Easter Sunday Paradox: Father Roy Must Recant, But Pedophile Priests Go Free

[Judi Lynn]

Easter Sunday Paradox: Father Roy Must Recant, But Pedophile Priests Go Free
April 22, 2011 by Angela Bonavoglia

Joining the now-excommunicated women who have stepped forward to be ordained as Roman Catholic priests, the latest victim of the Church’s strong-armed resistance towards women’s equality is internationally beloved Father Roy Bourgeois. The Church hierarchy, in its treatment of Bourgeois, is showing that it considers any advocacy of women’s ordination to be much, much worse than priestly pedophilia.

Father Roy has a long history of social-justice activism. In the 1970s, while working with the poor in Bolivia, he was arrested and forced to leave the country for speaking out against injustice. In the 1980s, he got involved in issues surrounding U.S. policy in El Salvador–this after four churchwoman, two being his dear friends, were raped and killed by Salvadoran soldiers. He became an outspoken critic of U.S. foreign policy in Latin America, establishing the School of the Americas Watch, which advocates for the closing the U.S. School of the Americas (aka School of Assassins). He spent five years in U.S. federal prison for nonviolent protest. He is a former Nobel Peace Prize nominee, and a recipient of a Purple Heart during his pre-priesthood service as a naval officer in Vietnam.

Father Roy is an extremely powerful force in the world, which meant that his unequivocal public support for women’s ordination–and his participation in the ordination of his friend Janice Sevre-Duszynska–greatly disturbed the hierarchy. The Vatican promptly excommunicated him, but as recently as February his order of 44 years, the Maryknolls, had not banished him from their ranks. “He has been excommunicated by Rome,” spokesperson Mike Virgintino told me, “but he remains part of the Maryknoll Society.”

Yet the Maryknolls went over the edge after Bourgeois spoke at a public panel on February 12 at Barnard College’s Athena Film Festival on Women’s Leadership. The panel, which I moderated, followed the screening of Pink Smoke Over the Vatican (in which I appear). Jules Hart’s documentary captures in vivid detail the Roman Catholic Women Priests’ movement and the increasingly hysterical response of the all-male, theoretically celibate hierarchy as it tries to discredit and defeat it.

More:
http://msmagazine.com/blog/blog/2011/04/22/easter-sunday-paradox-father-roy-must-recant-but-pedophile-priests-go-free/

Editorials:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x599753

[roody]

1. knr for Father Roy

[Peace Patriot]

2. Too late to recommend but I'm kicking. Very interesting subject--women in the Church! Thanks! nt