{"id":6588,"date":"2006-08-07T14:58:18","date_gmt":"2006-08-07T14:58:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/a-reporter-responds.html"},"modified":"2006-08-07T14:58:18","modified_gmt":"2006-08-07T14:58:18","slug":"a-reporter-responds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/a-reporter-responds.html","title":{"rendered":"A reporter responds"},"content":{"rendered":"

To Fr. Martin Fox’s question about his uncritical use of "Catholic priest…"<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

Q<\/strong> Dear Mr. Colimore: About your story on the woman, claiming to be a Catholic priest, having her first "Mass." I don’t want to beat you up; I assume you’re trying to be fair in this. But I’d ask you to appreciate that the validity of her ordination is akin to someone, showing up in the United States, claiming to be ambassador from Britain — only that’s not what the Foreign Office in London says. For that matter, it is akin to someone claiming to be a Philadelphia Inquirer reporter; only the Philadelphia Inquirer says otherwise. How can someone be a priest in the Catholic Church when the Catholic Church says otherwise? I assume you’re not a Catholic priest — can you say you are, because you and some friends got together, and they ordained you? Again, I think you’re trying to be fair — but a little more clarity would be helpful. <\/p>\n

Fr Martin Fox<\/strong>, Piqua Ohio 8\/07\/06<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
A <\/strong>Eileen DiFranco’s Old Catholic Church of the Beatitudes in Lansdowne, Pa. is not under the auspices of Rome but conducts itself largely as a Catholic Church – using the same sacraments, confession, liturgy, etc. The members of the church consider themselves Catholics though they are not Roman Catholics under Vatican authority. As I said in the story, dioceses across the country – including the Philadelphia Archdiocese – don’t recognize the ordination of women and church law only allows men to be ordained. I don’t think the Roman Catholic Church feels threatened by DiFranco’s group but is undoubtedly disappointed by its stand on the ordination of women. <\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To Fr. Martin Fox’s question about his uncritical use of "Catholic priest…" Q Dear Mr. Colimore: About your story on the woman, claiming to be a Catholic priest, having her first "Mass." I don’t want to beat you up; I assume you’re trying to be fair in this. But I’d ask you to appreciate that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nA reporter responds - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/a-reporter-responds.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A reporter responds - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"To Fr. Martin Fox’s question about his uncritical use of "Catholic priest…" Q Dear Mr. Colimore: About your story on the woman, claiming to be a Catholic priest, having her first "Mass." I don’t want to beat you up; I assume you’re trying to be fair in this. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6588\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}