An opponent, but worth learning from.


Activist heeds her calling to rock the boat

01:00 AM EDT on Saturday, June 17, 2006
BY FRANK LOCKWOOD
Knight Ridder Newspapers


Over the millennia, Christendom has had popes and priests, deacons and disciples, presbyters and prophets.

Now it has a Minister of Irritation, too.

Technically, Janice Sevre-Duszynska is co-chair of the Ministry of Irritation of the Women's Ordination Conference -- a group that supports female priests in the Catholic Church.

It's a title that other WOC activists dreamed up, but Sevre-Duszynska has embraced it.

"That clam has to be tickled and gently nudged and have a little irritant before it turns into a pearl," she said.

Later this month, she'll confront the nation's bishops when they gather in Los Angeles. In July, she is planning to be ordained as a deacon by a group of renegade Catholics in Pittsburgh.

The 56-year-old woman, whose actions have frequently captured headlines, doesn't like to be referred to as a protester. "It's prophetic obedience," she said.

For church leaders, Sevre-Duszynska has been a thorn-in-the-side for years.

She interrupted the ordination of a Lexington, Ky., priest in 1998, trying unsuccessfully to persuade then-Bishop J. Kendrick Williams to ordain her. Two years later in Washington, posing as a journalist, she crashed a meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and demanded that the church's American hierarchy "bring justice for women in the church."

The Hyatt hotel, where the meeting was held, banned her for three years. She was also evicted from the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.

In 2002, Sevre-Duszynska disrupted an ordination service in Atlanta. The fed-up diocese had her arrested and sought an injunction permanently barring her from any diocesan property.

She has also clashed with government officials over war and nuclear weapons. She was arrested for trespassing at Fort Benning, Ga., during a protest in 2001 and spent three months behind bars. Fayette County, Ga., school district officials wanted to fire her, but the dismissal was overturned on appeal.

In August 2005, on the 60th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, she ran afoul of the law again -- this time for trespassing at the Nevada Test Site north of Las Vegas.

But most of her efforts are church-related. Dressed in clergy garb purchased from a Protestant supply catalog, she has lobbied the bishops in Dallas, St. Louis, Denver and Chicago.

Bill Ryan, a spokesman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, declined to comment on Sevre-Duszynska's protests, but he suggested that the woman is wasting her time.

"The church doesn't consider itself free to ordain women to the priesthood because the church doesn't believe that's what Christ intended," Ryan said.

Sevre-Duszynska, a lifelong Catholic, says she felt called to the priesthood when she was a girl growing up in Milwaukee.

"I used to make believe I was a priest, celebrating the Mass, blessing the people and giving the homily," she said. "I knew the altar boy's prayers. I had learned them in Latin."

Other denominations don't consider her gender an impediment to the priesthood, but Sevre-Duszynska says her focus is on changing Rome's policies.

"I'm called by the Holy Spirit to present myself for ordination," she has said.

And she claims to represent more than just the nation's 65 million Catholics.

"I am all of the oppressed women of the Bible. I am Sarah, I am Hannah, I am Elizabeth, I am the woman who touched the hem of Jesus' garment, I am the woman who anointed his head with oil."

Defying the wishes of Rome, a group of Catholic activists in July will ordain Sevre-Duszynska as a deacon -- a post the church reserves for men. The group might ordain her as a priest after she completes additional theological studies, she said.

If the group ordains her as a deacon or a priest, she "is leaving communion with the Roman Catholic Church," Lexington diocesan spokesman Tom Shaughnessy said.

As the deacon ordination approaches, Sevre-Duszynska has paused to wander in the wilderness.

In January, she traveled to Egypt's barren lands and later climbed Mount Sinai atop a camel.

Last week, she flew to Arizona to begin a trek with other activists through the Sonora desert. The goal was to walk 75 miles from Sasabe, Mexico, to Tucson, Ariz., following in the footsteps of undocumented immigrants.

"I'm going to experience it so I'll be able to talk for them and be a voice for them," she said.

If all goes as planned, she'll be lugging a cross through the borderlands, carefully avoiding sunstroke and rattlesnakes.

Sevre-Duszynska says she is obeying her calling.

"To me, to be a priest means to live your life on the edge," she said. "To me, that's where the Holy Spirit is doing her dance."

http://www.projo.com/religion/conten...17.ca20c7.html