June 4 was not only a defining day for four area women, but a notable day at a local Catholic church as well.
For that day the four women were ordained as Roman Catholic priests in a service held in St. John’s United Church of Christ in Catonsville. Presiding at that ordination, Bishop Andrea Johnson of the Living Water Community welcomed Caryl Conroy Johnson, Patricia LaRosa, Marellen Marie Mayers and Ann Clarisse Yeoman Penick to a growing number of Roman Catholic women claiming a participatory role in their religion’s priesthood.
Calling themselves “Roman Catholic Womanpriests” (RCWP), they commit to a renewal movement within the existing church. The organization began in Germany with the ordination of seven women on the Danube River in 2002. Some of those seven went on to become “womenbishops,” ordained in Apostolic Succession and technically able to ordain women in the Roman Catholic Church.
In 2008, Dana Reynolds of California became the first American Roman Catholic Womanbishop; today, more than 100 Roman Catholic women worldwide claim membership in the priesthood.
However, while their claims may be technically valid, the church’s canon law says that they are illegal. According to the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith of May 29, 2008, the womenpriests and the bishops who ordain them are excommunicated latae sententiae, automatically, at the moment of committing the offence.
“They say that we have excommunicated ourselves,” said Eileen DiFranco of the RCWP’s Eastern Region. “That smacks of the old thinking that women impregnated themselves. … The so-called devout people are drawing a line in the sand and kicking us out.”
Nonprofit Educational and Informational
Roman Catholic Womenpriests-USA (RCWP-USA), a California-based 501(c)3 nonprofit corporation, lists its purpose as providing “an educational and informational service to the public. RCWP-USA Inc. promotes and supports the ordination of women and men in a renewed priestly ministry in the Roman Catholic Church.”
Gloria Carpeneto copastors The Living Water Community with Andrea Johnson. Ordained in 2008, Carpeneto holds a Ph.D. in human development and a doctor of ministry in spiritual direction. She is also a labyrinth facilitator, Reiki master, writer, teacher, certified massage therapist, wife, mother and grandmother.
“Roman Catholic Womenpriests has a vision of a renewed church and priestly ministry,” said Carpeneto. “We don’t practice evangelism. It’s more about communities coming together, calling forth from that community a leader. It’s the people saying who the priests are. We don’t recruit. We don’t impose the priests on the community. It’s a part of the renewed vision. It’s a much more organic than hierarchical organizational.”
RCWP does not have a seminary, but it does have a training program focused on preparing a candidate “pastorally, scripturally, theologically, liturgically and spiritually.” Carpeneto is program coordinator for the mid-Atlantic states and she collects data, compares it against the requirements and builds a course of study for the aspiring priest.
“A woman will approach. We match her experience to the five requirements. A person may have to fill in some gaps. We have an ideal and a preparation unit. A person needs academic credentials, personal reflection. When someone applies, they are entering a discernment program.”
Selecting Catonsville
The recent ordination and resulting media attention recalled the days of Catonsville’s earlier activist priests 40 years ago, the Berrigan brothers, Daniel and Philip. But, Carpeneto said that any connection was just coincidental. RCWP moves its ordinations up and down the Eastern Region and picked the Catonsville community because “St. John’s facility had a lot to do with it. It’s the perfect location: air conditioning, parking and a lovely church.”
Carpeneto is quick to distance RCWP from groups that want to break away from the mainstream Roman Catholic Church. “Some groups have decided to leave the formal church and set up their own,” she said. “RCWP only wants to renew, rather than break away. We very much want to be in the Roman Catholic Church.”
“It is a valid ordination,” she said. “But illegal, according to canon lawyers. There are different interpretations, but it is valid. All of it is valid; none of it is legal. Breaking the canon law, the illegality, causes the excommunication.”
Because the excommunication is latae sententiae, “We don’t even get the letter,” she said.
“Nobody asked to see us or even called us on the phone,” said Di Franco. “That’s terribly uncharitable and mean spirited, and not in keeping with the Gospel according to Jesus. You disobey, and you are out? That’s not Jesus’ way.”
Even more galling to Carpeneto, DiFranco and others, the Vatican Information Service reports that ordaining women appears on the list of most serious crimes against Roman Catholic canon law, or delicta graviora, putting it in the same category as sexual abuse of children by priests.
A Recipe for Change
“This is a hierarchical, autocratic, closed system that needs structural change,” said Carpeneto. “It is also unfair to the parishes. [Under the present system] one priest may have as many as seven parishes to serve. That is unjust to the congregations. Plenty of good people are leading the church, but the system itself is unjust.”
However, Carpeneto remains optimistic about the Vatican eventually accepting women into the priesthood.
“I believe it will happen,” she said. “I do see sunshine on the horizon. The issue is changing the structure of the system of the church. This isn’t a matter of ‘just add women and stir.’”
