Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph

Kansas City Star story on woman who wants to be Catholic priest needs less advocacy, more reporting

The Kansas City Star recently profiled a woman who — according to the newspaper's headline — "intends to be Kansas City's first female Catholic priest."

Only one small problem: The Roman Catholic Church doesn't ordain female priests.

The top of the Star's story:

In a few days Georgia Walker, at age 67, intends to become a priest,
at which point she will be excommunicated from the Roman Catholic
Church.

That doesn’t faze her.

“I don’t accept the legitimacy of that excommunication,” said Walker, who will be the first woman in Kansas City to defy the church and be ordained a priest.

The church in turn will not accept the legitimacy of her ordination because, under canon law, only men can be priests.

“That’s their problem,” Walker said of the church.

That steadfastness is a trait of the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests, a growing movement of people who see the church as too authoritarian and unwilling to be inclusive. But instead of leaving the church, they hope to change it from within.

As faithful readers know, GetReligion advocates the traditional American model of the press.

That model relies on journalists presenting facts — attributed to named sources — in a fair, unbiased manner. That's opposed, of course, to the one-sided, advocacy, European-styled approach to reporting the news.


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