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.
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
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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.”
“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.”
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.”
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