It’s not the same

By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | Dec 30, 2025

“Tina Thompson found a different way to be Catholic,” reads the lede of a sympathetic story in the Kansas City Reflector. The heroine of the story had strayed from her Catholic faith, but now announces that she has returned, as a priest. And the reporter takes her seriously, adding that “she is one of hundreds of women Catholic priests around the world.”

Which is odd, because Pope John Paul II taught definitively that the Catholic Church cannot ordain women as priests. Even the Reflector reporter acknowledges:

Women priests do not perform their duties in Catholic churches, and they cannot be officially ordained in one either. They are not recognized and are often excommunicated from the Catholic Church if they are heavily involved before their ordination as Roman Catholic women priests.

(That final sentence is puzzling. A woman could be excommunicated for participating in a parody of a sacrament, such as their “ordination,” but how she might “heavily involved” before the alleged ordination is not clear.)

So in what sense is this woman, who left the Catholic faith and then returned on her own terms, to an organization that dissents from teaching of the Catholic Church, a Catholic—let alone a Catholic priest? The Reflector story does not ask that question, yet indirectly provides some answers:

Thompson was ordained at Lawrence’s Unity Church, a religious movement founded in Kansas City, Missouri, that blends Christianity with spiritualism, emphasizing inclusivity, a loose approach to worship and embracing personal transformation.

Odd, isn’t it, that a “Catholic priest” would be ordained in a non-Catholic church? There was no bishop on hand, and the Unity Church, as described, does not sound like even an approximation of Catholicism. Since she cannot act as a priest in a Catholic church, how does Thompson plan to serve?

Her ministry as a priest isn’t yet clear. She said she gravitates toward art and ensuring an inclusive spiritual practice, but she also said she doesn’t want to limit herself so early into her priesthood.

So she won’t do what the Catholic Church expects priests to do. Which is OK, because whatever she does, it won’t be in a Catholic church. Yet this poor deluded woman insists—and this is most important to her—that she is not merely a female minister of some tiny Protestant sect, but a Catholic priest.

If you said, ‘Well, go be an Episcopal priest,’ it’s not the same. It’s just not the same.

No, it’s not the same.