The Womanpriests fantasy: installment 614

By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | Aug 22, 2016

If you're a regular reader, you know by now that I take a special interest in the contortions that journalists go through when they report on the bogus "ordinations" of Catholic women. Reporters will usually concede that the Catholic hierarchy does not recognize these ordinations, and the stories usually divulge that neither the "ordination" nor the subsequent ministry of the womanpriest take place in actual Catholic churches. Nevertheless, most journalists take at face value the women's claims to be Catholic priests. How do the reporters do it? How do they reconcile the women's claims with the overwhelming evidence to the contrary? The subject fascinates me.

An article in the Montana Standard was the latest to catch my attention. The subject was Eda Lorello, who says that she was ordained as a Catholic priest in 2013, in a Roman Catholic Womenpriests ceremony in Massachusetts. Although Roman Catholic Womenpriests exists for the purpose of ordaining women, and anyone who simulates the ordination of women is subject to excommunication, nevertheless the group insists that it is Catholic. "We're not a schismatic group," Lorello assures the Montana Standard.

Then, a few paragraphs later in the article, Lorello addresses the question of when/whether the Catholic Church will allow the ordination of women:

"I won't see it in my lifetime, the church ordaining women," she said. 

Help me out here. If the Catholic Church won't ordain women in her lifetime, why is she claiming to have been ordained in the Catholic Church?