Father Roy Bourgeois MM, Maryknoll and Mary

Within a few days, Father Roy Bourgeois MM will almost certainly be excommunicated. The 69-year-old Maryknoll priest of 36 years has lead the crusade against the School of the Americas for several decades. In August, he delivered the homily and participated in a so-called “ordination of women.” The Vatican recently directed him to recant the action within 30 days or be excommunicated, in accord with Canon Law. He has now publicly defied the Vatican and accused it of sexism in its ordination policy.

This is a sad turn of events.

I remember looking up to Roy in Maryknoll College Seminary. He was older than most of us: a Vietnam vet and Purple Heart Recipient, he saw the face of God in the orphans in Vietnam and returned to seek Maryknoll priesthood. He is a genuine hero. He is a man of unusual integrity, idealism, conviction, energy and courage.

Along the way, however, he became caught up in ideological passion. He became consumed by an accusation against our military and especially the SOA (School of the Americas.) The radical changes in Latin American and the world after the 80s did not lessen his righteous anger. He has now transferred this same righteous accusation to his Church which has declared (authoritatively and finally through John Paul II) that it CANNOT ordain women.

The excommunication was predictable and perhaps inevitable since it is mandated by canon law. News reports indicate that Roy is shaken up by this. He has given the last 36 years of his life to priesthood; now he will not even be able to receive communion.

Give him credit for the courage of his convictions. He is consistent: if women can be ordained, they should be ordained…and the Church should be resisted in its “sexist” policy. In his publicly released letter to the Vatican, he states: “Conscience is very sacred. Conscience gives us a sense of right and wrong and urges us to do the right thing. Conscience is what compelled Franz Jagerstatter, a humble Austrian farmer, husband and father of four young children, to refuse to join Hitler’s army, which led to his execution. Conscience is what compelled Rosa Parks to say she could no longer sit in the back of the bus.”

It is unfortunate that he casts himself in the role of indignant, accusatory prophet (like the martyr Jagerstatter) rather than as a penitent, a humble sinner like St. Peter at the crowing of the cock, and as an obedient son of the Church. It is unfortunate that he has been obsessed with resentment of the “military industrial complex.” It is unfortunate that he is blinded by accusation against the perceived evils of others and is not free to practice his own examination or inventory.

Predictably, Maryknoll took no disciplinary action. Maryknoll herself has drifted far from the high Mariology that inspired founders and pioneers like Price, Walsh, Ford and the generations that followed. Consider the role of Mary as classically understood: she is our Mother and Queen of the angels and saints and worthy of hyper-veneration. At Pentecost, she was present and essential in her hidden and anonymous manner. She quietly and peacefully enabled the fierce, masculine, apostolic zeal of Peter and the apostles who burst forth from that cenacle with a fire that was to change the world. She was not envious of their apostolic prerogatives but confident in her own pre-eminent role in salvation.

By contrast, we now have Maryknoll Father Roy confirming his misguided woman friends in their unholy envy for ordination. He joins them in their rage against Church authority, tradition, and indeed the gendered, sexual, bipolar structure of human existence and the entire created order.

When I entered Maryknoll College Seminary in 1965, a common practice among us was to say the rosary together in groups of 2, 3 or 4 while walking around the beautiful campus grounds. It was a masculine, fraternal exercise of openness to the Feminine One par excellence. Within about two years, that practice was entirely forgotten as the Cultural Revolution wrecked its havoc in our minds and hearts.

It would be good for us all to get back to that practice. And let us remember Father Roy as well as his Maryknoll brethren, especially is this sad time.