FutureChurch Statement on Excommunication and Women’s Ordination
As adult members of the Catholic Church, we, the leaders of FutureChurch, call on Catholic episcopal leaders to engage in open, mutual, faith-based dialogue with Fr. Roy Bourgeois and women who experience a call to priestly ordination in the Catholic Church, rather than impose the penalty of excommunication.
We renew our request for widespread discussion of the possibility of opening ordination to women, beginning with the diaconate. We call for a moratorium on the imposition of the penalty of excommunication in this regard. In addition, we urge Church leaders to enter into dialogue with women who experience a priestly call, as well as with those priests and other members of the Catholic Church who support them.
In the early Church the function of leadership was to bear witness to the action of God in the community and make decisions based on what the Spirit of God was doing within the people of God.
Acts 15 shows Peter behaving not as a judge but as a witness to the gifts the Holy Spirit had already poured out on the Gentiles even before they had been baptized. Paul and Barnabas witnessed to the action of God leading Gentile communities to Christ throughout the Hellenist world. The action of God to which they witnessed, led both leaders and the baptized to decide that new converts did not need to be circumcised before becoming Christian.
In the same way, we call on contemporary Catholic leaders to make decisions based on discernment of God’s action in the Church for, as scripture says: “Behold I make all things new.”
In the case of imposing excommunication on women who pursue their call to priesthood and on priests seeking to support them, the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith has never made clear the nature of these offenses nor the value(s) being protected. It is incumbent on the bishops as chief shepherds and teachers to inform the faithful of the nature of the offense, the reason for the extreme punishment, and the value being guarded.
Nothing has been found in the disciplines of sacred scripture, psychology, physiology, anthropology, theology, and sociology that precludes consideration of priestly ordination for women. Faithful Catholics are still waiting for a plausible rationale for refusing to discuss women’s ordination or for imposing excommunication as a penalty.
The current state of affairs is all the more puzzling in light of the 1976 statement from the Pontifical Biblical Commission that found nothing in Scripture to prohibit women’s ordination.
Passed by the FutureChurch Board of Trustees on December 8, 2008.
FutureChurch, headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio, is a U.S. coalition of 5,000 parish centered
Catholics striving to educate fellow Catholics about the seriousness of the priest shortage, the centrality of the Eucharist (the Mass), and the systemic inequality of women in the Catholic Church. FutureChurch makes presentations throughout the country, distributes educational and informational packets and recruits activists who work for full participation of all baptized Catholics in the life of the Church.