Sunday, April 3, 2011

Catholic woman taking defiant step

Adele Jones at 83 enjoys a carefree lifestyle at her independent-living apartment, reading novels in a rocking chair, catching Masses in a chapel down the hallway and scheduling shuttle service for jaunts across San Antonio.

Soon, her life will get a bit hectic.

Today, she'll be ordained a deacon — and months later a priest — in an unsanctioned ceremony that she claims will usher her into the all-male priesthood of the Catholic Church.

Jones is believed to be the first woman in Texas to take this step and is part of a growing movement by reform-minded Catholics seeking to spark the hierarchy into reconsidering its ban on female ordination.

The tipping point for Jones came last July when the Vatican suggested female ordination was an offense comparable to pedophilia and punishable by excommunication.

“I am not angry. I'm saddened,” said Jones, once a fundraiser for Catholic Television of San Antonio. 

“I love my church. I have loved it since I was born. But it's sad to see it self-destruct by what it's doing to women.”

This debate intensified in 2002 when seven women claimed to have been validly ordained aboard a boat on the Danube River as Catholic priests and later were excommunicated.

Today, leaders in this movement report an estimated 120 women worldwide are candidates or already ordained.

The Catholic Church sees the all-male priesthood as an unchangeable, time-honored custom central to preserving its sacraments and reflecting Jesus' selection of male apostles to head the early expansion of the Christian faith.

It also argues that nuns have been leaders with sizable ministries, and notes women may fill certain posts at parishes and other institutions.

But Jones and like-minded advocates contend rank-and-file Catholics are on their side. In a poll last year by the New York Times and CBS, 59 percent of U.S. Catholics favored letting women become priests, with 33 percent opposed.

Bridget Mary Meehan, a bishop in the Fort Myers, Fla.-based Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests, will ordain Jones and three other women as deacons at 3 p.m. today at St. Andrew United Church of Christ in Sarasota.

The ceremony will mirror the official Catholic liturgy, with a couple of exceptions: gender-sensitive names for God and no promises to obey Catholic bishops.

“We know we are disobeying an unjust law that discriminates against women,” Meehan said. 

“Just like the prophets of old and the leaders of the civil rights movement, we are not going to allow the Vatican and the institutional church to continue to discriminate.”

Citing a lack of information on Jones' case, the San Antonio archdiocese declined comment.


Church was her rock

Born and raised in New Orleans, Jones was the only child of a devoutly Catholic mother and Lutheran father.

The Catholic Church was her rock, she said. She said the traditional Latin prayers, elaborate processions and incense-infused ritual in the church before Vatican II enhanced her spiritual experience.

A graduate of Catholic schools, she became a psychiatric nurse at age 20 and married a physician from Texas. She helped him start a practice in Victoria.

Jones raised their two sons and was active in nonprofits and the community. She once was the Victoria school district's only female board member.

Divorcing after 29 years upset her once-stable lifestyle.

In 1979, she relocated to San Antonio as a single, empty nester in search of new direction. She lived in a condo across from Oblate School of Theology, where she took a summer course. It opened up a latent passion.

Eleven years later, she earned a master's in divinity and another in theology from Oblate and a doctorate in ministry at age 70 from a United Methodist seminary in Chicago.

She became a psychotherapist and occasional professor at Oblate known for her Franciscan spirituality and a counseling model based on the expressive movement.

Postgraduate study caused her periodic bouts of anger about gender inequities in the Catholic Church, she said. 

But she figured her lot in life was to live it in reverse: marry young, raise children, then find her true calling.

“I think when I was born, it was there,” she said. “But I didn't see anything after (marriage and children). It didn't develop because it wasn't available.”


‘The moment'

Jones always has been a voracious reader.

She turned a room in her apartment into an office with dozens of books. 

Framed photos of graduation ceremonies and academic certificates line the walls above a desktop computer whose screensaver is a classic portrait of Jesus.

On bookshelves rest the “Wizard of Oz” collection, Bibles, a concordance, commentaries and church histories, including one she pulled out on a recent afternoon about the Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther, the father of this historic split from the Catholic Church, was pictured on its cover.

Jones spoke of Luther's place in history: a Catholic priest who confronted the hierarchy over corrupt practices and posted his complaints — the 95 Theses — on the door of his German parish in 1517. He was excommunicated.

Jones said she expects the same outcome.

Once a priest, she envisions a ministry for Catholics in alternative lifestyles and from other marginalized communities.

She will present herself as a Catholic priest, performing funerals and weddings. She'll baptize converts. 

And she'll consecrate hosts into the actual presence of God — the core Catholic belief she said really is at stake in this battle.

“The consecration of the host — the moment — is at the heart of the church,” she said. “That's a lot of power.”

Jones, who occasionally uses a walker, said she has been exercising on a mat for weeks to prepare for her ordination. 

The focal point of today's ceremony will require her to lie face-down on the floor.

The bishop will pray. 

A choir will sing the Litany of the Saints, one of the oldest, most-cherished Catholic prayers that calls to mind the historic giants of the faith.

Her ministry will keep her busy, she said, but she's ready.

“At 83, I'd much rather sleep in late in the morning, read, write and play,” she said. 

“But when I was baptized, I entered the fullness of the Catholic Church.”

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