As if asleep for more time than should have passed, I turn on the restless bed of my soul,
Stopped in a sudden moment to find You at my very side, so near to me.
How did I forget You, where have you been for so long?
It was Your face I have always been seeking, have you never left me?
All in a moment, I cling to You tightly, and my heart knows what it missed,
That irreplacable ache that only grows when I hold You now,
Because somehow You are here and beyond… I cannot run such distance with You yet.
But these still moments are more than I could ever ask for,
The whirlwinding carousel in my soul cannot help but halting as in Your eyes
I am captured again; My heart and my soul desist from their wandering.
The road I’ve been walking down has petered into forgetfulness…And yet here I am,
In Your arms again, and I have refound a purpose I never thought I could lose.
I rememebered I am in love with.
Not a rational love, discursively proven, but from the need of my being,
I was struck, moved into the space where I could be open to receive;
Help me, my Jesus no to retreat and withdrawl my heart from You safe-guarding hands,
To relinquish the grasp and hold onto You, unsure of the days and nights ahead.
What more should I ask for, what more can I dare to dread
When I find myself in lost wonder of You, teaching me to open and give
To the truth of Your call, wooing deeply after my fickle heart.
I wanted You so desperately I began to fear myself, projecting into Your eyes
The old enslaving scoundrel that You purged out of me—You give in love, not lust.
You welcome me so tenderly, so gently, Jesus; help me entrust
Back into Your fold, into enamorment of You, the fears I have conjured,
The heart held untrue. Breaking our covenant again, I had fled,
From before Your sight, but this in my head as I slept and dreamed the quiet days away,
Looking to invest in a progress that offered what was safe, what coddled my fears,
Letting them devour my soul—O massochistic shame which left me so weak.
To find You still here, to give up, what a relief.
The gift did not vanish, which You implanted in me, sealed with Your kiss,
So forgetting I could only wish to understand what was lost, I need You to interpret, to teach.
This loving heart still beating, but lost from its focus of You, to scattered mirages,
Trying to give and to win with too little thought for the purpose of loving:
Not for my sake, but Yours, to draw each other into this fold.
I was brought there in loving, giving up love, I found more, until
I danced away from our tender romance, rationalizing each movement,
Reducing love to act, I forgot who You were, diminishing the strength of
The unexplainable current that flowed, moving my being, seeking
To woo all to the love of my King. Now Your have reclaimed me,
I return to life as Your bride; fix my heart on You so that my love will not lie.

Compose half past midnight on the 27th of May 2009, thoughtful walking home… the continuation of an internal dialogue.

Intellect is th enemy of my desire to love, the desire of love,
And I have chosen it to be my companion in my wandering.
So I sit on a dark-streeted bench
Beneath the starry mantle I am held, but not touched.
Love, whatever He is in a breathing form opposses my all.
In front of this parish in cool morning air- I find a place for reflection.
Silence, the whirl of a train, passing cars, hand on paper:
This is the emptiness of existence, sitting alone with self.
To be broken is to be able to find healing—what is wrong with how I often am?
To seek healing is to step into pain, that which I shy away from, the heat of Your love.
I am filled with the unexplainable, You? The realization of no movement… I know
But cannot understand the very ache of my being.
It is a path I have chosen, which remains perpetually disabled by desire
I continue this trek through night and evening.
Why sleep, why wake, the lustre and newness is gone…
The lust for you- with whole-bodied blush I raise my eyes to confess
Rushing from the marrow of the depths in my soul through
The radiating cells of my body’s very longing.
Define the part of me trying to claw into
A narrow ray of light, enough to encompas the urge
Of my very life, embedded in the questions.
The forbidden fruit it the love, the feeling, the freeing…
Which is outside of the ice in some sort of lighter way of being…
Which would unbind the cords of tightly-wound corset,
And release the crushing of bossom-bones over fragile organ into brisk shame.
Risk the heart-crushing by a breath of wind?
Not only in fear I resist you, my childish comprehending
Is not complete enough to reach out.
I have reverted to the transitional love,
Which gives and aches without cuase,
More than what is right for it too.
Naked night, what do you want from me-
Enveloping me in the shocking touch of You,
I cannot see into the moments beyond.
Desire has lost itself, sense lunges from base
Threshholds to pollute a broken soul that separates.
That fungus which infests, preventing comprehension,
Because of an unwillingness to give into Your love… beyond my constraints,
You will have to seduce me, I hestitate too much.
In fact I ask you to take me-
All that blood to my cheeks rushing in blush,
Exposes me as I try trading shame for trust.

Hylomorphic Relics: Form of Corporeity in the Matter of Saintly Veneration

Medieval Controversy between Aquinas and Bonaventure over Unity of Form

Introduction:

Inquiring into the medieval cult of relics, I was aware of a controversy over the veneration of relics as well as a diversity of reasons provided for the veneration of relics. Choosing to focus my research of the philosophical thought of St. Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure, contemporaries in different veins of the Augustinian tradition of Aristotle’s philosophy, I wondered how both were able to derive a theology that permitted the veneration of relics, corporeal remains of what had once been the vivified bodies of saints. Pointing out first the differences in Aquinas and Bonaventure’s thought on the composition of the human person (body and soul, equated with matter and form) through Aquinas’ condemnation in 1277 at Oxford. Rejecting the Augustinian matter/form theory with which Bonaventure agrees, Aquinas’ objection to famosissimum binarium Augustinianum, the plurality of forms in one soul, in particular indicates a different justification for the veneration of relics than that of Bonaventure. Transitioning from the Oxford condemnation to contrasting the two saints’ justifications of the veneration of relics, I will distinguish the elements of Aquinas’ thought for which he was thought unable to argue for the veneration of saints’ relics. Pointing out Aquinas’ distinctions between heavenly and spiritual bodies as rooted in the hypostatic union of natures in Christ, I will discuss how Aquinas’ veneration of relics is rooted in the Eucharist, which remains today as the living relic in Catholic thought. Concluding with a consideration of the applicability of Aquinas’ unity of form over Bonaventure’s multiplicity of substantial form to today’s thought, I will propose how the Protestant consideration of the Catholic practice of venerating saints’ relics still clings to a more Augustinian philosophy of relics.

Problem of Relics and Relating to the Saints:

The history of venerating Christian relics appears to be very controversial, from those who claim that the tradition of relics, physical remnants of things or persons which had been deemed holy or vessels of holiness, stems from ancient ancestor worship, to early Christian worship in the catacomb tombs of martyrs.[1] A fracturing point for Christians from the time of the reformation on, relics have stirred controversy between Catholics and other baptized believers. In his autobiography, Pilgrimage from Rome, ex-priest Bart Brewer now head of Mission to Catholics International posits that a “dogma that has bothered Catholics for centuries is the veneration of relics and the claims that they have magical powers. Even Martin Luther wondered how there could be twenty-six apostles buried in Germany, when there were only twelve in the entire Bible!”[2]

The direction of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments 2001 “Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy: Guidelines and Principles” [3] addressed the issue of venerating saint’s relics communicates the current, popular belief that relics of saints[4] to contain the same sanctity as these heroic persons now residing in Heaven. While there is no explicit discussion of power implicit in these relics, the Catechism recognizes relics as “sacramentals,”[5] which through extraneous to official liturgy of the Church, are:

These expressions of piety extend the liturgical life of the Church, but do not replace it. They “should be so drawn up that they harmonize with the liturgical seasons, accord with the sacred liturgy, are in some way derived from it and lead the people to it, since in fact the liturgy by its very nature is far superior to any of them.”(179)[6]

Seeing saint’s relics as a symbol of “the communion with the Sacrifice of Christ of the entire Church,” drawing a connection between the martyr’s blood in sacrifice for the gospel with the placing of their remains under the altar on which Christ is offered in symbolic sacrifice of Eucharist,[7] the Church postulates its belief in the unity of heavenly and earthly body’s of God’s people. This doctrine of communion of the saints has two meanings, ‘communion in holy things (sancta)” and “among holy persons (sancti)’[8] This relation between those who are physically dead, yet spiritually alive with God in Heaven and capable of interceding for those on earth is closely tied to the philosophical consideration of the composition of the human person as body and soul.

Aquinas and Unity of Form in Oxford Condemnation:

To understand the Medieval devotion to the cult of saintly relics, one must understand the medievals’ perspective of the world: a Hellenist distinction of soul and body between lunar and sublunary worlds: “The world below the moon was a world of corruption and decay, necessarily inferior to the world of the heavens, thought to be beyond time and change, incorruptible.”[9] Medieval scholastics considered death to be the means of crossing the “fault line”[10] between corrupting corporeal material (the body) and the spiritual realm pure light.[11] According to Christian thought, this separation between soul and body was only temporary until resurrection, though “the dead body joined in the instability and opacity of the sublunary world while the soul enjoyed the unmovable clarity of the remainder of the universe.”[12] It was in this world that saints “bridged the gap between divine perfection and human imperfection.”[13] The unusual grace of saints, begun with the belief that martyrs of the faith found consolation for their earthly wounds immediately in the bosom of their Savior in Heaven, made them windows to the spiritual grace of God for other humans before and after death.[14] Living and dead saints were considered to “simultaneously present in heaven and on earth.”[15] Because of the holiness of the person, normal phenomena of death (separation of the soul and body) was nullified, and a saint’s “soul in heaven was in contact with the body on earth, and communicated the heavenly power (virtus) of the soul to the body.”[16]

The Medieval veneration of relics during the 13^th century when St. Thomas Aquinas was writing and teaching was based on the Augustinian hylomorphic composition of the soul.[17] Representing this Augustinian hylomorphism, St. Bonaventure’s relation of form and matter diverges from that of Aquinas; though both theologically conclude that form and matter relate in such a way as to permit the veneration of saintly relics. According to Daniel Callus’ investigation of Aquinas’ divergence from “Augustinian” theory of the composition of form and matter in the human person, Augustinians in 1277 claimed that: (1) matter and form were identified with potentiality and actuality; (2) there was a sort of actuality in prime matter, a disposition due to rationes seminales to be independently; and (3) “the substantial form confers only one determinate perfection.”[18] The focus of this discussion is the point of contention from which these three principles are merely premises to the hylomorphic composition of the human being (though Augustinians claimed all created beings were composed thus). It is for rejecting this “binarium famosissimum, the twofold pillar on which the whole structure of the Augustinian school was supposed to stand,”[19] that Aquinas was condemned in 1270.

Yet what does binarium famosissimum imply in the hylomorphic composition of human beings? Before this question can be asked, we must discuss the origin of hylomorphic being, the root in which both Aquinas and Bonaventure (postulating Augustinian theory) understood being to be. According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the term “hylomorphic” indicating the composition of created being is based on the central doctrine of Aristotelian natural philosophy: a “metaphysical view according to which every natural body consists of two intrinsic principles, one potential, namely, primarily matter, and one actual, namely substantial form.”[20] Upon this basis Aquinas and the Augustinians agreed, along with the implications that matter and form could not exist or act independently. Having established the commonality of material and formal composition of created beings, what is the binarium famosissimum in regard to this hylomorphic composition of being with which Aquinas took issue? Binarium famosissimum is the “theory known as “plurality of forms” is not just the theory that there are typically many forms in a material substance.”[21] While Aquinas would have agreed with the notion of many accidental forms in material substances, binarium famosissimum suggests the “plurality of substantial forms in a given material substance.”[22]

Instead of accepting this view of multiple substantial forms in one individual, Aquinas proposed a distinction between compositions of corporeal and spiritual beings. Criticizing the perspective of the Augustinians, Aquinas posited three tenets from which he stated that a plurality of substantial forms could not be derived in human beings: (1) matter and form should not be equated with potentiality and actuality, as matter was only found in those things which would decay; (2) prime matter is complete potentiality, without any actual substance of its own; and (3) one substantial form acts upon prime matter to produce a being.[23] Rejecting the idea of rationes seminales, Aquinas claimed that no material body could exist without the determination of a substantial form, but that Angels and human souls were purely spiritual.[24] If one substantial form then gives all determinations and perfections of matter so that it is no way incomplete or imperfect, to posit that a human being can have more than one substantial form goes against metaphysical principles. Though his theory most directly affected the understanding of spiritual things, soul and angels, Aquinas’ “thesis of oneness of substantial form”[25] affected the understanding of human being which is both material and immaterial especially in regards to the subjects of death and immortality.

Denying “hylomorphic composition in spiritual substances and of plurality of forms” was strongly opposed by traditional Augustinians such as Bonaventure, reaching its height while Aquinas was regent in Paris, between 1269-72.[26] In Archbishop John Pecham’s letters of January 1, 1285 ad June 1, 1285, he notes the differences between Aquinas and Bonaventure regarding these theories of unity and plurality of form as representative of their Orders, the Dominicans and Franciscans.[27] Accusing the Dominicans of “forsaking the Saints and following heathen philosophers” by “pursuing a new and very dangerous course,” Pecham accused Aquinas’ theory of the unity of form to be against St. Augustine’s teaching, thus against the Church.[28] Callus liberates Aquinas from this accusation through interrogating the accusation through two questions: (1) the origin of plurality theology and (2) whether Augustine raised and solved the problems of pluralism.[29] Vindicating Aquinas from these accusations of heresy, Callus claims that Augustinians merely appropriated St. Augustine’s assent to the pluralist position, while his “authority was unanimously claimed by the supporters of the unity thesis,”[30] which was acclaimed even among some Franciscan theologians. Callus admits that Aquinas did innovate, but only in the angle at which he approached the metaphysical problem.

Having stated Aquinas’ position on the plurality of forms in rejection, rather stating that the soul is the one substantial form of the body, in opposition to the Augustinian perspective held by Bonaventure of multiple substantial forms per individual, though not against the perspective of St. Augustine himself (as was claimed in Aquinas’ condemnation at Oxford[31].  Focusing on this theme of unity of form as it relates to human nature, I will proceed to explicate Aquinas’ theology on relics as found in the Summa Theological reflecting this notion of unity of form in contrast to the proof for relic veneration from Bonaventure’s Augustinian perspective of multiple substantial forms in one being.

Bonaventure’s Plurality of Form in Relation to Relic Theology (Augustinianism)

St. Bonaventure’s philosophical Augustinianism claims an anthropology of “body-soul dualism that the soul is dominant over the body and independent of the body, and that the will is superior to the intellect.”[32] While Bonaventure denied that matter itself had any existence without form, he did interpret “the intellect and will as functions of the soul that are identical with the soul, not as separate powers.”[33] Holding that the soul separated from the body was not a complete human being, Bonaventure wrote that God did not create death, but that it was the cause of “the human will falling away from rectitude and justice.”[34] Seeing death as the falling apart of two sorts of matters,[35] incorporeal and corporeal matter, Bonaventure explains the immortality of the soul through its retention of substance.[36] Pertaining to the discussion of relics, the consideration of spiritual matter leads Bonaventure to conclude that “when the rational soul is separated from the body at death, it cannot be properly called ‘man.’”[37] With the philosophy of plurality of substantial forms, Bonaventure does not believe that the soul as form of the body can be directly connected to the body. Instead, Cullen infers that the mediating form of corporeity unites soul (spiritual matter) and body (corporeal matter) “because matter is never a pure potency.”[38] With such a perspective of human composition of “matter is disposed to form by seminal reasons, and the form must have an aptitude for the matter.”[39] According to Cullen, Bonaventure introduces two seminal reasons which are present in the material essences of soul and body which predispose them to be united as a human being: (1) unitability, the rationes seminales in the spiritual matter which predisposes it to unity to body and (2) complexion, the preconditioned tendency of corporeal matter which allows it be united to a soul.[40]

In fact, it is only when spiritual and physical matter is united in body and soul that the human being achieves true happiness and completion. Bonaventure claims that death is a violent disruption of the harmony which God intended, for “there is no spiritual fulfillment apart from material reality, either temporally or eternally.”[41] Yet the since the rift between physical and spiritual was torn by the fall, the holiness exuded by the life of a saint offers a healing grace to those other needy souls; a phenomena disintegrating the normal relation between incorporeal and physical matter at the point of death. Noting the interrelated origins of Bonaventure’s Eucharistic theology (which some authors have called the true relic), and consideration for the veneration relics, it is appropriate to make an analogy from Bonaventure’s discussion of Christ’s death (corporeal and spiritual matter of the Eucharist) and body to that of His consideration of saintly men’s bodies as relics. Having discussed Bonaventure’s philosophical understanding of death, his reasoning for veneration of relics seems to be that of a “’real presence of the saints in their relics and graves,’” which is comparable to the real presence of Christ in the elements of the Eucharist.[42] Thus like the Eucharist, the holiness of the saintly person insured that God would not submit that person to corruption,[43] based off of Bonaventure’s horror at “decay—mutability (moral and physical)—and a conviction that there is in the blood the profit of redemption remains immutable God.”[44] It seems from Bonaventure’s commentary on the Sentences that “divine power could have permitted relics of foreskin and blood to survive on earth” since “blood is part of the truth of human nature, which is informed by soul and hypostatically assumed by the Word.”[45] Bonaventure’s remarks about blood relics, Bynum comments, refer not so much to the resurrection of every particle of the physical body, but communicate bodily resurrection as a sure fact because of Christ’s blood.

Bodily death in all its hideousness is not only the punishment for sin; it is also, in a certain sense, the terrible symbol of the deformity that is sin. Death is the final ugliness. The body’s beauty is destroyed. It decomposes, rots, falls apart. In fact, when no longer informed by the spiritual soul, it is not really a body at all, but only a loose amalgam of dissipating elements. Here is the tragedy, the tearfulness of things, lamented by the entire world’s great art: the lovely beloved in the grip of the worms.[46]

This bodily death and corruption is horrible, but worse than the fact of decomposition is the reminder it proffers that the soul and body are divided from one another, and separated from God.[47] Bonaventure’s Eucharistic theology seems to have been deeply influenced by and influencing of his consideration of relics, derived from the belief that death, in separation the soul (incorporeal matter) from the body (corporeal matter) was a corruption of man as he was created to be by God. For Bonaventure, the bodily matter of a human person has been ruined by the fall by corruption leading to this separation between corporeal and incorporeal matter of death.

Centering his theological reflections on an idyllic conception of man in Eden, perfect unity between body and soul, Bonaventure locates the cause of fragmented body and soul in the fault of a human free will: sin caused human corporeality to focus on itself, and thus the body, complexified by multiple forms is in a state of decay till holiness in resurrection.[48] Equating  the separation of body and soul as a consequence of the fall,[49] Bonaventure writes that “’abandoning the soul’s true good for the sake of material satisfaction, the soul became separated against its will from the body, through the body’s death.”’[50] Thus it is only in resurrection or perfection of this divided condition by grace that humans are reunited to seek the good of relationship with God. Since the soul is immortal due to spiritual matter, Bonaventure’s philosophical theology proposes that the relics of saints be venerated because their incorporeal and physical matters have remained united through the grace of heaven, though they appear to be dead. From such lines of thought, that death has no conquered the saints, whose souls remain in communion of real presence with their bodies, some saints’ bodies were believed to be whole and uncorrupted as signs of the immortality that would be imparted to those through imitation of their holiness. Thus veneration of relics was a reminder of the future uniting of corporeal and incorporeal matter when Christ returned to earth as judge with the saints. Even while recognizing this connection of saints’ souls and bodies, Bonaventure maintains that “The soul cannot be fully blessed without the body, because she has a naturally implanted inclination to be reunited with the body.” Resurrection being the ultimate end of man’s body, it was either destined for eternal life (testified to by the holiness of the saints) or eternal death (which Bonaventure viewed as the separation of matter,” a death far more terrible, infinitely uglier: eternal death, the punishment for persisting irrevocably in the grossness of sin.[51]).[52] The immortality of the bodily is memorialized in both relic veneration and Eucharist for Bonaventure, though both only make present temporarily what has yet to be eternally solidified in resurrection. Having presented St. Bonaventure’s reasoning for veneration of relics, I will contrast this perspective with that of Aquinas in the composition of corporeal and spiritual being.

Aquinas’ Unity of Form Hylomorphicism and Relic Theology (Innovation?)

“And so St Bonaventure, like St Thomas, believes that there is incompleteness about the happiness of the saints in heaven before the resurrection of the body.”[53] But to Aquinas, the nature of this separation is more profound, since soul and matter are two parts of one composite being, not two united composite elements: the soul is the one substantial form of the body, and all other qualities which Bonaventure terms “form” are considered accidents. However, Aquinas was critiqued by Augustinians:

The reason why traditionalists objected to Thomas’ theory that in any substance there was only one substantial form was theological in character. If the soul of Christ, they thought, was the one substantial form of the body of Christ, and if there was no ‘form corporeity,’ it would follow that between Christ’s death and his resurrection; his body was not his body at all. In addition, they considered that, on Thomas’ theory, the veneration of the relics and bodies of saints could not be justified. Thomas has a different opinion, but his critics thought that his rejection of the traditional doctrine of ‘form corporeity’ was a perilous novelty.[54]

Judging that Aquinas’ consideration of the hylomorphic composition of man differed from Bonaventure’s traditional Augustinianism, he was forced to prove that the veneration of relics was possible through postulating a hylomorphism where the human soul was the one substantial form of the body. Aquinas’ rebuttal to the accusation of innovation included a response to both the possibility of adoring Christ’s body in the Eucharist as well as the saint’s bodies as vehicles of holiness, further indicating the connection between these physical vessels of grace as noted in Bonaventure.

In the third part of the Summa Theologica in the twenty-fifth question, Aquinas addresses the theological nature of this absence of this form corporeity by discussing “The adoration of Christ.” Arguing philosophically that “per se unity of a substance can only be preserved if one substantial form is united directly with prime matter, which is pure potentiality, so that all of a substance’s actuality is received by this substantial form.”[55] Augustinian plurality of form, by which form corporeity is necessary to unite body and soul, seemed to make unity only “per accidens” possible.[56] Arguing also that there was no such composition of matter and form in spiritual beings, Aquinas opposed the possibility of adoring Christ’s humanity as separate from His divinity.[57] Pointing to Christ as the example for why there can only be one substantial form in a body, Aquinas raises the issue of hypostatic union between Christ’s divine and human natures: If these indicate “that there are several persons or hypostases in Christ, it would follow that there would be, absolutely speaking, several adorations. And this is what is condemned in the Councils.”[58]

Since Christ must have one substantial form to receive a unified adoration, Aquinas turns to answer the objection of Augustinian traditionalists in the sixth article of this question:

It is clear from this that he who has certain affection for anyone, venerates whatever of his is left after his death, not only his body and the parts thereof, but even external things, such as his clothes, and such like. Now it is manifest that we should show honor to the saints of God, as being members of Christ, the children and friends of God, and our intercessors. Wherefore in memory of them we ought to honor any relics of theirs in a fitting manner: principally their bodies, which were temples, and organs of the Holy Ghost dwelling and operating in them, and are destined to be likened to the body of Christ by the glory of the Resurrection. Hence God Himself fittingly honors such relics by working miracles at their presence.[59]

Referring to the first article of this question in which Aquinas discussed adoration to Christ as man and God through a subsistent hypostasis, Aquinas recognizes that “honor is given to a subsistent thing in its entirety.”[60] Thus when the part of a saint’s body or item associated with a saint is venerated, it is not the part of the saint, or the item itself, but, as the saint is a member of Christ’s body; all of Christ’s substantial form (grace) is venerated.[61] While Aquinas demonstrates that his consideration of the hylomorphic composition of the body does not negate the veneration of relics, he rejects the Augustinian notion of plurality of substantial forms in one subject as detracting from the value of the Eucharist, the truest relic, thereby inhibiting the veneration of saints’ relics because of a belief in the form of corporeity.

Aquinas objects to the doctrine of the form of corporeity because unlike Bonaventure and other Augustinians, he postulates a composite difference between spiritual and physical bodies: “the heavenly body is without contrariety, whereas the elemental bodies have contrariety in their nature. And as generation and corruption are from contraries, it follows that, whereas the elements are corruptible, the heavenly bodies are incorruptible”[62] According to Aquinas, if the form of corporeity did exist in physical bodies, it “would inhere in matter immutably and so far all bodies would be incorruptible.”[63] The death of these physical bodies would allow for under a pluralistic hylomorphic theory of human composition would infer that “corruption would then be merely accidental through the disappearance of successive forms—that is to say, it would be corruption, not pure and simple, but partial, since a being in act would subsist under the transient form.”[64] Understanding the corporality of bodies to be due to elemental state of corporeal being, Aquinas claims that no form can exist in corruptible bodies under the conditions of generation and corruption which our bodies are subject too, concluding that “matter of corruptible and incorruptible bodies is not the same. For matter, as it is in itself, is in potentiality to form.”[65]

Aquinas argues that the form of an incorruptible (spiritual) body must differ from that of a corruptible (material) body because they have different potential ends: while the material body has the potential to corrupt, the spiritual body does not, thus they are composed of different matter towards those ends.[66] While confessing that all bodies have a form of corporeity, Aquinas clarifies that this does not mean spiritual and material bodies are composed in the same matter though “they are all included in the one notion of corporeity.”[67] Both heavenly bodies and earthly bodies have matter in so much as they have potentiality towards their form, though heavenly bodies have potentiality only towards their specific forms, which allows that for to perfect “this matter in such a way that there remains in it no potentiality with respect to being, but only to place.”[68] Since Aquinas distinguishes different limits to the potentiality of spiritual and physical beings, the form of corporeality differs:

In the same way, while the term ‘body,’ insofar as it is the genus of all bodies, signified the substantial form of all bodies, referred to by the term of ‘corporeity’ in the first sense, the same term in the sense in which is it the genus of quantity signified an accidental form of the same bodies, namely, their corporeity in the second sense, that is, their dimension extending them into space. But neither is the first, nor the second sense of the term ‘body’ distinguished by Aquinas that is relevant to the claim that a human being, or indeed, and living being, is composed of body and soul.[69]

To summarize, Aquinas distinguishes a necessary difference between the form of corporeity between heavenly and earthly bodies by noting that both contained potentiality towards their respective forms, but that “the matter of the celestial bodies is different from that of the elemental, because the matter of the celestial is not in potentiality to an elemental form.”[70] It is this difference in Aquinas’ consideration of the corporeity of earthly and celestial beings from the Augustinian consideration of corporeity as that capacity for potentiality with regard to one substantial form that allows Aquinas to justify the hypostatic union of Christ’s incarnation as well as advocate the veneration of saints’ relics in relation to the whole body of Christ and not merely bits of human body parts.

Conclusion:

Having introduced the difference between Bonaventure’s Augustinian perspective of the hylomorphic composition of being and Aquinas’, differences for which Aquinas was condemned at Oxford in 1277 (famosissimum binarium, the plurality of substantial forms in one body differing over the specific issue of the form of corporeity), seem the bases from which Augustinian thinkers argued against the valid possibility of venerating saints’ relics in Aquinas’ thought. While both thinkers view death, the separation of human soul and body, as violation of the created composite God intended, both draw different conclusions as to why the composition of spiritual and physical beings creates a link between the relics of saints and their positions of grace in heaven, both interrelated to positions on the transubstantiation of the Eucharist. As Callus points out:

The Thomist innovations, in so far as they are intimately connected with the problems under discussion, resolves themselves ultimately of the true notion of prime matter and substantial form. With the reception of Aristotelian learning and hylomorphic theory was commonly recognized by all schools as a doctrine whereby becoming might be accounted for and the composition of created beings explained. The conflict turned, not so much on the doctrine itself, but rather on the way in which the theory was interpreted. [71]

Predicated on the Eucharistic resurrection of Christ, Bonaventure and Aquinas agree that earthly bodies are subject to corruption, but that saints in heaven have a special relationship to their bodies because corruption no longer binds them. The distinctions between Bonaventure and Aquinas concerning the veneration of saints’ relics evidence themselves through Aquinas’ postulation of unity of substantial form in being. Arguing from the hypostatic union that if Christ’s two natures were considered two forms they would require different sorts of venerations, Aquinas pointed to such practice as heretical in order to distinguish a difference between spiritual and earthly bodies. Rejecting the Augustinian unity of matter, Aquinas claimed that both heavenly and earthly bodies share form of corporeity only in the sense that both have potential towards their forms.

The implications of plurality or unity of substantial form as debated in Aquinas’ condemnation at Oxford in 1277 seem to continue to impact Protestant and Catholic quibbling over the veneration of saints’ relics even today. Having been raised in a Protestant home, I am able to reflect back and see both how we considered the adoration of the Eucharist as well as the veneration of Saints’ relics as foreign as alien to the Body of Christ as we mystically understood Him. The Calvinisitic/Bapstist Protestant perspective I was raised with strikes me as very Platonic in the sense of Augustinianism; in fact St. Augustine was one of the few people whose anthropology and theology I was regularly exposed to. Aquinas, however, writes in a different conception of grace and the human person. As Aquinas’ reasoning is commonly accepted in the Catholic Church, to a Catholic considering the veneration of relics of the Holy Eucharist to be other to Christ is absurd. While the basis of plurality of forms influencing the teaching I received as a child allowed for human nature to contain both good and evil in it as well as emphasized that adoration of relics and Eucharist was idolatry, other to Christ. Perhaps the root of this consideration was not an internal philosophy of multiple substantial forms, but a projection of such onto Catholicism. However, embracing Aquinas, the Catholic position resonates with the thought of Aquinas, that the essence of grace in the relics of the saints, demonstrated through the Holy Eucharist is Christ Himself. Further consideration of this medieval debate on the hylomorphic composition of being might shed more insight into the distinctions between Catholic and Protestant Christianity—and perhaps they will reveal insights that one or the other of these groups bases their opinion of the other on misconceptions like unto the Augustinians’ misreading of Aquinas as opposed to the teachings of St. Augustine and the Church.

Bibliography:

Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologica. Second and Revised Edition, 1920. Literally translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province. Online Edition Copyright © 2008 by Kevin Knight. Nihil Obstat. F. Innocentius Apap, O.P., S.T.M., Censor. Theol.. Imprimatur. Edus. Canonicus Surmont, Vicarius Generalis. Westmonasterii. APPROBATIO ORDINIS. Nihil Obstat. F. Raphael Moss, O.P., S.T.L. and F. Leo Moore, O.P., S.T.L. Imprimatur. F. Beda Jarrett, O.P., S.T.L., A.M., Prior Provincialis Angliæ. 12 May 2009. <http://www.newadvent.org/summa/4025.htm#article6>.

Angenendt, Arnold. “Relics and their veneration in the Middle Ages.” The Invention of Saintliness. Editted by Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker. Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group: London and New York, 2002.

“Binarium Famosissimum.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Jun 16, 2008. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Online. 21 May 2009. <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/binarium/>.

Binski, Paul. Medieval death: Ritual and Representation. Cornell University Press: Ithaca, 1996

Bynum, Caroline Walker. Wonderful Blood: Theology and Practice in Late Medieval Northern Germany and Beyond. University of Pennsylvania Press: Philadelphia , 2006.

Callus, Daniel. “The Condemnation of St. Thomas as Oxford,” No. 5 of The Aquinas Society of London Aquinas Papers. The Newman Bookshop: Westminster and Maryland, 1946.

Copleston, Frederick. A History of Philosophy. Continuum International Publishing Group: London, 2003.

—. Medieval Philosophy. Courier Dover Publications: New York, 2001

Craig, Edward and Routledge (Firm), Ed. Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Taylor & Francis: New York, 1998.

Cullen. Christopher M. Bonaventure. Oxford University Press US: New York, 2006.

Davies, Brian. Thomas Aquinas: Contemporary Philosophical Perspectives. Oxford University Press US: New York, 2002.

Delio, Ilia. Simply Bonaventure: An Introduction to His Life, Thought, and Writings. New City Press: Newburgh, N.Y., 2001.

Geary, Patrick. Futra Scara: Theft of Relics in the Central Middle Ages. Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ, 1978.

“hylomorphism.” Encyclopædia Britannica. 2009. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 21 May. 2009 <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/279305/hylomorphism>.

Kowalczyk, Stanislaw. “Augustinianism.” PEF – © Copyright by Polskie Towarzystwo Tomasza z Akwinu. Accessed 20 May 2009. <http://ptta.pl/pef/haslaen/a/augustinianism.pdf>.

Klepper, Deeana. Department of Religion, Boston University. Course: Fall 2007, RN 307/607/STH TX 817 Medieval Christianity (M, W, F 12:00-1:00 P.M). Guide to Week V: Saints, Relics and Pilgrimage. <http://people.bu.edu/dklepper/RN307/guidev.html>.

McGrath, Alister E., Ed. The Christian Theology Reader. Wiley-Blackwell: Malden, 2006.

Pasnau, Robert. Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature: a Philosophical Study of Summa Theologiae 1a, 75-89. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK, 2002.

Pasnau, Robert and Christopher John Shields, Ed. The Philosophy of Aquinas, Revised Edition. Westview Press: Boulder, CO, 2003

John Saward. “The Fresh Flowers Again. St. Bonaventure and the Aesthetics of Resurrection.” 10 April 2009. Accessed 21 May 2009. < http://www.christendom-awake.org/pages/jsaward/fleshflowers.htm.>.

Skirry, Justin. Descartes and the Metaphysics of Human Nature. Continuum International Publishing Group: London, 2005

Wortley, John. “The origins of Christian veneration of body-parts.” Revue de L’Histoire des Religions 223. 2006, Vol. 1., p. 5-28.

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[1] Arnold Angenendt. “Relics and their veneration in the Middle Ages.” Invention of Saintliness. Edited by Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker. Routledge Studies in Medieval Religion and Culture. Edited by George Ferzoco and Carolyn Muessig. Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group: London and New York. 2002. 27-8.

[2] Bartholomew F. Brewer and Alfred W. Furrell. Pilgrimage from Rome. Bob Jones University Press: Tennessee, 1986. 132.

[3] Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. “Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy: Guidelines and Principles.” Vatican City, December 2001. Accessed online, 15 May 2009. <http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/ccdds/documents/rc_con_ccdds_doc_20020513_vers-direttorio_en.html>.

[4] This document considers relics to be: The term ‘”relics of the Saints” principally signifies the bodies – or notable parts of the bodies – of the Saints who, as distinguished members of Christ’s mystical Body and as Temples of the Holy Spirit (cf. 1 Cor 3, 16; 6, 19; 2 Cor 6, 16)(324) in virtue of their heroic sanctity, now dwell in Heaven, but who once lived on earth. Objects which belonged to the Saints, such as personal objects, clothes and manuscripts are also considered relics, as are objects which have touched their bodies or tombs such as oils, cloths, and images.’ Paragraph no. 236.

[5] According to Catechism # 1677, “Sacramentals are sacred signs instituted by the Church. They prepare men to receive the fruit of the sacraments and sanctify different circumstances of life.” (467)

[6] Catechism of the Catholic Church. Part II, Chapter 4, Article 1, Reference #1675 (New York: Doubleday, 1995). 466.

[7] Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. “Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy: Guidelines and Principles.” Par. 237.

[8] Catechism of the Catholic Church. #947-8.

[9] Prof. Deeana Klepper. Department of Religion, Boston University. Course: Fall 2007, RN 307/607/STH TX 817 Medieval Christianity (M, W, F 12:00-1:00 P.M). Guide to Week V: Saints, Relics and Pilgrimage. <http://people.bu.edu/dklepper/RN307/guidev.html>.

[10] Term Klepper quotes from scholar Peter Brown.

[11] Klepper’s notes.

[12] Klepper’s notes.

[13] Klepper’s Notes

[14] Angenedt. “Relics and their veneration in the middle ages.” 30.

[15] Klepper’s notes.

[16] Angenedt. “Relics and their veneration in the middle ages.” 30.

[17] Daniel A. Callus, O.P. “The Condemnation of St. Thomas at Oxford.” Aquinas Papers, No. 5. The Aquinas Society of London. The Newman Bookshop: Westminster and Maryland, 1946. 9.

[18] Callus, 10.

[19] Callus, 4.

[20] “hylomorphism.” Encyclopædia Britannica. 2009. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 21 May. 2009 <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/279305/hylomorphism>.

[21] “Binarium Famosissimum.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Jun 16, 2008. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Online. 21 May 2009. <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/binarium/>.

[22] “Binarium Famosissimum.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

[23] Callus, 10.

[24] Callus, 10.

[25] Callus, 11.

[26] Callus, 11.

[27] Callus, 20.

[28] Callus, 20.

[29] Callus, 21.

[30] Callus, 22.

[31] The condemnation in 1277 was issued by the Bishop of Paris Stephen Tempier, and the

Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Kilwardy, condemned some theses of Thomas Aquinas. Yet, as Kowalczyk notes, “At the end of the thirteenth and beginning of the fourteenth century, Aristotelianism and Thomism gained more and more recognition in the Church, and so the victory of Augustinianism in its current version after the condemnation of Thomism was short-lived.” (Stanislaw Kowalczyk. “Augustinianism.”)

[32] Stanislaw Kowalczyk. “Augustinianism.” PEF – © Copyright by Polskie Towarzystwo Tomasza z Akwinu. Accessed 20 May 2009. <http://ptta.pl/pef/haslaen/a/augustinianism.pdf>.

[33] Stanislaw Kowalczyk. “Augustinianism.”

[34] John Saward. “The Fresh Flowers Again. St. Bonaventure and the Aesthetics of Resurrection.” 10 April 2009. Accessed 21 May 2009. < http://www.christendom-awake.org/pages/jsaward/fleshflowers.htm.>.

[35] Bonaventure believes in a variation of Aristotelian thought known as “universal hylomorphism,” which infers that not only corporeal beings are composed of form and matter, but that there are two kinds of composites, corporeal and spiritual. (Christopher M. Cullen. Bonaventure. Oxford University Press US, 2006. 45).

[36] Cullen, 53.

[37] Ibid., 53.

[38] Cullen, 53.

[39] Ibid., 53.

[40] Ibid., 54.

[41] Ilia Delio. Simply Bonaventure: Simply Bonaventure: An Introduction to His Life, Thought, and Writings. New City Press, 2001. 70.

[42] Angenedt. “Relics and their veneration in the middle ages.” 30.

[43] Based off of Psalm 51.10 in the thought of St. Augustine and Bonaventure, this passage from the psalms cited in Carolyn Walker Bynum’s Wonderful Blook, pg. 117, was used as a proof text that neither a saint’s physical or spiritual matter would face corruption because of their holy state.

[44] Bynum, pg. 117.

[45] Bynum, 101

[46] John Saward. “The Fresh Flowers Again. St. Bonaventure and the Aesthetics of Resurrection.” 10 April 2009. Accessed 21 May 2009. < http://www.christendom-awake.org/pages/jsaward/fleshflowers.htm.>.

[47] Ibid.

[48] Delio, 75.

[49] Delio, 77.

[50] Delio, 78.

[51] John Saward. “The Fresh Flowers Again. St. Bonaventure and the Aesthetics of Resurrection.” 10 April 2009. Accessed 21 May 2009. < http://www.christendom-awake.org/pages/jsaward/fleshflowers.htm.>.

[52] Ibid.

[53] Ibid.

[54] Copleston. Medieval Philosophy. 99.

[55] Justin Kirry. Descartes and the metaphysics of human nature. 16.

[56] Ibid., 16.

[57] Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologica. Third Part ,Question 25, Article 1, “I answer that…” Second and Revised Edition, 1920. Literally translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province. Online Edition Copyright © 2008 by Kevin Knight. Nihil Obstat. F. Innocentius Apap, O.P., S.T.M., Censor. Theol.. Imprimatur. Edus. Canonicus Surmont, Vicarius Generalis. Westmonasterii. APPROBATIO ORDINIS. Nihil Obstat. F. Raphael Moss, O.P., S.T.L. and F. Leo Moore, O.P., S.T.L. Imprimatur. F. Beda Jarrett, O.P., S.T.L., A.M., Prior Provincialis Angliæ. 12 May 2009. <http://www.newadvent.org/summa/4025.htm#article6>.

[58] Ibid., “I answer that…”

[59] Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologica. Third Part ,Question 25, Article 6, Objection 3.

[60] Ibid., Third Part ,Question 25, Article 1, “I answer that…”

[61] Ibid.

[62] Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologica. First Part ,Question 66, Article 2, “I answer that…” <http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1066.htm>.

[63] Ibid.

[64] Ibid.

[65] Ibid.

[66] Ibid.

[67] Ibid., “Reply to Objection 4.”

[68] Ibid., “I answer that…”

[69] Brian Davies Thomas Aquinas: Contemporary Philosophical Perspectives. 261

[70] Ibid., “Reply to Objection 4.”

[71] Infromation derived from Daniel A. Callus, O.P’s “The Condemonation of St. Thomas as Oxford,” No. 5 of The Aquinas Society of London Aquinas Papers. The Newman Bookshop: Westminster and Maryland, 1946.

Reflecting rarely worms its way through the pervasive sense of life-ness, if I can lump together the everyday experience of being and living which engages the superficial person in cares of world, relationship, and future end. Repose and rest are foreign concepts in many lives these days; the restless sojourning can capture the entire pursuit so that God is lost amongst the pages and deeds where He is sought. I don’t dare universalize the engagement of living that I’m talking about too broadly, for who can deny that life is really beautiful and that we have barely begun to live until we have embraced the being we have been created as, the being which was formed out of the breath of our Father and formed, embedded with more purpose and grace than we can imagine. So that was a brief confession that this reflection is entirely infected with a disease that it hopes to open to explore as an inhibitor to that very life we have been given to work out in an essentially relational manner.

Curiosity easily loses its enticing remark glamour; curiosity is idle (thus spoke M. Heidegger)… it plays and dances, skips and whirls, but never really knows itself, because its entire fascination is novelty. It seems seductive, at least its enticing—the luminous questions emblazened with a flare of meaning. Each one a different turn to a labyrinth journey we think will lead us to God. I remember when I first started understanding that knowing and loving God was not a manner of intellection to infuse the head with a life-changing substance (still and always learning this), but that it was an intimate product of relationship. Relationship with God was substantially formed through the two-dimensional pages of a book and my imagination’s appropriation of those figures into my imagination. Solitary, dependent on curiousity to spurn on the questions. Curiosity is not substantial enough to provide for more than the moment; it is no better, barely any different to my mind, than being caught up seeking a physiological escape, a moment of bodily pleasure to run away from the presence of a life which seems to have no answers. Curiosity is a pleasure, like a self-seeking drive to hedonism, which finds only itself.

I remember reading a sociological article a few days back about relationship and contemplating the fact of a mirror either as either what we should be in others, or a disecting admiration of ourselves. In curiosity, is the end beyond ourselves? A lot of discussion can turn too greatly to utility by a focus on ends, my purpose in resurrection “ends” is that we persons are not made for the sole sake of ourselves. To engage in the play of curiosity too long or to become too entrenched in seeking a pleasure eliminates the possibility of really knowing. I think over the past 3 years, I have become convinced that no achievement of some intellection, no facts ingested and transformed into mental spawn will ever place in my arms the deep sense of accomplishment, the doing of something, that I have been running after. What is the drive? I have said God too long to recind that now, and I still believe it, but like all who appropriated God and His gifts, of self, of others to our own ends, I have become a proficient user of God as my means to selfish ends. God as my drug, I dare say, in abuse.

Dare I, still maybe asfixiated in a strung-out coma, claim to think I know where the meaning and satisfaction come in now? Maybe. Maybe in a Qohellet-like quest of another nature, I stumbled into the end of curiosity by finding it to pan out at the bottom of the free fall? The funny thing about buying oneself in intellection, curiosity and insulating onself with skeptical questions is that the spider’s web catches no more weight than dust flecks of our musty understanding of self. Selfishness seems at times to be the most fulfilling, but in the end, who wants to be locked up in a casket with only their own, decomposing heart, nailed down by their own hands without a cross, dangling in lonely illusions? No one. Man was not made to be alone. I think it is through the icy barricades of ourselves, fears, shame, inhibitions, insecuirities, that we have to break to know the One we are looking for. For me to see all my junk fashioned into this ice-casket and see my heart in coldpacks outside my own blue-skinned body is not hard for my overly vivid imagintion. I remember imagining Jesus for years and years apart from this world, other than the people around me, wholly Himself without the flesh of people, the touch and warmth… and so then, I think I was just a gazer, gawking at Him, thinking that was adoration.

Maybe I will have to reform what I thought of loving Jesus to beyond the striking dumb with wonder, the losing self into internal ecstacy, the further withdrawl and closed-ness to a surrounding world. Because I don’t think Jesus came to finally stake a dead heart in my chest and leave me to rot. His Word reverberates with the declaration that “I have come that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” I love the desert fathers for discussing demons as our own struggles in self that we try to alienate without. All this stuff needs to be cleared up to really get our hand open enough to touch our Savior. I sometimes sit, just wondering at this Jesus crucified. O what manner of love the Father has given unto us, that we may be called the children of God, for that is what we are. But can we be if we won’t take hold of what we’ve called demons, to put aside our religious opium and see that this existence which we can only tangibly percieve has more through our deepest need for love and relationality?

It was in kind of this line of thinking that I heard yesterday’s homily on “acedia,” sometimes referred to in the writings of the desert fathers as the Noonday Devil, acedia is “the absence of care” which is that paralysis of too depraved and famished soul which has only had itself to feed on. The priest emphasized this state as a condition which sounded very much like a sort of spiritual mononucleosis… which Kathleen Norris in her book Acedia and Me describes as “-weariness and despair, lack of energy and enthusiasm for life, and the inability to care about what was happening to her or to the world. Sometimes manifesting as “restless boredom, frantic escapism, commitment phobias, and enervating despair,” acedia is often mistaken for depression.” An exhaustion that has become ingrained through the constant repetition of good, productive things… but maybe that become displaced from the work of care to the compulsion of self. The past 2 semesters, I have had so many people ask me why I do what I do, and over the last year, I’ve entirely lost track. And then waking into a gradual state of this acedia… a really horrible alone place, I wondered about my God, where to get Him in arms again.

I think He’s showing me, in the knife-edge where the reality of life in its corporeal, mundane, sort of sense, that the faith-life is what really continues to remind us that our God is the God of the living. When we’ve forgotten what it means to really engage, to really try to know, when intellectual exercises leave us in the dust, we find our arms are still aching. I think that’s why God gave us to each other, gave us to care with and for one another. What a precious gift. To look up and see another, like but not, and to look into their eyes and see a story, and a life and feel a heart, pushing a pulse through their hands. The deep recognition we can resonate with in some… the same reverberating echo from chest cavity to chest cavity. And in the incommunicability of our wandering being, we find ourselves moved and directed by something greater than our thoughts. Maybe by love. The care of charity-love is the most fascinating, invigorating, strengthening thing I have ever discovered. Part of the whole beauty and marvel is that it is not a thing, this Love is a Person, who Himself draws me with another to Himself through another person. To give in care is the only way I can receive Him.
From 1 John 3,
“Children, let us love not in word or speech
but in deed and truth.
Now this is how we shall know that we belong to the truth
and reassure our hearts before him
in whatever our hearts condemn,
for God is greater than our hearts and knows everything.”
His heart being greater than mine, like a little child I can revel in the giving. I can rejoice and be free in the living fixing the cares of others as my own and being released on stagnating, grawing ache by a shared question. A shared anticipation, a shared love.

Perhaps acedia arises when we have made ourselves lonely, when we have rolled out of the arms of that Divine Lover and sleep-walking have made our ways into shadows that disorient our self-focused discovery. I love the still moments looking at my crucifix. And then with it impressed in my mind, I see others, those who have welcomed me to their hearts and lives with open arms. To them too, my arms open, and I begin to discover Love Himself.

A Church of Her Own: Renewed or Recreated Priesthood?

Priesthood through the Experience of Roman Catholic Womenpriests

Introduction:

Each woman’s story is different; each woman’s experience of vocation is individual and unique, adding to the multiplicity of possible vocations which can be qualified as “women’s experience.” Approaching the debate over male and female vocations in the Roman Catholic Church, I will analyze one aspect of female experience which offers many complex and ambiguous theological and ethical reflections: the office of the ministerial priest. While the Catholic Magisterium has historically silenced the discussion of possibly ordaining women to the ministerial priesthood, women have continued to find this dialog crucial to the tenuous relationships we hold with God and our communities. A frequent critique of the magisterial position by feminist authors is that women’s experience of vocation has been interpreted through masculine perceptions, unbalancing the appeal of Church towards a male population. According to feminist theologian Marian Ronan, “’Women’s experience’ is not the self-evident ground of feminist theology, but that which needs to be explained.”[1] Do the experiences of women leading to the development of the Roman Catholic Womenpriest movement indicate a movement towards a renewal of the priesthood as defined by the Catholic Magisterium, or lay the groundwork fir an entirely different sort of church leadership?

Approaching the question of women’s leadership in the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church, one finds two positions concerning the Magisterial position of excluding women from the ministerial priesthood: the first which considers men to be best disposed to image Christ; the second position viewing this exclusion of women from a priestly office as sexist, many movements advocating the sacramental ordination of women into the priesthood have rallied around the person of Christ as a literal symbol of holiness.[2] Focusing on some Roman Catholic women’s struggles over the question of ordination, I have studied most specifically on the Roman Catholic Women Priest movement (RCWP), an international association of women and men who have begun to ordain and train women to be priests in the Catholic liturgical tradition.[3]

I have conducted a qualitative research process into the experiences of a Roman Catholic womenpriests, questioning what led them to ordination and how their expectations of ordination have changed after having received a form of ordination.  Through the testimonies of some of these ordained women via interviews, conversations at a mass presided by a women, different articles and documents these women have written, newspaper reports about ordination events and a collection of books written from the perspectives of men and women who advocate or analyze the possibility of women participating in the ministerial priesthood, I have compiled an argument from many women’s experiences that suggest reform to the current Catholic priesthood and sacramental life, crucial components to be considered in the conversation regarding whether or not women should be ordained to the ministerial priesthood. Combining the interviews I conducted (with one womanpriest in person, another via internet exchange, and a third through conversation at a mass I attended) and observations derived from women who have felt a call towards priestly vocation with written reflection on female leadership that differs from the priesthood, I will analyze aspects of several women who have wrestled on a vocational level with the question of equality on an institutional level in the Catholic Church.

An issue on which I could find no analysis was that of the language used by the womenpriest movement to distinguish their clergy members. To clarify the use of some terms used throughout this paper, I would like to discuss the use of “womanpriests,” “womandeacons,” “womanbishop,” and “woman-mass.” The insertion of “woman” or “women”  before the typical titles of deacon, priest, and bishop suggests a kind of female-centeredness to the whole movement which would be worthy of future inquiry.

Uncovering these specific stories through interviews by myself and other scholars, I will briefly trace the history of the Roman Catholic Womanpriest movement to its inception, then discussing the ordination movements beginning in 2002. Since the RCWP movement was officially birthed with the first ordinations in 2002, minimal literature has been produced by women in movement itself, forcing me to rely primarily on newspaper and popular magazine articles to disclose the experiences of the movement’s members. While a few of the womenpriests have composed documentaries or academic journals discussing the RCWP movement, the majority of my literary material were books by other scholars and religious writers reflecting on the question and consequence of women priests. Referring to the Episcopal women priests as a point of comparison for what a dual gendered priesthood might look like in the Roman Catholic Church, I will trace the paper trail of Vatican documents written in reaction to the Episcopal ordinations of women against which the RCWP movement is reacting. While the RCWP does not see itself as separating schismatically or moving in an opposite theological position from that of the Catholic Church under the Magisterium, I propose that the ordinations and structural models followed by members of the RCWP depart from the historical definition of “Catholic” as defined by the Catholic community at large.

Women’s Ordination before the Womanpriest Movement:

Relying on the history compiled by Hellena Moon from her interviews with seven ordained womenpriests and two womendeacons, one finds the roots of the womanpriest movement reaching to the early secular feminist victories of the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Tracing a connection between political and academic interest in women’s issues in the early 60s, Moon claims that feminist theologies “benefited and collaborated with this dual academic/activist endeavor as part of the second-wave feminist movement.”[4] Describing the struggle for women’s rights as the “third great social movement originating in the sixties,” Susan Jacoby notes that in the 1960s the women’s rights movement was purely secular. Utilizing secular intellectual frameworks as bases for religious activism, Christian and Jewish “feminists voiced their concerns in 1965 by calling for a ‘radical challenge to the Church.’” [5] Noting that religious feminists would fundamentally disagree that the roots of their egalitarian movements are secular, Jacoby claims that patriarchal religions such as Catholicism are so fundamentally disposed to a male bias, that “religion and feminism can be reconciled only through a radical reconstruction of traditional religious practices and beliefs.”[6]

How would a radical reconstruction of the traditional practices and beliefs regarding the ministerial priesthood of the Roman Catholic Church be effected by feminist theologians and ethicists? Would the reconstructive movements introduce a secular ideology into the community of the Church? Such questions faced those male and female feminist theologians and ethicists who gathered together with sympathetic priests and Religious in the first Women’s Ordination Conference held in Detroit 1975. The WOC movement, named after that first gathering, formed the following year committed to “ordination of women and creation of a renewed church and ministry or the radical transformation of the hierarchical church.” WOC advocated the ordination of women by publishing the first issue of “Project Priesthood” in 1978, identifying and describing experiences of women who perceived a call to the ministerial priesthood.[7]

While the inception of a women’s ordination movement in America in 1975 centered on a political understanding of women’s ordination, “to seek an acknowledgment of women’s full valuation—of their equality in the Church,” a change in the mentality of WOC participants evidenced itself in the Baltimore conference of 1978. Conference speakers responded to Inter Insignores (released by Pope Paul VI in 1976) by challenging “the fundamentalism of the clericalist system” and calling for a renewal of the priestly office and understanding of its ministry.[8] Gaining public face through some members’ protest at the annual American bishop conference in Washington D.C. in 1978, women of the WOC were invited to meet with bishops in 1979 to discuss issues of women’s ordination to the diaconate and ministerial priesthood. Attendees, including feminist theologian Rosemary Radford Reuther, felt ignored and unappreciated, leaving the conference more frustrated than before.

Founding the Women of the Church Coalition (which later became the Women-Church Convergence or WCC), feminists such as Reuther[9] and Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza[10] sought to begin a grassroots, inclusive movement reinterpreting the patriarchal theology of the Catholic Magisterium. Lobbying with the WOC, WCC activists declaimed the Catholic Magisterium and supremacy of the papacy as patriarchal sexism, oppressing women.[11] Strategizing for the ordination of both men and women a priesthood of sexual equality, the conferences held by WOC led to a focus on the discipleship of equals in 1995. In 1996, nine members of the WOC attended the first European Women’s synod, hoping to establish an international coalition to advocate the ordination of Roman Catholic women to the ministerial priesthood. In 2000, this goal was achieved by the founding of the Women’s Ordination Worldwide (WOW) with attendees of, “an international network of national organizations working for women’s ordination.”[12] This coalition was composed of fourteen countries “including Germany, Austria, Spain, Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, the United States, South Africa, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and the Philippines.”[13] Interpreting justice towards women as joint vocations with men in the Roman Catholic ministerial priesthood, WOW chose to advocate the ordination of men, but particularly women, to “to a renewed priestly ministry in a democratic church, and to stand in solidarity with women who are ordained in the ongoing renewal of the church.”[14]

In 2001, the first meeting of WOW was convened in Dublin, Ireland from 29 June- 1 July under the conference title of “NOW IS THE TIME – A Celebration of Women’s call

To a Renewed Priesthood in the Catholic Church.”[15] Attended by 370 individuals representing 26 countries and 6 continents, the conference resolved not only to continue the petitioning for a female diaconate and priesthood, but also encouraged women to begin studying for these offices. Spokeswoman Soline Vatine referenced an interesting acknowledgement in the conference notes to a woman who is most likely the first woman in the 20^th century to be ordained by a Roman Catholic bishop, Ludmila Javorova.[16] Calling for others to follow the example of Javorova, WOW supported individuals who had illicit experiences of ordination, or were unable to be ordained because of Vatican legislature, in witnessing the oppressive/repressive stance of the Catholic Magisterium against the ordination of women.[17] This international movement ignited a fire with global manifestations just the following year on the Danube River, instigating a blatant break with the hierarchical value of all-male priesthood.

The Roman Catholic Womanpriest Movement:

Episcopal Background to Catholic Conversation on Women’s Ordination

The fruition of the women’s ordination movement with the first ordinations in 2002 by the womenpriests “actually represents the culmination of more than 30 years of lobbying and activism by the Washington, D.C.-based Women’s Ordination Conference (WOC).”[18] However, author Catherine Wessinger accuses the Vatican of formulating positions on the women’s ordination issue in constant reaction to Anglican developments which remain the closest in polity to the Roman Catholic Church out of the Protestant denominations.[19] In 1973, General Convention of the Episcopal Church in the United States narrowly avoided the ordination of women in , though eleven women were irregularly on July 29, 1974 by three retired Episcopal bishops.[20] Four more women were “irregularly” ordained until the General Convention convalidated the ordinations, approving of women priests in 1976.[21]

In response to this the Convention’s acceptance of women into the Episcopal priesthood, Pope Paul VI directed the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith to compose the first Vatican document explicitly addressing women’s ordination in 1976, Inter Insigniores, affecting Catholic women’s future hopes for contributing to the ministry of the Church. Because of the shortage of male priests, women were “called upon to make important contributions, and they are responding enthusiastically and with dedication.”[22] From the absence of male presence to maintain the hierarchy, women’s involvement in the local parish and diocesan ministry grew more and more apparent. Inter Insigniores offered a theological rationale for the priesthood using a nuptial analogy which the male priest represents Jesus Christ through the male figure in the marital imagery. While Wessinger asserts that this “analogy was not meant to be taken literally, and feminist women (and men) were insulted by the statement that women could not image Christ.”

As a response to the irregular Episcopal ordinations of women, Roman Catholic women held a conference in Detroit in 1975, out of which Ruth Fitzpatrick organized the national Women’s Ordination Conference.[23] The Women’s Ordination Conference held three more events in Chicago (1983), Cincinnati (1987), and Albuquerque (1993) before Pope John Paul II composed Ordinatio Sacerdotalis on 22 May 1994, directly echoing Paul VI’s sentiments on the ordination of women. In the meantime, however, the Episcopal Church elected its first woman as bishop, Barbara C. Harris, in 1988. The Pope’s statement Mulieris Dignitatum (“On the Dignity and Vocation of Women”) was published to aid the American Bishops in issuing a statement that affirmed the equal human dignity of women, though conceptualizing “women’s vocation in terms of the sexual condition of the Virgin Mary, as being either virginity (for nuns and Sisters) or motherhood (for married women).”[24] Questioning whether American Catholic women will perceive the Church’s dictates on female vocational roles to be sexist and punitive, Wessinger notes that hierarchical ecclesial positions remain closed to women. Serving at a grassroots level of leadership, “the great majority of lay parish ministers are Sisters and laywomen” who are aiding in the development of institutional structures to aid and support lay leadership in ministry.

Writing on “Ministerial Attitudes and Aspirations of Catholic Laywomen,” Virginia Sullivan Finn[25] advocates that “listening to experiences voiced by laywomen ministers is the most imperative step of all” (263) to supporting lay ministry in the Roman Catholic Church.

Many of the women Finn interviewed felt a sense of call toward her particular ministry from three sources: “an interior, spiritual sense of God’s call, baptismal call, and confirmation by others.” (264) In light of their perceptions of the needs of the people of God and call to service, Finn questioned many laywomen ministers regarding their desires concerning ordination. While the issue of ordination did not seem “necessary for them to be effective ministerial leaders who are trusted by the people they serve, the issue of ordination does not fade.” (265) while some voiced ordination as decreasing in importance, the sense of separation and isolation from full, sacramental ministry within her home church left many a woman counting the “cost of remaining a disciple within the Roman Catholic tradition (to) seem even more sacrificial.” (265-6). This sense of alienation from ministry because of their gender impelled many of the women within the RCWP movement to seek a remedy for the “sin” their church was committing against their ministerial vocation, either by seeking ordination in a schismatic sense with Rome, or converting to the closest sacramental denomination to their own religious tradition, the Episcopal Church.

History of the Womanpriest Ordinations

From the testimony of their website and members of the Roman Catholic Womanpriest organization, this movement of women asserting a right to the sacramental priesthood of the Catholic Church began internationally with the ordination of seven women in 2002 (referred to as the “Danube Seven”). All but two of these seven women were German, including American Angela White/Dagmar Celeste and Austrian Christine Mayr-Lumetzberger.[26] The excommunication of these women was announced in January 2003 by the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith (headed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI), giving the women twelve days to “seek the forgiveness of the Catholic church.”[27] The Catholic Magisterium opposed the ordinations as void, violating the 1924 code of Canon Law[28] because of the schismatic position of ordaining Bishop, Romulo Antonio Braschi, founder of “the Catholic-Apostolic Charismatic Church of Jesus the King,”[29] In spite of the Vatican’s refusal to lift the excommunications, the RCWP continued to ordain another woman in 2003 (Patricia Fresen of South Africa) and coronate their first two bishops, Mayr-Lumetzberger and Forster so as to enable the women to continue ordinations without relying upon male priests. During these early years of organization of the RCWP, the structure that emerged became a mirror of the magisterial priesthood, a progression from deacon to priest, priest to bishop.

By 2004, the RCWP had conformed to the magisterial sacramental ordination system, only ordaining sacramental deacons. Out of the six deacons ordained in 2004, two were American (Victoria Rue and Jane Via). Three of these women, Rue, Benay, and Birch-Connery, were ordained into the priesthood the following year, along with 2005 deacons Marie David and

Jean Maire Marchant. Five other women entered the diaconate as well that year, while Fresen became a bishop. 2006 evidenced a widespread interest in women to be ordained; RCWP welcomed ten women into the sacramental diaconate, eleven women into the priesthood, and consecrated Ida Raming as bishop. The most publically recognized ordinations to the occurred during 2007 when the locations as which these ordinations were held crossed the “neutral” boundaries (typically the Danube river or some other boat-like setting where a diocese could not specifically interfere with the rites). Fifteen womendeacons were received into the congregation of the Roman Catholic Women Priests, along with eleven womenpriests.[30]

The publicity afforded to the St. Louis ordinations, taking place under Rabbi Susan Talve, of the Central Reform Congregation, seems to have served as an opportunity for the Womenpriests publicize an otherwise unrecognized voice.[31] The wide-spread publicity of these ordinations allowed the two women ordained under Womanbishop Fresen, Rose Marie “Ree” Hudson, of Festus, and Elsie McGrath, of south St. Louis, to tell their stories as examples of women leaders and voice their silent internal struggles with a faith they found impossible to break with. Joining the ranks of 22 other American Catholic Womenpriests, both women converted to Catholicism from Protestant denominations through marriage to Catholic men. McGrath shared her call to priestly ministry occurred while accompanying her husband Jim through training for the permanent diaconate. When her husband Jim was ordained and she was not, in spite of having received the same training, McGrath described that she felt like she was “being stabbed in the heart.” Womanbishop Fresen, the presider of the ordination, shared that her own background was that of a Dominican nun, adding to the diverse expression of pre-ordination vocations present in St. Louis. Expressing their personal frustrations with magisterial ordinance against the ordination of women, the testimony of these womenpriests inspired responses for women who shared their exasperation.[32]

News reporters were fascinated by the tension between the womenpriests and the magisterial officials: the womenpriests almost seemed to aggravate the Canon Law-driven hierarchy by sending a letter to St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke announcing the ordination. In response , the Archbishop threatened all womenpriest candidates (and in actuality some attendees as well) with excommunication.[33] On October 1^st, the Archbishop received a letter expressing the women’s hope for his reaction as a representative of the Magisterium’s position on women’s ordination:

We do not expect you to support us or condone our actions, but we pray that you may accept that God is calling us to priesthood and that the Spirit is preparing the way, in justice, for women as well as men to be called to priestly ministry. (Hinman)

In spite of Burke’s letter to Rabbi Talve threatening that allowing the ordinations to proceed as planned would threaten Catholic-Jewish relations; Talve tactfully responded that “It would be terribly unfortunate for the Catholic Church to make a decision on their relationship with all the Jewish community based on the actions of one congregation.” Local priests were also supportive, anonymously approving that this was an action Jesus would have desired Himself.[34]

Last year in 2008, the RCWP grew by ten womendeacons, fourteen womenpriests, and one womanbishop, Dana Reynolds of the western region of the United States. Reynolds’ claim to apostolic authority comes through the hands of the first womanbishops in Stuttgart, Germany, where Reynolds was ordained on April 9^th. Only four months later on August 9th, Reynolds ordained Lexington, Kentucky woman, Janice Sevre-Duszynska. Throughout the entire year, RCWP celebrated ordinations in eight locations in the United States and Canada.[35] In a press release “The Case for Women Priests,” Womanpriest Bridget Mary Meehan shared the current position of the RCWP with Magisterial doctrine, viewing Pope John Paul II as having erred in ‘infallibly’ declaring that the Church was incapable of ordaining women in his Apostolic letter on 1994, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis[36]. Since his statement did not represent what the RCWP felt to be the faith of the believing community (Meehan states that “according to recent surveys about 70 percent of Catholics approve of women’s ordination, including some of the world’s bishops”). Not having taken vows of obedience to the Pope in their ordination, but rather to the Gospel as guide for their community,

Roman Catholic Womenpriests reject the penalty of excommunication issued by the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith on May 29, 2008 stating that the “women priests and the bishops who ordain them would be excommunicated latae sententiae.” [37]

Considering the fact that women and men of the RCWP movement do not hold themselves under obligatory obedience to the ecclesial structure of the Roman Catholic Church, one might inquire what it means for these women and men of the RCWP movement to call themselves Catholic. Is this break with the traditional heritage of Catholicism one that contributes to a restructuring of the Church, or a movement so divergent as to conceive an entirely separate Church movement?

Reformative Goal of the Womanpriest Movement?

The December 7, 2007 edition of National Catholic Reporter ran a cover story on the St. Louis ordinations, giving the RCWP movement a platform to discuss their history and mission, running biographies of five of their womenpriests, and discuss the hardships of their ministries and following the calls they had discerned. Transitioning from a focus on the actual event of the ordinations to the lives of the women involved in the RWCP, this article entitled, “Though Church Bans Women Priest More and More Women are saying ‘Why Wait?’” opens what author Kelley Raab calls a “Pandora’s box” of an issue rooted in women’s experiences.[38] Author of the National Catholic Reporter article, Pamela Schaeffer reports that Womanbishop Fresen relayed during an interview. As of the November 2007 ordinations, 50 priests had been ordained in the RCWP movement, including several men, amassing mostly in North America with thirty-seven ordained priests in the RCWP movement.

Most of the candidates who came forward for ordination were “the very women diocese and parishes have relied on to fill ministry gaps as the number of Catholic clergy have declined,”[39] composing a population of women typically in their 60s with faithful Catholic histories of service. Schaeffer notes that one of the common themes among the women desiring ordination is a long-felt call to the priesthood that these women attempted to live out by serving wherever possible, setting aside hopes for ordination. The age factor of women in the movement evidences the women’s desire to leave for their children and grandchildren a different church. Fresen indicated that the cause of the majority of priestly vocations occurring in America is somewhat related to the fact that many Catholic women in America have already studied theology, fulfilling RCWP’s requirement of 1-2 years of studying sacramental theology and mentorship by a priest. These mentors are “ordained men, including former priests and active priests who support the movement.” (15) A large quantity of the inquiries regarding ordination came from women religious who had harbored desires to be or witness women as priests.

Yet, as noted, while the majority of ordained individuals are women in the RCWP movement, the organization lives up to its message of justice by ordaining men who could not be priests under the current teaching of the Magisterium. In 2007, of the six men ordained by the womanpriest movement, two were openly gay, two were married, and two had physical handicaps for which they were refused entrance into seminary. Viewing the ordination of only celibate men to the priesthood as unjust, the RCWP welcomes all married, gay, or disabled to serve in a ministerial vocation as priest if the call is perceived. Since hierarchical structure is preserved only in as much as the womenpriests themselves claim legitimate apostolic succession, every other similarity to the current Catholic priesthood is abandoned. In place of a hierarchical structure, some associates such as Gerry Rauch, a board member of the Women’s Ordination Conference, advocate “a variety of forms of priestly roles for women, ranging from ordination to a ‘discipleship of equals,’ in which all symbols of power, including ordination would be obsolete.”[40]

While womenpriests advocate for a total reform of the church, they diminish hierarchical structure in favor of “more democracy, less political posturing and more diversity.”[41] Former WOC coordinator Andrea Johnson expressed sadness rather than hostility towards a Church unwilling to ordain anyone other than celibate men rather than spite/anger. Instead of ordaining married men, Johnson lamented that the Church would rather lose a crucial element of personability by build bigger churches to hold fewer masses. Bridget Mary Meehan, a womanpriest who has actively spoken on behalf of the RCWP movement, noted that if any of the women had been angry with the church authorities had redirected that passion to fulfilling not only their personal dreams, but the needs of the parishes. Shaeffer’s interviews were backed by the work of Jane Redmont, author of Generous Lives: American Catholic Women Today (1992) who noted that the majority of women she interviewed were in favor of women’s ordination, as well as revoking the celibacy standard. “Often, they felt that priestly celibacy, women’s exclusion from priesthood, and teachings on sexuality and reproduction were related to one another, and that the link among them was the fear of women and sex.”[42] Is the democratization of Church leadership as it has evolved in the RCWP movement? Advocating a democratic system of ecclesial leadership by asserting their different experiences of Church inequality, is the RCWP promoting a renewal or reconstruction of the current ecclesial structure?

Women Being Priests: Experience of Roman Catholic Womenpriests

Intimate Liturgical Experience

In exploring the variety of experiences members of RCWP found themselves in which impelled them towards ordination, I attended a mass offered by one of the womenpriests residing in Los Gatos. Held in an ordinary looking home from the outside, the meeting place of the Magdala Catholic Community offered a homey feeling of community when the small congregation of approximately 20 people (7 men and 13 women), including only 5 visitors (a young family and myself) under the age of 60. I noted a lack of racial and class diversity: all the individuals seemed to be white, of a middle class background. While the number of women exceeded the men present, composed of several former nuns, Jesuit priests, and lay people who had either left their faith communities and married or simply departed from vowed religious life. The dynamics of the group were explained to me over the course of the evening, while in the meantime I and the other guests were immediately and warmly welcomed into the community.

True to their claim of inclusivity, the pastor and assistant pastor of the community expressed a lack of interest in the denomination of any of the congregants: while recognizing that some were not Catholic, the type of Christian was unimportant. In one of my interviews with the pastor, she expressed that at this bi-monthly mass, the usual attendees were people who had been through such difficult struggles in life that none of them “give a damn about denomination anymore,” according to one member of the community. Concerned for the care of souls in spite of denomination, the pastor expressed her own honest feelings of inability to be the arms of Christ and wrestle with all the personal and pastoral questions that arose from the great responsibility of her office.

Yet in spite of a clear sense of ordination (the assistant pastor celebrating the mass wore traditional liturgical robe and stole), the mass was clearly an activity of the whole community rather than being restricted to the community. Beginning the mass by involving the community in prayers said in inclusive language, the assistant pastor invited the entire community to walk the journey of the sacrifice being made. Following ordinary Catholic mass structure, opening prayers were followed by different scripture readings as prescribed the lectionary for that day. Even though a new guest, I was invited to read as a lectionary from the epistle of St. Paul. These readings were done from the various locations around the room where we were seated. Even the Gospel was not proclaimed from the altar.

A creative homily calling for personal reflection on the symbol of the cross in place of a sermon brought together intimate groups of 2-3 congregants to share about how the cross symbolized life to us. Preparing for the Eucharist with a warm sharing of the sign of peace, congregants embraced and kissed each other with a genuine joy. The community offered up the prayers of consecration, hands outstretched towards the Sacrament, as if we were a community of priests concelebrating a mass. In fact, that was the emphasis of the pastor as she and I dialogued about the mass en route back to Berkeley. Coming together in communion of believers, Catholic and not, the baptismal priesthood of any believer was celebrated as members of the congregation administered the Eucharist to one another. Even the final blessing of the mass was administered by each of the congregants to each other before dispersing to share a meal, reminiscent of early church gatherings.

Chatting with the members of the community over the dinner, I witnessed a strong bond between these people, drawn together by a strong sentiment of worship. According to the pastor, the aging individuals of deep intensity and spiritual commitment whom I met at this woman-mass were representative of most of the communities served by the Bay Area womenpriests. Married couples, divorcées, homosexual couples, people from all walks of life were invited to experience the sacraments and real, un-judging community. Evaluating the overall experience, I was struck by how sincerely caring each person I spoke with was concerning my own spiritual journey, regardless of my faith heritage. Liturgically, the form of the Vatican II ordinary mass was quite obvious, and all components of the mass were present, even if the actual celebration by the people without an extremely differentiated view from the celebrant herself would have been criticized by orthodox, magisterial liturgists. At least in the celebration of the Eucharist, the womanpriest mass remained true to the RCWP goal of evidencing a church structure which is:

A more inclusive, Christ-centered Church of equals in the twenty-first century.  Women bishops ordained in full apostolic succession continue to carry on the work of ordaining others in the Roman Catholic Church.  We advocate a new model of priestly ministry united with the people with whom we serve. We are rooted in a response to Jesus who called women and men to be disciples and equals living the Gospel.[43]

Ministerial Situations

The willingness of the RCWP to receive vocational calls of marginalized Catholics (women, deformed men, and gay men) may defy the Magisterium to encourage many who have envisioned a more equal-opportunity priesthood, but at a great cost to its proponents. Of the women Schaeffer interviewed for her article in National Catholic Reporter, three Church-employed lost jobs over their involvement with RCWP:

Fresen, fired from a prestigious teaching post and expelled from her religious order; Jane Marchant,  forced to resign her position as head of  health care ministry for the Boston archdiocese; Meehan, facing income losses now that Liguori, a Catholic publishing house, has removed her books from its lists.[44]

Even Rabbi Talve, the facilitator of the November 2007 ordinations in St. Louis suffered as a result of her support of the RCWP movement, being disinvited from an interfaith event at a Catholic university. The ministry of the womenpriests was not dampened by this ‘persecution;’ Fresen viewed discouragement from mainstream, hierarchical Catholicism as evidence of a need to minister to marginalized Catholic culture. By margins of Catholic culture, Fresen referred to:

The huge numbers of Catholics who, if church law were strictly applied, would be barred from receiving the sacraments. These include men and women who have divorced and remarried without getting their first marriage annulled by the church; gays and lesbians living with partners; people who have received or supported an abortions, or couples who are unrepentant about the fact that they use contraceptives to limit family size.[45]

By not assuming any titles, such as ‘Mother’ or ‘Father,’ the womenpriests seek to draw the entire community towards Christ-like love and acceptance, devoid of hierarchical class distinctions. Redmont emphasizes the reformative nature of a womanpriesthood by suggesting that “structural change in church government, a stronger role for the laity, and the broader concerns of women in the life of the Church” are the chief preoccupations for those who support the womanpriest movement (328).

Interviewing one of the womenpriests, a native of the Bay Area, she shared how difficult supporting herself was as a “renegade” womanpriest: with a small congregation who did not regularly tithe, the vocation this woman felt most fulfilled in compensated her least. This womanpriest I interviewed travels over an hour twice a month to serve mass in Los Gatos as pastor of the Magdala Catholic Community, receiving little if any compensation and paying for liturgical robes and other items out of her own pocket. Holding down three jobs (as counselor, priest, and wedding coordinator), this pastor not only offers wedding celebrations and private mass, but also counsels professionally. According to this woman, all of the other womenpriests are just as busy, struggling to make a living and maintain the vocations for which they have placed themselves at odds with the rest of their Church.

While the womenpriests have been officially excommunicated, the overall rejection of clericism in favor of the Eucharistic celebration in a democratic environment allows them to minister to those who feel marginalized because of being excluded from Eucharistic communion under the administration of the Magisterial Catholic Church. In the woman-mass I attended, the inclusivity towards people of varying life situations was freely discussed, as many of the attendees were formerly committed to religious celibacy and had now married, openly gay and lesbian individuals, or divorcees, all of whom would be traditionally denied the Eucharist.

Critiques of the Womanpriest Movement: Inclusive of All Community?

Separation from or Service to Community?

Witnessing the vision of RCWP movement male and female priests lived-out in current ministry; a component of critique arises when considering the contest in which the priests express their ordination. Researching the experience of women in priestly roles, I interviewed an ordained Episcopal woman priest who changed ecclesial communities from Roman Catholic to Episcopal twelve years ago over the issue of women’s ordination, she questioned the purpose of ordination objectively, and specifically of the Roman Catholic Womanpriest movement. Considering ordination to be a sacrament conferred not just by the clerics, but by the laity as well, this woman priest saw the defining purpose of ordination as rooted in community: service to and for the people of God by designated ministers. How can one minister without a community, she asked? Should one’s ordination be used entirely as an instrumental protest against a misogynistically structured ecclesial community which prohibits women from serving at the altar?

Experiencing a daily struggle in her own certain call of ordination, my interviewee feels deeply Catholic in her heart, and remains torn between the two ecclesial communities of the Episcopal and Catholic Churches. Noting the commonality of Christian faith to both, the Episcopal priest mourned the emphasis of divisive factors between church communities and denominations. All the differences are beautiful diversities to be celebrated, but not to inhibit communion, she communicated, sounding very much like one of the womenpriests. Since ordination into a community that would recognize with her the priestly vocation to which she felt called was the defining factor in this woman’s change of ecclesial communities, she expressed a deep personal preference of not contradicting the position of an ecclesial community from within. Still in an organic stage, torn over the ambiguity of the symbol of a woman at the altar, questioning maintains an open conversation in this woman’s life.

Certain that someday the majority of lay people will be recognized by the Catholic Magisterium in opening the priesthood to women, my interviewee was more curious as to the form the feminine priesthood would take in a Catholic context. Roman Catholic women are still the most passionate feminists, she conveyed, probably because they are still tying to gain recognition which is assumed by most every other ecclesial community and denomination. Hedging a bet that this distinctive element of Catholic theology, the all-male priesthood will eventually dissolve into the position shared by other churches, this priest concluded our discussion ecumenically, wondering if perhaps the most fundamental of all positions, whether liturgically, scripturally, or traditionally, would not soar out of the recent return to conservative distinctiveness by embracing a more unified position on issues like the ordination of women. Perhaps the real question behind women’s ordination is not the weight of tradition or gender conflicts, but insecure personal identities. From our discussion, I affirm that the conflict of women’s ordination becomes even more ambiguous through an analysis of women’s experiences with the multiplicity of issues raised in the conversation.[46]

Truly Inclusive of Diversity?

Marian Ronan takes the entire Women’s Ordination Conference, including the Roman Catholic Womanpriest movement, to task for not practicing the inclusivity they claim. In her article “Ordination and Apartheid,” Ronan compares the ordination issue of women in the Roman Catholic Church to two social phenomena linked to women’s liberative issues through the Civil Rights Movement: the racial oppression of minorities under white society and the fact of women obtaining the right to votes fifty years after males of all races. Reflecting in solidarity with the WOC activist in the desire “that women should be recognized as equals in the ecclesial tradition we love and hate, seems less and less likely to be fulfilled in the foreseeable future, our responses are increasingly full of pain and anger,”[47] Ronan is not content to merely dwell in these negative emotions.

Writing in 2005, Ronan questions whether or not the white woman, whose comparison of racism and sexism she compared, has any right to draw a direct connection between these oppressions. Such a comparison from a woman in the WOC seems trite, since only 1-2% of the attending population of ordinations of the most recent ordinations (then in Ottawa, Canada) were people of color.[48] Wondering about the analogy between racial oppression and the repression of women in ecclesial office in the Catholic Church, Ronan wonders:

Why exactly is our movement so white? By definition, women who seek ordination in the Catholic Church are highly educated members of the professional managerial class. All of the women ordained on the Danube and in Ottawa were white.[49]

Accusing the whole women’s ordination movement as a whole of being “un-nuanced” in the assertion of racial and sexual analogy, Ronan incriminates herself in desiring to find a solution to the currently white conversation of ordination in the intersection of racial and gendered conversation. If remaining so focused on the legitimizing of ordained women in the ministerial priesthood “excludes Black Catholics, how analogous are racial oppression in society and the oppression of (some) women within the Catholic Church?”[50]

One has only to glance through the Roman Catholic Womanpriest website, looking over the limited biographies of ordained individuals, to see that there is no racial diversity obvious among the ordained, but that they are all white. Having noted the typical age of individuals in this movement to be in their mid 50s or early 60s, my own experience of a white, middle class, mostly older congregation of predominantly women seems to assimilate into the typical picture of the communities these womenpriests preside over. One might even wonder about the language used in this religious feminist movement: womanpriest? Womanbishop? Womandeacon? While this movement advocates inclusivity for people of all race, gender, sexual orientation, or state of life, it appears, even from the official website, that mostly middle aged, middle class white people are attracted to this movement. Discovering only two published profiles of male priests ordained in this movement, one might wonder whether reverse sexism will result from the passionate sentiment Ronan noted. Holding up a mirror for RCWP to see itself in, Ronan’s critiques should be readily accepted by a movement interested in more than gender issues, as Victoria Rue voiced, “As Roman Catholic Womenpriests, we are not just interested in gender equity. We are focused on a more sweeping landscape, the transformation of the Roman Catholic Church. Womenpriests are one step in the changes that need to take place.”[51]

What Might Hierarchical Mothers Look Like?

Women Restructuring Church

Looking at the historical shift in the RCWP from renewing the Catholic priesthood to forming a new kind of priesthood, theological implications haunt a devout reader: What would the Catholic Church look like if both Mothers and Fathers were permitted service at the altar? This question has haunted the imaginations of feminist theologians and thinkers through the years following the ordination of women into the Episcopal priesthood as well as the genesis of the Women’s Ordination Conference. The Roman Catholic Women Priest Movement has sought to envision the possibility of womenpriests in an isolated ecclesial context, arousing numerous questions regarding how women would administer the sacramental office of priesthood.

Kelly Raab’s When Women Become Priests: the Catholic Women’s Ordination Debate imagines the reforms women could bring to the life of the Church, especially in regards to the celebration of the Eucharist and structure of Church authority.[52] Arguing through five ideas she perceives pertinent to the women’s ordination conversation in the Catholic Church, Raab outlines the differences between male and female priestly ministry in terms of: gender reversal, maternal envy, Christ as woman, and gender, sex and God.

In her first point, Raab claims that while the Church prohibits women from joining the priesthood, “both the Catholic priesthood and the notions of the church have ‘feminine,’ particularly maternal, origins” even in the celebration of the Eucharist.[53] Noting that the Eucharist is a maternal image rooted at its heart in the mother-infant relationship, Raab describes the priesthood as a feminine office populated only by celibate men.[54] Blaming the opposition to women priests on “unconscious dynamics concerning male gender identity issues,” Raab accuses men in the hierarchical Catholic priesthood of having (consciously or unconsciously) contracted a sense of womb envy. Noting this envy of the female biological capacity to bear children, Raab links this with the centrality of sacrifice to the Catholic Eucharistic theology.[55] Suggesting that the priesthood has become a site for psychological transference, Raab proposes that women altar celebrants “would serve as a template for maternal transferences.”[56] Analyzing these transferences as both positive and negative, womenpriests would resurrect questions Christology and how women can represent Christ to parishioners.

Viewing these tenants as means of women serving in a Catholic priesthood, Raab “began to see ritualizing as a way of creating an alternative reality, as opening an avenue for individual and social change” in an institutional structure from her interviews with ordained Episcopal women.[57] Through an experience of mass at the hands of a female Episcopal priest, Raab felt she had encountered a female Christ who in turn allowed her to experience herself “intuitively affirmed and more included in the service.”[58] This refreshing experience of the Eucharistic ritual reenacted to Raab “the primordial drama of identification with and differentiation from mother” portrayed by women offering the Eucharistic sacrifice.[59] This maternal body is necessary, Raab argues, if Western dualism is to be overturned in favor of a more holistic experience of the gospel.[60] Erasure of this dualism comes through the recovery of Christ as a sexual being, eliminating “misogyny, homophobia, and denigration of sexual pleasure.” [61] Besides a sexual liberation, Raab finds enormous symbolic significance to women’s ordination: affirmation of an egalitarian sense of church in order to further catholic sentiment of all being equal before God in terms of salvation; improve ecumenical dialog through portrayal of equal rights for all people; and furthering the Church’s ideal as utopia, “representing a future, eschatological, or saved, community.”[62]

Raab’s perception of a more communitarian, egalitarian church organization with the dawn of a female priesthood aligns with the ideals of the Roman Catholic Womenpriests. Caught between the fact of remaining within the liturgical definitions of the Roman Catholic Church as an institution and rejection of many of the principles governing the Catholic Church, my interview with member of the Roman Catholic Womanpriest movement and personal interaction with members of her community suggests that the experience of the women involved in RCWP advocated a reformation and reexamination of Church structure, specifically pushing an egalitarian organization (often anti-clerical) and acceptance of varying life styles as equally valid within the Christian community. Rather than seeking to replace male priests with women and exclude men from the Church, the RCWP serves as a thought-provoking challenge to current Church structure around the celibate, male priesthood. According to Meehan:

Women as priests remind us that women are equal symbols of the holy and that the identity of priests should reflect the experiences and spiritual authority of women. Women priests help the church to recognize women’s rightful place as equals in the governing structures of the church. Reclaiming our ancient spiritual heritage, women priests are shaping a more inclusive, Christ-centered, Spirit-empowered church of equals in the 21st century.[63]

A Woman’s Touch: Feminizing the Church?

Many supporters of the movement for women’s ordination to the Catholic ministerial priesthood have been faced with an accusation that ordaining will “feminize” the Church. But what is meant by feminization? According to statistic provided by John Allen, Jr. in his article “The Feminization of the Church,” women are already the majority of congregants and lay ecclesial ministers, composing the general population of the Church.[64] Yet according to the majority of these women expressing “feminine” opinion, the priesthood is in need of reform.[65] Redmont’s survey of women’s opinions on priestly leadership resulted in a variety of opinions centering on the same theme of reforming the celibate, male-only sacramental order.

Decentralizing the priesthood as the sacramental focus of liturgical life, laywomen such as Abigail McCarthy hold a more democratic view of Church leadership. If all congregants are priests, the priest should just be selected from amongst the people by the people, rather than being assigned by some hierarchical order.[66] Focusing on the primacy of the Eucharist, “Eucharistia facit Ecclesiam, (‘The Eucharist makes the Church’).”[67] Fr. William Shannon suggests that the celibate, male variety of Eucharistic celebrants is secondary to the actual celebration of the Eucharist. Discovering that some women favored ordination in principle, Redmont found at the heart of this position a deeper set of questions regarding structure and ministry of the Church, which was “unlikely to be ‘sacramental priesthood as it is presently structured and understood.’” Noting the need for women ministers, laywomen choose to view ministry in a larger context than merely ordination, considering men and women to be called in the same way.[68]

Ambiguity about church structure, while desiring inclusive positions for women if there is to be a hierarchical structure, pervades a large number of women’s analyses of the women’s ordination conversation. For few is the question as simple as whether or not to ordain women along with men, but rather, whether or not anyone should be ordained at all. Kathryn Schuler, a college student interviewed by Redmont, expressed distaste for the women’s ordination conversation because it encourages women to buy into nonsensical, cult-like tradition.[69] Mary Hunt, another interviewee from among Catholic laywomen, desired to “forsake ordination in favor of ministry,”[70] though she would demand “justice” of ordination (equal-opportunity ordination between men and women). Because she had little hope of the institutional ordaining, Hunt relayed a premonition that the institutional church would attempt to pacify women desiring ordination by allowing women deacons. Voicing this opinion, Hunt aligns with Redmont to concur with one of the basic principles of the RCWP movement—to accept only a priestly ordination from the Vatican rather than settling for diaconate.[71]

From a feminist perspective of Women-Church, not only does rejection ordination allow for a more consensually structured church community, but “also implies a move toward self-determination and a change in the traditional understanding of the sacraments.” [72] Redmont’s experience of interviewing women who ministered within the Catholic Church was that they worked both within and outside church structures, utilizing Traditions when convenient and innovating to best meet the needs the were faced with. “Most of the women who spoke to me of a call or vocation to ministry (ordained or not),” Redmont recalled,” made clear to me that the church community was always part of this call.’[73] Perhaps then, a feminine contribution to the Church community’s sense of call reconciles both an inner, personal sense of call and the invitation of a community of faith to allow for a variety of ministries within and outside of a hierarchy.[74] Many members of the RCWP movement “believe not only in women’s ordination, but also that total reform of the Church is needed. They advocate for less hierarchy and more democracy, less political posturing and more diversity — and making celibacy for priests optional.”[75]

Conclusion: WomenCommunity- Choosing the Battles

Having analyzed the Roman Catholic Womanpriest movement through its history originating in the Women’s Ordination Conference, an array of experience culminating in democratic, egalitarian, a decrying of clerical celibacy and decentralization of the clerical office in favor of a communal Eucharist demonstrates a fundamental shift away from the tradition which is recognized on a social and magisterial level as “Catholic.” Maintaining a deep appreciation for Eucharistic sentimentality, members of RCWP advocate personal experience over the tenants of traditional religion. Does this favoring of individual experience over structural principles change the entire tenor of the Eucharistic sacrifice to a non-Catholic context? Noting that the womanpriest I interviewed felt that the RCWP’s decentralization seemed more Protestant than Catholic, I recall Susan Jacoby’s analysis of the secularization of traditional religion.

While a high percentage of Catholics in Europe and America favor the ordination of women to the ministerial priesthood,[76] the roots of the religious feminist movement seems to be related to the initial, secular women’s rights movement.[77] Referring to the Catholic Magisterium’s theological position on the ordination of women as conservative, Jacoby argues that “that mainstream American religion has become more secularized as a result of its accommodation to feminism.”[78] Not tied to the same regard for tradition, Protestant theology in both the eighteen and nineteen centuries was most easily “secularized” than Catholicism by expose to Enlightenment thought and evolutionism.[79] Recognizing feminist thought as a challenge to the Catholic structure of Church, Jacoby notes that “the pope’s resistance [to women’s ordination] is based on theology, not sociology, and is perfectly comprehensible within his historical frame of reference.”[80] The expectation of the RCWP and the WOC as a whole that the Church will operate from some democratic process are the results, Jacoby would suggest, of secularization in society. Women’s ordination from a magisterial understanding of the Catholic faith is not only a threat to the patriarchal structure of the Church hierarchy, but a danger to the most central mystery of the Catholic faith, the Eucharist:

The essence of a secularist and rationalist worldview is the de-sacralization of mysteries and taboos that defy logic and the laws of nature, and that is American feminism has elicited such a fierce and enduring enmity from the religious right. As its core, feminism can only be understood as an attack on the sacralization of man-made customs governing relations between the sexes.[81]

It is this socio-theological threat to Catholic culture which causes “the status of women is a line in the sand, a measure of their unwillingness to let secular laws and new secular customs overturn centuries of religious dogma and tradition.”[82] How can the RCWP movement, if it threatens the very mystery which the proponents seek to liberate from patriarchal structure, claim to remain Catholic? Perhaps a more critical application of women’s experiences of vocation must be applied before entirely departing from a Catholic frame of reference.

Ronan addresses this subject of seemingly binary discourse through the work of Mary McClintock Fulkerson’s Changing the Subject.[83] Developing a particularly female tool in her discussion of different women’s experiences, “the analytic of women’s discourses,” Fulkerson critiques an unconscious reproduction of the Cartesian mind-body split in the discourse of women’s ordination by “uncritical appeal to women’s experience.” The patriarchal system has already subordinated women through production of a “Cartesian binary framework” in society. Only by a critical application of women’s experiences to social situations by “textualizing” does Fulkerson believe the “the supposed naturalness of the various components of this [patriarchal] social order by showing how the positioning of signs in texts and actions, and the intersections between them, literally construct differences.”[84] Noting theology as the context, not the origins, of theological and ethical reasoning, Fulkerson offers a challenge to the very experientially-based RCWP movement. RCWP’s “secular” principles of democratic, egalitarian, anti-clerical leadership run contrary to the theologically-based Catholic Magisterial tradition, and that its appeal to experience may work against its very goals of egalitarianism, I suggest that perhaps the RCWP is not a renewal of the Catholic priesthood, but a reinvention of it.

While the Roman Catholic Womanpriest movement ordains women into the apostolic succession claimed by the hierarchical Catholic Church, there are diverse opinions amongst these women as to whether or not women should seek to participate in oppressive male structures of ecclesial organization. Advocating two main themes in their theological expressions, the Womanpriest movement focuses on consensual (even anticlerical) leadership and equal access to the Eucharist for all people. Since the majority of Catholics in the American church seem to be in favor of ordaining women, the RCWP voices the opinions of many women and men in the Church in active movements such as the Women’s Ordination Conferences or Women-masses that gender-oriented arguments prohibiting women from exercising full sacramental ministry are simply sexist. Imagining the possibilities of womenpriests within the hierarchical structure if the Catholic Magisterium through the biased experiences of ordained Episcopal women, many women tend to favor a position that moves out of hierarchy entirely to a simply communitarian, egalitarian form of church structure. Noting that the demographics of the male and female participants in the womanpriest movement tend to be pre-Vatican II Catholics (many from former religious life), one might wonder whether the great range of fluctuation in doctrine and practice after the council affected the disenchantment of religious and priests who left their vowed lives for lay-like positions in frustration with the hierarchy.

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[1] Marian Ronan. “Ordination and Apartheid.” Women’s Ordination Conference. This article was first printed in Vol. XIV, No. 3, the December 2005 – February 2006 issue, of EqualwRrites, the newsletter of the Southeastern WOC. Accessed 2 February 2009. <http://www.womensordination.org/content/view/63/117/>.

[2] The position within the Roman Catholic culture advocating women as fit candidates for the ministerial priesthood is espoused by several different groups and organizations. WomenEucharist ( written about in book titled WomenEucharist by Sheila Durkin Dierks http://wovenword.com/WomenEucharist.htm) describes women presiding over the Eucharistic celebration in home congregations.  The Women-Church Convergence [WC-C] considers itself “a coalition of autonomous Catholic-rooted organizations/groups raising a feminist voice committed to an ekklesia of women which is participative, egalitarian and self-governing.”(Statement from homepage, accessed on 2 May 2009: http://www.women-churchconvergence.org/home.htm.). The Women’s Ordination Conference (WOC),founded in 1975, is considered the oldest and largest foundation “working solely for the ordination of women as priests, deacons, and bishops into an inclusive and accountable Catholic Church.” (According to the title statement on the WOC home page accessed 28 April 2009, http://www.womensordination.org/ ). Another group which sincerely believes that the Vatican is wrong to prohibit Catholic women from ordination to the ministerial priesthood is the Women Priest organization, seeking to negotiate the ordination of women under a state of obedience to the Pope (http://www.womenpriests.org/index.asp). FutureChurch, a movement of Roman Catholics founded in 1990 in Solon, Ohio, currently active in 28 parishes throughout North East Ohio. Future Church is concerned about the related issues of women in ministry, optional celibacy, inclusive language, and Church decision-making that involves all the faithful, as called for by Vatican II, deferring these to the primacy of the Eucharistic celebration (derived from self-acclaimed statement on the FutureChurch website, http://www.futurechurch.org/about.htm, accessed 2 May 2009). The final group which I will make mention of is the Roman Catholic Womenpriest movement, not only advocating for the ordination of women, but claiming there is no supremacy of the Pope’s authority over that of the entire baptized church, have gone ahead and claimed ordination for women and men into a “renewed,” inclusive priesthood, against papal decree (according website http://www.romancatholicwomenpriests.org/index.php). It is on this final movement which this paper will focus to analyze the experience of some women’s vocations to an ecclesial office within the Roman Catholic community.

[3] Roman Catholic Womenpriest Website. This website was created and is maintained by RCWP-USA, Inc., a California 501©3 non-profit corporation, as an educational and information service to the public.  RCWP-USA promotes and supports the ordination of women and men in renewed priestly ministry in the Roman Catholic Church.  This website provides information about RCWP worldwide, with special focus on RCWP in North America.  Every ministry convened by a Roman Catholic Woman Priest operates separately and independently from the RCWP-USA, Inc. non-profit. © 2009 Roman Catholic Womenpriests 77847. Accessed 2 May 2009.  <http://www.romancatholicwomenpriests.org/index.php>.

[4] Hellena Moon. “Womenpriests: radical change or more of the same?” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion. University of Indiana Press, 22 September 2008. Accessed 2 May 2009. <http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-35599677_ITM?email=hmecaskey@op.dspt.edu&library=Alameda%20Free%20Library>.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Susan Jacoby. Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism. New York : Metropolitan Books, 2004. 338.

[7] “A Movement Begins.” Our Story. Women’s Ordination Conference. Copyright 2008. Accessed 2 May 2009. <http://www.womensordination.org/content/view/8/59/>.

[8] “Development of the Mission, Key Turning Points.” Our Story. Women’s Ordination Conference. Copyright 2008. Accessed 2 May 2009. <http://www.womensordination.org/content/view/8/59/1/1/>.

[9] Moon.

[10] Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza is included as one of the foremost speakers for the reformulating of patriarchal theology Women/Church Convergence (According to the Women-Church Convergence website history accessed 28 April 2009, <http://www.women-churchconvergence.org/herstory.htm>).

[11] Moon.

[12] Moon.

[13] “Women’s Ordination Worldwide,” Women’s Ordination Conference. Copyright 2008. Accessed 2 May 2009. <http://www.womensordination.org/content/view/133/1/>.

[14] Women’s Ordination Worldwide.” Women’s Ordination Conference.

[15] Soline Vatine. “Conference Proceedings of Now is the Time.” Women’s Ordination Worldwide Conference. 29 June-1 July 2001. Accessed 2 May 2009. <http://www.we-are-church.org/it/attual/Congresso.donne.prete.html>.

[16] Javorona, a Czechoslovakian member of underground Roman Catholic Church known as “Koinotes” (Winter, “Ludmila’s Story”), was ordained on December 28, 1970 by Bishop Felix Maria Davidek, witnessed by his brother Leo. Javorona found reason for her ordination y Bishop Davidek “was that in women’s prisons nuns and other inmates had died without priestly support or the sacraments. But it was also clear to us that a woman is much better at dealing with women’s problems than a man is. Just think of the sacrament of reconciliation.” (Ertel and Georg Motylewicz). (Vatine, Soline. “RESOLUTIONS TO THE MEMBER ORGANISATIONS OF WOW AS PASSED AT THE WOW ECUMENICAL CONFERENCE IN DUBLIN, IRELAND, JULY 2001.”)

[17] Soline Vatine. “RESOLUTIONS TO THE MEMBER ORGANISATIONS OF WOW AS PASSED AT THE WOW ECUMENICAL CONFERENCE IN DUBLIN, IRELAND, JULY 2001.”

[18] Kristen Hinman. “The Church Ladies,” Riverfront Times (RFT). November 07, 2007 at 12:13pm. Accessed 19 April 2009. <http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2007-11-07/news/the-church-ladies>.

[19] Catherine Wessinger. “Women’s Religious Leadership in the United States,” Religious Institutions and Women’s Leadership: New Roles Inside the Mainstream. Ed. Catherine Wessinger. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1996. 22.

[20] Ibid.

[21] Ibid.

[22] Ibid.

[23] Ibid., 23-5.

[24] Ibid., 24.

[25] Virginia Sullivan Finn. “Ministerial Attitudes and Aspirations of Catholic Laywomen in the United States.” Religious Institutions and Women’s Leadership: New Roles Inside the Mainstream. Ed. Catherine Wessinger. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1996. 243-68.

[26] The names of the women ordained at the first Danube ordination in 2002 are the following, as cited by the Roman Catholic Womenpriest website (http://www.romancatholicwomenpriests.org/history.htm):

Pia Brunner (Germany); Angela White/Dagmar Celeste (USA); Gisela Forster (Germany); Christine Mayr-Lumetzberger  (Austria); Iris Muller (Germany); Ida Raming (Germany); Adelinde Theresia Roitinger (Germany)

[27] Gill Donovan. “Excommunications of seven women confirmed.” National Catholic Reporter 39, no. 14 (February 07, 2003): 6. Religion and Philosophy Collection, EBSCOhost (accessed April 19, 2009). The women were ordained June 29^th 2002 by Romulo Braschi, whom Donovan describes as a “schismatic Argentine bishop.” Threatened with excommunication a month later, the women refused to acknowledge any sort of scandal or invalid/null ordinations, and subsequently the Vatican issued a decree of excommunication on August 5^th 2002. While these women appealed for their excommunication to be revoked, the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith confirmed the excommunication on December 21^st, 2002, forbidding the seven women ability to celebrate sacraments and sacramental rites, as well as receiving “the sacraments and to exercise any function in ecclesial office, ministry or assignment.” This decree was published on January 27^th 2003, and has remained intact since that time. Pamela Schaeffer offers a detailed account of the St. Louis 2007 ordination in “Though church bans women priests. (cover story).” National Catholic Reporter 44, no. 6 (December 07, 2007): 15-18. Religion and Philosophy Collection, EBSCOhost (accessed April 19, 2009), supplying background details to the earlier history or RCWP.

[28] Gill Donovan “Vatican excommunicates women ordained in June.” National Catholic Reporter 38, no. 36 (August 16, 2002): 13. Religion and Philosophy Collection, EBSCOhost (accessed April 19, 2009). In spite of incurring excommunication, none of the newly ordained womenpriests agreed to the terms set forth by the Vatican: no participation in administering or receiving the sacraments.

[29] Ibid.

[30] Hinman.

[31] From news reports made on the days leading up to the ordinations, November 7, 8, 9, etc (Hinman, Kristen. “The Church Ladies,” Riverfront Times (RFT). November 07, 2007 at 12:13pm. Accessed 19 April 2009. <http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2007-11-07/news/the-church-ladies>.)

[32] Schaeffer.

[33] Hinman.

[34] Hinman.

[35] Information concerning the 2008 ordinations of the Roman Catholic Women Priest movement were derived from press releases issued by RCWP representative Bridget Mary Meehan in “Roman Catholic Womenpriests Ordain U.S. Bishop” (Release date: April 9, 2008. Accessed 17 April 2009.) and “Peace and Justice Activist to Be Ordained a Roman Catholic Womanpriest” (Release date: July 30, 2008. Accessed 17 April 2008.) both from the Roman Catholic Women Priest website: <http://www.romancatholicwomenpriests.org/Kentucky%20RCWP%20Press%20Releases.zip>.

[36] John Paul II. Apostolic Letter, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis. Washington, D.C.: United States Catholic Conference,1994.

[37] Bridget Mary Meehan. “The Case for Women Preists,” Global Ministries University. 18 July 2008. Accessed 19 April 2009. <http://www.romancatholicwomenpriests.org/Kentucky%20RCWP%20Press%20Releases.zip>.

[38] In her book When Women Become Priests: The Catholic Women’s Ordination Debate (Columbia University Press: New York, 2000), Kelley A. Raab induces possibilities for the priesthood of women in the Roman Catholic Church from interviews with Episcopal priests, noting that “many conflicting and controversial issues on sexuality would surface, and additional discussions on the issue would be critical” (206) if women could be ordained.

[39] Finn.

[40] Pamela Schaeffer. “Though church bans women priests. (cover story).” National Catholic Reporter 44, no. 6 (December 07, 2007): 15-18. Religion and Philosophy Collection, EBSCOhost (accessed April 19, 2009)

[41] Hinman.

[42] In Generous Lives: American Catholic Women Today (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1992. 325-6) Jane Redmont’s interviewees as a majority suggested that women’s ordination would “be good for the Church” as a whole (327). “The women’s ordination movement has never focused on what Mary Hunt calls the ‘add women and stir’ formula,” but aims to renew the church and reexamine the meaning and definition of priesthood just as much as advocating the ordination of women (327).

[43] Mission Statement.” Roman Catholic Womenpriests. Copyright 2009. Accessed 20 April 2009. <http://www.romancatholicwomenpriests.org/index.php>. This website was created and is maintained by RCWP-USA, Inc., a California 501©3 non-profit corporation, as an educational and information service to the public.  RCWP-USA promotes and supports the ordination of women and men in renewed priestly ministry in the Roman Catholic Church.  This website provides information about RCWP worldwide, with special focus on RCWP in North America.  Every ministry convened by a Roman Catholic Woman Priest operates separately and independently from the RCWP-USA, Inc. non-profit.

[44] Schaeffer.

[45] Schaeffer.

[46] Lizette Larson-Miller, Episcopal Priest. Personal Interview. 21 April 2009.

[47] Ronan, “Ordination and Apartheid.”

[48] Ibid.

[49] Ibid.

[50] Ibid.

[51] Rue, “Womenpriests in the Roman Catholic Church.”

[52] Kelley Raab. When Women Become Priests: The Catholic Women’s Ordination Debate (Columbia University Press: New York, 2000).

[53] Ibid., 16.

[54] Ibid., 16

[55] Ibid., 17.

[56] Ibid., 17.

[57] Ibid., 23.

[58] Ibid., 19.

[59] Ibid., 197.

[60] Ibid., 199.

[61] Ibid., 207.

[62] Ibid., 236.

[63] Bridget Mary Meehan. “The Case for Women Priests.”

[64] John L. Allen Jr.,”The fennmzation of the church.” National Catholic Reporter 43, no. 34 (August 17, 2007): 13-17. Religion and Philosophy Collection, EBSCOhost (accessed April 20, 2009).

[65] Jane Redmont. Generous Lives: American Catholic Women Today.

[66] Ibid., 326

[67] Ibid., 328.

[68] Ibid. 329.

[69] Ibid., 329.

[70] Ibid., 329.

[71] Ibid., 329-30.

[72] Ibid., 330.

[73] Ibid., 331.

[74] Jane Redmont. “’You’re a What?’ Catholic Women as Ministers,” Chapter 8. Generous Lives: American Catholic Women Today.

[75] Hinman, Kristen. “The Church Ladies.”

[76] Moon.

[77] Jacoby, 338-9.

[78] Ibid., 339.

[79] Ibid., 340.

[80] Ibid., 340.

[81] Ibid., 340.

[82] Ibid., 340.

[83] Ronan, “Reclaiming Women’s Experience: A Reading of Selected Christian Feminist Theologies.”

[84] Ibid.