Three Women to be "Ordained"/Excommunicated

I don't offer this to you in a spirit of indignation; nor one of support. Instead, I'm placing it here simply for your consideration. My personal opinion is that it is a shame that these women feel compelled mock that which they say they feel drawn toward. Clearly, the Church doesn't allow women to be priests; therefore, they cannot be priests. For any woman to say she is a Catholic priest is as meaningful as me saying that I'm a rutabaga. Even if I plant myself in a garden, I'm never going to be a rutabaga.

This article written by Michael Paulson was found in the International Herald Tribune:

Three aspiring Catholic priests will be anointed and prayed over this weekend in an ordination liturgy that will resemble the traditional in most ways but one: The three being ordained are women.

The ordination ceremony Sunday, at a historic Protestant church in the Back Bay, is the first such event to take place in Boston, one of the most Catholic cities in the United States.

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, in accord with Vatican teaching, says the participants in the ordination ceremony will be automatically excommunicating themselves.

But the women being ordained say they are acting because they feel called to the priesthood and compelled to resist what they view as a wrong church teaching.

"We're part of a prophetic tradition of disobeying an unjust law," said Gabriella Velardi Ward of Staten Island, New York, a 61-year-old architect with two children and five grandchildren. Ward is joined by Gloria Carpeneto of Baltimore and Mary Ann McCarthy Schoettly of Newton, New Jersey. Complete article.