Over the millennia, Christendom has had popes and priests, deacons and disciples, presbyters and prophets.
Now it has a Minister of Irritation, too. Technically, Janice Sevre-Duszynska is co-chair of the Ministry of Irritation of the Women’s Ordination Conference — a group that supports female priests in the Catholic Church.
It’s a title that other WOC activists dreamed up, but Sevre-Duszynska has embraced it.
I thought that "Woodstock Theological Seminary" was one of the most apt names, but I think Ministry of Irritation is even a more accurate one. They certainly are irritating like annoying bug bites that won’t quite make you sick but that if would be nice if totally eliminated.
Later this month, she’ll confront the nation’s bishops when they gather in Los Angeles. In July, she is planning to be ordained as a deacon by a group of renegadeCatholics in Pittsburgh.
The 56-year-old woman, whose actions have frequently captured headlines, doesn’t like to be referred to as a protester. “It’s prophetic obedience,” she said.
Now that is just downright funny – "Prophetic obedience." Creative orthodoxy was also pretty funny, but this one gets the prize. I will have to try that one some time. If I am ever pulled over for speeding I will tell the officer that I wasn’t disobeying the law because I knew that one day in the future the speed limit it will be increased. It would be cool though if there was a time-traveling bishop from the future that could come to our time and tell them that sorry 2000 years in the future the Church is still teaching the same thing and women are still not being ordained. I have pondered about this aspect from time to time. Barring the Second Coming of Christ you have to wonder what people a thousand of years or so in the future will make of the Catholic Church which still will be consistently teaching the truth. Hopefully of course they will be coming to deeper theological understandings of those truths, but I am sure it will be irritating to those who have not yet accepted the Church to see the Church as a rock that so-called progress will not have beat down into societal conformity. You know, the gates of Hell and all that.
For church leaders, Sevre-Duszynska has been a thorn-in-the-side for years. She interrupted the ordination of a Lexington, Ky., priest in 1998, trying unsuccessfully to persuade then-Bishop J. Kendrick Williams to ordain her.
Two years later in Washington, posing as a journalist, she crashed a meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and demanded that the church’s American hierarchy “bring justice for women in the church.”
The Hyatt hotel, where the meeting was held, banned her for three years. She was also evicted from the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.
She has also clashed with government officials over war and nuclear weapons. She was arrested for trespassing at Fort Benning, Ga., during a protest in 2001 and spent three months behind bars. Fayette County, Ga., school district officials wanted to fire her, but the dismissal was overturned on appeal.
But most of her efforts are church-related. Dressed in clergy garb purchased from a Protestant supply catalog, she has lobbied the bishops in Dallas, St. Louis, Denver and Chicago.
Bill Ryan, a spokesman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, declined to comment on Sevre-Duszynska’s protests, but he suggested that the woman is wasting her time.
“The church doesn’t consider itself free to ordain women to the priesthood because the church doesn’t believe that’s what Christ intended,” Ryan said.
8 comments
Minister of Irritation…how appropriate.
When will they give it up?
This is one they will never win.
Has any one thought that perhaps this poor soul is simply mentally ill? Interrupting ordinations with a “Oh, Pick Me! Me Next!” is quite over the line of sanity and rational behavior.
Maybe all this “Irritation” needs a good dose of some anti-hallucination drug and some good psychotherapy.
Let’s call them what they are: priestesses.
It really makes them mad.
So when someone asks you what you think of “women’s ordination,” simply reply, “Jesus, said nothing about priestesses.”
As an obedient prophetess*, I predict:
In the year 2525, if man is still alive, he will STILL have Ministers of Irritation making nuisances of themselves!
*This is a good gig if you can get it. You should start off smaller though. I recommend you try your hand at being an animal psychic first (hint: the cat is ALWAYS unhappy). Then advance to mega natural disaster prognosticator (wear a sweater draped over your shoulders and sit on the edge of the Grand Canyon, if you can adopt a British accent, you’ll be even more believable).
“56 year old woman”
So, they chose the youngest to be their leader….
This woman does her job well. But I don’t think the Church allows even men to just walk up and be ordained.
This is what really sticks in my craw as a woman in the church. She certainly doesn’t speak for me, I didn’t ask her to speak for me and I don’t give her permission to speak for me.
That she would interrupt a ceremony as solemn as an ordination begging to be ordained is absurd.
I just want to cry when women like this get into the media because somehow the mainstream press thinks that there are many Catholic women who think this way.
I would bet that she is in the majority in thinking that her tactics are “obedient” by any stretch of the imagination.
Hmmm. Interrupts ordination to draw attention to herself. Misrepresents (aka lies about) herself being a reporter. Is proud of being irritating. Gee, why don’t we just start ordaining 8-year-old hyperactive boys and just call it a day?