The Deacon's Bench
Photo: by John Roca
Um, no you’re not.
Eda Lorello, a longtime church worker, said she was ordained during a service in Wellesley, Mass., on Aug. 10 organized by Roman Catholic Womenpriests, an advocacy group that says it has ordained 120 women to what it calls the priesthood in the United States in the past decade.
The Vatican does not recognize the ordinations as legitimate, and has said that the women automatically “excommunicate” themselves when they take part in such services. Sean Dolan, a spokesman for the Diocese of Rockville Centre, called the effort to make Lorello a priest “absurd.”
“It’s wrong for her to portray herself as a Roman Catholic priest,” he said. “She is not.”
Lorello, who said she did not want her age disclosed, said she was dismissed earlier this summer by the diocese from her volunteer position as a lector at St. Andrew’s Roman Catholic parish in Sag Harbor. The parish’s pastor, after consulting with the diocese, “told me you can’t be a lector anymore because it will confuse the people,” she said.
Dolan confirmed that she had been dismissed and said the pastor, the Rev. Peter Devaraj, was “completely within the canonical guidelines” in removing Lorello as a lector in the parish because she publicly took a position against church teachings.
UPDATE: Elizabeth Scalia takes aim and fires:
I generally don’t pay attention to these “women priests” stories, but this one is happening in my backyard, so to speak, and there are three things that are really annoying me about it: the vanity (so much vanity), the disingenuity, and finally the thoughtlessness that borders on being unkind.
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