Priestess Faces Excommunication

Eileen DiFranco, a cradle Catholic who claims to have been ordained, hopes not to be excommunicated for committing "holy disobedience" by trying to say Mass, sponsored by the Church of the Beatitudes, after having been given the usual warnings.

I didn't think an Old Catholic group would go for something so unorthodox, but I guess once you unhinge yourself from the Magisterium, you'll swing with any breeze.

"I feel conscious [sic] bound that if I think that a law is unjust, I am obliged to break it," she said. No word was given about the possibility that egalitarianism might not be the best yardstick to hold against the justice of supernatural vocations.

"I am continually saddened that my brothers are seeing this as a source of dissension instead of a means for bringing people back to church," DiFranco added. Therein, I think, lies the problem. She's not validly ordained, so anyone who comes to her isn't coming to the Church as such. Having more people show up on Sunday morning as nice, but we shouldn't be settling for the empty ritual Paul warns us about. The least we should consider is where these people are showing up. I get that she thinks she's bringing people to the truth, but how hard must it be for her to see that copping an "I can be at odds with core teachings of the Church but still be united with the Church" attitude is just for starters going to be confusing? The Church is not some western democracy; if she'd done enough academic study in her discernment to learn that much...ah, but then she might also have learned how a female priesthood is invalid, and immutably so. Safer to rely on a feeling of being called to spiritual fatherhood, eh?

One man said, after DiFranco's liturgical charade, "It's time for a change." I realize that the 40 years since Vatican II we've spent changing things isn't a terribly long time, but if all these innovations were really that great, shouldn't we be seeing some fruits like increased devotion, mass attendance, and vocations amongst the dissenters? Instead we get circuses and unqualified individuals brushing aside the discernment process so they can grasp the brass ring of priesthood. Doesn't it seem suspicious?

Whatever.