Georgia Walker wants to become first female priest of Kansas City, even if it means excommunication

Georgia Walker

Woman Priesthood: Kansas City Woman Georgia Walker fo face excommunication from Catholic Church after being ordained as a priest.

Throughout the many decades the Catholic Church has existed, the call to priesthood has remained a position reserved for men, but in recent times, it appears that the tide is about to change, as women are increasingly questioning the continued exclusion of women from Catholic priesthood.

The call is getting incredibly louder and taking new dimensions by the day, so much so that many websites are beginning to spring up across the internet, calling for the validity of the ordination of women as priests in the Catholic Church.

One of such “eCrusades” is championed by Roman Catholic Women Priests, who “have challenged and broken the Church’s Canon Law 1024,” a law it has dubbed “an unjust law that discriminates against women.”

“Despite what some bishops may lead the faithful to believe, our ordinations are valid because we are ordained in apostolic succession within the Roman Catholic Church,” they cry out. Canon Law 1024 of the Roman Catholic Church says that only baptized men may be ordained as priests, but it appears Georgia Walker, a 67-year-old Catholic, is having none of that, as she is presently generating so much buzz within and outside the Catholic community.

Walker, in a no holds barred move, has absolutely thrown caution to the wind as she is going in for ordination on January 3, not minding the fact that she will get excommunicated from the church afterwards. Excommunication is the prescribed reply to any ceremony seeing the ordination of a woman as a Catholic priest, as it appears to be stipulated in the Canon law.

In 2008, the Vatican said any woman attempting to be ordained and anyone attempting to ordain a woman would be automatically excommunicated and could not receive the sacrament, but apparently, Walker will not be the first “female Catholic priest” to face banishment and excommunication, as there are currently about 200 women priests, with more than 150 in the United States alone, that have faced same.

Walker has stated that the Catholic diocese has explicitly warned her that she would be excommunicated if she continued with her plan, but she seems to be undeterred even in the face of the threat, which is a very real one. Walker has stated that the Catholic Church is dying and she feels the need to restore life into it. The first step, she said, is to make sure the church has an equal voice and is using its most untapped resource: women, she told FOX4.

If she finally goes through with her ordination by Bishop Bridget Mary Meehan, who travels the country ordaining women priests and deacons, she will be the first woman priest in all of Kansas City. Even though her Ordination will have her excommunicated, meaning that she will have no official ties or affiliation to the Catholic Church anymore, she remains unfazed, as she believes to have support from some parish members, and plans to find a place to hold her own masses.

Walker also plans to establish a regular visit to prisons in the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, to bring the sacrament to inmates, as a Kansas City publication has stated. The “millennium campaign” for inclusion of women in Catholic Priesthood dates back to 2002, with the ordination of seven women in 2002 on a boat in the Danube River.

Many had hoped that the very flexible Pope Francis will make some dramatic changes to the longstanding rule, but he dashed many hopes, in a mid-air news conference on the plane back to Rome after a Brazil visit, when he simply said “That door is closed,” making it clear that women can’t be priests.

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