Women's ordination, revisited

What a difference a headline makes.

A story I wrote last week, reporting that a group called Roman Catholic Womenpriests was holding a ceremony at which it planned to declare three women to be ordained Catholic priests, caused a bit of a firestorm because of the headline, which said “3 women to be ordained Catholic priests in Boston.’’ The headline – which I did not write or see before publication -- was paired in the paper with a subordinate headline that said “Excommunication automatic, church warns,’’ but the construction proved problematic when readers, particularly on-line, saw the main headline as a legitimation of a ceremony that the Catholic Church says is invalid. The criticism, as happens these days, rippled through the blogosphere, and I got quite a bit of very angry e-mail.

We ran a clarification; I posted much of the e-mail I received; and I personally wrote to everyone who e-mailed. Then, when the actual ceremony took place, I filed a breaking news story to the web, that ran under the headline, “Group claims to ordain women priests in unsanctioned ceremony,’’ and a slightly different version for the Monday morning paper, which ran with the headline “Dissident group claims three women ordained as priests’’ (in an early edition, the word "upstart" was used in place of "dissident.") The Globe tried, in those headlines, to reflect the debate over what was taking place.

The language I used in the stories also changed somewhat. I’ve been at this a long time, and I knew the subject of women’s ordination is a bit of a minefield, so in the first story I avoided using the word “Mass,’’ or the titles “Rev.” or “Bishop” in front of a woman’s name, knowing that those terms would be debated. The story was very clear that the Catholic Church viewed the ceremony as invalid, and the women as excommunicated; it quoted from the Archdiocese of Boston, and Pope John Paul II, and I thought it was quite clear and fair. I did call the event an “ordination ceremony’’ – my reasoning was that there are lots of such events in Christendom and beyond that are not sanctioned by Rome, some by Catholics not in union with Rome, and some by non-Catholics, and it seemed to me that the standard practice of newspapers is to honor the language used by religious groups. When an evangelical church declares someone ordained as a pastor, we say that person was ordained as a pastor; we don’t conduct an examination of his or her theological training, and we don’t ask who else would recognize this person as ordained.

But the reaction suggests that many readers didn’t read the story the same way I did, especially once they had seen the problematic headline, and so I decided to rethink the use of a few words – especially “ordain” and “ordination” – in the story about the actual event. In the end I decided to use the word “ceremony” rather than “ordination” to describe what was taking place, unless it was attributed to someone, and to attribute every description that I thought might be contested. That resulted, most awkwardly, in this phrase, “They then helped preside over a service at which they declared bread and wine to be consecrated and offered what they called Communion to anyone who wished to receive it.”

The coverage of the Sunday event has generated another round of e-mail which I am posting below. Much of it acknowledges the effort at greater precision, but some of it criticizes me – or the headline writer -- for going too far in the other direction. Some of it comments on the vitriolic tone of the discussion. And a blogging priest who has been subjecting my coverage to Talmudic scrutiny offered a line-by-line analysis of the evolving coverage, concluding that the second story was better than the first. (Thanks!)

A few lessons I take from this episode:

- A traditional journalistic device for communicating more information about a story, the “subhed,’’ does not translate to the Internet. The initial story had a subordinate headline, or subhed, that made clear the church’s view of the ceremony, but even on Boston.com that subhed was dropped on many pages, and as the story migrated through the blogosphere, the story was referred to only by the main headline, which was, at best, disputable.

- Another journalist convention, “play,’’ is also irrelevant in cyberspace. As I explained to some readers, if the Catholic Church had decided to ordain women, that would be a huge front page story. The stories about the ceremony this weekend ran at the bottom of page B1 – a signal, in our view, that the matter was interesting and newsworthy, but not huge. But, of course, in cyberspace those distinctions, which we at newspapers spend a lot of time thinking about, are obliterated.

Some people asked me why we covered the story at all. Several of the e-mailers said they saw no distinction between the ceremony at the Church of the Covenant, and any individual who just declared himself or herself to be the president or the governor. This was my response to one of those readers: "The rationale for coverage is that this is the major group involved in a subject of high public interest and with at least some claim to, or argument for, legitimacy, which is why the Vatican and the various dioceses have responded, which Beacon Hill etc. would not do if your friends swear you in as governor. The e-mails I got make clear that there is a group out there that wishes we would simply not acknowledge that this group exists or is having this event, but that would be an editorial judgment as well, one that many people would view as censorial. I suppose each of our readers, given the options of all that takes place in Boston and the world each day, would put together a different set of stories if they were in charge of the newspaper, and all I can tell you is that we are making the best judgments we can, hour after hour and day after day, trying to decide what is important, significant, interesting, and trying to cover those events and issues in a way that reflects what is happening fairly and precisely."

I’m moving on to other stories, but I’m always interested in your thoughts, so feel free to e-mail.

The first round of comments, reacting to last week's story, is archived here. And the newer comments, responding to coverage of the actual event, is below (if you don't already see them, click on "full entry"):

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"Dude: I'm guessing that you have thicker skin than mine, but I just read some readers' comments to you regarding tomorrow's Womanpriest ordination and I'm pretty shocked. And I'm guessing that the comments you've selected were heavily filtered to boot. Regardless of what one believes on the issue of famale Roman Catholic priests, I'm sorry anyone felt compelled to respond to your article with such venom. And in the name of faith, no less. The irony there is clearly lost on most folk, and the resulting mixture is bewildering. Blessings on and gratitude for your continued reporting."

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"Whenever did you take to siding with the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston?? Your report on the WomanPriest Ordination on Sunday, was a blantantly disrespectful report, not of the facts, but of your opinion of the facts as seen thru the eyes of the Archdiocese and C. J. Doyle and his Catholic Action League of Massachusetts. Your choice of the words 'Upstart group claims three women ordained as priests' shows bias and judgement. You did a real disservice to the thousands of Catholics who do indeed celebrate the fact that women are reclaiming their valid place in the history of the Roman Catholic Church .A record, which includes not only women priests but women bishops as early as the 6th Century. The real story Mr. Paulson, is why this fact has been hidden for centuries by the male dominated hiererarcy and perpetuated as 'a matter of doctrine' for so many centuries. Think of what a story you could have penned, if you choose to report these facts. Where is the reporter who so brilliantly reported and detailed the facts of the sexual abuse scandal? Shame on you for your lack of research on the topic, as well as your blatant bias in reporting the events of Sunday's events."

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"I just read your coverage of today's ceremony and I wanted to follow through by saying how much I appreciated the lengths you went to present accurately the Catholic Church's view of what occurred. Your use of indirect discourse repeatedly was a great means to be fair to both sides. Thank you for your professionalism with this and for taking my and others' suggestions as seriously as you did. I was initially surprised to learn from your article that they had excised the promises of obedience and celibacy from the typical ordination rite … and then, seconds later, laughed. This illustrates so clearly — at least from the Catholic point of view — that this flows from mistaken notions of power and sexuality, respectively. Thanks for including it. The title worked, too, and it seemed to influence AP's coverage."

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"E-mail about a story would be just what you hoped for, now, wouldn't it? And fodder for your blog, too? I guess that spells success from where you sit... accuracy in reporting be damned, eh?"

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"I read your Internet article on the ordination of women today in Boston. You were fair, balanced and informative regarding the subject matter. This R.C. dictatorship of the spiritual proletariat stuff since the time of General Constantine is getting kinda old in this very modern, very complex world."

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"There is something in your article that does not make sense to me. It is probably not your doing, but it still does not make sense. Here's the situation: Rome, or someone high up in the Catholic church says the participants are not Catholic. At least that is part of what your article says. Then another part of your article says Rome says all participants have been or are excommunicated. Let me ask you this, if they are NOT Catholic how can they be excommunicated? I mean you have to be Catholic to excommunicated. Am I right or not? As for me, this whole business of celibacy for priests (and women priests too) is absurd. Rome has way tooo much power in my opinion."

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"Once upon a time, the Boston Globe was at least a local media outlet. Nowadays, however, the Globe appears to be published in Alice's Wonderland and written in an Orwellian language of doublespeak. The newspaper's peculiarly prominent and thoroughly disproportionate coverage of the charade claimed as an ordination of women by the bizarre and schismatic 'Roman Catholic Womenpriests' organization offers proof enough of that. Beyond the unvarnished glee with which these self-promoting individuals are trumpeted in your columns as being 'ordained,' there is an odd prurience evident in the Globe's rush to publish its vaguely celebratory and unnecessarily persistent stories on this sad matter. These women, assuming they once were held in good standing by the Catholic Church, have chosen instant excommunication. In that voluntary apostasy, a tragedy emerges long before any notion of noble defiance can possibly enter the conversation these women seemingly wish to provoke. Their story is not one of courage or progress. Nor is it a story of feminism, of equality or one of simple piety. Rather, it is a sordid tale of a contemptuous act. As such, your reporting is itself exposed as calculated choreography intended primarily to insult faithful Catholics. If the Wonderland Globe had a scintilla of honesty remaining, it would simply admit its disdain for all things authentically Catholic in the same way partial ownership by the New York Times holding company is routinely notated. Such an admission would spare readers not wanting to bother reading about the trivial pursuits of some disgruntled fringe. Maybe the paper also would refrain from calling "a venerable Protestant church" any organization so obviously and vehemently hostile to Catholicism and its ancient tenets. The Wonderland Globe would be free to simply report a vulgar betrayal of ecumenical spirit as though it were genuine religiosity. Oh, if only Alice were your editor in chief ..."

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"What these women fail to realize or admit is that the Vatican 'maintains' the rules as they have been set and followed for over 2000 years. If the ruling body of the Catholic Church says they aren't priests then they aren't, whether they have hand apostolic succession of hands laid upon them or not. They don't make the rules, but they certainly have to follow them, or they can just decide to start their own church. Either way, they have removed themselves from the good graces of the Holy Father by their actions which go against the traditions and teachings of this, the first and true Christian religion which was started by Jesus himself. These women can say what they want but unless the governing body that has the authority to grant said privileges approves, they don't have any true credentials and all ceremonies carried out under these women are not valid either. Just because I want to say that I am a lawyer, or a doctor, or an architect doesn't make it so. In fact, it is illegal to present yourself as such without 'PROPER' credentials. I wonder if it's illegal to call yourself a priest when the church says you are not?"

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"You're all out of sync with the Holy See. You can be priests, bishops, anything you wish to call yourselves. You can wail and cry and and make speeches. You may cry 'prejudice' or 'discrimination'. You may have rites and rituals, ceremonies. You may have a mass (never a Mass). Yours is not sacrifice, it is pride and impudence. You are not models of the Blessed Mother, for you do not utter 'yes' to His will, but drown Him out with your own demands and mandates. The one thing you are NOT? Roman Catholics obedient to Christ's Vicar on earth, The Holy Father, successor to Peter. God help you all!"

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"Just a note to let you know that you do indeed have it correct - the three women were ordained within the Catholic Church. Now, they were ordained by validly ordained bishop - which makes it a valid ordination. We can go 'round for days arguing about the fact that there were no females among the 12 apostles. But until the Vatican (and their spies) sniffs these women out - they are priests. Here's something that these biblical bean-counters would do well to remember - when Jesus arose from the dead...who did He appear to FIRST? It was Mary Magdalene. Yes...a woman. He told her to go forth and bear the message that He had risen. And if the fact that the a woman was the FIRST messenger of Jesus' resurrection...what better case can be made for women to be ordained and finally enjoy the potential for FULL involvement and ministry within the Church? If I sound a bit emotional regarding this issue, it is perhaps because I am what a lot of folks refer to as a 'recovering Catholic'. However, since being received into the Episcopal Church in 2001, I much prefer the phrase 'former Catholic'. (After all, I'm pretty sure my marriage to another woman means I wouldn't exactly be welcomed back with open arms!) There are many things wrong with the hierarchy in the Catholic Church (as with ALL organized religions, for that matter) - some of those problems would be stemmed if the Church took full advantage of the many women within their ranks with the intelligence, faith, compassion and desire to minister in the ways that only a clergyperson can."

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"Great articles - thanks for covering this very significant story."

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"Presbyterians and The United Church of Christ ought to stay out of the fight to have the Roman Catholic Church ordain women. Whether you agree with the Roman Church or not, it's a voluntary association and Catholics are guaranteed freedom to worship as they please by the United States Constitution. In fact people who wish to worship as Catholics in a church where women are ordained can affiliate with the Episcopal Church, which has an unbroken chain of Catholic bishops and genuine Catholic sacraments. Furthermore, Presbyterian and Congregationalists need to apologize and make restitution for their past sins before they criticize Roman Catholics. As the Puritans, they were responsible for religious persecution in the British Isles, particularly in Ireland where Cromwell and his lieutenants were responsible for ethnic cleansing and mass murder, believed to have taken more than half a million lives. Real or imagined, the sins of English kings identified with the Catholic Church never justified the crimes committed in Ireland by Puritans (now Presbyterians and The United Church of Christ) in Cromwell's time or in the present day under Northern Ireland's Ian Paisley. Puritan intolerance and exploitation of Catholic workers in New England has a history as old as the Salem witch hunts and persisted well into the 20th century when Harvard led the so-called Ivy League in distancing itself from Puritan sectarianism, a process still incomplete since we have yet to see a Catholic college admitted to the Ivy League and a Yale where the memory of Lyman Beecher, the Puritan divine who instigated the burning of the Ursuline convent in Boston and wrote the viciously anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic 'A Plea for the West,' is unwelcome."

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"Very interesting piece on the ordination controversy. A bit tricky to write, I'm sure, and much more balanced than the last one."

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"I am a Catholic laywoman and I really wish there could be a formal discernment process in our church as to the posibility that God could indeed be calling woman to be priests because of the pastoral needs that exist rather than out Church simply say that these women excommunicate themselves. I worked for many as a nurse at the Hospice at Mission Hill which closed over ten years ago. Jean Marchant was chaplain there and absolutely wonderful. She has a real gift at being with people who are suffering and is a very genuinely spiritual woman. One day a patient was admitted to the hospice dying with Aids accompanied by his mother. I was letting him know the services hospice had to offer, chaplain social work etc when he told me the one person he did not want to see was a Catholic priest. He said he was molested by a priest as a teenager, he left the church but went back to attend mass for the funeral mass of his father who was an alcoholic and the same priest who had molested him was still there and in fact said the funeral mass for his father. I asked him if he had told his mother about the abuse and he said he had not but he seemed to trust woman. I was very glad that Jean was working at the Hospice and believe that this is an example of where there is a tremendous pastoral need for womenpriests. I know the Catholic Church claims that it does not have the authority to ordain woman priests but surely the example of Jesus's compassion towards people suffering and the words of Jesus to Peter to 'Feed my Lambs and Feed my sheep' are important. We believe that the Holy Spirit continues to guide the Church and could'nt be quiet possible that the Holy Spirit is indeed calling women to be priests given all that has happened in our church. I think our church has taken a very legalistic approach to the subject of womenpriests and is missing what is important which is meeting the spiritual needs of people."

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"I saw the selection of responses; I apologize for the few that were abusive, but I was happy to see that many correspondents made the case more effectively and succinctly than I. I appreciate the fact that the Globe may offer a correction; unfortunately, said correction will not reach anywhere near the number of people that the incorrect article did--the damage has been done. Bottom line, the women involved may think they are 'priests,' but their own belief does not make it so, regardless of who they get to "ordain" them. I wish the Globe was not so determined to 'Stick it to' Rome [see Carroll, James]. As a news organization, your readers deserve better."

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"Is it stated anywhere in the Bible that only Men can be ordained priests? Does it say anywhere in the Bible that priest cannot marry? I am 75 yrs old and a practicing Catholic all my life. I believe the above are rules made by Church leaders and therefore can be changed.''

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"Headline definitely works for us 'conservatives'! :-)"

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"I just read today's Globe retrospective article on this same event--although not perfect, it was much better balanced and did a far better job presenting the truth of the matter. Thanks for your efforts.''

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"A word of support from the peanut gallery: I just saw the posting from the women's ordination story over the weekend- and all the angry (and often poorly written) letters. Just wanted to send a note of support, regardless of what I think of the ordination, for your consistent and careful reporting and writing. As my people would say, 'if anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town.'"

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"Like Yasser Arafat, the Boston Globe never seems to miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. Today's clarification regarding the story on the women to be "ordained" tomorrow heaps obfuscation on top of confusion. The status of the women after the "ordination" is not in dispute (mistake 1 of the clarification). It is beyond question that there will be a ceremony tomorrow. It is religious in nature, and it has a view towards making priests of the women concerned. But according to the rules of the church for which they seek Holy Orders, it is not an ordination (mistake 2 of the clarification). Their status will not be in dispute. They will have excommunicated themselves from the church they wish to serve. These are the facts of the situation. They may be painful and regrettable, but they are the facts nonetheless. It is improper for the Boston Globe to portray the perspective of the breakaway organization Womenforpriests on the staus of these women as on a par with that of the church itself. It may take a long time before the Roman Catholic Church ever changes its position on the matter, but this form of self-imposed exile is not likely to help matters at all."

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"Thank you for presenting this issue in such a fair and balanced manner in your recent Globe article. So many in the media always present these types of disputes in a dishonestly biased manner according to their own personal opinions no matter how illinformed they might be."

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"Thanks for your reply. First let me apologize for the tone of my email. I think I could have made my point with less sarcasm. What I find frustrating is the number of secular news outlets reporting on these three women in this mock ordination ceremony. Did you realize that World Youth Day attracted the largest gathering in the history of Australia? Where was that in the secular press? Unless it was tied to the Priest sex abuse scandal (which seems to be the only kind of sex abuse that bothers the secular press) nothing was printed. There was more ink spilled in the secular press over these 3 women than on the 400,000 from all over the world that showed up for Mass on Sunday morning for World Youth Day. Why is that? Again thanks for your response. My intention is not to disrespect you or your work but to understand better where you are coming from."

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"I wanted to take the time to thank you for the piece you wrote yesterday on the supposed ordination of women in the Catholic Church. I came across both that and an earlier article you had written in a blog to which I subscribe, and really wanted you to know that the change in tone is greatly appreciated by those of us in the Catholic community. Your second piece is much more, I'll say fair, than was the first one. Thanks again for your work, and bless you."

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"Much better article this time around as regards the clarity of the positions of both sides."

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"Great article about Womenpriests. Keep them coming. Only by brave, spirit filled women such as these will the wall eventually come tumbling down."

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"I was away for the weekend so didn't see the Globe's clarification. However, I did read your report today and was pleased that the headline was more appropriate."

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"I think you should do a follow up article and let people know what church these women will be practicing in. I am sure there are many people that would love to attend. It is funny that 3 women who want to dedicate their lives to Christ are excommunicated immediatley, but a guy who is responsible for child rape; life long mental illness; and suicides is living in the lap of luxury in Italy. How sick is this cult? Believe it or not I am a practicing Catholic and I feel that my better values and quaities are due to my Catholic upbringing, but when you continue to witness the arrogance of the Catholic church, you really begin to realize that you are simple a product of their brainwashing as all of them are. Great article."

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"A very fair article indeed. Congratulations. It's good to see objective reporting which states significant facts face-on without being partisan. I look forward to reading more of your work online."

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"Thanks for covering the women’s ordinations in Boston. I wanted to clarify something that was stated in your 'clarification' re: the disputed status of the women in the July 18 article. Your statement reads that the Archdiocese 'will regard them as having excommunicated themselves and therefore as being neither Catholic nor priests.' To clarify, being excommunicated does not actually make the women “not Catholic” (by virtue of Baptism they can never be unmade Catholic); what it does mean is more like a punishment—as a result of 'breaking laws' they are asked to not participate in sacramental celebrations. For some, that will feel like being no longer Catholic, since the 'source and summit' of Catholic experience is the liturgical celebration of Eucharist. However, technically, they are still Catholic. As you know, the women reject this punishment, believing the law itself to be unjust, and the punishment, consequently also unjust. I hope this clarification aids in more full understanding."

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"I noticed that when the Church of England voted (and it was hotly debated) recently to allow women to be ordanied as bishops the Vatican wasted absolutely no time in expressing their disappointment (less than 24 hours, to be exact, according to the Catholic News Service). If they would have the Protestant churches (as a group) not give any kind of appearance in 'meddling' with the affairs of the Catholic church (even just by something as benign as renting space) then the Vatican would do well to follow their own advice!"

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"The postings have been most interesting. Particularly telling, perhaps, are those letters based in vitriolic language. Regardless of the authors' stances, I must say the ad hominem approach falls flat, and hope you will disregard those attacks as peripheral to your written work. After reflecting more on precisely why this story (and, yes, the Globe's coverage of it) bothered me so, I concluded it was the artifice of it all: there was absolutely nothing Catholic about these stunts - except perhaps for scriptures or liturgical form employed, of which little was reported. Still, stunts they were, for there was no cognizable religious group (in the institutional sense) underpinning them. Rather, a hodgepodge of organized religions and activists deigned to call their ceremony an ordination of priests, specifically ordained within the historical, if not present-day Catholic Church. That is more than erroneous. It is beyond even disobedience to authority. In Biblical terms, it is bearing false witness, and in the Judeo-Christian ethos that grave offense is never one to be celebrated."

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"I have just finished reading your blog about the ordination of these women into the priesthood of My Roman Catholic Church. I have been reading the globe off and on for the last 50 years. Without exception, every chance the Globe or it's writers get a chance to portray My Church unfavorably they leap at it. The happiest day in the life of the globe was when Cardinal Cushing died. He took the globe on at every turn and they were afraid of him. I was quite amused at many of the emails you chose to publish. I wonder if any of them can define the word 'theocracy' The Holy Roman Catholic Church is a Theocracy...period. It will continue to function as one until Jesus Christ returns to HIS Church. Personally, I wonder why the globe's high paid journalists aren't out knocking on the doors of the local synagogues to inquire when the might start having women Rabbis. Oh, I forgot the globe never, never, never questions the Hebrew Faith and traditions."

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"I just read through many of the comments and was startled by the meanness contained in many of them. I also noted an interesting pattern in the consistency of the argument, 'If I claim myself to be (fill-in-the-blank), that does not make me one.' As a woman who is Catholic and feels called to the priesthood, I ask myself about the question of validity as well, though certainly in a different tone--not marked by sarcasm, but by concern. What most consoles me is that the people, not the rules, make up the living church, and if there are people who support and seek out the womenpriests, it seems to me the validity of that movement of Spirit cannot be denied."

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"Many of those in my age group (the 30-somethings) have left the Catholic Church for a number of reasons, one of which is that the Vatican excludes women from the priesthood. About 8 months ago, my wife and I started going to a Catholic community that has a woman priest. This female pastor and church community are wonderful and we feel more connected to church than ever before. The Gospels are clear that Jesus’ ministry included both men AND women. I’m convinced that Jesus welcomes every person responding to God’s call to ordination. It won’t be the Vatican, but our female pastor who will baptize our children, anoint our sick parents, officiate at our child’s wedding, and bury our friends. I don’t care what church 'officials' say, these women are priests."