Live Stream of Ordination of Judy Beaumont

Saturday, January 21, 2012

More than 200 People Attend Ordination of Judy Beaumont as a Roman Catholic Woman Priest/ News Stories

LIVE STREAM of ORDINATION of JUDY BEAUMONT

http://www.lambofgodchurch.net/Lamb_of_God_Videos.html

More than 200 People Attend fort Myers Woman's Ordination as Roman Catholic Priest
http://www.news-press.com/article/20120121/NEWS0110/120121014/0/NEWS0104/More-than-200-attend-Fort-Myers-woman-s-ordination-Roman-Catholic-priest?odyssey=nav%7Chead

From:  Bridget Mary's Blog

 

Comment:

Congratulations Judy and the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests.....God's Blessings grow with you and your Spirit.
Diane Dougherty

Vatican Bullying-details included

Comment:
Many have heard about the Vatican dismissal of Bishop Bill Morris of Toowoomba, but few have been privy to the circumstances that initiated this action.  Ever vigilant, the Australians have not allowed this to rest.Quoted from the article below:

"Released this week, independent civil and canon law reviews of the removal of Bishop Morris in May 2011 have concluded that there was a denial of "procedural fairness and natural justice" in the sacking. A retired Queensland Supreme Court judge, William Carter QC, found it "an unfair process and in breach of the principles of natural justice, [which was] offensive not only to the requirements of civil law but also to those of canon law". Carter found that the breaches were regularly exercised by three Roman dicasteries and reached as far as Pope Benedict XVI between 2006 and 2011."

Rather than staying out of the Vatican politic that allows clerics to bully its own members, they have stepped up to the plate.  Good for them.....let's see what comes next!  Perhaps others will fully examine these actions as efforts to gang up on other members and cow theminto submission.  In the past this could be done....let's hope this age has ended-for the good of the Catholic Church.
Diane Dougherty


http://www.thetablet.co.uk/user-login.php?redir=article/162232
THE TABLET | 21 January 2012

MICHAEL KELLY
Rites and wrongs

Inequality is Engineered into a politic-Why it matters

Please take 40 minutes to listen to this uninterrupted presentation by Bill Moyers on Structural Inequality.

A long time ago, I was listening to a speaker talk about how poverty was structured into the fabric of nations.  Shortly after that I heard Oscer Romero was killed at Mass for preaching that Poverty was a construct created by some of his congregants....

I belong to a group whose main objective is to engineer equality into the fabric of Catholic life.....these are awe inspiring times.

http://billmoyers.com/segment/jacob-hacker-paul-pierson-on-engineered-inequality/

Outstanding Article-Judy Beaumont-ARCWP

The link is   news-press.com/article/20120115/NEWS   but I found you also need to put in the title: "Fort Myers woman defies church to be ordained Roman Catholic Priest.  It is a very good article and video

Judy Beaumont: the path to priesthood: Judy Beaumont, 74, of Good Shepherd Ministries, will be ordained as a Roman Catholic priest on Jan. 21 at Lamb of God Lutheran-Episcopal Congregation in Fort Myers. The Catholic church opposes woman priests.

Written by

Mary Wozniak

• Filed Under

• News
• Fort Myers news

Purchase ImageZoom

Judy Beaumont risks the loss of her soul by being ordained, says Diocese of Venice Bishop Frank Dewane. Beaumont says she is following her conscience. / Brian Hirten/news-press.com

Zoom

Judy Beaumont, 74, will be ordained as a Roman Catholic priest Saturday. Bishop Frank Dewane says she risks excommunication from the church. / Brian Hirten/The News-Press

Zoom

Brian Hirten/The News-Press....Judy Beaumont, 74, walks Deborah Bryant to her new Fort Myers Apartment after helping her find permanent residence through Goodwill Housing. Beaumont who founded Good Shepherd Ministries in Fort Myers, will be ordained as a Roman Catholic priest on Jan. 21 at Lamb of God Lutheran-Episcopal Congregation in Fort Myers. The Catholic Church opposes woman priests and Bishop Frank Dewane has warned Beaumont of consequences like being excommunicated.

More

Related Links

• Decree on ordination of women published by Vatican
• Bishop Bridget Mary Meehan uses her blog to rebut Bishop Frank Dewane’s letter to Judy Beaumont
• Letter exchange between Bishop Frank Dewane and Judy Beaumont
• Diocese of Venice compiles its own Q&A about women’s ordination

Judy Beaumont plans to take a historic step Saturday, one that will jeopardize her immortal soul.
Beaumont, 74, of Fort Myers, is defying centuries-old doctrine in becoming the first woman in Southwest Florida to be ordained a Roman Catholic priest. The church decrees this role is reserved for men. Bishop Frank Dewane of the Diocese of Venice, which oversees the Catholic faithful in 10 counties, including all of Southwest Florida, has warned her not to cross that patriarchal line.
“It has been brought to my attention that you purportedly reside in the Diocese of Venice in Florida and may attempt to be ‘ordained’ to the ministerial priesthood here within this Diocese,” Dewane wrote in a letter to Beaumont. “This is a most grave and serious matter of consequence for your soul.”
The consequence is automatic excommunication, or expulsion from the church, the bishop wrote. The same penalty applies to anyone who participates in the ordination ceremony.
“With this in mind, for the good of your immortal soul, I exhort you to choose not to participate in this attempted ‘ordination,’” Dewane wrote.
Beaumont says she will follow her conscience and take the consequences. The ordination will be held at 3 p.m. at Lamb of God Church, a Lutheran-Episcopal congregation on Cypress View Drive in Fort Myers.
“Of course, we all reject that excommunication, because it’s a man-made rule that does not really follow what we know of Jesus, what Jesus would do,” said Beaumont, who entered the convent at 17 and was a Benedictine nun for 35 years. “How can any group of human beings say to God, ‘You can’t call a woman.’?”
She is one of more than 124 women priests and 10 woman bishops who say they have been called to serve in the Catholic Church. Most are in the United States, but others are found in South America, Germany, Austria, France, Ireland, Canada and other countries. The movement began in 2002 with the ordination of seven women by a male priest on the Danube River.
The movement has generated controversy and debate between traditional and progressive Catholics who favor the concept of “inclusion,” embracing women priests, married priests, gays and others not accepted by the church.

Judy Beaumont plans to take a historic step Saturday, one that will jeopardize her immortal soul.
Beaumont, 74, of Fort Myers, is defying centuries-old doctrine in becoming the first woman in Southwest Florida to be ordained a Roman Catholic priest. The church decrees this role is reserved for men. Bishop Frank Dewane of the Diocese of Venice, which oversees the Catholic faithful in 10 counties, including all of Southwest Florida, has warned her not to cross that patriarchal line.
“It has been brought to my attention that you purportedly reside in the Diocese of Venice in Florida and may attempt to be ‘ordained’ to the ministerial priesthood here within this Diocese,” Dewane wrote in a letter to Beaumont. “This is a most grave and serious matter of consequence for your soul.”
The consequence is automatic excommunication, or expulsion from the church, the bishop wrote. The same penalty applies to anyone who participates in the ordination ceremony.
“With this in mind, for the good of your immortal soul, I exhort you to choose not to participate in this attempted ‘ordination,’” Dewane wrote.
Beaumont says she will follow her conscience and take the consequences. The ordination will be held at 3 p.m. at Lamb of God Church, a Lutheran-Episcopal congregation on Cypress View Drive in Fort Myers.
“Of course, we all reject that excommunication, because it’s a man-made rule that does not really follow what we know of Jesus, what Jesus would do,” said Beaumont, who entered the convent at 17 and was a Benedictine nun for 35 years. “How can any group of human beings say to God, ‘You can’t call a woman.’?”
She is one of more than 124 women priests and 10 woman bishops who say they have been called to serve in the Catholic Church. Most are in the United States, but others are found in South America, Germany, Austria, France, Ireland, Canada and other countries. The movement began in 2002 with the ordination of seven women by a male priest on the Danube River.
The movement has generated controversy and debate between traditional and progressive Catholics who favor the concept of “inclusion,” embracing women priests, married priests, gays and others not accepted by the church.

Mary Magdala, more commonly known as Mary Magdalene, was referred to as “the apostle of the apostles,” or the primary apostle, to whom Jesus appeared first after his resurrection and sent to tell the others, Beaumont said.
“Poor Mary,” Beaumont said. “She has been given a bad rap as the repentant prostitute, and I think scholarship today has pretty much wiped that out. It’s not who she was.”

Issue of power

Power is another issue entwined in the Catholic woman priest debate, said the Rev. Roy Bourgeois, a Maryknoll priest who remains under threat of excommunication by the church for participating in the 2008 ordination of a woman priest in Kentucky. He also was detained by Italian police last October while leading protesters who tried to deliver a petition to the Vatican, signed by about 15,000 people, in favor of woman priesthood.
“I’m a priest now for 39 years and in discussing this issue with so many fellow priests, not all, but for many, women and the ordination of women are a threat to our power and this clerical culture of the priesthood,” Bourgeois said. “They threaten our power and our privileges, and this of course is not what Jesus intended.”
Beaumont, who was born in Chicago, came to Southwest Florida in 1998. She has a master’s in religious education from Loyola University and spent months in federal prison in the early 1980s after participating in a peaceful protest against the Trident nuclear weapons system in Connecticut. She operates Good Shepherd Ministries of SW Florida Inc., which serves the poor and homeless. Beaumont co-founded and runs the ministry with Judy Lee, another Catholic woman priest, who was ordained in Boston in 2008.
The Rev. Walter Fohs, the Evangelical Lutheran senior pastor at Lamb of God Church, is hosting Beaumont’s ordination because his congregation supports women in ministry and accepts the ordination of women as Lutheran pastors and Episcopal priests.
“It makes sense to me,” he said.
The church has taken the original teachings and message of Jesus and “put one layer on top of another layer on top of another layer of just ridiculous traditions and beliefs,” he said. “Women have shown themselves to be equal and sometimes more than equal to men in certain roles.”
The Rev. Anne Robbins, an Episcopal priest who serves as pastoral assistant at Lamb of God, also supports Beaumont. Robbins was ordained a priest in 1983, but women have been serving as Episcopal priests since 1977, she said.
“I don’t think that God discriminates against women and I think that sometimes we have to do things that are not strictly legal in an organization in order to help it move forward, and that is what happened in the Episcopal Church,” she said.
The movement can’t be stopped, said Bourgeois, who grew up in the 1950s in Louisiana, where the last five pews of his church were for black members.
“There were those in my town and in the church who tried to stop the integration of the schools, who tried to stop the civil rights movement,” Bourgeois said. “They couldn’t do it. There were many who tried to stop the right of women to vote, including high-ranking Catholic Church leaders. They could not do it. There were those who tried and who are trying to stop the ordination of women. It’s not possible.
“This is a movement, the ordination of women, like all these other movements, that’s rooted in justice, rooted in equality.”

Woman makes a stand by leading a local Mass

Congratulations Mary Frances Smith of St. Cloud Minnesota...We are proud of your courage and pray your community grows. 

http://www.sctimes.com/article/20120109/NEWS01/101090023/Woman-makes-stand-altar-by-leading-local-Mass

Womenpriests with a Clear voice for justice-Janice Sevre Duszynska and Donna Rougeux

http://www.wtvq.com/content/localnews/story/Protests-Continue-In-Downtown-Lexington/gUiEOYAo50uWmE4W2x4pow.cspx

Bishop Bridget Mary Meehan’s story in Changing Church: Stories of Liberating Ministers

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Changing Church: Bishop Bridget Mary Meehan: videos on Women Priests in the Roman Catholic Church and excerpts from an ordination service

http://jannaldredgeclanton.com/blog/

Changing Church: Bishop Bridget Mary Meehan: videos on Women Priests in the Roman Catholic Church and excerpts from an ordination service

Published: January 2, 2012
Dr. Bridget Mary Meehan
Read Bishop Bridget Mary Meehan’s story in Changing Church: Stories of Liberating Ministers: https://wipfandstock.com/store/Changing_Church_Stories_of_Liberating_Ministers%20;%20condensed%20version%20on%20this%20blog:%20http://jannaldredgeclanton.com/blog/?p=157

Posters-good Catholic Girls and Stephen Colbert

Love this!
http://goodcatholicgirls.tumblr.com/

Bishop ponders reasons Americans leave Catholic church

Comment:  This Bishop hit the nail on the head.

http://ncronline.org/blogs/essays-theology/bishop-ponders-reasons-americans-leave-catholic-church

Bishop ponders reasons Americans leave Catholic church

By Richard McBrien

Created Jan 02, 2012

by Richard McBrien [1] on Jan. 02, 2012

• Essays in Theology [2]

Bishop Howard Hubbard of Albany, N.Y., is the only U.S. bishop I know of who has explicitly taken into account the report of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life that appeared more than two years ago and found that one in 10 Americans has left the Catholic church.
Thus, if ex-Catholics were a denomination unto themselves, they would constitute the second largest, behind only the Catholic church itself.
Bishop Hubbard is also one of the few bishops who was known and respected by the Catholics of the Albany diocese when he was named in 1977. Today, the frequently heard comments after a bishop has been appointed are: "Who is he? Where is he from?" or "Oh my God, not him!"
Bishop Hubbard has been writing a series of monthly articles in his diocesan paper, The Evangelist, regarding the departure of so many Catholics from the church. His initial column attributed the fall-off to the usual suspects: the loss of a sense of sin, individualism, rampant consumerism, secularism and so forth.
But he received some feedback to these articles. Readers noted that he had "neglected to acknowledge ways in which the church itself has contributed to the alienation of many of its members and to its lack of appeal, especially to younger people."
Other bishops would do well to read his column, "Failings of the Church," in Origins, November 17, 2011, vol. 41, no. 24.
At the top of his list of failings is the sexual abuse scandal in the priesthood. The problem was "not only that a number of priests betrayed the sacred bond of trust by sexually abusing minors, but more significantly there is a disillusionment and a loss of faith created by the way we bishops engaged in negligent retention and placed the image of the church before the protection and well-being of children and vulnerable youth."
One has only to look to Ireland to see the negative effects of the sexual abuse crisis on a country that is far more Catholic in its population and social traditions than the United States or Canada.
"Many Catholics ... have been appalled by the fact that church leaders have not acknowledged sincerely and convincingly the reality of what happened, assumed responsibility for it and brought about the conversion of mind and heart which alone can rectify it."
"Truly," Bishop Hubbard declared, "clergy sexual abuse and its handling by the hierarchy are self-inflicted wounds -- born of clericalism, power and secrecy -- that will take a long time to heal."
He also mentioned parish closures and mergers, but gave little space to them. He devoted more print to what he called "anemic parish life." He referred to the problem of cliquishness and the difficulty many new members have to fit in.
"But surely," he wrote, "inclusiveness and hospitality should be high priorities in a parish ..."
Then he listed "pastoral insensitivity" as another reason why so many Catholics are alienated from the church. Here all-too-familiar complaints surfaced, among them parents whose child is denied baptism because they are not regular church-goers, couples who are denied marriage because they are not registered parishioners, or family members who are prohibited from saying a few words about the deceased at the end of the liturgy of Christian burial.
Of course, there are always complaints about poor liturgies and homilies. The latter are too often "canned," with little to do with the Scriptural readings of the day or the daily realities of the congregation. Neither do the music selections reinforce the liturgical theme of the Sunday.
The reason why the church has lost so many younger members, Bishop Hubbard continued, is that the younger people are technologically proficient. They are wedded to their cellphones and the Internet, including Facebook, Twitter, blogs and websites.
He asks if parish and diocesan websites are imaginative, easy to navigate, full of live links and are continually updated and redesigned.
Finally, many Catholics feel unaccepted or exploited. These include women generally, the separated or divorced, the single parent, the gay or lesbian person, and those who cannot fully accept the moral leadership of the hierarchy, especially on issues related to human sexuality and reproduction. (The last is only alluded to in Bishop Hubbard's list, but many Catholics do complain about the fixation of bishops on such issues as abortion and gay marriage.)
"Some people," Bishop Hubbard concluded his column, "find the church too traditional; others too progressive." In my opinion, however, it is not a 50/50 problem. There are many more disaffected Catholics who feel that the church has abandoned the path marked out by the Second Vatican Council.
But that's for another time.
© 2012 Richard P. McBrien. All rights reserved. Fr. McBrien is the Crowley-O'Brien Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame.

The Nativity and Social Media

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sghwe4TYY18