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The Seattle Times
(MCT)
SEATTLE - For 45 years, she was a Roman Catholic nun. Now she considers herself a Catholic bishop.
Patricia Fresen of South Africa says she was ordained a priest in 2003 and a bishop last year - though the church recognizes neither.
The 65-year-old Fresen is part of a movement that began four years ago called Roman Catholic Womenpriests. She's one of about 40 members who consider themselves priests or deacons and one of four who consider themselves bishops.
Fresen was invited to Seattle by Betty Hill, co-president of Call to Action Western Washington, an organization of Catholics calling for church reforms such as allowing married and women clergy.
"It's a matter of justice," Hill said. "Right now, women in the Catholic Church are not equal to men."
Under canon - or church - law, only men can be ordained, and the church says those in Roman Catholic Womenpriests are therefore not priests or bishops and that most sacraments they perform are invalid.
"This isn't a question of whether the church values women. It's a question of authority," said Greg Magnoni, spokesman for the Seattle Archdiocese. Within the Catholic community, "there's a vast number of things Catholics may or may not agree with. In the end, if you're Catholic, you accept the authority of the church."
Church teachings say only men are ordained because Jesus chose male apostles, and that bishops are direct successors of the apostles. Another church tradition says a priest is supposed to be "another Christ. That has often been understood as identifying with Jesus Christ, who's a male," said Monsignor Anthony Bawyn, a canon lawyer in the Seattle Archdiocese.
But Fresen, who entered the Dominican order at 17, considers such restrictions unjust.
She compares what she's doing now to what her Dominican congregation in South Africa did to protest apartheid, which segregated society by race - the sisters opened their schools and hospitals to people of all races.
"We had decided we needed to break an unjust law," said Fresen, who now lives in Munich, Germany. "Now, we are in a church, which has church laws, which discriminate unjustly against women . . . . I saw this as absolutely parallel."
For years, Fresen loved being a Dominican sister, she said. But over time, as she went to Rome and studied theology with seminarians, and returned to South Africa to teach at a seminary, she grew angry.
"I was good enough to teach the students how to preach, but I was never permitted to open my mouth in the seminary chapel and preach because I was a woman," said Fresen, who has a doctorate in theology.
Gradually, the anger changed into a longing to minister as a priest. She wanted to lead the Eucharist and hear confessions.
Other women felt that way, too. In 2002, seven participated in an ordination ceremony on the Danube River and were subsequently excommunicated by the Vatican.
That was the first of such annual ceremonies, which last year took place in the U.S. for the first time - in Pittsburgh.
Fresen says she and the other women are probably considered "automatically excommunicated" by the church but that the Vatican has not acted against those ordained after 2002. She was asked to leave the Dominican order, though.
She didn't want to become a bishop, she says, but saw the wisdom in having an English-speaking bishop. About 110 women in Roman Catholic Womenpriests are preparing for ordination, most of them English-speaking. There are a few men as well.
Fresen says she was ordained a bishop by a male bishop in Europe in good standing with the church, whose identity remains secret. He also ordained two of the other women bishops and could be considered automatically excommunicated for doing so.
The sacraments the women perform - such as weddings, confession and the Eucharist - would, in most cases, be considered invalid by the church. Baptisms are an exception, since even non-Christians with the right intention and know-how can baptize.
Neither Fresen nor Hill, of Call to Action, thinks Pope Benedict XVI will allow the ordination of women.
But "I believe it will definitely come," Fresen said. "If the apartheid system in South Africa can be changed, this can be changed. But it will probably take a generation or two."
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(c) 2006, The Seattle Times. Distributed by Mclatchy-Tribune News Service.
