Boston Diocese Boots 'Women Priests'

Church excommunicates 4 women ordained in unsanctioned ritual
By Peter Fearon,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 21, 2008 9:08 AM CDT
Boston Diocese Boots 'Women Priests'
Rose Marie Dunn Hudson and Patricia Fresen, both members of the activist group Roman Catholic Womenpriests. The group ordained three new women priests Sunday.    (AP Photo/Tom Gannam)

A group campaigning for women to be admitted to the Roman Catholic priesthood held a ceremony in a Protestant church in Boston yesterday in which three women were declared Catholic priests and a fourth a deacon. The Archdiocese of Boston immediately denounced the action and declared that the women had automatically excommunicated themselves by taking part in the unauthorized ordination, reports the Boston Globe.

A spokesman for a conservative lay organization blasted the ordinations as a "sacrilegious parody" of Holy Orders whose "publicity value must be measured against the manifest fraudulence and irredeemable hopelessness of their cause.” Said a female Protestant minister: “Prejudice in liturgical clothing is still prejudice.’’ (More Archdiocese of Boston stories.)

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