By Mark Davis
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
November 14, 2010
http://www.ajc.com/news/newnan-woman-challenges-catholic-741285.html
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| A public school teacher in Fayetteville, Diane Dougherty of Newnan had previously been a nun and taught in Catholic school classrooms. |
Diane Dougherty lives in a neat, white house that she shares with her cats, Pete and Gypsy Rose. She teaches second grade in Fayetteville. She smiles a lot, her eyes flashing with intellect.
She hardly looks like someone flouting centuries of tradition, challenging the Roman Catholic Church.
Dougherty, 65, wants to be a deacon. But in the Catholic Church, the position of deacon — like that of priest and bishop — is held by men only.
The Newnan resident is in the forefront of a movement that seeks to change all that. In ordination ceremonies in the United States and across the world, nearly 200 Catholic women have declared themselves deacons, priests and bishops. A male priest whose support of ordaining women drew a rebuke from the Vatican calls the issue "unstoppable."
The Vatican remains opposed to the ordination of women, calling it a "grave crime." Church officials say women are highly valued and stress female equality in all areas of life. The example the church follows, officials say, was set by Jesus.
If she declares herself a deacon, Dougherty is nearly guaranteed to be excommunicated — removed from the faith she's embraced since childhood.
Excommunication is not too high a price to pay, Dougherty said. She thinks the Catholic Church is behind the times.
"I want to give the next generation a vision" of the roles women could have in the church, Dougherty said. "Forbidding [positions of authority to women] is sexism, and sexism is evil."
The Archdiocese of Atlanta, overseeing nearly 1 million Catholics, doesn't agree.
Deacon "is a uniquely male role," said the Rev. Theodore Book, the archdiocese's director of the Office For Worship. Jesus' 12 disciples, the original deacons, he noted, were men.
"It's something Jesus Christ gave to the church."
Dougherty politely disagrees. "Jesus," she said, "didn't ordain anyone."
'Will of the Lord'
In the Catholic Church, members of the diaconate — deacons — are ordained ministers. They also are parishioners' advisers, confidants and spiritual guides. The church calls them "servants" to their congregation.
God decreed the roles of men and women in the church, said Tim Staples of Catholic Answers, a California-based nonprofit organization that explains the fundamentals of Catholicism.
"The church does not consider herself qualified to change the will of the Lord," he said. So, the only deacons the church recognizes are men, Staples said.
The church is mistaken, say members of Roman Catholic Womenpriests and more than 25 other groups formed over the years. Founded eight years ago in Europe, Womenpriests believes the early church welcomed females to leadership positions before establishing a male hierarchy. In the United States, about 80 women — married, never wed, divorced, straight, gay — have been ordained. Worldwide, an additional 100 members have taken vows to be deacons, priests and bishops.
The organization's existence underscores the unrest some Catholics feel with the status quo, said Dennis Coday, managing editor of the National Catholic Reporter. The newspaper, an independent source of information on Catholic issues, has been covering the church for more than 40 years. "The number of women coming forward for ordination is growing," said Coday.
Katy Zatsick of Lexington, Ky., ordained as a priest earlier this year, said the group's members want to serve parishioners, not squabble with their male counterparts.
She also believes Dougherty would be an exemplary deacon.
"She is loving, caring, compassionate and wise," said Zatsick, 67. "She's a ball of fire, too."
Called to serve
Dougherty grew up about 50 miles northeast of Cleveland in Painesville, Ohio, the second-oldest in a family of four children. Her earliest memories include walking two blocks to Mass at St. Mary Catholic Church.
As she grew, so did her convictions. By ninth grade, said Dougherty, she'd read the Bible and regularly attended morning Mass. There, immersed in tradition and ceremony, young Diane made up her mind: She would do the Lord's work. "I knew I had a vocation to serve," she said.
After high school, she became a nun and got a degree in education. For nearly 30 years, she taught in Catholic school classrooms.
In 1983, she came to Georgia, where she taught catechisms at St. John Vianney Church in Lithia Springs for one year. Dougherty said she left when a new pastor changed church programs over her opposition.
"I realized there was something wrong with the hierarchy," Dougherty said. "There was an absolute power over us, and I didn't think that was right."
Dougherty left Georgia and went to Pennsylvania. Three years later, she gave up the nun's life, but only after intense prayer. "I felt it was the right thing to do."
She moved back to metro Atlanta, where she'd spent a happy year. She taught at St. Joseph's School in Marietta from 1987 to 2001, when she was laid off in a restructuring. In 2001, Dougherty entered the public school system in Fayette County.
In all the moves and job changes, said Dougherty, one thing has remained constant: her desire to serve.
She wakes at 4 every morning, walking through rooms whose walls are decorated with family photos. She stops in her office, a space filled with books and pictures of churches. One frame contains her certificate of confirmation in the church.
There, she bows her head. Dougherty asks the Almighty for wisdom and patience, for humor and strength. She needs that, she said.
In choosing the diaconate, "I jumped into the middle, the middle of the fire."
No records
The Archdiocese of Atlanta comprises 69 North Georgia counties. It's home to about 900,000 Catholics who worship in 87 parishes and 12 missions, or churches without full-time pastors.
Dougherty is not registered in any of the parishes, said Patricia Chivers, the archdiocese's director of communications.
"As a former employee of the Archdiocese of Atlanta, she would know to register with the church office," Chivers wrote in an e-mail.
In a telephone interview, Chivers was even more emphatic. "We don't know who she is," said Chivers. Church officials, she said, know nothing about her plans for the diaconate.
"She hasn't contacted us."
Dougherty said she routinely worships at St. Mary Magdalene in Sharpsburg or at Our Lady of Lourdes in Atlanta. She's never registered at either parish, she said, "because I travel a lot."
Mixed thoughts
Betsy and Jack Record of Marietta, parishioners at Holy Family Catholic Church, think Dougherty is free to follow her religious beliefs.
But if she doesn't like the way the Catholic Church operates?
"Go somewhere else," said Jack Record, 60, who attended the Marietta church's Friday morning Mass.
His wife, 59, nodded. "Sometimes people think they can pick and choose in religion," she said. "It's not like a fast-food restaurant."
Debbie Kleban of Marietta, leaving Mass, agreed. "I believe in what the church teaches us," the 46-year-old said.
Joanne Banks, another parishioner who attended Mass on Friday, wasn't sure that only men should be deacons. "They [church officials] are very strict in policies and procedures," said Banks, 63, of Marietta. "And I don't know if that reflects God."
The Rev. Roy Bourgeois, whose support of ordaining women has placed him at odds with the Vatican, thinks it's only a matter of time before women take a place in Catholic pulpits.
A priest, Bourgeois attended the ordination of a female priest two years ago in Lexington. He received a letter from the Vatican asking him to recant his support or face excommunication, said Bourgeois. Bourgeois said he has not recanted.
Ordaining women "is like the civil rights movement, the abolition of slavery, the women's rights movement," said Bourgeois, who lives in Columbus. "It's unstoppable."
Bridget Mary Meehan of Falls Church, Va., whom the Womenpriests organization has identified as a bishop, agrees with Bourgeois.
She likened Dougherty's actions to those of Rosa Parks, the African-American seamstress whose refusal to surrender her bus seat to a white passenger in 1955 in Montgomery, Ala., became one of the touchstones of the civil rights movement.
Like Parks, "we know we are disobeying an unjust law," said Meehan, 62, who plans to conduct Dougherty's ordination ceremony. "One must always disobey an unjust law."
Dougherty, meantime, studies. She is working with a female priest in Florida, learning the requirements of the diaconate. One day, Dougherty said, she'd like to be a priest.
Dougherty knows that her decisions will anger some, please others. She can live with that.
"People say, 'Why don't you leave?" said Dougherty. "I say, 'I'm not leaving.'"
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