So Long, Farewell, Auf Weidersehen, Goodbye
And don't let the door hit your ass on the way out

An interesting story from The California Catholic Daily

A Really Cool Church
“It is plausible that the all-male priesthood has caused some Catholic women to convert to the Episcopal Church to be ordained?”. “I didn’t realize how much pain I had from growing up in a church that did not permit women as pastors,” said Melanie Donohoe. [She] was talking about growing up Catholic.

“I was not one of those girls who wanted to be a nun,” said Donohoe. “I always loved the spiritual, the mystical, and the sacramental, but I did not sit around dreaming of being a priest.” But, today, Donohoe is a priest -- or what some would call a priest. She is an Episcopal minister and associate rector of Transfiguration Episcopal Church in San Mateo. “I'm really happy being a priest,” she said, “and I love my parish.”

Some have said a disproportionate number of Protestant female clergy are made up of former Catholics. Do they leave because the Catholic Church forbids women’s ordination? Examining this question, Paul Perl, writing in the Dec. 22, 2005 edition of the journal Sociology of Religion, said, based on the statistics (and the latest were from 1994), it is impossible to judge why, but a significantly larger percentage of female than male converts from the Catholic Church entered the Protestant ministry -- 5.1% as opposed to 2.5 percent.

But the percentages for the Episcopal Church are significantly higher. From 1980 to 1994, 13.7% percent of female clergy were former Catholics as opposed to 9% of male clergy. Over the years, the percentage of formerly Catholic Episcopal priestesses increased: 1980-84, it was 10%; 1985-1989, 13%; and 1990-94, 17%. This, coupled with the fact that the percentage of formerly Catholic Episcopal female converts did not grow in like proportions, led Perl to conclude that “it is plausible that the all-male priesthood has caused some Catholic women to convert to the Episcopal Church to be ordained.”

Though Donohoe said of the Episcopal Church, “we’re a really cool church,” she admitted, “We’re not perfect.” For instance, “there’s still a couple of dioceses that won’t ordain women,” one of those being her neighbor, the Diocese of San Joaquin.

Allow me to reinterate... a woman can no more be ordained, as a tree be given Last Rites, or a goldfish be Baptized (or me being a nun). Obviously, these gals were never taught (or have purposfully rejected) some of the basics of both Sacred Sripture and Tradition.