A Place at the Altar

Jan Jarboe Russell reports in Sunday's New York Times Magazine on Jane Via of San Diego, California.

Via is 59, and

According to Russell,

if it were not for the accident of her sex and the fact that she is married with two sons, she would be an ideal candidate for the [Catholic] priesthood.

Via agrees, claims to have been ordained June 24, 2006, and to preside at Mass at Mary Magdalene Apostle Catholic Community. She gave her first purported homily July 30, 2006. In the text at MMACC, she is described as Dr. Jane Via. It begins,

I remember being a grad student at Marquette studying Scripture and discovering the Elijah and Elisha stories for the first time.

I remember being a freshman at Marquette and being told in two semesters of introductory Theology that someone on the faculty had "proved the Holy Spirit does not exist", but I digress.

...But we can feed the spiritually starving of our time and there is bread with which to feed them. We can feed them, not with loaves and fish, but with hope and prophetic disobedience.

Dr. Via "had left academia for the law" and is a deputy district attorney in San Diego.