Don’t Say a Prayer for St. Michele Birch-Conery
By Phil Little, Ladysmith, BC
Volume 35 Issue 1, 2 & 3 | Posted: April 4, 2021
The Editor:
Rev. Dr Michele Birch-Conery died in Windsor Ontario. Michele was part of our Corpus community on the Island and her theological formation was guided by François Brassard and Connie Kurtenbach. Michele was indeed Dr., not from one of those Kellogg’s theological seminaries in the U.S.A., but a true academic scholar and a university professor.
Michele was ordained according to the R.C. rite and served a small community here on the Island. She was invited to live in southern Ontario and was subsequently ordained as a bishop for the Women’s Priests movement.
Michele, and the other ordained women in Canada, would have been excellent pastors in our parishes but their calling and their abundant gifts were denied and condemned. I believe their ordinations were valid.
Obviously it is not a shortage of priests that is the problem but rather how to pull the wool over the eyes of the leaderless flock and convince them that the male celibate clergy (knowing that celibate is interpreted in a very wide sense) is vital for pastoral ministry.
And the flock wanders off. If it were not for recent immigrants from traditional Catholic countries there would be little demand for Catholic clergy services.
Perhaps I do not share such a concern for our manufactured priest shortage. If the priority was serving the people there would have been huge changes like sometime after Vatican II. The priority is clergy control – not ministry.
And don’t say a prayer to St Michele Birch-Conery. She had little time or patience for the church that denied her equality and gurgitated anathemas at her ordained ministry.
Phil Little,
Ladysmith, BC
By Phil Little, Ladysmith, BC