Father Roy (this atheist's hero) may be excommunicated.

[roody]

Roy Bourgeois threatened with excommunication


By NCR Staff
Published: November 11, 2008

Maryknoll Fr. Roy Bourgeois, founder of SOA Watch, outside a congressional office building in Washington in 2007 (CNS photo/Paul Haring)
Maryknoll Fr. Roy Bourgeois has been threatened with excommunication by the Vatican's Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith for his support of women’s ordination, according to a letter made public today.

The letter was written by Bourgeois and addressed to the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith. It was distributed via e-mail by Bill Quigley, a New Orleans lawyer who represents Bourgeois.

According to Bourgeois’ letter, which is dated Nov. 7, the congregation has given him 30 days to recant his “belief and public statements that support the ordination of women in our Church, or (he) will be excommunicated.”

---snip---

If Bourgeois is excommunicated at the end of 30 days, it would come just before the mass rally and protest against the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Ga., that Bourgeois has organized for 19 years. In recent years, more than 15,000 people, many of them Catholic university students, have joined the three daylong rally and demonstration.

http://ncronline3.org/drupal/?q=node/2545

This wonderful man started the School of the Americas Watch www.soaw.org

[BrklynLiberal]

1. No one who supportss women's rights can be in the Vatican hierarchy

[Ilsa]

2. I can understand an authority requiring a priest to stop endorsing

a move contrary to their teachings, but you can't force someone to recant their beliefs. It's absurd. Who would believe such a recant?

[roody]

3. Father Roy would never do such a thing anyway. He is a wonderful

human being.

[vixengrl]

4. I noticed this myself (me, another atheist! but I went to a Catholic

college and was always an Amnesty International supporter, so I've known of the Maryknoll mission for a while and have a lot of respect, there.)

I've never quite understood the exclusion of women from the priesthood, given the Biblical significance of women in the early Church and the record of saints (says my wee little Catholic-schooling, and two marriages to men raised Catholic, with a lot of masses and discussions, etc.) I've known nuns who were piercingly intelligent and marvels of leadership. Says my politically-conspiratorial mind, that since he had to add his politics to the mix, he's obviously too radical for the church to have around.

That he dedicated himself to the Catholic Church and is facing being cast from it is saddening. On the whole, I think his kind of "apostasy" is the good kind--the kind that forces an organization to look at its moral self. If the Church chooses not to see what he offers, I feel confident he will continue to do good things.

[Ilsa]

5. And of course, other denominations within Christianity have the same rule

regarding women. Southern Baptists, Mormons, etc. do not allow women to have leadership positions within the church, or at least not any where women are "over" men, such as women teaching co-ed Sunday school classes, etc.