Woman claims to be Long Island’s first female Catholic priest

Long Island has apparently gotten its first female Catholic priest. At least, according to Newsday, Eda Lorello claims to be. Lorello may claim to be a priest, but she certainly is not one within the Roman Catholic Church.

Lorello, from Sag Harbor, does not want her age disclosed. Oh, and she’s also a grandmother. This is another puzzling detail, for not only are priests supposed to be men, but in the Roman Catholic Church, they’re supposed to be celibate as part of this higher vocation.

Lorello says that she “got tired of waiting,” and thus was ordained on August 10, in Wellsley, Mass., by a group called Womenpriests, which according to them, has ordained 120 women priests in the United States during the past decade.

Regarding the reaction from the Diocese of Rockville Centre, Newsday reports:

The Vatican does not recognize the ordinations as legitimate, and has said that the women automatically “excommunicate” themselves when they take part in such services. Sean Dolan, a spokesman for the Diocese of Rockville Centre, called the effort to make Lorello a priest “absurd.”

“It’s wrong for her to portray herself as a Roman Catholic priest,” he said. “She is not.”

It is absurd and wrong, and she is indeed not a Roman Catholic priest. Also, does  Womenpriests really have the authority to decide who becomes a priest? Many people may feel called to do many things, but that does not mean it is proper for them to do so. It also does not actually make them what they claim to be.

From Newsday:

Lorello and Roman Catholic Womenpriests say that the ordinations of women are valid because they stem from the ordinations of seven other women that were performed by three Roman Catholic bishops in 2002 in Europe. Lorello said she was ordained by a woman “bishop” at last month’s service, during which two other women were also ordained. According to Catholic teaching, priests are ordained by bishops whose authority goes back to St. Peter.

Those ordinations of seven others were not valid either then, and also would result in these women excommunicating themselves. Those bishops should also be held accountable then for confusing the people they are supposed to serve and set on the right path.

Also from the piece:

Priests officially ordained by the Roman Catholic Church typically go through years of training in seminaries and parishes, and then are formally ordained by a bishop. Womenpriests says those it ordains have a master’s degree or a doctorate in divinity, theology, religious studies or the equivalent, and work with a mentor to complete further study and reflection on the sacraments.

I do have to question the kind of proper study and reflection these women seeking to be ordained are receiving then when they are being mentored by those who go against such a clear Church teaching.

Lorello talks a big talk and does so while evoking figures like St. Augustine and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. She does so in a manner which Elizabeth Scalia categorizes as vanity, as Lorello uses the example of such figures to claim her authority to break an unjust law. Now, Lorello is not necessarily a bad woman, but she is a deeply misguided Catholic. And, unfortunately, she seems to be quite set in her ways.

She seems so misguided because she seems to completely misunderstand Church teaching. Lorello fails to understand that just because we want something to change and feel it should be different, does not mean that it will or actually should be:

She said she put her dream on hold for decades as the Church maintained its ban on women priests.

“I waited through five popes, now six, to change that canon law that says only males can be ordained,” she said. “I got tired of waiting.”

If Lorello is truly as good of a Catholic as she believes herself to be, she should have never been just waiting around and expecting canon law to change. She was “waiting” then for something that was never going to happen, as Pope Francis, Pope Benedict and Blessed Pope John Paul II never planned on changing canon law.  And just because Lorello “got tired of waiting” does not mean that she has the authority to go against Church teaching to suit her desires and beliefs, and claim that she is a Roman Catholic priest when her ordination is not and could not be recognized.

Newsday mentions a “Pew Research study in March found that 59 percent of Catholics nationwide favor allowing women to be priests, 35 percent are against it and 6 percent don’t know.” Again, just because 59 percent of Catholics nationwide polled may favor this change, does not mean that the Church should embrace such a change. Although this percentage is a majority of Catholics, these Catholics also fail to understand doctrine of their Church then.

The article also mentions a statement from a representative from the USCCB on the matter:

Sister Mary Ann Walsh, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said the Church has had a “long and constant tradition” of ordaining only men to the priesthood, dating to Jesus’ selection of the 12 apostles.

“Jesus broke a lot of rules in his day, but he didn’t break that one,” Walsh said. She added that “there is no evidence” the Church’s stance on a male-only clergy will change.

That Jesus had 12 male apostles is not a fact that will change, and serves as a basis for Church teaching, which will remain no matter what public opinion may say.

Lorello speaks of being “a faithful daughter of the Church” and says that she “has felt called to the priesthood since she was 7 or 8 and used to stage pretend Roman Catholic Masses in her house, complete with her dolls lined up as “parishioners.”” Lorello perhaps is a good Roman Catholic and a “faithful daughter of the Church” in some ways, but she does miss the mark. If she wishes to remain a true Catholic, then she cannot consider herself a priest. God either meant for her to be a Roman Catholic, or, for her to fulfill her vocation to the priesthood in another denomination which does ordain women.

Helpful links regarding the Church’s teaching about the ordination of priests can be found at the National Catholic Reporter,  EWTN,  and About.com