Three Women ordained as "Roman Catholic priests"

Three of the nine women to be ordained as Roman Catholic priests and deacons lay on the floor during a ceremony on a boat in international waters on the St. Lawrence Seaway near Gananoque, Ontario. Nine North American Catholic women were ordained priests or deacons in what will amount to a test of Pope Benedict's determination to enforce the Vatican's ban on women's ordination.

According to a poll cited in Newsweek (April 1, 2002), 64% of Catholics in the United States support the ordination of women, despite a definitive ruling from the Church to the contrary. From this poll it is apparent that Catholics are: (1) abysmally ignorant of their Faith and/or (2) in open rebellion.

Concerning a male-only priesthood, the Church declared in 1976 that "the fact of conferring priestly ordination only on men, it is a question of an unbroken tradition throughout the history of the Church, universal in the East and in the West, and alert to repress abuses immediately. This norm, based on Christ's example, has been and is still observed because it is considered to conform to God's plan for his Church" The Catholic Church has never felt that priestly or episcopal ordination can be validly conferred on women. A few heretical sects in the first centuries, especially Gnostic ones, entrusted the exercise of the priestly ministry to women: this innovation was immediately noted and condemned by the Fathers, who considered it as unacceptable in the Church.

Those clamoring for women’s ordination not only err regarding Church doctrine, they also fail to understand that ordination is a gift, not a right. The 1976 Vatican document is clear: "The priesthood is not conferred for the honor or advantage of the recipient, but for the service of God and the Church; it is the object of a specific and totally gratuitous vocation: "You did not choose me, no, I chose you, and I commissioned you. . . " (Jn 15:16; cf. Heb 5:4)."