For taking part in a movement that ordained her and other women as
priests and bishops, Patricia Fresen has been officially excommunicated
by the Roman Catholic hierarchy.Unbowed, the South African native told a gathering of more than 1,500 at a liberal Catholic conference in Louisville that the hierarchy has it backwards.
“The present pope and the previous one are in schism,” said Fresen, a former Dominican nun and a keynote speaker at the national conference of the group Call to Action, which wrapped up a three-day gathering at the Galt House on Sunday.
She contended that Pope Benedict XVI and his predecessor, John Paul II, are rolling back the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, which began 50 years ago this fall.
“After all, a general council is the highest authority in the church, higher than the pope,” Fresen maintained.
Fresen — a bishop in the Roman Catholic Women Priests movement — titled her talk, “Less Pope, More Jesus.” She called for an end to the hiearchical governing of the church and instead a “much broader understanding of the church as the people of God.”
Fresen cited inspiration from the overthrow of apartheid, or legalized discrimination, in her native country.
“The only way as I discovered in South Africa to bring about real systemic change is to do something against the system, and that’s what we’re doing,” she said.
“We claim equality and justice for women,” she added.
Fresen drew applause and amens numerous times throughout her speech, which she delivered beneath a large banner with the Italian word “aggiornamento,”a term used at the Second Vatican Council for bringing the church up to date.
In addition to Fresen, several women attended the conference in clerical attire, part of a movement that defies Canon 1024 in Roman Catholic law — that a “baptized male alone receives sacred ordination validly.”
Former St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke — now head of the Vatican’s top judicial body — declared Fresen and two other women to be excommunicated in 2007 for their involvement in an ordination service in his archdiocese. His statement called Roman Catholic Women Priests a sect outside the church.
Call to Action challenges Roman Catholic teaching and practice in several areas, calling for women’s ordination, the inclusion of feminine images for God in the liturgy and an affirmation of artificial birth control and same-sex relationships.
The group says it has about 25,000 members and supporters and dozens of chapters nationwide.
The conference included communion liturgy presided over by women.
An Archdiocese of Louisville statement said: “Call To Action is not officially recognized by the Church, and this conference is not sponsored or supported by the Archdiocese,” it said.
“No permission has been sought nor any granted for Mass.”
Like Fresen and others in the women’s ordination movement, Call to Action itself has received official disapproval.
In 2006, the Vatican upheld a decree by the bishop of Lincoln, Neb., declaring members of Call to Action excommunicated. The Vatican said Call to Action held positions “unacceptable from a doctrinal and disciplinary standpoint.”
Call to Action Executive Director Jim FitzGerald maintained that the Catholic people, not the hierarchy, “are the church.”
He said the annual conference — held for the first time ever in Louisville after years in the Great Lakes region — exceeded expectations.
“The Second Vatican Council’s goal was to muster the church’s best energy, and that’s what we did,” he said.
Joseph Martos, an attendee from Louisville, agreed. “This is something a lot of Catholics need to hear and want to hear,” he said.
Barbara Zeman, a member of the Call to Action board and herself a member of the Roman Catholic Women Priests, said she was inspired when she attended a liturgy led by Fresen several years ago.
“Seeing a woman at the altar for the first time was a dream come true,” Zeman said.
“That day I learned that Patricia’s story,” Zeman said, of how she had “a fire in her belly that would not be extinguished.”