Fraud detected but unpunished

By Diogenes ( articles ) | Jul 28, 2006

Jean Marie Marchant is one of the 9 women who claimed to have been ordained as Catholic priests in a surrealistic ceremony that took place last year in international waters. Like most of the other would-be priestesses, Marchant showed her courage by using a false name.

But now she had identified herself in a letter to Boston's Cardinal Sean O'Malley, forcing him to make some public response. Here it is:

Donilon, O'Malley's spokesman, said yesterday that "the cardinal has imposed no penalty on Jean Marchant, because, according to church law, she separated herself from the church by her own action."

Translation: By participating in a mockery of the sacraments, Marchant has incurred the penalty of excommunication, but the cardinal isn't going to say that out loud. Why not?

And hey, wait a minute. Marchant didn't separate herself from the Catholic Church after her alleged ordination. Or rather, to be more accurate, she didn't separate herself from the archdiocesan payroll. After her public show of contempt for Church teaching, and the public act that incurred her formal excommunication, she continued to serve as director of health-care ministry for several months before finally tendering her (well publicized) resignation. Since she couldn't accept the Church's teachings, I suppose we can assume that she refused to accept payment for her services.

There's more. The sympathetic Boston Globe story minimizes the damage done by Marchant's treachery, assuring readers that she did not often perform priestly functions, although "she has quietly anointed some she has quietly anointed some sick people and privately consecrated the Eucharist."

Wrong. She pretended to anoint sick people and consecrate the Eucharist. She can't actually perform those priestly functions, because she isn't a priest. (Yes, I know she thinks she's a priest. But if you wake up tomorrow under the illusion that you are Napoleon Bonaparte, you still won't have an army.) Insofar as any bewildered Catholics relied on Jean Marie Marchant to fulfill their spiritual needs, they were denied the sacraments-- by an official of the Boston archdiocese.

From the pastoral perspective that is a very, very serious offense. Even from the secular perspective it's a form of fraud. And in response to that fraud, the cardinal-archbishop "has imposed no penalty." Thereby making it very likely that similar frauds will occur in the near future.