HAPPY THANKSGIVING. MORE ON THAT, LATER.
FOR NOW, NEWS ABOUT A TRULY BRAVE PRIEST!
I am quite familiar with the work of Fr. Roy Bourgeois, and believe he is the herald of a "new" Catholic Church. I think eventually, the Church must support fully the policies of Peace & Social Justice, or it will lose us as faithful members. Peace & Social Justice means that prejudice, and the old, negative policy of non-inclusion of women as priests, and I'll say it:
LGBT persons, and also priests who may wish to marry, must end.
We will soon have an RC Church much like the divided Episcopal Church, and I for one, think that may be a very very good thing!
Let's it hear it for Fr. Bourgeois!
And for the first rule of The Catechism:
Your conscience, first, the Church, second.
See story, below:
___________________________________________________________________________
Published on National Catholic Reporter (http://ncronline3.org/drupal)
Roy Bourgeois threatened with excommunication

By NCR Staff
Published:
November 11, 2008
Maryknoll Fr. Roy Bourgeois, founder of SOA Watch, outside a congressional office building in Washington in 2007 (CNS photo/Paul Haring)Maryknoll Fr. Roy Bourgeois has been threatened with excommunication by the Vatican's Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith for his support of women’s ordination, according to a letter made public today.

The letter was written by Bourgeois and addressed to the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith. It was distributed via e-mail by Bill Quigley, a New Orleans lawyer who represents Bourgeois.

According to Bourgeois’ letter, which is dated Nov. 7, the congregation has given him 30 days to recant his “belief and public statements that support the ordination of women in our Church, or (he) will be excommunicated.”

The letter indicates that Bourgeois received notification from the congregation Oct. 21.

Bourgeois, a priest for 36 years, attended the ordination of Janice Sevre-Duszynska [1] in Lexingon, Ky., Aug. 9 and preached a homily [2].

If Bourgeois is excommunicated at the end of 30 days, it would come just before the mass rally and protest against the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Ga., that Bourgeois has organized for 19 years. In recent years, more than 15,000 people, many of them Catholic university students, have joined the three daylong rally and demonstration.

Bourgeois was not immediately available for comment. The text of Bourgeois’ letter follows.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Rev. Roy Bourgeois, M.M.
PO Box 3330, Columbus, GA 31903
November 7, 2008

TO THE CONGREGATION FOR THE DOCTRINE OF THE FAITH, THE VATICAN

I was very saddened by your letter dated October 21, 2008, giving me 30 days to recant my belief and public statements that support the ordination of women in our Church, or I will be excommunicated.

I have been a Catholic priest for 36 years and have a deep love for my Church and ministry.

When I was a young man in the military, I felt God was calling me to the priesthood. I entered Maryknoll and was ordained in 1972.

Over the years I have met a number of women in our Church who, like me, feel called by God to the priesthood. You, our Church leaders at the Vatican, tell us that women cannot be ordained.

With all due respect, I believe our Catholic Church’s teaching on this issue is wrong and does not stand up to scrutiny. A 1976 report by the Pontifical Biblical Commission supports the research of Scripture scholars, canon lawyers and many faithful Catholics who have studied and pondered the Scriptures and have concluded that there is no justification in the Bible for excluding women from the priesthood.

As people of faith, we profess that the invitation to the ministry of priesthood comes from God. We profess that God is the Source of life and created men and women of equal stature and dignity. The current Catholic Church doctrine on the ordination of women implies our loving and all-powerful God, Creator of heaven and earth, somehow cannot empower a woman to be a priest.

Women in our Church are telling us that God is calling them to the priesthood. Who are we, as men, to say to women, “Our call is valid, but yours is not.” Who are we to tamper with God’s call?

Sexism, like racism, is a sin. And no matter how hard or how long we may try to justify discrimination, in the end, it is always immoral.

Hundreds of Catholic churches in the U.S. are closing because of a shortage of priests. Yet there are hundreds of committed and prophetic women telling us that God is calling them to serve our Church as priests.

If we are to have a vibrant, healthy Church rooted in the teachings of our Savior, we need the faith, wisdom, experience, compassion and courage of women in the priesthood.

Conscience is very sacred. Conscience gives us a sense of right and wrong and urges us to do the right thing. Conscience is what compelled Franz Jagerstatter, a humble Austrian farmer, husband and father of four young children, to refuse to join Hitler’s army, which led to his execution. Conscience is what compelled Rosa Parks to say she could no longer sit in the back of the bus. Conscience is what compels women in our Church to say they cannot be silent and deny their call from God to the priesthood. Conscience is what compelled my dear mother and father, now 95, to always strive to do the right things as faithful Catholics raising four children. And after much prayer, reflection and discernment, it is my conscience that compels me to do the right thing. I cannot recant my belief and public statements that support the ordination of women in our Church.

Working and struggling for peace and justice are an integral part of our faith. For this reason, I speak out against the war in Iraq. And for the last eighteen years, I have been speaking out against the atrocities and suffering caused by the School of the Americas (SOA). Eight years ago, while in Rome for a conference on peace and justice, I was invited to speak about the SOA on Vatican Radio. During the interview, I stated that I could not address the injustice of the SOA and remain silent about injustice in my Church. I ended the interview by saying, “There will never be justice in the Catholic Church until women can be ordained.” I remain committed to this belief today.

Having an all male clergy implies that men are worthy to be Catholic priests, but women are not.

According to USA TODAY (Feb. 28, 2008) in the United States alone, nearly 5,000 Catholic priests have sexually abused more than 12,000 children. Many bishops, aware of the abuse, remained silent. These priests and bishops were not excommunicated. Yet the women in our Church who are called by God and are ordained to serve God’s people, and the priests and bishops who support them, are excommunicated.

Silence is the voice of complicity. Therefore, I call on all Catholics, fellow priests, bishops, Pope Benedict XVI and all Church leaders at the Vatican, to speak loudly on this grave injustice of excluding women from the priesthood.

Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador was assassinated because of his defense of the oppressed. He said, “Let those who have a voice, speak out for the voiceless.”

Our loving God has given us a voice. Let us speak clearly and boldly and walk in solidarity as Jesus would, with the women in our Church who are being called by God to the priesthood.

In Peace and Justice,
Rev. Roy Bourgeois, M.M.
PO Box 3330, Columbus, GA 31903
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________
There you have it. I think I'll address one issue at a time, but as I posted nearly a year ago, the Church needs to address its' issue of not allowing "out" LGBT persons to serve in the priesthood(Everyone knows there are already many members of the clergy who are LGBT, but they cannot come out, as the Church would turn them away. That's ridiculous. And sad.). I suspect the Church will embrace LGBT persons as priests and members of the clergy, once women serve as priests. And they WILL. Yes, they will!
Peace, kids.

I JUST POSTED YESTERDAY ABOUT LIES BEING PERCEIVED AS TRUTH, AND I MENTIONED KATRINA AS A HUGE FAILING ON THE PART OF THIS ADMINISTRATION. So it was interesting to see this news story, just released...As if we needed any reminder of the utter incompetence, complete lack of care or compassion, or even basic concern, and later, such unrepentant denial ("You're doin' a heckuva job, Brownie").
I follow this story with an update on some brave women. Women who have become priests!
_____________________________________________________
La. doctor cleared in patient deaths recalls storm
By MARY FOSTER, Associated Press Writer
Trapped in a hospital with 2,000 people in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Dr. Anna Pou recalls her throat burning from the rancid smell.
Toilets had backed up and temperatures in the eight-story building reached almost 110 degrees because the windows didn't open. Power had failed, levees broke and 80 percent of New Orleans was flooded, including the hospital basement where the generators were.
It was completely dark at night. Stories of murders, gangs raping women and children circulated through Memorial Medical Center, where the people, including more than 200 patients, feared for their lives.
Pou, the doctor accused — and later cleared — of giving lethal doses of drugs to four patients during the chaos recalled the four days of misery in a recent interview with The Associated Press. It was her most detailed account of the scene where 34 patients died since the storm three years ago.
"You can't really understand what it was like if you weren't there," Pou said. "Nothing can describe it."
It began as a typical weekend for Pou, who wasn't worried when she made her way to Memorial in August 2005.
Hurricane Katrina appeared headed to Florida. Even when warnings were issued for New Orleans, the respected cancer surgeon never thought of leaving. She stayed with her patients in what would become a personal and professional hell.
After the storm passed Monday, Aug. 29, it seemed the decision not to evacuate patients and staff was a good one. They didn't know levees were collapsing.
"We made it through the storm pretty good," Pou remembered. "On Monday, it was just a little hot, but we had some generators working and food and water twice a day."
By Tuesday, water was rising in the streets, eventually reaching 10 feet. The hospital basement flooded and the generators failed.
When nightfall came, the hospital and the city were in darkness. Water pressure dropped, toilets backed up and the temperatures began to swelter.
"The smell got to be rancid in no time," Pou said. "It burned the back of your throat."
The deteriorating situation had dire consequences. Those trapped in the hospital could hear voices in the dark. People had broken into a credit union office across the street and holed up there.
"We started hearing stories about murders, about gangs raping women and children," Pou said. "The women that had their children there were really scared."
They had a few flashlights but no spare batteries.
"One of the nurses showed me how to bump my foot against the next step to find it," Pou said. "We counted the steps from one floor to another so we wouldn't miss one and fall."
Pou said staff struggled to climb stairwells, carry supplies, and spent two-hour shifts squeezing ventilators to keep patients alive.
"The heat was so terrible, it wore you down," Pou said. "We were trying to keep the patients comfortable. The 9-year-old daughter of one of the nurses even took shifts fanning them."
Airboats evacuated some patients and babies from the nursery, but most remained. All Pou said she could do was try to keep critically ill patients comfortable.
"Tuesday night was when we realized we were going to be there for a while," Pou said.
They gathered supplies, rationed food and water with non-patients, and prayed.
About seven medical staffers, including Pou, stayed with patients. Others went to the roof and the ground floor to coordinate the intermittent rescue efforts with the few boats and helicopters that showed up.
"When a helicopter left, we never knew if they would be back," Pou recalled. "They might be sent to another rescue. And after dark it was too dangerous for them to fly at all."
Under the military's orders, the staff did reverse triage. The healthiest patients were taken out first in an effort to save the greatest number of people.
Many had to be carried to the roof. It was slow, backbreaking work, with as many as 10 people struggling up the dark stairs with a stretcher. At least 34 people died waiting for rescuers.
Pou was one of the last to leave Memorial. She returned to New Orleans — her house had not been flooded — from Baton Rouge a few months later at Thanksgiving. In January 2006, she started working at a Baton Rouge hospital, trying to put Katrina behind her.
Then, in July 2007, she was greeted by four police officers on her arrival home from a 13-hour day of surgery. They handcuffed her, still in her scrubs, and drove her to jail. She was booked on four counts of second-degree murder.
Attorney General Charles Foti accused Pou and two nurses of using a "lethal cocktail" of medication to kill four elderly patients. Pou has always maintained she killed no one during those desperate days, though she acknowledges patients were sedated.
She was forced to give up private practice and started teaching at the LSU medical school in Baton Rouge.
Months of pain and frustration set in.
A year after their arrest, the New Orleans district attorney dropped charges against the nurses, and a grand jury refused to indict Pou. Two civil lawsuits in the deaths are pending.
"I felt very alone," Pou said of her year of fighting the criminal accusations. "Even if people were around me I felt an intense loneliness. It was as if no one knew what I was going through."
Pou's supporters believed she and the nurses acted heroically. A group of doctors and nurses held a rally on the anniversary of her arrest, and hundreds turned in support.
Her experience helped her get landmark state legislation approved to protect the actions of doctors and nurses during disasters.
"It was that support and prayer that got me through it," said Pou, who is back in private practice.
As Katrina's third anniversary nears, Pou said the experience was life-altering.
"I've learned a lot from this," she said. "I thought I had suffered at times in my life, but I had no idea the depths of pain one person could feel. I think that has made me a better person and certainly a
more compassionate doctor."
________________________________________________
___
And now, for something more upbeat....Here's a story that makes me smile. I hope these women will be recognized for the pioneers they are, and welcomed back into the Church. If not, I'll predict right now, that two issues will divide the Roman Catholic Church just as one of them has, in the Episcopal Church:
The issue of women becoming priests(The Episcopal Church has ordained women for over two centuries), and that of LGBT people being ordained, which more than half of all Episcopalians are already doing, and see as positive and good. Unless the Roman Catholic Church fully embraces women being allowed--indeed--encouraged, to serve in any capacity they wish, and unless openly LGBT people are given that same right, the Church will continue to see the kind of mass(and Mass)-exodus that began several years ago when the sex-abuse scandal broke. For now, I celebrate the courage of women who feel called to serve in any religious order. And I especially applaud these women, who listen to, as The Catechism of The Roman Catholic Church ironically instructs, "Your conscience first, the Church, second."
Here's the story:
___________________________________________________
Group says it ordains 3 women Catholic priests
By STEVE LeBLANC, Associated Press Writer
An activist group hoping to pressure the Roman Catholic church into dropping its long-standing prohibition barring women from the priesthood says it ordained three women on Sunday.
Church officials did not recognize the ordination, and the Vatican has previously warned that women taking part in ordination ceremonies will be excommunicated.
The group known as Roman Catholic Womenpriests held the ceremony at the Church of the Covenant, a Protestant Church in Boston.
The group said the three women — Gloria Carpeneto of Baltimore, Judy Lee of Fort Myers, Fla., and Gabriella Velardi Ward of New York City — are responding to a heartfelt call to serve the church as priests.
A fourth woman, Mary Ann McCarthy Schoettly of Newton, N.J., was ordained as a deacon, the group said.
The Archdiocese of Boston issued a statement decrying the ceremony.
"Catholics who attempt to confer a sacred order on a woman, and the women who attempt to receive a sacred order, are by their own actions separating themselves from the church," the archdiocese said.
The group says the women who are ordained remain loyal members of the church and will act as priests whether they are excommunicated or not.
Sunday's ordination ceremony was performed by two women the group describes as bishops — Ida Raming of Struttgart, Germany, and Dana Reynolds from California.
The ceremony "is not in compliance with their man-made rules, but it's certainly in compliance with the Roman Catholic ordination rituals because our bishops were ordained by all-male Roman Catholic bishops who are in good standing with the church," as provided by the church's ordination rituals, said Bridget Mary Meehan, the group's spokeswoman.
The group, which was formed in 2002, has conducted similar ceremonies in the U.S. and other parts of the world.
In March, the archbishop of St. Louis excommunicated three women — two Americans and a South African who were part of the Womenpriests movement — for participating in a woman's ordination.
Pope Benedict XVI, like his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, has rebuffed calls to change traditional church teachings on the requirement that priests be male.
Catholics who are excommunicated cannot receive sacraments. The penalty can be lifted if those who have been punished are sincerely repentant.
______________________________________________
___
Have a great Monday. Peace, kids.