A Maryknoll priest facing laicisation for refusing to recant over the ordination of women plans to protest outside Washington's Papal Nunciature

This is a sad case, but one that should serve as a warning to those who think they can both represent the Catholic Church and teach error at the same time. It involves Roy Bourgeois, a 72-year-old Maryknoll priest, who was excommunicated latae sententiae in 2008 for having participated in the "ordination" of women in Lexington, Kentucky. Since that time, Bourgeois has been offered several opportunities to recant his belief that a calling to the sacred priesthood is given to women as well as men, but has steadfastly refused to change his mind on the issue.

On 29 March, Roy Bourgeois received a canonical warning from his superiors in the Maryknoll community, giving him one last chance, and fifteen days to recant his belief that women are called to the Catholic priesthood. This means that unless the priest formally recants by 13 April, the superior general of the Maryknoll Fathers will proceed under canon law to seek his dismissal from the missionary society and will then request his laicisation.

From what I have read so far, it seems that far from wanting to accept the Church's teaching on priesthood, Roy Bourgeois is planning to stage a protest outside the Papal Nunciature in Washington this coming Friday, 8 April. It seems that his supporters at the Women's Ordination Conference will be joining him in this act of defiance, during which he will publicly express his support for women's ordination. According to dissident websites, other "church-justice" movements and those wanting a "New Church" will also be at this event. One assumes that most of these protesters will be well into retirement age, and that not many of them will turn up.

Although many US news sites are reporting that Roy Bourgeois might recant, especially if grated an audience with Cardinal William J Levada, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, I have read a statement issued two days ago by Bourgeois, in which he said: "...I see this with such clarity that rather than recant, I'd rather eat at a soup kitchen and live under a bridge, and do that with deep inner peace and a clear conscience."

I certainly hope that Bourgeois doesn't end up becoming homeless as a result of his "conscience", and am sure that nothing so melodramatic would happen to him. Having said that, there are many who would argue that he should have followed his conscience and left the priesthood ages ago - he could have entered the arena of liberal politics as a layman. The priest is there to represent the Church, not his own eccentric ideals - therefore, a man unable to let go of his ego to preach uncomfortable truths shouldn't really have been ordained in the first place. The priesthood is not a right, but God's gift imparted through and for the Church - not for women (or men) who wish to possess it for their own agendas!

It seems, at last, that the days of the post-Conciliar ego-centred priest are coming to an end. It is also very good to see that those men currently offering themselves to the service of the Church in the sacred priesthood are far more willing to sacrifice their selfish inclinations, so as to reflect Christ as he really is. As Catholicism moves towards a greater understanding of what Vatican II really was about, men like Roy Bourgeois will find it very difficult to be fed and clothed at the Church's expense, whilst using the priesthood as a means to attack the very thing they are called to serve!