Introduction
Today we rejoice because the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests is ordaining Kathleen Ruth Ryan as a priest and  Edmund John, Kim Panero, and Phoebe Joan as deacons in Albany, New York. Like the mystics, prophets and rebels in our spiritual tradition, these ordinands celebrate God’s boundless love and all-embracing presence everywhere and in everything. Continue

It's been nearly a week since the much-anticipated release of Pope Francis' encyclical on the environment. Since then, the document's many beautiful and challenging elements have been justifiably lauded in both the religious and secular media.

His call to replace fossil fuels is bold, his understanding of overconsumption and scarcity is prophetic, his compassion for the earth and all of its creatures is stunning. I could go on, but so many other commentators and theologians have done the work of parsing and praising the document so well that I will focus on an issue that remains woefully underdeveloped in the encyclical: overpopulation.

I say "woefully" because few people who are as concerned about ecological destruction as Francis is would deny that overpopulation is one of greatest threats to the earth's survival.  continue

TURIN, ITALY Pope Francis has again publicly indicated he is not considering appointing women to leadership positions in the nearly all-male Vatican bureaucracy, saying to do so would be to promote a "functionalism" of women's roles in the Catholic church.  continue reading

A radical event took place Saturday in a most traditional setting: a tiny, white, classic New England church in Shelburne. Mary Catherine White was ordained and now considers herself a Roman Catholic priest.  

….“Jesus treated women as spiritual equals,” said Bishop Bridget Mary Meehan of the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests (ARCWP), who presided. “It is time for the institutional church to go back to its roots and do the same. continue reading

REMEMBER the AIDS crisis? If you lived in a big American city during its spread, you were witness to constant sorrow and countless examples of gay people treated as second-class citizens.

One was almost certainly this: the steadfast, heartbroken man being shut out of his beloved’s final weeks — not allowed in the hospital room, not welcomed at the grave — because some family members disapproved and no law trumped their bigotry.

This was a recurring story, an infuriating leitmotif, and many gays and our allies remarked and railed that it wouldn’t be happening if committed same-sex relationships got the legal recognition that heterosexual ones did.  continue reading

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Cuyahoga County's probate courts are ready to go should the U.S. Supreme Court legalize same-sex marriage, according to a news release sent Tuesday.

In the release, court officials said the probate courts, which issues marriage license, "will be ready, willing and able to promptly issue such licenses in accordance with the law."  continue reading

ROME — Roman Catholic bishops accused of covering up or failing to prevent the sexual abuse of children by priests will now be subject to judgment and discipline by a new Vatican tribunal, according to a plan approved on Wednesday by Pope Francis.

The decision is a measure that abuse victims have urged for years. The church has judicial procedures for judging priests accused of abuse, but until now bishops accused of negligence or cover-ups were almost never held accountable by the church itself. continue reading

Dear Friends,
Here is a link to the obituary for womanpriest, Alta Jacko, whom I ordained a priest in October 2009.  I leave early in the morning for Chicago to preside at her funeral.  You may read the short obituary and then link on the photo album to see some very nice photos of Alta and her ordinations.  She had been ordained a transitional deacon in Minnesota in 2008 by Bishop Dana Reynolds.
In joy and hope,
+Joan

Orthodox theology teaches us that all human beings are made in the image of God.

As Rev Jody Stowell put it to The Guardian, "God encompasses gender – he is both male and female and beyond male and female. So when we only speak of God in the male form, that’s actually giving us a deficient understanding of who God is.”  continue

A group within the Church of England is calling for God to be referred to as female following the selection of the first female bishops.

The group wants the church to recognize the equal status of women by overhauling official liturgy, which is made up almost exclusively of male language and imagery to describe God.  continue