Life as a Roman Catholic woman priest

The Faith Column this week will look into women who are given leadership roles in various faiths. Roman Catholic woman priest Marie Evans Bouclin describes why Catholics need priests who understand the "realities of ordinary life"

By Marie Evans Bouclin Published 31 March 2008 10:26

When bishop Patricia Fresen ordained me as a Roman Catholic woman priest, she perceived in me a call to minister to some of the most wounded women of the Church - women who had been sexually abused, as children or vulnerable adults, by a priest. For several years I had been giving lectures, workshops and retreats to survivors of abuse in the hope of finding with them pathways to healing for their violated souls.

I expected this ministry to abused women would continue with the added benefit of my being able to offer the sacraments of the church to those who asked for them and it did. The day after my ordination, however, I was invited to pastor at Christ the Servant, a small parish that had been abandoned by its priest, a man who had been dismissed by his bishop for supporting women’s ordination. My home is too far away to travel to this church every weekend, so I serve as an associate, part-time pastor. From this community I learned that parish renewal is possible. At Christ the Servant, lay leaders administer the parish, organize visits to the sick and elderly of the community, provide material assistance to the poor, and lead Bible study and a week-night prayer group. The priest provides sacramental services, theological grounding, and pastoral support.

Many Catholics tell me they long for substantial spiritual nourishment. They need energetic leaders who celebrate and affirm their commitment to live Christ-centred lives at a time when there is a critical shortage of priests. And they would welcome women priests.

My ordination generated considerable media interest. The reaction of the church hierarchy was to publicly declare that I had “excluded myself” by not adhering to an official teaching of the church. So, while I received no official notification from my diocesan bishop that I was under interdict, I received an email from my parish priest that I would not be allowed to receive communion. Most Catholic priests are polite but are careful not to openly support me.

Media exposure also prompted invitations to celebrate Eucharist with groups of disenfranchised Catholics - people also “excluded” from communion for a variety of reasons. A young woman asked me to bless her marriage because she had been told she was no longer Catholic when she moved in with her boyfriend. The family of an elderly woman who left the church in her thirties asked me to give their dying mother absolution and to celebrate her funeral - at her specific request.

Perhaps because the paedophilia scandal has hit this diocese particularly hard, many Catholics here support me. They believe it is time women and married men were ordained, that the Church needs priests who understand the “realities of ordinary life." They know that I’m married, have raised three children and have a grandchild. They also seem to know that my only motive is to serve and help heal the wounds of abuse in the church I love.

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13 comments

Mon, 2008-03-31 19:11 — RCTheophile

By definition, a woman who is authorized to perform sacred rites of a religion is called a "priestess," not a priest. Within the Roman Catholic Church, there are groups of lesbian women who feel called to perform male roles and take on male titles. I met an ordained Protestant woman who demanded to be called "father" and wore male clerical collars and garb. I feel that this is indeed disordered thinking.
If they are ordained, then why don't they call themselves by the correct name of their functioning? They are priestesses, and the Roman Catholic Church has never allowed them.

Mon, 2008-03-31 23:55 — ivan.najera@thomson.net

I guess when you tell some one "You can't do this" you are abusing them! Right?... Wrong!!! Marie Evans Bouclin was told she couldn't become an ordained priest so she got mad and not only that she went right ahead, ignoring the excommunication consequences, and got ordained, but to get even, she decided to ordain many others as well. Now she feels some what vindicated and thinks she is justified because the others tell her she is OK. Remember Jim Jones? He was also accepted by the same people he led to their doom.

Tue, 2008-04-01 04:30 — DDamdg

RC theophile is sadly wrong in all her or his pre-judgements. There have been women priests in the early church. And these modern women priests have a perfect right to call themselves priests. They have a right to name themsleves and RC theophile does not have a right to name them unless she is their parent. Obedience is to Christ and his gospel and not to the institutional RC church. The power of the Holy Spirit is not confined to the RC church. It is a free spirit that sanctifies whom it will. Marie Bouclin is sanctified by that same Holy Spirit. There is no such thing as excommunication. Excommunication is an antiquated, fantasy sledgehammer which the church wields as a form of institutional brutality. No sane person believes in excommunication. It is nonesense. There are now women priests and there was so in the early church. It has happened. Congratulations to Marie and her sister priests and bishops for their courage to recognize the priesthood of women. The Church and the pope will catch up to them.

Tue, 2008-04-01 06:51 — vaticanpitbull

DDamdg
-As a theologian and author, I can see that DDamdg knows very little scripture on the matter of excommunication, on the role of the Holy Spirit and on the relationship between the message of Christ and His own self on earth-the body of Christ- the Church.

I can also see that DDamdg knows very little about true Church history. Anything related to womens ordination was found in heretical groups and was outlawed by the first ecumenical council in canon 19.

They do have a right to call themselves priests if they do so, or catholic if they so wish.....but.....I can call myself a cat all I want and just because I say it to be true with all my heart does not make it so.

These women priests as others have noted cannot call themselves women priests- to unpack this phrase it would mean that they are saying: women who possess the male office of sacrifice giving. They must use the word priestess (pagan). In English we have no concept of gender oriented language. And the greek word presbuteroi is the male form.

DDamdg please get yourself educated. If you call yourself Catholic I am sorry for your confusion and hope you find peace. I will pray for your conversion to the Truth of Christ. Know that I forgive you your sins on the matter.

Tue, 2008-04-01 16:42 — RCTheophile

I would also like to comment on the last paragraph of the article regarding married priests and the pedophilia problem in the Church.
To say that by having married clergy the problem of sexual abuse would cease to exist is fallacious. According to FBI stats, over 85% of pedophilia cases in the United States are perpetrated by married individuals in the form of incest or abuse of a known family friend.
In the Orthodox Church, where clergy are allowed to be married, there are many cases of separation and/or divorce.
And finally, here in the United States there are over 600 priests in the Roman Catholic that are married, who had been ordained in another Christian church and have been accepted into the Roman Catholic Church as priests.
So to say that priests "need to know the realities of life" is a bit out of line. I would add that there are millions of people who are alone and live celibate lives who also because of their choices are indeed the realities of life.
As one of my systematics professors used to say, and I'll use here regarding some of what has been said in this article, "That dog don't hunt."

Wed, 2009-08-26 17:16 — Wendy MacLean (not verified)

How sad to read the rancor and vicious comments posted in response to the good news of this article!
The fear runs through these words like a rope, ready for a hanging.
Please, listen well to each other. "Obey" means "hear"--listen.
Ordination is not an easy choice. Any woman or man who is ordained is committed to a life of devotion. We should be thankful for any man or woman willing to make the sacrifice that goes with the role. A woman who chooses to respond to the call of the Holy Spirit to serve in the church is not choosing a life of luxury or ease. Please stop quoting systematics--or get a dog.

Tue, 2008-04-01 18:19 — Didymus

Wimminpriests are no different than any of the other 40,000-plus Protestant denominations that currently plague Christianity. ubi Petrus, ibi Ecclesia.

Sun, 2008-12-28 18:35 — truthseeker2

Let's get real here. The denial of ordaination of women as priests is just about simple womb envy. The reality is that women bring human beings into the world. and some men are seeking something that is exclusively male and spiritual as that. So they discriminate and give men special roles in society. Almost anything that is manmade defined as exclusively male has its roots in womb envy. Women bring life into the world, and no one can deny that, so the church makes an attempt to make men the spiritual life givers. The reaction by a number of male catholics about this topic shows they are very threatened, just proving my point.

Let's also get real about the history of sexual abuse within the church. Women have something special to bring to the prieshood and at least we won't have to worry about them molesting children! The simple truth is that maybe women can bring back that sense of purity to the church.

Women are the primary attendees of churches in general, so if women become the majority of the priests than the church will ultimately become much more female-centered. I can see that some men are very threatened by that.

Women were priests in just about every early religions, and most of the pre-Christian religions focused on honoring women for bringing life into the world. Let's see a taste of honoring women return. Mary is co-redemptrix and should be worshipped right along with Jesus. As Jesus gives life, so does Mary, and women should be honored for bringing life into this world! These sexist men just need to get over their manmade laws to help men compensate and get over their womb envy, womb inadequacy.

Mon, 2008-03-31 17:19 — Olive Tree

According to saints and mystics, the true definition of "obedience" is a "surrender to Love". I believe that Marie Bouclin has surrendered to Love in her care of the marginalized, especially in her care of women who have been abused by male priests in the R.C. Church. She is a priest after the heart of Jesus.

Mon, 2008-03-31 14:38 — vetfred

If we look to the lives of saints of the past and present they all have one thing in common: OBIDIENCE. they all had a great respect of the virtue which they truly bilieved to be the will of God. Once they decided to follow Christ they always saw in the decisions of their superiors and in the hierarchy the will of the Lord and the power of the Holy Spirit giuding them to holiness.

All I can see in this story now is PRIDE and very little HUMBLENESS....

Let's pray for those that go far from the teachings of the church and make harm to their souls and those who follow them

Mon, 2008-03-31 17:02 — RCTheophile

Please remember that these women who have been ordained have excommunicated themselves from the Roman Catholic Church by their actions. Their Protestant actions against the Roman Catholic Church make them Protestants, not Roman Catholics.

Mon, 2008-03-31 18:03 — ivan.najera@thomson.net

To serve our Lord is the call to all Christians. If we profess our selves to be Catholic, then we must abide by the Catholic Church guidelines or else we are no a true Catholics. Thru that many catholic priest have sin against their own church and its people, yet that doesn't justify for any lay person to say "I think this should be done" and do it against the Church's laws and ordinances, other wise we will have nothing but chaos.
Imagine for a moment that every person who thinks different from what the Catholic teaching profess, start their own “catholic branch” (as it is already happening), with their own changes, pretty soon we’ll have what we see amongst the protestants; hundreds of hundreds of denominations with some of them so far from the truth now that is pathetic.
Remember that one of our main believes as Catholics is that we believe that The Holy Spirit guides the church and that is why we believe in its "Infallibility" regarding its teachings. If some day The Holy Spirit sees it fit that we have Woman in the priesthood, it will happen! It will be embraced by the Pope and all of us Catholics, but until then, our duty and obligation is to obey the Pope because he holds the keys from Heaven as commanded by Jesus Himself.
Ivan Najera