For centuries, the Catholic Church rejected the idea of women priests because Catholic thinkers such as Saints Augustine and Thomas Aquinas argued that women were spiritually and biologically inferior to men.

   But according to Maryknoll Father Roy Bourgeois, that argument doesn’t float well today, even by Vatican standards. So the church hierarchy now argues that Christ surrounded himself by male apostles. That’s the way it was then and has to be now. No more questions, please.

   Not so fast, Bourgeois told an audience of Catholic activists at San Diego’s First Unitarian Church on Nov. 4. “That’s simply not true. It was the women who stood by the cross of Jesus when the male apostles were hiding out in fear. And it was Mary Magdalene and other women who first brought the news of the resurrection.”

   Bourgeois said he was brought up never to question the church’s teachings or U.S. foreign policy, and that led him to join the U.S. Navy and serve as an officer in Vietnam.

   After his discharge in San Diego in 1973, he entered a Maryknoll seminary in New York and later served as a missioner in Bolivia for several years. He told his audience at the Unitarian Church that it was with his work among tin miners and slum dwellers outside La Paz that he witnessed the negative effects of U.S. foreign policy. 

   Bourgeois’ activism with opposition groups drew the ire of the U.S.- supported dictator, Gen. Hugo Banzer, and he was forced to return to the U.S.

   The priest’s talk in San Diego, “Struggles for Justice in Latin America and for Women in the Catholic Church,” was sponsored by Call to Action San Diego County , the San Diego Catholic Worker, and St. Mary Magdalene Catholic Community.  

School of the Americas Watch

   Bourgeois, a native of a small Louisiana town, is best known for his opposition to the U.S. – sponsored School of the Americas (SOA), a center that trains Latin American military in the use of torture techniques for insurgents.  Bourgeois’ group, School of the America’s Watch, conducts annual protests at the school’s headquarters in Ft. Benning, Georgia.

   SOA first drew Bourgeois’ attention in the early 1980s with the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero and the rape and murder of four church women in El Salvador. “This shook us,” Bourgeois said. “We went there and found that our country was giving guns and training to those who were doing the killing. When we came back to the U.S. we could not keep quiet.”

   It was time to act, added Bourgeois. He and two friends entered Ft. Benning disguised as military officers and positioned themselves near the barracks where 500 Salvadoran troops were staying. They brought a loudspeaker that pierced the night’s silence with the last sermon of Archbishop Romero who asked the troops to stop the killing and repression — to lay down their weapons.

   The response was immediate. “They threatened to shoot us,” said Bourgeois. “We left the boom box blaring out the archbishop’s message. We wanted to give our message to a judge, but he wouldn’t hear it. We spent a year and a half in jail, but we have no regrets. You can’t silence the truth.”

   Since then thousands of protesters of all ages and backgrounds have gathered each year at the gates of Ft. Benning to protest the SOA.  Hundreds have been arrested, and bills have been sent to Congress to close the school.  Thus far only SOA’s name has been changed to the Defense Institute for Hemispheric Security Cooperation.

   But the school continues, says Bourgeois, with its same instructors, curricula and staff, graduating soldiers in deadly combat and torture techniques to be used against their civilian populations. “Several graduates have participated in massacres and drug trafficking.”

   Despite this, Bourgeois sees a sea change taking place in Latin America. New leaders are emerging such as Evo Morales in Bolivia, he says, are rejecting U.S. domination and showing more compassion for the poor and workers. “He welcomes foreign cooperation, but as partners in development, not as conquistadores.”

Women Catholic Priests

   As a seminarian and priest, Bourgeois said he never questioned his church’s teachings on women’s ordination. “Then I began to ask myself, why not? The priesthood is a gift and it comes from God, not from the Vatican. Who are we to say that our call is authentic, and theirs is not?”

   Things came to a head for Bourgeois when he con-celebrated the 2008 ordination mass for Janice Sevre-Duszinsky in Lexiington, Kentucky. Two months later the Vatican told him he committed a serious crime and had 30 days to recant or face automatic excommunication.

   Bourgeois wrote back that he couldn’t recant. “If the church was to be rooted in Jesus, we need the faith and compassion of women in the priesthood.”  Thus far, he has received no reply to his letter.

   Since the sex abuse scandal erupted in the early 1990s, no priests or bishops have been excommunicated for sexually abusing children or covering up their crimes.  Yet several women have been excommunicated for being ordained priests.

   Bourgeois concluded his talk by urging his audience to follow the advice of Archbishop Oscar Romero who said that in the struggle for justice we can all do something and do it well. As for the ordination of women, Bourgeois added:  “It’s happening before our eyes. I am filled with hope and joy. We have lots of work ahead of us.”

   For a DVD copy of Father Roy Bourgeois’ talk, contact Al O’Brien of Call to Action San Diego at (619) 222-5676.