Women Ministers in the Catholic Church

Women Ministers in the Catholic Church

Anglican Female Clergy

I have written in previous posts about the stated intention of certain Catholic bishops and high ranking clergy in the United Kingdom to actually discourage priestly vocations because they have a liberal, feminist agenda.

Their argument goes like this: "We have too many priests rather than too few. This means that the church is still incorrigibly clericalist. The laity have still not found their voice. Lay women especially have been excluded and marginalized. Therefore we will discourage priestly vocations--especially from Anglican clergy converts, 'rigid' young men who are orthodox in their beliefs, and anyone basically who doesn't sign on to our seventies, polyester liberal agenda. Then we can pressure Rome to let us have women priests. But if Rome still won't let us have women priests we won't have any priests at all. Instead we'll have laypeople running parishes and they can be lay women. We'll make sure that the bishops appoint them and they are 'our' kind of women."

I was told it is happening here in the USA as well, and here is proof. In the Diocese of San Jose they are appointing women 'Ministers of Parish Life' who will run the parish. A priest will visit to administer the sacraments. I expect the priest will not be there every Sunday to say Mass and certainly not every day for daily Mass. I am willing to be corrected, but I expect that means the female 'Minister of Parish Life' will be authorized to conduct "communion services" using the reserved sacrament.

Apart from the obvious retardation of such an idea (that the reserved sacrament is for lay people to help themselves to) they will take this inch and run a mile.

The lady "Minister of Parish Life" will wear a cassock and surplice and some sort of vestment which will be indistinguishable from a deacon's or priest's stole. She will light the candles, process in and conduct the communion service from behind the altar and it will look like a Mass for as much as most people will be able to see and understand. They'll probably get around the prohibition of laity reading the gospel and preaching by allowing her to read a homily prepared by a priest, or they will simply say, "She is not preaching. She is sharing a few thoughts..."

Then the laity will pipe up and say, "Dorothy does everything the priest does! Why is it that she can't say those few words of consecration? How unfair to Dorothy! How cruel and hurtful is this dreadful patriarchal Catholic church not to allow Dorothy to be ordained!" And Dorothy and her clergy supporters and her bishop will all look wounded and hurt and cry together and have a group hug and pretend to be victims.

Fasten your seatbelts. It's coming to a diocese near you!