c. 1998 Religion News Service

EDGEWATER, N.J. _ Most Sundays you can find Ana Lopo at Holy Rosary Church here, reading the Gospel in Spanish as a lector, offering the communion host to parishioners or worshipping in the pews.

Lopo, a Cuban immigrant and public relations executive who serves part-time as a volunteer Eucharistic minister, is part of a quiet revolution that has swept the Roman Catholic Church since the Second Vatican Council concluded in 1965.

Opening church doors to the contributions of lay people in general, and those of women in particular, Vatican II ushered in a sea of change in the way the church addresses women’s issues and permits women to hold positions of responsibility.

Echoing many other active women in America’s Catholic Church, Lopo said: “We have a voice.”

When asked about the most pressing women’s issue on the agenda of church reformers, one that causes some to angrily criticize the hierarchy as sexist and out of touch, Lopo is at peace.

“I don’t know if there will be women priests in my lifetime,” she said. “I seriously doubt there will. For me, it’s not an issue. I’m not saying the issue isn’t out there, but even among my friends it’s just not an issue.”

Linda Pieczynski, national president of the reform movement Call to Action, said such attitudes are common and understandable.

“Women’s ordination was only really seriously discussed in the past 10 to 20 years, and it takes time for things to seep into the consciousness of the general community,” Pieczynski said. “Strides have certainly been made, which is why you ask the next question in terms of the priesthood. You begin to say, `Wait a minute. We’re doing all the work, and yet you’re saying Jesus didn’t choose us?”’

Perhaps showing signs of alarm at the increasing clamor for women’s ordination, the Vatican has acted several times to cut off debate on the issue in recent years. In 1994, Pope John Paul II issued an apostolic letter rejecting the notion of women priests.

Still, the issue would not die. In June 1997, the Catholic Theological Society of America sent a report to the U.S. Catholic bishops raising “serious doubts regarding the nature of the authority” and the “grounds in tradition” of doctrine banning women priests. The bishops promptly issued a statement supporting the Vatican.

Then, last January, the Vatican’s powerful Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith declared the pope’s teaching on women priests to be infallible, meaning the pronouncement had been made with divine assistance.

Reformers argue this is a clear example of the male hierarchy refusing to share power, but conservatives view it a different way.

“The church isn’t a democracy,” said Leon Suprenant, executive director of Catholics United for the Faith, a lay organization with 13,000 American members. “The push for ordination is seen as an equality issue, but we see the priesthood as a call to a particular assembly. These men are called to be spiritual fathers.

“This is a call to service, not something to be striven for or to be exercised as a power,” Suprenant said. “These people should be careful what they ask for. Priests are asked to lay down their lives for the sheep.”

The church’s argument is simple: Jesus Christ was a man who chose men for his disciples, who in turn chose men to follow them _ for the past 2,000 years.

Suprenant bemoaned the “confusion” created in American churches when a priest such as the Rev. Jim Callan in Rochester, N.Y., permits his associate, Mary Ramerman, to preach the homily and celebrate portions of the Mass normally reserved for men.

Callan, who was fired from his job at Corpus Christi Church by his bishop in August for violating church doctrine, argues that the church needs to update itself to conform to the true teachings of Christ.

On Thursday (Oct. 15), Ramerman announced she had been terminated from her job as associate pastor at Corpus Christi by the interim administrators assigned to the congregation by Bishop Matthew Clark in the wake of Callan’s firing.

“Every act of discrimination _ the putting down of one group by another _ is a sin,” Callan wrote in his book, “Can’t Hold Back the Spring.” “Thus we are engaging in sin by continuing to bar women from equality in the church.”

Behind the sometimes acrimonious debate, a great segment of the church continues to shift silently toward a more liberal position. Polls show the majority of American Catholics would approve of both women and married priests.

And more and more women, many accepting the fact that ordination is something closed to them, are experimenting with other church leadership roles.

Some argue the reasons for women’s advancement are more practical than progressive. Women employees of the church are generally paid less than men, and the increasing number of lay people are picking up the slack left by a steady decline in the number of priests.

Those attributing change to the priest shortage say it’s only a matter of time before women priests are accepted. The number of American priests has fallen steadily from 59,000 in 1970 to 47,563 today.

“No one expected the Berlin Wall to fall, not even months before it happened, but history is moving much more rapidly now,” said leading church liberal Richard P. McBrien, a professor at Notre Dame University. “Granted, women’s ordination has been blocked by the present pope … but it will not be stopped forever.”

Lack of a dramatic shift in Vatican policy regarding the priesthood hasn’t prevented women from having an impact on the church.

A 1992 study by the National Pastoral Life Center in New York determined that roughly 85 percent of the 20,000 lay ministers working at least half-time in American parishes were women. The same year there were 52,277 priests and 10,384 ordained deacons in America.

Six years later there are 12,247 deacons, and reformers say the first major concession by Rome may be to permit female deacons to be ordained.

“My sense in talking to these (lay) people is they are not frustrated priests or wannabe priests,” said Sheila Garcia, assistant director of the Secretariat for Family, Laity, Women and Youth in the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. “These are women who came to church ministry either from another career or after raising a family. They felt a call to serve the church, and they wanted to give back.”

DEA END CHAMBERS

AP-NY-10-16-98 1511EDT