Jean Marie Marchant was responsible for coordinating the work of chaplains who visited the sick. (Globe Staff Photo / Bill Greene)
Posted on 07/28/2006 8:20:57 AM PDT by NYer
A department head at the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston has resigned her post after revealing that she had secretly participated in a ceremony last year in which she says she was ordained as a Roman Catholic priest.
Jean Marie Marchant, who for the last four years has been director of healthcare ministry for the archdiocese, offered her resignation to Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley in a letter last week in which she said that a year ago, using a pseudonym, she had been among nine women who had participated in an ordination ceremony on the St. Lawrence Seaway in Canada. That group, whose ordination ceremony is considered invalid by the church hierarchy, also included another woman from Massachusetts, Marie David, a Harwich innkeeper who now leads a weekly liturgy on Cape Cod.
``I've always seen my role as to stay within the church and to push the boundaries," Marchant said in an interview. ``But I really came to see in the archdiocese that the change was not going to come about because we women were doing a good and worthy job, but that something more dramatic and drastic had to happen. Until we really took a very strong step and defied this very unjust law -- the canon in canon law that restricts ordination to men -- nothing was going to change."
O'Malley, who has repeatedly said that women cannot be ordained as priests because Jesus did not have female apostles, immediately accepted Marchant's resignation. Although in 2003 Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who is now Pope Benedict XVI, announced the excommunication of seven women ordained as part of the same movement, the Archdiocese of Boston has not sanctioned Marchant and has chosen less confrontational language in its conversations with her, an e-mail alert to priests, and a statement to the Globe.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
A 61-year-old native of Waltham, Marchant now lives in Framingham with her husband of 19 years, Ron Hindelang, a one-time Marist priest who left the priesthood for their relationship. She has two grown children and five grandchildren from her first marriage; two other children died shortly after childbirth.
Oh brother! It's contagious.
IF they have a problem with the rules and regulations of the RC Church, there is a plethora of Christian churches that will take them and even ordane them.
Whats her problem?
Yep, that's right Boston Globe. If it weren't for O'Malley . . .
good sign there.
They are well aware of the other churches that ordain women and usually end up in one of them, after they have been excommunicated. They prefer to be petulant and obtuse.
But the thing is...nothing happened. The ordination was invalid. Just empty motions and pretty robes.
-Theo
She shouldn't worry about paying the bills.
There are plenty of jobs for someone like her out here in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.
She could start work tomorrow.
"She has two grown children and five grandchildren from her first marriage"...so was she divorced or widowed when her husband married her and gave up the priesthood? Despite this unusual history, she was given the job of co-ordinating chaplains in the diocese. Interesting.
Precisely.
I remember her, I always felt there was somthing "off" about her, she got to have loads of input into the Annual Appeal and I remember the whole time she was raving how "Walter" was so great and that he should basically be the face of the Archdiocese....this was back in '03.
The Walter she was talking about was Rev. Walter Cuennin
I also heard stories from my Seminarian buds of how they would be put under Priestesses when they got their hospital field work assignments....they all hated that.
She is basically characteristic of who you find working at the Chancery of the Archdiocese of Boston.....though at least she is married (perhaps only civilly) to the guy she lives with.
I remember I got grief once for reading "The Wanderer" on my lunch break.
Do you have any insight as to WHY certain dioceses seem to just run right off the rails? Is it the laity, or the clergy, or a combination of both?
And please forgive my obtuseness, but I can't recall at the moment who Rev. Walter Cuennin is or was.
Fr. Cuennin who now has an cushy college chaplaincy position at Brandeis was the heterodox pro-homosexual Pastor of Our Lady Help of Christians in Newton....and also a gay travel agent during his leave of absence.
I can't speak to other Diocese, but I think Boston went off the rails out of fear: there was a feeling there that you couldn't offend people by promoting orthodoxy and you couldn't offend people by telling them that their behavior was wrong and that they had to keep up appearances by any means necessary, even if it meant sacrificing the very core teachings of the Catholic Church.
When I was there, the Cabinet Secretary tried to convince an intern that there was a Pope Joan. The Director of the Annual Appeal Cohabitates as well as the now Director of Stewardship.
Out of an office of 18 there were mayber six who were practicing Catholics (using a very loose definition). And among those there weren't many Christians.
For instance, they have no morality clause, yet the Protestant (liberal at that) organization I work for now has one.
Hopefully our next Bishop will be better......
My pastor volunteers his priestly services to the RC diocese. He serves as Chaplain at a catholic hospital. The Director is a nun with an extensive entourage of EMHCs. Father has admonished several of them for improper handling of the Eucharist. When the Director raised her shackles at him, he educated her as well. She was so frustrated because she couldn't complain to the bishop ;-)
She is basically characteristic of who you find working at the Chancery of the Archdiocese of Boston.....
Lol ... Father related his first visit to the local RC diocesan chancery. The Receptionist greeted him with: 'Good morning, Sir'. He always wears clericals and was really taken aback.
I remember I got grief once for reading "The Wanderer" on my lunch break.
Great paper! I've been subscribing for years.
Well, God willing, BXVI knows what he wants . . .
Why won't she join one of the sects of priestess-Christianity that already exists? I can't think of one reason. Maybe she's an anti-Protestant bigot?
1Cr 14:34 Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but [they are commanded] to be under obedience, as also saith the law.
1Cr 14:35 And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.
1Cr 14:36 What? came the word of God out from you? or came it unto you only?
1Cr 14:37 If any man think himself to be a prophet, or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things that I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord.
Mondo bizarro!
These dames will never learn--they are never never never never going to be lawfully ordained priests.
Pure Ego!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.