Lead story
Roman Catholic Women Priest Bishop Marie Visits Victoria
Volume 30 Issue 1, 2 & 3 | Posted: April 5, 2016
On Tuesday January 19, Marie Bouclin flew into Victoria for what amounted to a week long visit. As Roman Catholic Women Priest (RCWP) Bishop for Canada, she had been invited by a group of progressive Catholics to discuss the possibility of resurrecting the remnant of the RCWP community on Vancouver Island.
At one point in the past decade Vancouver Island boasted four ordained RCWP priests, clearly the most in any one region in Canada. Michele Birch-Conery of Parksville was Canada’s first ordained woman priest in a ceremony on the Saint Lawrence River in 2005. She was soon joined on the Island by Kim Sylvester of Duncan, Rose Mewhort of Mayne Island and Jim Lauder, a married man in Victoria, ordained by Bishop Patricia Fresen at St. Aiden’s United Church, Gordon Head in 2008.
On Tuesday January 19, Marie Bouclin flew into Victoria for what amounted to a week long visit. As Roman Catholic Women Priest (RCWP) Bishop for Canada, she had been invited by a group of progressive Catholics to discuss the possibility of resurrecting the remnant of the RCWP community on Vancouver Island.
At one point in the past decade Vancouver Island boasted four ordained RCWP priests, clearly the most in any one region in Canada. Michele Birch-Conery of Parksville was Canada’s first ordained woman priest in a ceremony on the Saint Lawrence River in 2005. She was soon joined on the Island by Kim Sylvester of Duncan, Rose Mewhort of Mayne Island and Jim Lauder, a married man in Victoria, ordained by Bishop Patricia Fresen at St. Aiden’s United Church, Gordon Head in 2008.
Rose and Kim’s ordinations took place at Centennial United Church in 2010. Father Roy Bourgeois, a Maryknoll missionary priest for forty years who was kicked out of his order for endorsing women’s ordination, had attended their ordination as deacons the year before.
ST. IRIS HISTORY
For five years an RCWP community, St. Iris, persisted in Victoria after a few years based on Mayne Island during what became known as its ‘catacomb years’. During this time, two streams were evolving within the Roman Catholic Women Priests movement, RCWP which is comprised of regional groups based on geographical location and the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests (ARCWP) which is more of an international organization.
In 2013, Jim Lauder and Michele Birch-Conery moved to ARCWP while others remained as part of RCWP Canada which elected Marie Bouclin as Canadian Bishop five years ago. However, the usual difficulties of the long haul took its toll and last fall Jim Lauder and his wife Janine decided upon new directions in their lives and withdrew their services as pastoral leaders of St. Iris.
The community had been holding monthly inclusive service at McCall’s Funeral home reception area, which had proven elegant quarters for such a modest endeavour.
Lauder has been a celebrant for funeral services in Victoria for more than a decade so was able to fix the arrangement at McCall’s after a number of early months in Victoria in grottier quarters. At one point early in the process, he had admitted that ordination fitted well into his career plans which eventually took precedence over the long-term difficulties of community development of a faith community.
Many of those who attended St. Iris did so on the basis of commitment to the principle of equality for women within the Catholic Church rather than any great belief in the style of leadership that was being demonstrated. Serious discrepancies occurred such as the fact that little consultation on major decisions was being held, such as the joining of ARCWP and the rejection of RCWP-Canada. In addition there was a discouragement of participation in planning the liturgies or celebrations.
An arbitrary attitude toward issue resolution was increasingly apparent. The difficulty of clericalism was emerging, clearly incompatible with the vision, mission and values of the RCWP movement, one rooted more in personality type rather than any overt ideology. As a result an odious obduracy toward properly rectifying these issues and problems persisted.
All this seemed unnecessary and certainly ran contrary to RCWP’s principles of more egalitarian structure. As the clericalism mounted, more and more dissent was being harboured. An irony was that many of those who attended St. Iris were more theologically literate and and seasoned in their efforts to promote equality in the church.
After decades of waiting for Rome to show any insightful leadership, these dedicated Catholics were forced into trying this new feminist model of ecclesiology. The situation was building to a crisis when the Lauders announced their decision to abandon the project that St. Iris had become. They decided to keep the name St. Iris for some future use. The choice of the name St. Iris was another example of an arbitrary unilateral decision.
The momentum was in the direction of eventual dissolution anyway. There seemed to be little interest or capacity to change the root causes of this – the clericalism, the discouragement of real community participation in any planning, and the attitude of denial about what was really wrong.
On any number of occasions the leadership was approached in a relaxed and casual manner but the critiques were always summarily dismissed without any obvious consideration or trial. The numbers were starting to drift downwards.
Whereas the community in Calgary, St. Brigid’s, was growing into the hundreds of contacts with regular attendance of forty to sixty for biweekly services, St. Iris was down at times to half a dozen stalwarts which eventually prompted the change of direction for the Lauders.
Marie Bouclin was invited to visit in the wake of this collapse by those who were shaken by the closure and tone of the dismissal, in the hope that something could be saved before too much time passed and the window of opportunity was lost. She had participated in an earlier major St. Iris celebration shortly before Jim Lauder had decided to forsake RCWP Canada for ARCWP.
THE WEEK’S ACTIVITIES
Bishop Marie’s west coast visit was structured along the lines of spending one-on-one time with anyone who wished to consult with her about the past situation and future community-building which could include discussion of discerning possible priesthood candidates. Marie now sees her main task at this stage of things as helping communities find suitable leaders, one who can build up basic RCWP communities throughout Canada, and then helping these leaders get ordained.
Currently there are communities in Vancouver, Edmonton and Calgary as well as Mayne Island and the remnant in Victoria. After leaving Victoria she went to spend time with the community in Vancouver, Our Lady of Guadeloupe, where the current priest leader Vikki Marie is ill. The RCWP community in Vancouver sprang out of the Catholic Worker community in the east end of Vancouver.
Principally her visit consisted of collective consultations which included a supper gathering with half a dozen former St. Iris members, a public information session to those curious about the roots and direction of the movement. Interestingly the majority of those attending were males.
A principal public presentation was to thirty or forty interested participants at The Epiphany Explorations Conference, The United Church of Canada annual progressive spirituality conference which Marie attended while in the city.
Her talk was an informal noon-hour gathering with extensive question and answer as many of those in attendance struggled to make sense of the idea of the actual existence of validly ordained Catholic women priests when the Vatican has banned even the discussion of the notion.
Her answers had a ring of authenticity, rooted in her lived experience as they were. Her speaking style reflects her grounded, down to earth common sense personality, one who has arrived at her situation in life as a careful step by step process of inevitable development.
MARIE’S STORY AND JOURNEY
How does a conventional Northern Ontario Franco-Ontarian Roman Catholic woman in her senior years, one who once served as the executive secretary to a moderate Roman Catholic Bishop in her home diocese end up leading a radical feminist movement within the Roman Catholic Church worldwide?
The real strength of Marie’s down to earth and sensible presentation of her story is her convincing depiction of the logical and inevitable steps her journey has taken. She is married to a patient, and tolerant and supportive dentist, she says, now retired in Sudbury. Albert has accompanied her every step of the way along with their three successful children, who have been supportive even though they have little use for the Catholic Church of their formative years.
She has long admired the work of Bishop Remi De Roo, particularly the synod he developed here between 1987-92. She studied this process closely in developing the synodal process for the Diocese of Sault Ste Marie when she was assigned that task by Bishop Marcel Gervais as his executive assistant. She felt graced, she said, to have a luncheon meeting in Nanaimo with Bishop De Roo during her Island stay.
Karen Woods who served as her informal chauffeur around Victoria found her quite delightful she said. They enjoyed each other’s sense of humour and general open attitude toward life, and Karen found Marie a careful and helpful listener. Karen and other former attendees at St. Iris have accepted the ongoing responsibility of exploring the possibility of establishing an RCWP sensitive intentional prayer community in Victoria.
Marie Bouclin is an animator of intentional communities made up of alienated Catholics but also spiritual seekers looking beyond the framework of the Roman Catholic church. She has been driven to the margins to live out her ministry, in the same manner as other great visionary leaders in the Catholic church have had to do in the past.
This was often necessary before their work and mission and program was inevitably integrated permanently into the heart of the Catholic tradition.
A fresh start is being attempted here in Victoria.