Jean Marie Marchant Letter

The following letter is from Jean Marie Marchant to Cardinal Sean O’Malley detailing her decision to seek ordination to the priesthood and, as a consequence, to resign from her position as Director of Health Care Ministry for the Archdiocese.  

July 17, 2006

His Eminence, Seán Cardinal O’Malley, OFM Cap.

Chancery

2121 Commonwealth Avenue

Boston , MA   02135 -2192

Your Eminence,

Last year, I responded to a call I have experienced all my life and was ordained priest in a ceremony that took place on July 25^th on the St. Lawrence Seaway .

While the call to marriage and motherhood has been deeply and wonderfully fulfilling in my life, and while God has blessed me with extraordinary opportunities to minister, I could no longer ignore this persistent call to serve God’s people as an ordained priest.

As you may know, prior to my appointment 4 years ago as Director of the Office of Health Care Ministry, I served for 5 years as Director of Mission and Spiritual Care at Caritas Carney Hospital .  I came to that ministry following 16 years of service as a hospice chaplain in homecare settings and at the Hospice at Mission Hill, a hospice for people with AIDS.  Each of these ministerial settings called forth and developed my gifts for ministry, but each also heightened my call to priestly ordination as I experienced the receptivity of patients and their loved ones to my ministry and their profound gratitude for my pastoral presence.   I came to realize last year, that faithfulness to God’s Spirit alive in my life obliged that I acknowledge and actualize my call to priesthood. 

As with others called to priesthood, my childhood memories include my routinely “celebrating Mass” for my friends at my altar in our dining room at home.  It was when I was in the 3^rd grade that a Holy Thursday pilgrimage to visit the “7 churches” revealed to me that it was not just in ‘our’ parish that there were no women serving as priests.  I came home from that journey deeply impacted and confused, wondering how this could be. 

Of course, in time, I came to learn that Canon Law limits ordination to persons of the male gender.  Yet…God created me female, and God has called me to priesthood.  I have wrestled for my entire life with these seemingly irreconcilable realities, and finally came to see that these are not irreconcilable, merely, contra legem.  And, so, I along with 3 other women from the United States and Canada stepped forward and responded last July to God’s call to ordained priesthood.  Throughout time and history, people from across the globe have stepped forward in opposition to unjust laws to claim with validity the respect due to human persons.  We see examples in the Civil Rights movement in our country, and the struggle with apartheid in South Africa .  The history of our Church is rich with the stories of women and men who likewise demanded that our Church be called to acknowledge and rectify its injustices.  Many of these courageous souls condemned in their time are now among those canonized. 

I appreciate that my ‘contra legem’ status places me in an ‘irreconcilable’ position in terms of my ministry as an employee of the Archdiocese of Boston, and as a consequence hereby offer my resignation.  I do so, with profound gratitude for the opportunity I have had to serve in this capacity, and with prayers that my efforts will be honored, and that my ministry as a woman of God and of our Church will be respected.

My years as Director of Health Care Ministry have shown me the extraordinary burden carried by priests of the Archdiocese, and the dramatically increasing, unacceptable, circumstances of unmet sacramental needs of God’s people.   I can assure you that if the Church honored the call of women and of men who are married, this burden would be lifted and the people of God would not be wanting for pastoral and sacramental ministry… there is no shortage of priestly vocations in the Archdiocese of Boston.

Sincerely yours in Christ,

Jean Marie Marchant, M.Div., D.Min.