A group of four self-proclaimed female Catholic priests from Southern California who are part of a larger, international group of 180 women who were excommunicated are reportedly defying the Catholic Church by pushing to oversee the ordination of female priests despite the Vatican’s ban on the practice, according to CBS Los Angeles.
They call themselves the “Roman Catholic Womenpriests” (RCWP) and they are party to a movement that began in secret decades ago until 2002, when male bishops ordained seven priests on Europe’s Danube River, writes CBS.
Jennifer O’Malley, one of SoCal’s four self-proclaimed Catholic priests and a member of RCWP, holds prayer at an Episcopalian Chapel in Long Beach. She called the Church’s law “sexist,” saying “the call of God trumps that,” reports CBS.
Gary Macy, a renowned author on the subject and the chair of religious studies at California’s Santa Clara University, a private Catholic, Jesuit school, Pope Benedict XVI saw the ordination of women as a grave crime and pointed out that the Pope believed that disobeying this law would be as serious as a priest sexually abusing children. He said that even if women “went through the consecration ceremony or ordination ceremony, nothing happens.”
Macy told Breitbart News that while women can be ordained by the Church as deacons, the “present Pope [Francis] is very clear that the teaching that women cannot become priests will not change.”
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