Sr. Theresa Kane Strikes Again!

Speaking in Chicago in late July, Mercy Sister Theresa Kane condemned the Vatican's absolute prohibition against the ordination of women. She called "male Catholic leaders, many of them bishops and pastors . . . culturally ignorant and culturally impotent regarding the presence, the potential, the human aspirations of women to be adult, mutual co-responsible collaborators."

It was Kane who caused an international stir in 1979 when she publicly addressed Pope John Paul II during his first visit to the U.S. "As women we have heard the powerful message of our church addressing the dignity and reverence of all persons," she said ". . . Our contemplation leads us to state that the church in its struggle to be faithful to its call for reverence and dignity for all persons must respond by providing the possibility of women as persons being included in all ministries of the church [including priesthood]."

The pope was not pleased.

Pressure for women priests has been mounting in the 31 years since. Polls in recent years report as high as 65 percent of Catholics favoring removal of the ban.

At the Chicago event, which was held for Catholic liturgists at the InterContinental Hotel at O'Hare, Kane said: "Many women have already moved out of traditional Sunday worship. Other women have begun very courageous, strong, alternative liturgies, which we believe are valid, mystic, pastoral, spiritual, all the qualities that are needed for the human soul. . . . Maybe it is the beginning of a new church. Maybe this is how we have to look at Pentecost. . . . To continue in an exclusively male priesthood is in my judgment both a form and expression of idolatry."

As an example of clerical arrogance, she noted that when a group of sisters in the Midwest were planning an assembly at their motherhouse, they invited the local bishop to attend and celebrate Mass. "The bishop wrote back and said it must be in a parish church and not at the motherhouse, you must have altar boys come to assist me, and no sister may carry the cross in the procession," reported Kane, adding that the sisters decided not to have a Mass.

Theresa Kane's words came in the midst of an outpouring of alarm and rage among many Catholics after the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, also in July, put the "attempted" ordination of women in the same category as the sexual abuse of minors. Both were called "egregious" violations of the moral law and much more serious than other sins. That the determination of women to serve the church as equals would be placed on the same level of evil as the violation of children struck many as an indication of how out of touch Vatican leaders are with reality, not to mention common sense.