A GOOD MAN IS HARD TO FIND

From NOLA.com:

The Rev. Roy Bourgeois, the Lutcher native and peace activist excommunicated three years ago for publicly supporting the ordination of women as Catholic priests, now faces expulsion from his religious order and from the priesthood as well, his superiors have told him.

Pathetic, pathetic, pathetic. It's surely the loss of the Roman Catholic Church and the Maryknoll Fathers. I've long had Fr Roy's quote on my sidebar: "Silence is the voice of complicity.".

Bourgeois and Mike Virgintino, a spokesman for the Maryknolls, a missionary order of priests, confirmed that “with much sadness” the order earlier this month served Bourgeois written notice that he must publicly recant his support for women’s ordination by Saturday.

Without his compliance, a second warning will be issued, followed by the Maryknoll’s request to Rome that Bourgeois be dismissed from the order and “laicized,” or defrocked after 38 years as priest, Virgintino said.

Bourgeois said in an interview from his home in Columbus, Ga., he cannot, as a matter of conscience, recant his belief that women are called to the Catholic priesthood.

“They’re asking me to tell a lie,” he said. “To exclude women from the priesthood is a grave injustice to women, to the church, and to God.”

The authorities in the Roman Catholic Church, indeed, do a grave injustice to women to deny their call to serve as priests. Perhaps, we can persuade Fr Roy to serve in the Episcopal Church.

He worked as a Maryknoll missionary in Latin America. Living among impoverished peasants in Bolivia -- where he was kicked out -- and later in Guatemala and El Salvador, he came to feel that American foreign policy’s support for their governments was deeply anti-Christian. His anger coalesced around the School of the Americas, an Army institution at Ft. Benning that Bourgeois and other activists said taught Latin American military officers techniques, including torture, for suppressing the poor.

Defenders of the school, now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, said the school taught military officers the values of democracy.

Bourgeois founded an organization called SOA and for years traveled the country speaking out against the school and building support to have Congress to close it. He has been arrested at least three times and served nearly four years in jail for trespassing on the base during protests. He described his support for women’s ordination as a justice issue, of a piece to the rest of his life’s work, rather than a theological issue. (My emphasis)

Amen! I view my support for equality in the policies on ordaining women and LGTB persons as a matter of justice.

From "About us" at SOA Watch:

SOA Watch is an independent organization that seeks to close the US Army School of the Americas, under whatever name it is called, through vigils and fasts, demonstrations and nonviolent protest, as well as media and legislative work.

On November 16, 1989, six Jesuit priests, their co-worker and her teenage daughter were massacred in El Salvador. A U.S. Congressional Task Force reported that those responsible were trained at the U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA) at Ft. Benning, Georgia.

Recently, I noted the feast day of Óscar Romero and the martyrs of El Salvador.

Fr Roy's home town, Lutcher, Louisiana, is across the Mississippi River, not far from Thibodaux, and he has family there, including his 97 year old father. He is a homeboy whom I have long admired.