Female "Ordinations"
From Auntie Beeb, we have an article about another batch of simulated ordinations, in North America this time.
Female ordination isn’t actually possible in the Catholic Church (a post I’ll save for another time), but since they decided to arbitrarily challenge all the rules at once (not just the gender rule), these are invalid ordinations for non-gender-related reasons anyway.
To become a priest/bishop in the Catholic Church, you’ve got to be:
- Ordained by a validly ordained bishop in good standing (maintaining the unbroken chain back to the original Apostles)...
- ...in a ceremony that meets the norms established at the time…
- ...and meet basic criteria (we’re ignoring gender, remember), like being a Catholic in good standing, etc…
Since the first of these “bishops” had “ordained” each other from scratch, we fall down on criteron #1. Even if that weren’t a problem, they appear to be using an ordination ceremony of their own invention out on a boat, which means we also lose under criteron #2 anyway.
The third also presents problems, as participating in something that violates #1 and #2 incurs automatic excommunication to begin with (as would subsequently impersonating an ordained priest). Rather than focusing on the gender rule, they seem to have decided to challenge all the rules at once.
Regina Nicolosi, one of the participants, remarked that she does not “fear an excommunication because I don’t feel excommunicated.”
sigh That still means you’re excommunicated.