That's Stupid #2: Winonan sees Womenpriest ceremony as an act of faith

Story

Winonan sees Womenpriest ceremony as an act of faith
By Darrell Ehrlick | Lee Newspapers

.
WINONA, Minn. — Kathy Redig’s most profound act of faith might be the one that gets her condemned, if not excommunicated from the church she’s been a part of her whole life.

The lede is supposed to grab attention and give the most important information. Okay, so it's grabbed attention, but in a a way that's either anti-Catholic or completely misunderstands Catholic teaching on the priesthood. The lede presents a paradox, or something very like one, implying that the Church is wrong. If you're writing something aimed against the Church, this would be expected. Not here.

Also, on the word "condemned." Condemn means to send to hell, right? Well, the Church can't do that. Nobody can, except God, and whether God sends people to hell or whether people choose hell or whatever is a complicated theological issue that I'm not going to get into here, mostly because it's irrelevant and I don't understand it thoroughly. Fact is, the Church can't condemn you to hell.

And excommunicated? If this is an act of "faith," obviously she has no "faith" in the Church, and if your "faith" is misplaced and you persist in it, the natural (?) consequence is excommunication.

She claims the Roman Catholic Church, after May 4, may not claim her.

That’s when Redig plans to be ordained in Winona by the Roman Catholic Womenpriests, a worldwide organization that has publicly ordained 23 priests and four bishops since 2002.

I assume these 23 and 4 are all women? Sorry, folks, but no ordinations took place. Holy Orders is a sacrament, which according to the Catholic Encyclopedia, "Sacraments are outward signs of inward grace, instituted by Christ for our sanctification." These alleged ordinations were outward signs, but there was no inward grace because ordination of women was not instituted by Christ. Therefore, no actual ordinations took place.

But Redig isn’t going ahead with ordination to put herself at odds with church leaders and church law. She says she wants to bring more people to the church she loves.

This is good news.

There's a line from the Screwtape Letters (C.S. Lewis) that goes something like "Our cause [that of hell] is never so much in danger as it is when a human, no longer desiring but still intending to do our enemy's [God's] will, looks round a universe from which all trace of him [God] seems to have vanished, asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys."

“For 15 to 20 years, I’ve struggled,” Redig said. “This is the only church I want to be a part of.”

Not sure what to make of this. I'm glad she's faithful, but I'm skeptical of the "I want" factor.

But when Redig participates in Mass, she looks to the altar and sees a man leading worship, a man on the cross and thinks about the men leading the church.

It was a man who died for us; of course it's a man on the cross. And, to be honest, I think it's one of the most attractive things about him. Here's a man who chases after me and chases after me but doesn't force me not to run away, and chases after me even when I run away... tries to keep me out of trouble but doesn't force me out of doing something stupid... then forgives me every time I run to him crying that I've offended him... listens patiently to my "I promise never to do it again" knowing I will and believes me and forgives me and loves me anyway... and even though I've voluntarily jumped off a cliff vomiting as I fall into a hellish abyss of total abandonment, he comes down, rescues me, and gets himself killed doing it... totally and completely dies to rescue me from my own stupidity and infidelity... then isn't dead and is therefore still available. How is that not attractive?

“There’s no one up there that looks like me,” Redig said. “Many times in Mass I’ve shed tears because women have not been given a voice. We can’t be ordained just because we came in the wrong wrapper.”

Take this up with Christ, then, not with the Church, because the Church doesn't have authority to ordain women.

And femininity is not the "wrong wrapper." You're being male-chauvinistic if you think that way. There's nothing "wrong" with being a woman, and the Church is not saying or even implying this. Time for more theological study.

She doesn’t want out of the Catholic church; she wants in — and she wants to bring others along.

Redig explained there are many who feel like church outsiders, uncomfortable because they’ve been marginalized by some of its teachings. She feels called to minister to those people.

This attitude displays another misunderstanding of the Church. Either accept the Church's teachings or leave the Church. She teaches truth, and if teachings change then obviously they aren't true. People aren't marginalized by the Church's teachings. They've been marginalized by bad catechesis.

“I want the bishop to know that I am not looking to take anyone out of the church,” Redig said. “But there are so many who do not feel served. There is so much work for all of us to do. The bishop shouldn’t be afraid.”

I like her fidelity.

I don't like that people need to "feel served." We aren't here to be served; we're here to serve.

And there's a difference between "feeling" and "being."

Meeting with the bishop

Before meeting with Winona Bishop Bernard Harrington in March, Redig said she was at peace.

Three weeks before the meeting, the diocese newspaper issued a full-page explanation of the church’s rules and reasons for only ordaining men.

which, of course, aren't mentioned in this article.

Harrington said the article in The Courier wasn’t coincidental. He said he used it as an opportunity to start teaching the church’s position.

Start?

When Redig met with the bishop, she said she offered Harrington the chance to be part of the ordination.

“I asked him, ‘So would you ordain me?’” Redig asked. “He said, ‘Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t.’”

Good bishop.

Redig told him that she felt called to the priesthood and there were many people in need of more pastoral care.

To rely on your emotions to tell you about reality is dangerous. Redig's a woman; she should know this.

“Many don’t feel served. I understand there’s a shortage of priests, and I told the bishop, ‘Women are here, ready to serve,’” Redig said.

Watch out--Mary's about to say something offensive!

Redig is completely right that "women are here, ready to serve." I think this is one of the reasons Christ chose an all-male priesthood. (This is all theological speculation, so if I'm speaking heresy I hope someone will correct me.) Here's something men can do--men have to do--and women can't get their hands on. I think men need that. Men need to be needed for their masculinity (the same goes for women and their femininity). With the priesthood, men have to step up and do it. They can't sit back and say oh, the women will take care of it (because, women, you know we would).

She received a one and a half-page letter from the bishop. In it, he urged her to renounce her ordination as a deacon and not follow through with ordination as a priest. He warned her that he would not endorse her as a Catholic chaplain, told her she is not in good standing with the church and unable to receive communion.

Most importantly, if she follows through with the ordination, Redig said, he will send papers to Rome. Such papers have been the beginning of the excommunication process for other women who’ve been ordained.

Good bishop. But misquoted. The women weren't ordained, unless Buttercup really was married to Humperdinck.

“He said it may be a happy day for me, but it will be a sad day for the Diocese of Winona because I am causing confusion for the people of faith and I am not bringing about unity,” Redig said. “He seemed terribly afraid. And I wrote him a response and said that every day is a sad day for women who cannot be fully at the table.”

She also invited four priests in the diocese to attend her ordination. All declined.

Good priests. But...

She said they’ve privately expressed support for her work, but publicly, they could face retribution for supporting her.

The next steps

Redig plans to start a small gathering for those who identify with the Roman Catholic church but feel marginalized by its teachings or policies.

The congregation will be called “All Are One,” a reference to the Gospel of John where Jesus prays, “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you.”

Redig says Scripture alone gives her inspiration to reach out and confidence about her ordination.

Sola scriptura? We dealt with that five hundred years ago and rejected it as a heresy.

“How do you intend for those words of Jesus to be fulfilled while you’re turning away people?” Redig asked. “Take a look around the Mass and those who received the Eucharist — there are probably a lot of Catholics who shouldn’t be there — those who’ve remarried, are gay or voted for John Kerry. If you actually followed all the injunctions of the church, there’d be no one worthy of Mass.”

She's absolutely right: there is no one worthy of the Mass.

Anyway, there are more theological misunderstandings here that I'm too lazy to deal with right now...

For now, she plans to start a group that will meet in a house, not unlike the apostles did in the early history of the church.

Her journey

Redig’s journey toward priesthood began years ago, when she entered a convent at age 18, shortly after graduating from Cotter High School in Winona. She chose the order because of its work with juvenile delinquents and teenage girls.

But she left before taking her first vows.

“I chose that because it was all women could do,” Redig said. “But I also knew I needed a partner in life.”

She met her husband, Robert, who had also spent time in seminary.

She became a licensed practical nurse and had two children.

Nursing was rewarding for Redig, but she always seemed more interested in the spiritual aspects of the patients.

“I felt I was always called to some sort of ministry,” Redig said.

In 1988, she enrolled at Winona State University, where, as an adult learner, she tailored her own major to focus on psychology from birth to death. In 1993, she entered a chaplaincy program at Franciscan Skemp in La Crosse and eventually enrolled in a clinical pastoral education at Gundersen Lutheran, too.

She studied for a master’s at Saint Mary’s University.

In 1994, qualified to serve as a chaplain, she sent letters to area businesses and health care facilities, asking if they had any chaplaincy openings.

At first, Winona Health declined, saying it was downsizing.

“But I argued. I told them you can’t downsize what you don’t have,” Redig said.

About the same time, the hospice program need a chaplain for five hours per week. She took it. Eventually, she developed the first chaplaincy at Winona Health’s Community Memorial Hospital, where she now serves with a second chaplain.

Redig receives an episcopal certification from the diocese in order to be called a Catholic chaplain. Her ordination through Womenpriests will probably mean a revocation of that endorsement.

The call

Every year, Redig took a survey that gauges women’s attitudes in the church. There was a question about whether she felt called to be an ordained priest. Sometimes she’d answer yes, other times, no.

Then, one day as she was doing laundry and talking with her husband about frustrations with the church, she off-handedly said, “Well, I guess the only way we’ll find a church that’s meaningful to us is if we start one ourselves.”

Yeah, see, there's the problem. Leave the church Jesus (i.e., God) founded and found your own... mere humans... we aren't smarter than God.

“I thought I was kidding,” Redig said. “But the spirit wasn’t.”

Redig explored possibilities of ordination, gaining admission to the Womenpriests movement, which had drawn international attention in 2002 when seven women were ordained on the Danube River.

Not ordained! They went through the motions but nothing actually happened ontologically!

For Redig, pursuing the priesthood has been about living the best part of the Catholic faith, the tradition of practicing what her conscience tells her.

Catholicism isn't about doing what your conscience tells you. Conscience must be well-formed for it to have any legitimate say.

With a conviction that comes from deep inside,

because we all know that has authority...

with her family support and the support of Womenpriests, Redig is proceeding. And maybe the most powerful reason for her journey is from what she’s learned on the job as a chaplain.

“Ministry is affirmed by the people,” Redig said. “That’s what I learned from being a chaplain. The people — that’s where it comes from.”

No! No! God--that's where it comes from.

(898 words)