First of its kind?

ABC’s Dan Harris for “World News Tonight” in a story about the Episcopal church’s selection of Katherine Jefferts Schori. [Via Newsbusters]

Harris: Starting in the early ’70s, as the women’s movement gained steam, more women began entering the ministry. Presbyterians, Episcopalians, United Methodists and American Baptists now regularly ordain women. But that’s a relatively small percentage of American Christians. Most evangelical denominations, as well as the Catholic Church, steadfastly refuse to ordain women. Nevertheless, in late july, Joan Clark Hauk, a grandmother from Pennsylvania, will be ordained as a Catholic priest, along with seven other women. It will be the first ceremony of its kind in this country, and one the Vatican does not condone.

ABC must be honoring CBS’s Dan Rather’s retirement by immitating him. Catholic League president Bill Donohue responded as follows:

“Some at ABC News are obviously hyperventilating over the election of the first female presiding bishop in the Episcopal Church, and that no doubt led them to package this story with a bogus account about women being ordained as Catholic priests. Joan Clark Houk, and seven other women, will hold an ‘ordination’ ceremony on a boat in Pittsburgh on July 31, but no one save mad feminists will give it any credence. Indeed, this happens every day in the asylum: some actually think they’re the pope.

“ABC News also errs in thinking that this make-believe game has never been played before. In 1981, AP picked up on a story by the National Catholic Reporter which said a woman ‘has been ordained and has been performing the duties of a priest for the past year.’ In 1996, Catholic World Report ran a story on a meeting of the Women’s Ordination Conference (which supports next month’s game) wherein four women dressed as Catholic bishops and then ‘solemnly blessed the audience as they made their way to a stage that was filled with dancing women.’ And just last month, Victoria Rue, wearing a white robe, appeared before a crowd in San Jose and declared, ‘I am a Roman Catholic woman priest.’

“In other words, this madness is old hat. Nonetheless, I am asking David Westin at ABC News for an on-air clarification of this bogus story.”

Katherine Jefferts Schori herself is an ex-Catholic. Though here parents left the Church in 1963 when she was in fifth grade. I had parts of an interview played on the Hugh Hewitt show where she was asked about life after death. If you heard only the answer and not the question, you would have not know what is was about or even that it was Christian in any way. In fact pretty much could be said about this interview with her.