She's not a priest and it wasn't a "Mass."
Just another heretical wacko liberal modernist in need of sock puppet therapy. Signs of the times...
Posted on 08/07/2006 8:00:19 AM PDT by NYer
Eileen DiFranco sang the hymns, prayed and took Communion as she had done at countless other Catholic Masses.
But yesterday, for the first time, she led the service as an ordained priest - and received a warm reception from hundreds of Catholics and others.
"Nothing is impossible with our God," she told a congregation at the First United Methodist Church of Germantown. "Not even a woman priest."
Applause rippled across the steamy sanctuary, where many fanned themselves with programs titled: "First Mass. Eileen DiFranco."
DiFranco, 54, of Mount Airy, had participated in a July 31 ceremony that organizers say made her among the first women to be ordained in the United States by the organization Roman Catholic Womenpriests.
Roman Catholic dioceses in the country, including the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, and the U.S. Conference of Bishops have pronounced the ordination invalid, saying church law allows only men to become priests.
"I feel I have been called out by my community to do this," DiFranco said in an interview. "It has been a nudging along the way by God and by people who know me."
In her homily, DiFranco said people today sometimes found "very little that is meaningful in the teachings of the church about Jesus." Churches that were full two generations ago, she said, "are emptying out, and parishes are closing... .
"Some think that a return to those pietistic days of yesteryear, where the laity knew its place and only the priests knew and spoke the words of God, will repopulate the seminaries and repack the pews."
But DiFranco said people were looking for more from the church. "The big issues that might have brought some of you here today remain unaddressed, untackled, unmentionable," she said.
A nurse at Roxborough High School, DiFranco has been an active member of the Church of the Beatitudes, a congregation of about 20 people in the Old Catholic community. The group rents space from Garden United Methodist Church in Lansdowne.
But DiFranco said she had felt led to hold her first Mass at the church in Germantown.
Twenty-three years ago yesterday, on the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, she had gone to a peace rally in King of Prussia and was impressed by the warm greetings of a group of people there.
Members of the First United Methodist Church of Germantown were hugging and kissing one another - and she remembered wanting to be part of a church like that.
On another Hiroshima anniversary, DiFranco celebrated her first Mass at the church, speaking of peace, tolerance and God's love.
"We want to support Eileen and this movement" toward the ordination of women, said Carl Yusavitz, 61, a Mount Airy resident who attends St. Vincent's Catholic Church in Germantown.
"I consider Eileen a Catholic and a priest," he said. "Her validity is based on 'By their fruits, you will know them.' Eileen has wonderful fruits."
DiFranco's son, Ben, 17, who attends La Salle College High School in Wyndmoor, said his mother's service as a priest "is going to be a catalyst for women being ordained in the church."
"A couple of my friends say she is not a priest, that her ordination was not valid," said Ben DiFranco, who assisted his mother at the altar during the Mass. "But I also have friends who are really for it."
The Rev. Bernie Callahan of the Church of the Beatitudes said DiFranco's ordination and first Mass were a sign that "paths are being opened to Catholic women."
"This has happened at a grassroots level, and those things tend to be unstoppable," said Callahan, adding that DiFranco would be a regular celebrant at his church.
Janice Sevre-Duszynska, a Lexington, Ky., resident who was ordained a deacon during the July 31 ceremony, said DiFranco's priestly work was needed.
"We need women's interpretation of the Gospel," said Sevre-Duszynska, who attended DiFranco's Mass. "Most of the poor of the world are women and children. Where are their voices?"
Toward the end of her homily, DiFranco told the congregation that "in Jesus, there was never a disconnect... . The words excommunication and intrinsically disordered would not have been part of Jesus' vocabulary."
The congregation applauded and later greeted her and her husband, Larry, at the entrance to the church.
"It was wonderful," DiFranco said of the Mass. "I felt so lifted up."
Dear Coleus,
"She, like madonna, should be excommunicated."
In that Madonna has apostasized, she is excommunicated.
In that this woman simulated the reception of the sacrament of Holy Orders, she is also excommunicated.
sitetest
That's kind of like writing a headline about a Muslim Rabbi. You tend to lose all credibility before the story begins.
No. It can't be Roman Catholic by definition.
What we are witnessing is the birth of another Protestant denomination.
You're confusing "lawful" with "valid"; they aren't the same things. "Lawful" (or "licit") means permitted by law; "valid" means the sacrament actually did something; it wasn't just a sham.
Nobody outside the Catholic Church is lawfully ordained, but some may be validly ordained.
Therefore, any subject outside the Church, rejecting her teachings, wouldn't be a lawful ordination.
Absolutely true. However, if the ordination had proper form (the words of the ordination liturgy itself), proper matter (imposition of hands), a valid minister (a validly ordained bishop), a valid recipient (a baptized male), and valid intent (the intent to ordain; intent to confer Holy Orders), it would be valid but not licit or lawful.
This is an explanation from the Catechism, hate to repeat it again, but you asked:
1399 The Eastern churches that are not in full communion with the Catholic Church celebrate the Eucharist with great love. "These Churches, although separated from us, yet possess true sacraments, above all - by apostolic succession - the priesthood and the Eucharist, whereby they are still joined to us in closest intimacy." A certain communion in sacris, and so in the Eucharist, "given suitable circumstances and the approval of Church authority, is not merely possible but is encouraged."
The Eastern churches were with us from the beginning and have much more in common with our doctrines/beliefs than other churches. Indeed, as you pointed out they are soft on divorce and disagree with us on original sin. I'm not too sure about contraception, I will have to do further research that. I will take your word for it. These are issues that indeed put a stumbling block before us for full unity with them. That said, the Orthodox are part of the historic ecclesiastical communities created by the Apostles of Jesus Christ. To say that they aren't, would be to deny our own heritage in Church history.
The Polish National Church circa 1897 and the Old Catholic Church circa 1870 can not make that claim of being present in the time of Apostolic history.
She's not a priest and it wasn't a "Mass."
Just another heretical wacko liberal modernist in need of sock puppet therapy. Signs of the times...
That has nothing to do with the validity or invalidity of their orders.
A valid sacrament requires (one more time) valid form, valid matter, a valid minister, a valid recipient, valid ministerial intent (typically, the intent to do what the Church does; it doesn't imply orthodoxy of belief), and valid intent on the part of the recipient (in an adult, the intent to receive the sacrament). The history of the group the minister or recipient belong to doesn't matter, as long as they're validly ordained in succession from the Apostles.
Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, covers this extensively. (Ott was the standard text on dogmatics in the immediate pre-Vatican II era.)
Dear FJ290,
What you quote from the Catechism doesn't explain why the Orthodox have valid sacraments, including Holy Orders, just that they DO have valid sacraments and orders. And it doesn't say that the Polish National Catholic Church, and at least some of the Old Catholics DON'T have valid sacraments and Holy Orders.
"The Eastern churches were with us from the beginning and have much more in common with our doctrines/beliefs than other churches."
I'm not sure that's necessarily true. However, it doesn't matter, directly.
Again, the validity of the sacrament does not lie in the belief of the minister of the sacrament. If one has proper matter and proper form, and the minister of the sacrament does what the Church intends to do, then the sacrament is valid.
The belief that one must hold orthodox belief for sacraments one performs to be valid is Donatism.
"Indeed, as you pointed out they are soft on divorce and disagree with us on original sin. I'm not too sure about contraception, I will have to do further research that."
Some Orthodox are tougher on contraception than others, but it is my understanding that most Orthodox Churches believe that the question of contraception should be left to the couple in consultation with their spiritual father. My understanding is that the Orthodox permit contraception as a concession to human weakness.
"That said, the Orthodox are part of the historic ecclesiastical communities created by the Apostles of Jesus Christ. To say that they aren't, would be to deny our own heritage in Church history."
Are you saying that the validity of Orthodox sacraments and Holy Orders is a function of real estate? What about the Russian Orthodox Church? Moscow wasn't exactly part of the historic communities founded by the Apostles. Some of the slavic Orthodox Churches trace to Ss. Cyril and Methodius, not to any of the Apostles.
I think that after all this time, there is concern about the Old Catholics in that now most (all?) of them are ordaining and consecrating women, and it is possible that many no longer do what the Church intends to do. I believe that is why the Church doesn't speak publicly about their validity, because it would have to be examined on a case-by-case basis.
But there isn't any reason in principle that I know of why their orders couldn't be valid, if a denomination continues to intend to do what the Church does.
sitetest
I wish the moron headline writers could get it right; this was not a mass and she was not a priest. This has as much validity as a play in the back yard.
I respectfully disagree and here's why.
"Despite the ongoing work of the ecumenical Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC), in 1998 Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (then the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and later Pope Benedict XVI) issued a doctrinal commentary to accompany Pope John Paul II’s apostolic letter "Ad Tuendam Fidem", which established penalties in Canon law for failure to accept “definitive teaching.” Ratzinger’s commentary listed Leo XIII’s Apostolicae Curae, declaring Anglican Holy Orders to be “absolutely null and utterly void,” as one of the irreversible teachings to which Catholics must give firm and definitive assent.[1] These teachings are not understood by the Church as revealed doctrines but are rather those which the church’s teaching authority finds to be so closely connected to God's revealed truth that belief in them is required in order to safeguard the divinely revealed truths of the Christian Faith. Those who fail to give firm and definitive assent, according to the letter, “will no longer be in full communion with the Catholic church.”
However, many persons, including Basil Cardinal Hume have suggested that the conclusions of Apostolicae Curae can only relate to the situation in 1896, and that the involvement of Old Catholic bishops in Anglican ordinations during the 20th century has re-established apostolic succession in that Church (along with a change of consecratory prefaces). Other critics argue that apostolic succession had never been broken in the first place, due to ordinations tracing back to Archbishop Laud as well as Archbishop Parker. The latter was alleged to have been a break in the chain of apostolic succession - an unofficial cause of concern to Rome regarding the validity of Anglican orders."
I also think it is helpful to read "On the Nullity of Anglican Orders, Apostolicae Curae."
Dear FJ290,
Concerning the Polish National Catholic Church, according to this USCCB article, there is "well-established mutual recognition of Holy Orders and other sacraments celebrated by bishops and priests of either church."
http://www.usccb.org/comm/archives/2001/01-088.shtml
The dialogue of which you speak isn't about whether or not we recognize their Holy Orders, but rather, under what circumstances Catholics should be permitted to receive the Blessed Sacrament in PNCC churches. Such a discussion presupposes the validity of PNCC orders.
sitetest
Dear FJ290,
There is nothing in your post or in Apostolicae Curae that refutes Campion's point. You asserted that folks like the PNCC have no claim to validity since they "can not make that claim of being present in the time of Apostolic history."
I don't see that what you posted from Cardinal Ratzinger addresses that point, nor do I see anything like that in Apostolicae Curae.
As well, it doesn't explain the validity of sacraments and orders in the Russian Orthodox Church.
sitetest
Hopefully, the wackiest whackos of St. Vincent's will start going to the Methodist Church for this lady's services.
I think I can see where you're coming from. What she wants is a good thing (priesthood) and the way she's going about it doesn't seem criminal, violent, outrageous; in fact it goes along with some of our American individualist cultural values ("Be sure you're right; and then, go ahead" --- Davy Crockett.)
If some of us Catholic FReepers are reacting with a degree of exasperation that surprises you, it may be because we've seen this stuff go on over and over and over for the past, say, 40 years. That is, people making it up as they go along --- people doing their own thing --- people picking and choosing their own gospels, their own creed, their own sacraments, their very own best-guess moral laws, etc. etc. AND saying they're still "good Catholics" because they're so terribly sincere.
What they fail to see is that Catholicism is actually something definite. It's definable. It's tangible. It's solid. It's knowable. It's there.
You can't change what it is by changing your vocabulary list, your costume, or your ever-shifting paradigms. You can't transpose it into the key of Marx. You can't put a tutu on it and call it ballet. You can't canonize Siddhartha or build a shrine to Ayn Rand.
It's Yes or No. Up or Down. Stay or Go. That's it.
[sigh]
Yes, Anglican orders are invalid. Ott goes into detail on this as well. They are invalid because (a) the ordination ritual was modified in the 1550's in such a way that (in Rome's view) it became invalid as to form (see my post above); and (b) there is doubt about whether the Archbishop of Canterbury at that time, through whom most Anglican orders pass, was validly ordained (invalid minister). Lack of valid minister or lack of valid form renders the sacrament invalid.
The invalidity of Anglican orders does not imply anything about anyone else's orders, most notably those of the Old Catholics or the PNCC.
Let's see....
1) She's not Catholic.
2) She's not a Priest.
3) It wasn't a Mass.
It should read:
'Fake mocks faith as she role plays her way through staged ceremony.'
Um, no...this is a non-existent thing. How can a thing that doesn't exist do anything? Better for them to say, "Fake priest tries (and fails) to celebrate Mass." One would think, for as many times as the mainstream press and the hopeful sillies keep putting these stories out, that they'd have caught on by now. There are NO female Catholic priests, no matter what silly "ceremonies" they participated in on what boat out in the middle of the sound; and nothing they ever do will even approximate a Catholic Mass, for the same reasons. Counterfeit is counterfeit.
It's pitiful that they are so deluded, but Jesus says, "There are none so blind as those who will not see..."
In an era of do-it-yourself religion we have seen Jim Jones kill followers with Kool Aid and Heaven's Gate members overdose to meet the mothership. One thing Catholicism offers that this situation does not is a way to avoid error through bishops who run seminaries and have disciplinary power. If Islam had a responsible episcopate, we might be able to get it to rein in terrorism, but it does not.
Catholics may not be unified, but the teachings of the Church ARE.
Nope. By definition Protestants don't have women in the pulpit.
Clean up your own mess.
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.