A Journey to a Woman Priest
I like my current pastor, Fr. Tom, very much. I appreciate his style: his earnestness, sincerity, and good humor set the tone for the parish. He gracefully navigates the shoals of small-town life. He impressed me when he spoke up against anti-Catholic bias when our creche was vandalized.
Fr. Tom makes everyone welcome–North Fork natives, retirees, weekenders, immigrants, visiting family members and returnees. He is a good priest and a good man. We could ask for none better.
As much as I appreciate and respect Fr. Tom, and would be happy to have him as my pastor for the rest of my life, I would also miss not being able to experience the Eucharist with a woman priest.
So I decided to seek one out.
I will be attending a home church with a Roman Catholic Womenpriest presiding at Mass later this fall. She was ordained in Boston this summer. I have no idea what kind of emotions I will feel, but I suspect they will include pride, wholeness, a degree of fear, and a feeling of connection with the women of early Christianity. 
I will also have an out-pouring of gratitude. First, to all the women who felt the call to ordination and stuck it out in the Catholic Church, not leaving for MCC, or the Episcopalians, another denomination or ending up as an aching or sour agnostic. For people like Sr. Louise Lears and Maryknoll priest Fr. Roy Bourgeois who put their principles on the line and paid the price; and finally for the founders and leadership of Women’s Ordination Conference, who breathed life into the dearest hope of women. Thank you all.
