Father "Her" -- Women in the Priesthood

Of late, there has been much written about the Vatican's recent revisions to Church law, which included the strengthening of penalties against pedophile priests. The announcement, long overdue, should have been welcomed by people everywhere as a step away from the darkness that has for centuries shrouded activities within the priesthood...and it would have been. The Church, however, chose once again to prove how misogynistic a society it is by including the crimes of heresy, apostasy, schism and the ordination of women as among the most heinous a Catholic can commit. Having personally experienced the Church's total disregard of our existence, I was not surprised to learn that women are still regarded as dirt under the heels of the all powerful male hierarchy.

My disillusionment with the Catholic Church goes back to 1961. At the time, my older sister was planning to marry a divorced man, and she asked me to be her junior bridesmaid because that's what big sister's do. I was thrilled. Her fiancé was a really cool guy in my opinion. On a recently passed birthday, he had won my heart by presenting me with a stack of LPs by my favorite recording artists. How could he be bad?

He wasn't and neither was my sis for loving him and wanting to share her life with him. However, since brother-in-law to be was divorced, the only way the Catholic Church would recognize their union was if they filed for an annulment - a process costing thousands of dollars they did not have. Rather than part with their hard earned money for something that guaranteed nothing other than padding the Church's already bulging coffers, they decided to marry civilly and get on with their lives. You should know that, for my sister, this decision did not come easily. We had been raised and educated in the Catholic Church. My father ate, slept and brushed his teeth while intoning the Ten Commandments. Our aunt, my father's sister, had been a Mother Superior in the Franciscan order. We were thoroughly indoctrinated in the belief that eternal damnation would fall upon us if we strayed from the very straight and narrow path laid out by the Vatican in the name of God.

When my sister decided to marry her beau anyway, it nearly killed my father. He remained stoic through the ceremony, but the following Monday, he advised me to go to confession and tell the priest that I had participated in an "unholy" service. I was twelve. What did I know of unholy? My sister had married the man she loved. To me, that made everything right. The priest behind the screen in the confessional did not agree.

Remember, I was in the eighth grade at the time. During my grammar school days, it was ritual for the entire school to go to confession prior to the first Friday of every month. We went as a class, each student waiting patiently on line, one behind the other, for the classmate in front to bare his/her soul of such viciousness as whispering in church during mass or talking back to their parents. After confessing, we would march our now cleansed souls to the altar, where we would kneel and say our penance. Then, we would sit together in pews while waiting for the remainder of the class to unburden themselves.

When my turn came, I solemnly made the sign of the cross while intoning, "Bless me Father, for I have sinned." Boy had I ever! Once I told my tale, Father Weisbecker proceeded to shout for everyone within a twenty mile radius to hear that my sister was a whore (not sure I knew what that meant), that all her children would be illegitimate (another new word) and that I would burn in hell for sanctioning their union. Sanctioning? I was a kid. I wanted to be in a wedding. What sanctioning?

Forget penance. Crying, I ran out of the church with Sister Regina Miriam fast on my heels - I was faster. Sister Regina called my mother and explained what had happened. Unlike my dad, my mother was not a church goer. I won't get into the conversation that transpired between mom and Father Weisbecker the following Sunday on the front steps of the Church in front of fellow parishioners. Suffice it to say, my mother would have been hard pressed to call herself a lady for awhile.

Years later, I married my high school sweetheart in a "sanctioned" church ceremony and within twelve months, I was fighting for my life. Like a good Catholic and covered with bruises, I went to my parish priest for help and was told, basically, that "til death do you part" meant even if by murder. According to God's so-called representative on earth, I should be a good wife, go home and do what my husband told me to do. What I did, instead, was get a divorce and go through the annulment process my sister had been wiser to avoid.

Again, I am not going to detail the demeaning and dehumanizing process (for women) that is a Church annulment. I'm sure there have been some women who have not experienced the humiliation that I did, but then their ex-husbands had probably not been paranoid schizophrenics with latent homosexual tendencies. The priests who controlled my spiritual life that day pressed for information about our sexual relations with the force of a vise and seemed to enjoy all the sordid details.

Needless to say, I'm not a practicing Catholic anymore, and I find the Church's control of women insufferable, so when I read an article by Lona O'Connor in the Palm Beach Post about a small group of women who had been ordained by renegade priests and were, actually, saying mass and presiding over the sacraments, I felt empowered.

There is a growing movement by women to embrace the God of their faith without the acknowledgment and permission of the Vatican. In fact, these women are encouraged by men who themselves have been ostracized by the Holy See. According to O'Connor's piece, a group of similar thinking Catholics and their supporters met earlier this month in Estero, Florida to share their faith and their belief that one day the Vatican will recognize women in the priesthood.

Among those attending the meeting was John O'Callaghan, a suspended priest who is married to Dena O'Callaghan, the female priest who officiated at mass. Dena O'Callaghan dates her desire to enter the priesthood to the 1970s and the Second Vatican Council, a time, as O'Connor wrote, "....when anything seemed possible within the Church."

I encourage you to read Lona O'Connor's article linked here:

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/on-the-west-coast-of-florida-a-small-834535.html

If you, like me, had given up hope that the Catholic Church would ever move out of the dark ages, you will feel a surge of hope in your heart. I stopped believing in a higher power years ago, but tonight before I lay me down to sleep, I will ask fate to hear the prayers of "Father" Dena O'Callaghan and other women of faith.

The true meaning of being made in the image and likeness of God is spiritual, not physical, and women can love and serve with the best of them. Additionally, they will protect the children.