Ordination of a Woman Priest (R. Catholic) -- Three Oaks, MI -- First in Michigan

Lillian Lewis, who spent 25 years as a pastoral associate for Catholic congregations in and around Chicago, said in an Interview to Michigan Live correspondent "My real job now is to give witness and stand up for what I believe in." For decades, Lewis was a loyal Catholic. She went through Catholic schools in Chicago. She earned her bachelor's degree from Mundelein College, founded by the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Her master's in theology is from Marquette University, operated by Jesuits. Lewis spent most of her career as a theologian, overseeing ministries, serving as a spiritual director, even training priests about the liturgy. But because she was a woman, Lewis was limited in the roles she could perform, the titles she could hold, the power she could wield. "There is no positions of authority for women in the Church. Not one," she said. "For many, many years, I watched women hitting their head on the glass ceiling" of Catholicism, Lewis said. What finally put her "over the edge," she said, was the sex-abuse scandal in the Catholic Church, with its revelations that bishops were protecting pedophile priests. She was sickened, she said, by "the lies, the hiding, the duplicity." Lewis was further appalled, she said, at how the sex-abuse scandal led the Catholic hierarchy to "castigate homosexuality, when so many of them are gay themselves." "That did it" in terms of discrediting the moral authority of the Catholic hierarchy, she said. "There's an arrogance that the Church must atone for, and it's in the clericalism." She considered leaving the Catholic Church, but decided, "I'm not leaving Catholicism. There's much I love, especially the inner core, the mystics, the great tradition of wonderful staff. "It's the patriarchy that's the downer," she said. As her disenchantment with the Vatican grew, Lewis said, she sought a new spiritual community, and found one in Roman Catholic Womanpriests, a sect founded in 2002 in Germany by Catholic progressives. The group has ordained about 145 women as priests worldwide. "I felt I needed a community to keep me on the pilgrim's path, and I found that with Roman Catholic Womenpriests," Lewis said. "I didn't anticipate how terrific it would be." She was ordained a deacon in the Womenpriests in 2010. On Saturday, she will be ordained a priest (place changed to her home). The ceremony will be conducted by Joan Houk, a Womenpriests bishop. Among those cheering her on, she said, are her four daughters and three grandchildren. After the ordination, Lewis is planning to form a ministry with her husband, Stephen Shimek, who spent 25 years as a Dominican priest. They are planning to perform baptisms, weddings and are seeking a site for weekly church services. The two are seeking to create a ministry attractive to disenchanted Catholics -- a large group considering that a third of Americans raised Catholic have left the Church, according to recent surveys. To put that into context: The U.S. now has twice as many former Catholics than it has current Southern Baptists, the largest Protestant denomination. "You can't exclude people left and right and then talk about love. That doesn't fly," Lewis said. "The theme of our ministry will be the message of St. Francis: Repair our church. It will be about reparations." ALSO from Harbor Country online news site: 250 people to attend the ordination taking place at First Congregational Church in Three Oaks. The ceremony will be conducted by Bishop Joan Houk, ordained as a womanpriest in 2006. http://www.harborcountry-news.com/articles/2014/05/29/news/doc538623d7e4f0c279340685.txt