Women Priests- A Missing Link

A few years ago, I registered for the Parliament of the World Religions. At the Parliament, as it turned out, and for reasons I can’t remember now, I was able to come to one session only. I don’t even remember what the session was about. What I remember is that someone there mentioned the Women’s Ordination Conference.

I immediately hastened to the WOC’s website, hungrily reading through its pages. I couldn’t believe that this organization existed for decades and I was only learning about it now! The myth busters were especially eye-opening. And then I read about the Roman Catholic Women Priests. What??? Is this for real? My mind was struggling to comprehend, while my heart did cartwheels of joy.

Yes, it’s for real. I jumped to the Association of the Roman Catholic Women Priests website next to learn that there were a few hundred ordained Roman Catholic women priests in the world. And although each has been promptly excommunicated from the Catholic Church, for a split second my mind saw a world in which this wasn’t so. A world in which it was perfectly normal for women to be ordained as Roman Catholic women priests. I have to say, it was a pretty awesome world.

I was eager to get to know these Roman Catholic women priests. And they couldn’t have been more welcoming! Each interaction with them felt like the Divine Mother’s embrace: powerful, supportive, nourishing. And one of the major differences I noticed between services I had attended led by men priests and those led by women priests was the absence of hierarchy.

Yes, the woman priest led the service, she had organized and prepared for it, but the service was a joined, communal thing. Everyone who wanted to read or sing could do that. The woman priest didn’t preach to us, rather she spoke from her heart and held the space so beautifully. The vision of the world in which women priests’ love, devotion, and care imbibe the Catholic Church became even more vivid.

I felt this was getting very close to how it must have been when people gathered around Jesus, or later Mary Magdalene and others who continued to share the way of love Jesus had taught them. A vision of the past I had during a Kundalini Yoga teacher training in Israel when we sat under a tree in the dessert, opening our hearts in prayer and song, and I swear, I could see Jesus sitting under the tree, praying and singing with us. It was so inclusive, festive, and both earthly and heavenly at the same time.

It’s important to remember that in the time of Jesus, there was no Catholic Church. There was the Jewish religion and hierarchy that Jesus called people to transform. It’s ironic then that only a few centuries later, his way was institutionalized, and that two thousand years later it would be so similar to the very thing Jesus wanted us to change in the first place.

But the silver lining is that since it is one of the major institutions in the world, transformation of the Catholic Church could have such a tremendous positive effect on so many people around the world! The possibility of this, that vision of the world  in which power over is transformed by and into the power of love, is why I am here and why I got so excited about WOC’s work.

And in many ways, we already have one of the vital missing links for the transformation of the Catholic Church: the movement led by the Roman Catholic women priests. The movement that is propelled forward by the power of love and a sincere desire to serve God. The movement which, it’s important to note, is not against male priests. Rather, it is for inclusivity, tolerance, compassion, togetherness, and understanding.

Transformation of the Catholic Church into an abode of love can happen and we don’t have to come up with anything new. We don’t need to endlessly discuss and think about this. It is not an intellectual exercise. It is a call of the heart.

And our hearts always help us find our way back to love, under that tree, singing with Jesus.