Word: priestly
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Stoles have a very particular meaning in Roman Catholicism: they signify ordination. But Ramerman is a woman and, according to church doctrine, cannot be ordained. It did not help that she stood next to the priest during Mass, read the preface to the Eucharistic prayer and raised the chalice of wine at the end of the prayer--activities that are the purview of the ordained. For years the Vatican peppered the Bishop of Rochester with complaints about Corpus Christi and probably made its feelings clear during his official visit to Rome this year. The message: Such heresies must...
Clark asked Ramerman to modulate her role during Mass, in part by desisting from "priestly gestures" and by removing her stole. She refused and was dismissed on Oct. 15. But she is unrepentant. Says she: "The Vatican holds women back when it sends the message that we're not good enough to approach the altar, not good enough to read the Gospel, not good enough to be a priest...
Defiance is a Corpus Christi tradition. The month before, the Bishop removed the church's maverick priest, Father Jim Callan, who had pushed his parish beyond Catholic extremes. In 1974, during his very first homily as a priest, he called for the ordination of women. He also welcomed all to partake of Communion (with no baptism and no belief required). In 1993 he began blessing gay unions. He characterizes many of the Vatican's policies as "sinful and discriminatory...
...course, the Holy See zealously protects the integrity of Catholic sacraments--whether they involve marriage between a man and woman, or the Eucharist. It maintains that the gender of a priest is not accidental but essential. Christ was male, he appointed male apostles, so the minister who absolves sins and personifies Christ in celebrating Mass must be male. "I declare," wrote Pope John Paul II in 1994, "that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women...
...while you're busy tending to your physical needs, don't neglect your spiritual ones. Many patients find that praying with a minister, priest, rabbi or other counselor before or after an operation provides an extra measure of calm--and gives them a head start on the road to healing...