Bourgeois threatened with excommunication

In his 39 years as a Catholic priest, Father Roy Bourgeois has been used to speaking his conscience on issues of justice, most notably against repressive regimes in Latin America and the U.S. foreign policy that has supported them.

In recent years, the 72-year-old Bourgeois has turned his attention to the Catholic Church’s ban on women’s ordination, calling it a grave injustice and an affront to God.

Bourgeois, who has been threatened by the Vatican with excommunication and now faces dismissal from his religious order for refusing to recant his views, will speak on sexism in the church this weekend in Milwaukee, at the annual gathering of the Catholic reform group Call to Action.

“This for me is rooted in justice. It is a matter of conscience,” said Bourgeois, who says he was persuaded by the many gifted and spiritual women he’s met in his work as a peace activist.

“We profess that God created women and men of equal worth and dignity,” said Bourgeois, who likens the ban to the racism in the Deep South of his youth, where black Catholics sat in the last pews of his church.

“As priests, we say we are called by God and only God. Who are we to say that our call is authentic, and God’s call of a woman is not?”

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