On Arte, women to attack the Catholic priesthood – Liberation
A lost fight? At least for one or two decades, if not more. Tapping Catholicism, the ordination of women at the priesthood is an old and persistent sea serpent. Theologian and journalist living in Zurich, Switzerland, feeling a call to become a priest since the age of her 15 years, Jacqueline Straub is not discouraged. In recent years, she has written, insistent, many letters to Pope Francis. She has often received polished answers. But who do not leave anything Get out of a possible evolution.
Long black hair that descends on the shoulders, a sweet look ruthlessly scrutinizing the ultra-masculine world of the Vatican, Jacqueline Straub is one of the heroines of the documentary Priests, prohibited vocations From Marie Mandy, a work spread over several years. And a long journey through a transgression international, that which has taken the plunge to a few hundred women around the world (the figure of 300 is most commonly accepted) which have been ordered priests despite the formal prohibition of the Catholic Church. Like Christina Moreira in Spain or Myra Brown in the United States.
« I only knew that God called me and I had trouble believing it, » confides Myra Brown, at the head of the dissident parish Spiritus Christi in Rochester, in New York State. The African-American, very invested in the fight against racial discrimination, traces the intimate dialogues (and no doubt imagined) with his God who seemed to make him a bad joke: « You can’t call me, it’s impossible. Because I am a woman because I am Catholic! » In fact, these fervent Catholics often fight for a long time with themselves before resolving themselves to transgress.
This movement was publicly initiated, in 2002, by ordination, in the middle of the Danube, of six women by two unidentified bishops. Four years later, ordination takes place this time in France, on the Rhône. Excommunications follow (the rejection of these women by the Catholic Church), pronounced in the Vatican. Marie Mandy’s film touches just in the personal and intimate account of these women who have become priests, hitting the Catholic patriarchal citadel.
Determined, Jacqueline Straub will challenge cardinals, heavy goods vehicles within Catholicism, at the very heart of their bastion in Rome. This gives rise to strong, almost unforgettable moments. The German Gerhard Müller, ex-prefect of the doctrine of the faith, successor of the Inquisition, the tackle severely by telling him that it is a « error » to think that she can have the vocation. The Jesuit Michael Czerny, very close to Pope Francis, encourages him strongly to continue journalism because she is, he says, « A wonderful journalist ». Only the Cardinal Archbishop of Luxembourg, Jean-Claude Hollerich, also a Jesuit and also very close to the Pope, suggests developments. To the question of whether there could be women priests, he answers: « I can imagine it. »
