Mary Kay Kusner blesses the hands of registered nurse Jim Joslyn in the Palliative Care Unit at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics on Wednesday, May 26, 2010, in Iowa City. (Jim Slosiarek/The Gazette)
Posted on 05/27/2010 1:09:53 AM PDT by iowamark
The Catholic Church won’t be celebrating one Iowa City resident’s ordination next month.
In fact, neither the Diocese of Davenport nor the Vatican will even acknowledge Mary Kay Kusner’s ordination through a group called Roman Catholic Womenpriests.
That lack of institutional acknowledgment keeps Kusner, 50, motivated as she prepares for ordination by a group called Roman Catholic Womenpriests.
“I believe Christ’s intention was to have an inclusive church,” Kusner said. “I believe ‘catholic,’ which means universal, needs to be a truly inclusive and welcoming church.”
Such a church, she said, would include the ordination of women.
Kusner, a self-described devout Catholic, is an ordained Catholic Church deacon and has been a University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics chaplain for more than 20 years. She sees the irony in deciding to go against the church to which she’s devoted her life.
But she’s following the lead of Roman Catholic Womenpriests, an eight-year-old movement of believers who say they are “reclaiming our ancient spiritual heritage” and shaping a more inclusive “Christ-centered Church of equals.”
In her small congregation of about 20 people, called Full Circle and meeting at various homes in Iowa City and Coralville, “inclusion” means welcoming gay and lesbian worshippers, she said.
Kusner said she believes many seeking her out will have left the Catholic Church because they disagreed with some of the doctrine.
The Rev. Roy Bourgeois, founder of the School of the Americas (SOA) Watch in Fort Benning, Ga., was in Iowa City earlier this month to give her support. As a supporter of the Roman Catholic Womenpriests, Bourgeois has been threatened with excommunication but has not received a letter finalizing the threat.
“It’s time that we implement a model of the church that we want to worship in,” Bourgeois said. “It’s time to remember that we are the church, that those people in Rome are not the owners.”
Kusner has strong opposition. The Catholic Church does not allow the ordination of women. Canon Law calls for the immediate excommunication of anyone who tries to ordain a woman.
Bishop Martin J. Amos of the Diocese of Davenport, to which Catholic churches in Johnson County belong, asked in a statement issued this week that anyone in the diocese considering the idea “prayerfully reconsider any participation in the process or advocacy of ordaining women to holy orders.”
Probably the hardest opponents for her to face are closer to home. Although her husband and children support her, Kusner’s parents do not. “It was heart-wrenching to get their reaction, to get a letter from them begging me not to do this,” Kusner said.
Roman Catholic Womenpriests has no main office but has regional offices in the United States, Canada and Europe.
Kusner went through seminary and watched many of female Catholic peers become pastors in Lutheran or Episcopal churches. “It didn’t seem to make sense to spend all that time without getting ordained, but I knew at the time that I couldn’t go to those other faiths,” she said. “I tried other faith traditions, I just can’t not be a Catholic.”
It doesn't 'call for it' - the process is completely automatic. The moment she gets 'ordained', she's out. She's not going to get a Hallmark card.
Mary, you're going to be going on a journey. We pray that Christ will sustain you and lead you back.
Fixed it.
You can believe anything you want.
But you can’t believe whatever you want and be a Catholic.
There is this thing called doctrine which defines the beliefs of Catholics. If you do not believe in these things you are free in this country to seek out others who believe as you do.
Just don’t call yourselves Catholic.
She can call herself a devout Catholic, but she isn’t since she is CHOODING to EX-COMMUNICATE HERSELF!! Pray for your soul, Mary Kay.
Women are not allowed to be deacons in the Catholic Church either. The artcle says she’s already an ordained Catholic deacon.
(Told ‘ya so!) This is how it starts, back “when” this wouldn’t have even made the news ... but now it is taken seriously. Watch this church crumble like the Episcopal church did ... Lib termites chewing on the pews.
Hardly. Unlike the Episcopal church, the Catholic church does not attempt to determine truth by majority vote. The impossibility of ordaining women is already infallibly taught, and will never change.
She'll get "ordained," she'll be automatically excommunicated by the very act, the church won't budge, and that will be it. She'd have better luck trying to move Mt. Everest around.
She may think she is.
The moment she got 'ordained' 20 years ago was when she was out.
Oh wait....never mind.
Ithaca: The City of Evil
Iowa City: Sister City of the City of Evil
Sometimes you can’t have everything you want. She’ll have to choose between ordination or Catholicism.
Yeah, right. That's what we thought too. Look at this "infallible" church ... not defrocking abusive priests, allowing Pelosi, et al Communion ... one baby step at a time, it's headed for the same cliff. The progressives are in your pews ... and they don't believe in "infallible" ... remember what Obama said about the "infallible" Constitution? It's "restrictive." :-)
At the Last Supper, Christ left Himself quite literally with us until the end of time. If the words during the consecration at Mass are correctly stated, the bread and wine become the True Body and Blood of Our Lord, Jesus Christ. (It doesn’t matter what the progressives in the pews think in that regard.)
“Kusner, a self-described devout Catholic, is an ordained Catholic Church deacon and has been a University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics chaplain for more than 20 years. She sees the irony in deciding to go against the church to which she’s devoted her life. “
You can’t start a life of fidelity with disobedience and a fabrication.
It would be like starting a marriage by rubbing an affair in your spouses face.
UH, deacons can’t give blessings (except as a private person can give blessings) and of course women can’t be deacons in the Catholic church.
So where did the reporter get this claim?
She was ordained a deacon by Womenpriests.
It will matter when the “secular” world takes over your church and a woman hands you the cookie. You are “BELIEVING” that it won’t happen ... that is what we thought in the Episcopal Church, we had all our laws and doctrines and BELIEFS ... but if you allow these people ANY kind of control within your church, it will change forever, just as the USA is changing. Don’t be BLIND to it, the person sitting beside you might think a woman priest is a good idea. Find them, root them out, use the church laws you have now to get rid of them. I say again ... Pelosi getting communion? The church looks the other way and allows it ... Notre Dame? Look at the creeping socialism happening within your church, one “progressive baby step” at a time. BELIEVE as you will, but they are among you ... and NO INSTITUTION is safe from them.
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