Midwest Region Press Releases

  • May 4, 2008
  • October 30. 2008
    MEDIA RELEASE

    Release date: October 30, 2008

    Contact: Laura Singer, 773-550-0847 (cell) or (773) 736-2562,  LTS72@aol.com, www.romancatholicwomenpriests.org and www.womensordination.org

    Chicago Chaplain to be ordained a Roman Catholic Womanpriest

    Chicago, IL. On November 1, 2008, a Chicago woman will be ordained a Roman Catholic priest and three women will be ordained as Roman Catholic deacons in preparation for the priesthood at 1:00 p.m. at St. Pauls United Church of Christ, 2335 N. Orchard (Fullerton and Orchard).  In the first Roman Catholic Womanpriest (RCWP) ordination in Chicago, Barbara Zeman (Chicago) will be ordained a priest, and Alta Jacko (Chicago), Linda Wilcox (Afton, MN), and Mary Styne (Milwaukee, WI) will be ordained deacons by Bishop Dana Reynolds of California.

    "My ordination is a conscious response to and an affirmation of a call from God that has been present in me for many years,” stated Zeman. “I am not doing this for myself, but for previous generations of women who have served the church tirelessly, without recognition; for current generations who seek a more inclusive church where the dignity of each individual is realized; and, for future generations so that they do not have to suffer the inequities that others have."  As a working priest in Chicago, Zeman will integrate her professional and spiritual life in hospital chaplaincy.  She has already begun to build a faith community in her neighborhood and will continue to work with ministers in other faith traditions to keep alive Cardinal Bernardin’s vision of Common Ground – to create a climate in which people get along with each other and where the dignity of each human being is respected.

    The ordinations will be conducted by RCWP, a movement which is building a reclaimed model of priesthood for a renewed Roman Catholic Church. Its goal is to achieve full equality of women and men in the Roman Catholic Church, and to live with inclusiveness, respect and justice for all in a community of open and affirming equals.

    “I want to be ordained to help make a path for the other women who have the gifts and this same desire to serve in the Church,” said Wilcox.  “I’m following my conscience, which I have learned in my Catholic teaching, is my obligation to do, even if it means going against authority. My ordination presents a public challenge to the Catholic Church’s ban on women priests and deacons that cannot be ignored.”

    In 2008, RCWP are celebrating ordinations in eight locations in the United States and Canada. As of November 1, 2008 in the U.S., there will be 35 priests, 8 deacons, 16 candidates, 1 bishop and many applicants.

     “These ordinations bring to light the service and commitment of Catholic women doing the work of priests,” said Laura Singer, Chicago area Catholic and Board President of the Women’s Ordination Conference. “These women are following the example of Jesus and challenging the unjust and sexist practices of the Catholic Church through direct action.”  Many advocates of women’s ordination support these ordinations as one way to move toward full equality for women in the Catholic Church.

    Media are welcome to cover the ordination ceremony.  Media must register with contact person prior to the event for guidelines.  Doors open at 12:15 p.m. Please be respectful; this is a sacred event. Ordination candidates and other RCWP and WOC representatives will be available for interviews after the ceremony, but not before.

    XXX

    Press Release: 
    Ordination of Roman Catholic Women, Winona, MN May 4, 2008
    Contact: Regina Nicolosi     
    Phone: 651 388 6059
    Email: crnicolosi@yahoo.com

    Mary Smith of Long Lake, MN and Barbara Zeman of Chicago, IL will be ordained as deacons in Winona, MN, May 4, 2008.  A third woman, Kathy Redig, of Winona, MN will be ordained a priest. Redig is a chaplain at the local hospital. All are members of the Midwest Region of the Roman Catholic Womenpriests movement.  The ordaining Bishop, Patricia Fresen, stands in valid Apostolic succession.  This will be the second ordination of women to the priesthood in Minnesota.  The first Midwest Region ordination of two women to the priesthood and three to the diaconate was in Minneapolis on August 12, 2007.

    Regina Nicolosi of Red Wing, MN is the program coordinator for the Midwest region.  She will present the three women to the bishop and recommend them for ordination.  Nicolosi was ordained a Roman Catholic Womanpriest in Switzerland 2006.

    Roman Catholic Womenpriests are offering a renewed model of priestly ministry rooted in Jesus' example of inclusivity in the Gospels, not placing themselves outside the church.  It is our hope that Roman Catholic women priests will one day be affirmed as faithful daughters of the church who offered the church a gift of a renewed priestly ministry in a community of equals modeled on Jesus in the Gospels. The first ordinations were held on the Danube in Germany in 2002.

    Recent scholarship affirms that women were ordained in the first twelve hundred years of the church’s history. The first half of the church’s history provides us with images and accounts of the inclusion of women in Holy Orders that contradict the later prohibition. The evidence provides a tradition we reclaim.

    We hold up heroic women in the church’s tradition like Hildegard of Bingen, Joan of Arc and St. Theodora Guerin who obeyed God, followed their consciences and withstood hierarchical oppression including interdict, excommunication and death.

    The Catholic Church teaches that a teaching or law of the church is authoritative only if it is “received” by the sensus fidelium, the community of faith. If the community of faith does not accept the law, it has no effect on us. All people have a moral obligation to disobey an unjust law. St. Augustine taught that an unjust law is no law at all. Since 70% of U.S. Catholics favor women’s ordination and a growing majority of Catholics worldwide also favors women’s ordination, we do not “receive” or accept the Church's prohibition against the ordination of women and the church’s continued reliance on sexist metaphors, beliefs and assumptions for denying ordination to women.   Contrary to the hierarchy’s claim, there is no shortage of vocations to the priesthood, only shortsightedness about who has a vocation to priesthood. 

    The church teaching prohibiting women's ordination is not based on Scripture, tradition or the teaching authority (magisterium). In 1976, the Pontifical Biblical Commission concluded that there is no biblical reason to prohibit women's ordination. According to tradition, women were ordained deacons, priests and bishops in the first 1,200 hundred years of the church's history. The Roman Catholic Church teaches primacy of conscience. The prohibition against women's ordination is not infallible. 

    Roman Catholic Womenpriestsare loyal members of the church who stand in the prophetic tradition of holy disobedience to an unjust law at discriminates against women. Roman Catholic Womenpriests reject the penalties of excommunication, interdict, and any other punitive actions by church officials against Roman Catholic Womenpriests.
    Pope Benedict XVI, wrote when he was Cardinal Ratzinger, in the commentary section of the Doctrine of Vatican II, volume V, page 134,: "Over the Pope as the expression of the binding claim of ecclesiastical authority, there still stands one's own conscience, which must be obeyed before all else, if necessary even against the requirement of ecclesiastical authority.”  Pope Benedict has not excommunicated any of the women who were ordained in Roman Catholic Womenpriests in North America.

    Roman Catholic Church laws are often contradictory. In this instance, canon 1024 limits sacred orders to men, while canon 849 states that baptism is the gateway to the sacraments. Scholar Bishop Ida Raming, doctor of theology, points out a prior church understanding:  “some medieval canonists hold that not maleness but baptism is the pre-requisite for valid ordinations: “After being baptized, anyone may be validly ordained.” (The Exclusion of Women from the Priesthood: Causes and Background)

    Roman Catholic Womenpriests are leading the way to a renewed Roman Catholic Church in which the full equality of women will be a reality.  Like Mary Magdalene, apostle to the apostles, and the women deacons, priests and bishops who served in the early centuries of our church, we are offering a model of a renewed priesthood in a community of equals.

XXX

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