In the Roman Catholic church, only men can become priests. Father Anne is here to change that ...
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00:00Did you know that in the Roman Catholic Church the ordination of a woman to priesthood is
00:05considered a criminal offense as
00:08severe as the sexual abuse of a child by a priest?
00:22We cannot be ordained as priests, which means we cannot serve as bishops. Women's
00:28gifts are kept out of the church because it teaches girls that they're less than human,
00:33teaches boys that they are superior to girls, and it allows men to not have to treat women as
00:41equal partners in ministry or even in life.
00:44There's a lot of reasons why the Catholic Church has limited the priesthood to men, but the
01:04fundamental reason that they
01:06put forward now is that Jesus was male and that he chose twelve men to be his
01:14apostles. Now, it's it's an extremely
01:19fundamentalist reading of Scripture.
01:21There's historical and archaeological evidence proving that women had equal participation in the church for
01:29quite a few of the early centuries. Still, there has been no movement in Rome to welcome women as
01:36equal participants.
01:45A
01:51New Mexico woman is calling for change within the Catholic priesthood.
01:56There was a ceremony for her today, and by church rules, it automatically
02:01excommunicates her and any other Catholic who takes part in it. Pod after pod of people came around and laid hands on me.
02:09Many people
02:12were sobbing. They were sobbing from the experience of being with
02:18Roman Catholic clergy that were women. I
02:22received the punishment of excommunication in a way as a gift because it is a
02:30way that keeps me in communion with the suffering of God.
02:35My social media, I mean, there's just no other way to describe it. I mean, it was just completely destroyed by hate.
02:57All through my young adult years, I really wasn't a practicing Christian. I was a Christian. I was a Christian.
03:03All through my young adult years, I really wasn't a practicing Catholic. I
03:06started to experience a spiritual awakening in my late 20s, early 30s. I was actually managing
03:13an independent band at that time, but I just felt an experience of something
03:19calling me to connect. It's very difficult to explain.
03:23The Jesuits taught me how to understand the specific way that God was communicating with me, and once I started to
03:32understand God's communication, that is when I heard the call to be a priest.
03:53It would be a lot easier
03:56for me if I just chose a different religion like the Episcopalian Church or the Lutheran Church,
04:03but I am Roman Catholic and God is asking me to make this sacrifice to
04:11work for reform of the Roman Catholic Church.
04:23This is the Roman Catholic Women Priests Movement. So women have been
04:28working in this movement for, you know, about 50 years in terms of advocating for the inclusion of women in
04:37the Sacrament of Holy Orders, but it wasn't until
04:412002 that women were actually ordained.
04:52Any kind of teaching that closes down conversation, that is a hallmark of the dark spirit, in my opinion, because you have to allow the
05:12conversation for the spirit to move and to teach us. We have to talk about LGBTQ. We have to talk about
05:19stories. The church, I do believe, will move on some of these issues, but, you know, it's not going to be overnight. I want to see reform in the church. I want to be
05:31welcomed into the institutional church as a priest before I pass away.