Academic

Women who participate in ordination ceremonies automatically excommunicate themselves from the Catholic Church

By Ann Bartow

So reports this Boston.com article, which also notes:

A group advocating for the ordination of women held a ceremony yesterday in a packed Protestant church at which it declared three women to be Catholic priests and a fourth woman to be a deacon.

The ceremony, like several others that have taken place around the world over the past six years, was denounced by the Roman Catholic Church, and critics said the event was a stunt with no religious significance. The Catholic Church has consistently taught that only men can be ordained as priests, and the Archdiocese of Boston said that the women who participated in yesterday’s ceremony had automatically excommunicated themselves by participating in what it said was an invalid ordination ceremony.

But the women who participated in the event, along with the several hundred people who spent nearly three hours in the sweltering Church of the Covenant, said they rejected the excommunications and believed that the women had been validly ordained. The women were vested with white chasubles and red stoles and greeted with a standing ovation as they were declared to be priests. They then helped preside over a service at which they declared bread and wine to be consecrated and offered what they called Communion to anyone who wished to receive it.

The ceremony was organized by Roman Catholic Womenpriests, an organization that is not recognized by the Roman Catholic Church. Catholic Church officials say the women are not Catholic, their ordinations are not real, and any sacraments they attempt to celebrate, including yesterday’s Eucharist, are invalid. …

A commenter retorted:

THE CONTESTED ordination of women to the Catholic priesthood presents an interesting dilemma to the Roman Catholic hierarchy which so far has declared the participants to be neither Catholic nor priests and the ordination and subsequent service invalid. Wouldn’t it be easier to simply declare the participants not women?

Via Twisty.

Full post as published by Feminist Law Professors on July 25, 2008 (boomark / email).