Waukesha resident Kathy Sullivan Vandenberg faces excommunication for seeking the priesthood in an unsanctioned ordination ceremony, Milwaukee Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan said in a statement handed out at weekend Masses at Vandenberg's home parish.
In that statement, our Archbishop reviews his meeting with Ms. Vandenberg.
Dolan and Vandenberg disagree on what happened after the meeting."She promised she would confer with me about her next step," Dolan wrote to the parish. "In two subsequent letters, I have asked for her decision. Her regrettable participation in the protest gives me her unfortunate answer."
Vandenberg said that "wasn't quite accurate."
"I did respond to him in a letter," she said. "And I said . . . I (was) still deciding what I should do."
Our Archbishop took that as a commitment to tell him of a decision to participate in the ceremony before doing so. She says it meant "That's for me to decide and you to find out."
Update: More at Dad29 and Open Book
Update 2: More from Diogenes at Off the Record, and at Ten Reasons
I am a parishioner at St. Mary's. A minor point that the article didn't mention is that the letter from the Archbishop was accompanied by a statement (typed at the top of the Archbishops letter) by our pastor Fr. Volkert stating that Ms Vandenberg, "who is known to members of the St. Mary Parish community", participated in the attempted ordination and that he (Fr. Volkert) does not accept or support her invalid action. I thought that this was a good statement. I don't know if this was intentional, but I like his choice of words: she is "known to members of the parish" versus she is a member of the parish (which she no longer is by her action). BTW, she was at Mass on Saturday evening, but did not go to communion.
ReplyDeleteThere was quite a flurry of clerical activity immediately post-"ordination." The Vicar for Clergy paid a visit to St. Mary's. One needn't be a genius to intuit that he might have been giving the pastor "The Word" from the Archbishop as to just exactly what the proper response should be. Apparently, that happened. Now the question is: Why in the world would this flake-ette continue to attend a Mass she feels is tainted by patriarchal and hierarchical hegemony? Shouldn't she be out somewhere with a card table, a couple candles, a hand full of Neccos, and some grape juice raging against the machine with a small band of aging moonbats? After all, isn't that why she get "ordained"?
ReplyDeleteThe whole thing is like a Ren & Stimpy cartoon (but not as funny). She's Stimpy; I can't figure who Ren would be... Mayber her ordaining "bishop"?