Event explores topic of women as ordained Catholic priests

To parishioners in her small Sacramento congregation, Elizabeth English is their Catholic priest: She presides over their Sunday Mass, leads them during Communion and baptizes their babies.

To the Roman Catholic Church, English symbolizes a topic that church leaders consider closed: the ordination of women priests.

English left the Roman Catholic Church five years ago to pursue her calling to the priesthood. She is now a priest in the Independent Catholic Church, a group not recognized by the Vatican. She is the only female Catholic priest in the Sacramento region.

"I had to leave the church; there was no place for me," she said. "I wish there was."

Last week, English joined a Nobel Peace Prize nominee who is also a priest and about 150 others at St. Mark's Methodist Church in Sacramento to discuss the ordination of women priests.

They called on the church to consider women clergy, saying they are necessary for a vibrant and healthy church that needs the "experience, courage and compassion" of women in the priesthood.

It was not just someone from the Catholic Church, there are literally HUNDREDS of priests that sexually abused children. If HOME DEPOT had HUNDREDS of sexual abusers, I guarantee you it would and should cause an uproar.

nope, doesn’t fly. There are FAR more incidences of protestant clergy, teachers, scout leaders, molesting children than Catholic clergy.....why do you hear so much about the Catholics.....you don’t chase the Lutheran church if a minister goes astray, he represents 1 congregation and they don’t have much money, teachers are representitives of the government and have fair protection, Catholics, however, are “employees of an archdiocese and thus there are deep pockets. No case should have been allowed to proceedwithout the accused being there (no dead priests) and beyond whatever statue of limitations that applied...When these 20 and 30 year cases come out of the woodwork, I’m very suspicious of the motives of the complainant......kind of like the “repressed memory stories”

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