Catholic Women Face Excommunication

The Catholic church can keep up its "no girls allowed" policies if they want to but they are going to end up without a church. What purpose would excommunication serve?

Joan Houk has ministered to the sick and needy, run two Roman Catholic parishes that were without priests and has presided over baptisms and funerals. Her calling now, she says, is to be a priest.

Houk will be one of a dozen women participating in a ceremony Monday in which eight will proclaim themselves priests and four deacons. The ceremony won't be recognized by the Catholic church, which has a 2,000-year tradition of an all-male priesthood.
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"This unfortunate ceremony will take place outside the Church and undermines the unity of the Church. Those attempting to confer Holy Orders have, by their own actions, removed themselves from the Church, as have those who present themselves for such an invalid ritual," according to the statement released by the Rev. Ronald Lengwin, a spokesman for the diocese.

The diocese said they will welcome back anyone who chooses to leave the church.

Liberal Catholics say the ongoing clergy shortage and the dramatic rise in female lay leaders in American churches will eventually create pressure to ordain women. More lay people than priests are working full-time in American parishes and a significant number of the lay leaders are women ...

I think that the blatant sexism in the hierarchy of the Catholic church as well as within church doctrine is one of the main reasons that I cannot/will not formally join a parish or come out of "ex-Catholic" hiding. It just makes no sense to me and I won't risk being insulted in mass when I am going for a spiritual lesson not a diatribe on my place as a woman (though, this seems to happen more in churches of other denominations more often). I don't if or how the Catholic church will evolve in "the West." Perhaps only poor Africans and Latin Americans will be the ones to hold up the faith and its outdated teachings as long as they remain poor and oppressed. I just can't buy into it any longer and feel silly going through the motions.