Defining the Church . . . Badly
July 27, 2007
Mere Comments

Another sad story of people playing dress up: Women Anointed Catholic Deacons, Priest in S.B. from the Santa Barbara Independent. It's the usual story: lifelong Catholics, love the Church, feel called to priesthood, Church misogynist, hope for future change, women were priests in the early church, have to stay to promote change, accepted someday, international movement, and so on, though it leaves out the almost inevitable "the church is not the magisterium" line and adds the faux reassurance that excommunication "does not remove one from the church" but only bars one from the sacraments. (Not, of course, that they care.)

And like so many articles on this subject, the reporter took seriously and without question the claim that these women were Roman Catholic bishops and priests. They are doing what the Church expressly forbids, they don't represent any Catholic official or institution, they have no place in the Catholic system, no Catholic official or institution recognizes them (other than, perhaps, some secretive order of aging leftwing nuns and even they don't support them in public), but nevertheless the reporter and the editor who wrote the headline declare them to be Roman Catholics.

the rest-Commentary at Touchstone