Local woman to be ordained priest in unsanctioned Catholic service
HARWICH -- Even as a child, Marie David wanted to be a priest.
She knew, of course, that Catholic women could not become priests, but she also thought life in a convent was not for her, so she simply set aside the notion that one day she might wear a collar and consecrate the Eucharist.
But now David, a Cape Cod innkeeper, is taking her vestments and her family to Canada to participate in a renegade ordination ceremony, led by a group of women whose own participation in an unsanctioned ordination ceremony three years ago led to their excommunication by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the church official who is now Pope Benedict XVI.
The ordination ceremony today is to take place on a boat on the St. Lawrence Seaway, near Gananoque, Ontario, Canada. It will be the first in North America since the so-called Danube Seven -- a group of seven women including a former governor's wife in Ohio, Dagmar Celeste -- were ordained by a schismatic Argentine bishop on the Danube River, between Austria and Germany, in 2002.
Two of those women now call themselves bishops -- they say they were secretly elevated by bishops in good standing -- and will be performing the ordination of nine women, including David. .
The Vatican and other church officials, insisting that women cannot be ordained as priests, say these ceremonies are not valid. Ratzinger personally announced the excommunication of the Danube Seven. Subsequently, a Dominican nun from South Africa, Patricia Fresen, was expelled from her congregation after she claimed to be ordained in 2003. The ordinations of Fresen, the Danube Seven, as well as today's ceremony, have been organized by a movement called Roman Catholic Womenpriests.
David, who opposes mandatory celibacy for priests and is married to a former priest, shrugs off the possibility of being excommunicated by the church, saying ''there would be a sadness, but I refuse to recognize their authority to tell me that."
Already a member of the Harwich clergy association and an occasional substitute preacher at other local churches, she says she plans to celebrate Mass and perform baptisms and weddings at her bed and breakfast, the Harbor Breeze Inn, which the couple converts each winter to the Evensong Retreat and Spirituality Center.
''It's not accepted by Rome today, but that doesn't mean it will not always be accepted," David said. ''The only way Rome will allow women to be ordained is we do it. It has to start someplace."
Polls suggest that a majority of US Catholics support the ordination of women, according to James D. Davidson Jr., a professor of sociology at Purdue University. Davidson, who studies Catholic public opinion, said support for ordaining women is strongest among younger and more educated Catholics; overall, he said, about 53 percent of US Catholics support the ordination of noncelibate women.
But scholars said there is an important distinction between today's ceremony -- which is being conducted by women ordained by a schismatic bishop -- and the ceremony in 1974 in which 11 Episcopalian women were ''irregularly" ordained by retired Episcopal bishops, in violation of Episcopal church law. The Episcopal Church authorized the ordination of women two years later.
The Catholic and Episcopal churches both believe in apostolic succession -- that today's bishops are the successors of Jesus's apostles and have the apostles' authority to ordain priests -- so it was more significant when recognized Episcopal bishops ordained women than it is when an unrecognized Catholic bishop does so.
And the Catholic Church is not even discussing -- at official levels -- the ordination of women; Pope John Paul II declared that ''the church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the church's faithful."
''This would be way more significant if an actual legitimate [Catholic] bishop ordained a woman -- that would be much more difficult for the hierarchy to deal with," said Mark A. Chaves, the chairman of the sociology department at the University of Arizona. Chaves is the author of ''Ordaining Women: Culture and Conflict in Religious Organizations."
''People can declare they're doing absolutely anything they want in the free world, but to declare you're still within a particular church is another matter," Chaves said.
David insists that today's ordinations are valid because they are being performed by women bishops who were consecrated by legitimate bishops. She said she has had no contact with the bishop of Fall River, George W. Coleman, whose diocese includes Cape Cod.
''I'm not asking for permission anymore," she said. ''I respect the people who are in power, but I disagree with them because so many people are excluded."
Coleman's spokesman, John Kearns, said, ''This so-called ordination is absolutely invalid."
''We believe that we need to follow Christ's commissioning of men as apostles and continue that with a priesthood that is a male priesthood," Kearns said. ''It is not a reflection on the dignity of women, or their holiness, but just a continuation of Christ's teaching."
Kearns said today's ceremony would not further the debate.
''I don't think that staging an invalid ordination ceremony will contribute to any positive dialogue between women and the church on their role or on ways to increase their role in nonordained ministries," he said.
David, 48, is a native of Sanford, Maine, who attended parochial school through eighth grade.
''In eighth grade, my principal said I definitely had a vocation," she said. ''But I thought I'd last an hour in a convent. And I was brought up that girls can become nuns, boys can become priests, and you don't cross those lines."
As an adult, she worked as a director of religious education at a parish in Saco, Maine, and then as a volunteer in a parish in Merrimack, N.H., where she tried to get permission from the bishop to preach regularly, but was ignored. While living in New Hampshire, she married James F. David, who had been the pastor in Saco, but who had resigned from the priesthood; the couple began worshiping at the Paulist Center in Boston.
The Davids decided their goal was to run a retreat, and in summer 2002, they bought the 10-room inn in Harwichport; the couple is converting a barn on the property into a chapel and is laying out a labyrinth for meditation. David is trained in Reiki, a form of energy healing through touch.
David said she had explored other Christian denominations, but that ''each time, it kept coming back to me, that I'm a Catholic -- for all Catholicism's graces and all of its sins. I can't be unbaptized."
The same summer that the Davids bought the inn, the seven women were ordained on the Danube, and David began e-mailing the organizers, seeking to be ordained herself. She said she has been prepared for the priesthood through educational materials provided over the Internet by a theologian affiliated with the Womenpriests organization.
David said she hopes to minister to ''disaffected Catholics," including those who are divorced, as well as gays and lesbians.
''I believe in the richness and the power of God's sacraments," she said. ''If I go forward and acknowledge my call to priesthood, I hope that may give other women the power to go forward. It's time for people's voices to be heard."
Michael Paulson can be reached at mpaulson@globe.com. 