ROMAN CATHOLICS Unofficial ordination to be 1st for U.S. women

Three female priests secretly ordained by male bishops will head the ceremony.
SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE
On July 31, a dozen well-educated, experienced Roman Catholic women will pass into uncharted spiritual waters on a boat cruising Pittsburgh's rivers.
On that afternoon, three women in vestments will lay their hands on the heads of the 12 women and anoint their hands with oil during an ordination ceremony that will be the first of its kind in the United States.
Among the participants is Joan Clark Houk, 65, of McCandless, Pa., who with seven other women are answering a call to be priests; the other four are candidates to be deacons.
It will be the fourth such ceremony in the world since 2002, all unrecognized by the Vatican. The women are part of a growing international movement to push for women's ordination.
The Women's Ordination Conference, based in Fairfax, Va., is supporting the Pittsburgh ceremony, which will be held aboard the Gateway Clipper boat Majestic. Pittsburgh was selected because of its central location.
Notifying the diocese
In a three-page letter dated May 9, Houk advised Bishop Donald Wuerl of her plans. She has received no response. Houk also sent a copy of the letter to all 360 priests in the diocese.
"It is a sin for the Church to discriminate against women and to blame God for it," Houk wrote.
The Rev. Ronald Lengwin, spokesman for the Diocese of Pittsburgh, said the church "has determined that the ordination of males is a part of the faith handed down by Christ through his apostles and therefore the church is not free to change it. Ordination to the priesthood can only be conferred on a male."
The participants in the July 31 ceremony, Lengwin added, are ignoring church teaching. "I would say they have freely chosen to separate themselves from the church," he said.
Houk is a cradle Catholic and mother of six. She has served as a pastoral director in two Kentucky parishes, worked on a marriage tribunal, taught catechism and the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults and worked with her husband, John, to prepare engaged couples for marriage.
"The church has to take a stand for women ... that they are the image of God and are to be respected and treated on an equal, human level. This is really why I have to do what I am doing," she said in a recent interview.
The ordinators
Presiding at the ceremony will be Patricia Fresen, Gisela Forster and Ida Raming, who live in Germany and are bishops in Roman Catholic Womenpriests, an international group of Catholics who support women's ordination.
The women claim they are part of the church's valid apostolic succession because Roman Catholic bishops in good standing ordained them secretly. The women refuse to name those bishops to protect them from reprisals by Vatican authorities in Rome.