Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests - press release

​Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests Response to Pope Francis’s Failure to Revise Canon Law Equating Women’s Ordination with Clergy Sex Abuse
 
On June 1, 2021 Pope Francis shunned the Spirit’s lead to transform the centuries old patriarchal bias against Catholic women called to priestly ministry.  He failed to revise Canon 1329 which equates women’s ordination with the grave crime of clerical sex abuse. This updated Canon continues to reserve the harshest punishment of excommunication for ordained women serving the people of God as liturgical presiders, pastoral ministers, spiritual counsellors, interfaith chaplains and social justice advocates. This misogynist man-made law is a degrading insult not only to women called to Holy Orders but to faithful Catholics everywhere.
 
The worldwide international Roman Catholic Women Priest Movement is supported by millions of our fellow Catholics who reject the Vatican’s continued discrimination against women from a hierarchical model. Rather, they embrace an inclusive, Christ-centered and Spirit-empowered model of Church as a community of equals where all are welcome to receive Eucharist and other sacraments, including the LGBTIQA, and divorced and remarried population.

Moreover, in recent years, some Catholics in priest-deprived areas have been calling women in their communities to be ordained as well as inviting women priests to serve as sacramental leaders to promote spiritual transformation, restorative justice and social change.
 
The Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests claims our spiritual authority to ordain women as a prophetic act to lead the Church to live Gospel equality and justice now. We joyfully respond to the Spirit’s call to create new paths for spiritual renewal and structural transformation in our Church that affirm women as equal images of the Divine in our world.