugh when you hear this, but maybe one of you has one of these things.'"
They needed a portable X-ray machine, cots, trucks, drivers, pilots with small planes, as well as a warehouse space to sort, store and pack donations.
"We got everything we asked for. It was amazing."
Hundreds have volunteered their time since the earthquake, and a constant stream of Spiritus parishioners continues to visit Haiti. Medical professionals work in the massive open-air shelter set up by construction workers. The past year has been spent battling the cholera epidemic.
While the parish and outreach ministries of Spiritus thrive, their former parish, Corpus Christi, has fallen victim to a shortage of priests and the growing movement to close inner-city churches.
The church, which has undergone several name changes, is now clustered with three other parishes.
Eventually, three of the four will be permanently shut down.
A few miles away, the Spiritus Christi visioning board, a committee of parishioners charged with charting the parish's future, have begun to consider inviting a new minister who might eventually pastor the community. In typical Spiritus style, they are open to the possibilities.
"The candidate could be already ordained, not ordained or even someone ordained to another tradition," Ramerman said. "The person could also be in our community already and we haven't recognized her or him yet."
While the community contemplates its future leadership, on the occasion of her anniversary, Ramerman is content to reflect on what God has taught her over the past decade.
She has boiled it all down to nine lessons, which she shared with the community during her anniversary Mass.
Some lessons have been deeply personal.
"First, I'm not perfect. I fail. I fall down. And I get up again."
She continues, "Fear is created in my own mind and can be dismissed by my own mind. There is nothing to worry about. Everything is OK."
Other lessons concern human connection. "I've learned that relationships are complicated. And a smile means more than a word."
She has also gained new ministerial wisdom: "Children make the best spiritual directors. When I look past the body and see the spirit of the person, I always see God. There is healing for everything."
Her final realization also aptly describes the challenge that the Spiritus Christi presents to many of us.
"We already have the power to change the world. We just don't know it yet."