Archaeological photograph of a mosaic in the Church of St Praxedis in Rome. It shows Mary in blue as the archetype of the female religious leader. She is seated with St. Prudentiana and St. Praxedis who were both leaders of house churches. Episcopa Theodora is depicted on the far left.

Teacher ousted for support of nun
By Dan Horn • dhorn@enquirer.com • September 14, 2009

A volunteer religious education teacher was dismissed this weekend for publicly voicing support for Sister Louise Akers, who has been ordered by Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk to stop teaching because her backing of women priests contradicts Catholic doctrine.

Dr. Carol Egner, a life-long Catholic and gynecologist, got into trouble when she wrote a letter to the Enquirer supporting Akers.

When Egner’s pastor read her letter, he asked her to write another that either renounced her position or made clear that she “yields to the wisdom of the church.”When she refused, she was told she could no longer teach her Old Testament class for sixth-graders at Our Lady of Lourdes parish in Westwood.

“This is frightening,” Egner said Monday. “I think it’s a step backward.”

Her pastor, Rev. David Sunberg, said his decision is not part of a broader crackdown on dissent and he is not following a new, get-tough edict from Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk, who recently ordered Akers to stop teaching in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati because of her public support for the ordination of women.

Spokesman Dan Andriacco also said the archbishop had nothing to do with Egner’s dismissal.“We have an obligation to teach what Christ and His church teaches,” Sunberg said. “If she can’t do that, it wouldn’t be in our interest to have her teach.”

In her letter, Egner said she could find no biblical reference barring women from the priesthood and that allowing women priests could help ease the priest shortage that now afflicts the church. “Some self-reflection on the part of church officials may be beneficial,” she wrote.

She also suggested that the clergy abuse crisis might have been avoided if the church had been more open to the ordination of women.

Egner, who has been a volunteer teacher for two years, said she never discussed her views on women priests in her religion class and she told Sunberg she never would bring it up. Her letter does not identify her as a teacher and does not name her parish.“I feel the punishment is disproportionate,” Egner said. “Priests have abused boys and their punishment was disproportionate the other way. I feel the church really hasn’t taken responsibility and addressed that, and yet I can’t write a letter to the editor.

“I don’t get that.”

The reasons for Egner’s dismissal are similar to those Pilarczyk gave when he told Akers, a teacher for 40 years, that she no longer could teach in archdiocesan schools and institutions. He said the Catechism of the Catholic Church is clear when it states that “the ordination of women is not possible” because Christ chose only male apostles.

Pilarczyk gave Akers an ultimatum after her name appeared on the Web site of the Women’s Ordination Conference, which advocates for the ordination of women.

The archbishop told her to remove her name from the site and publicly renounce her support for women priests. Akers agreed to the first demand but refused the second.

Sunberg said he was disappointed Egner also refused to publicly retract her comments.“It kind of surprised me, and it saddened me, too,” he said. “Carol is a nice person.”

Egner, 53, said the decision stunned her. She described herself as “very Catholic” and as someone who still urges her patients to pray for saintly intervention.

She said she’s now likely to leave Our Lady of Lourdes parish.“This just smacks of, this is the way it is and if you don’t like it there may be repercussions,” Egner said. “Catholics have a very long tradition of various beliefs and the ability to talk about them, and sometimes things change.”

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If this wasn't so pathetic it would be funny. This is not about a theologian writing a book with questionable conclusions. This is about a volunteer teacher who wrote a letter to a newspaper.

It's amazing to me that years of faithful service can be tossed over board for having a positive opinion on the notion of women priests. But then I'm not vested in the mythos of the Catholic priesthood.

The story of Dr. Egner is, at least to me, a much bigger issue than what happened to Sr. Akers. Akers was a vowed religious advocating for a female priesthood. She was a paid employee of the Cincinnati Diocese. Dr. Egner is a volunteer teacher who merely wrote a letter to the editor in support of Sr. Akers. One wonders if it was her comment about pedophile priests that really irked her pastor. Unfortunately Dr. Egner is correct. The Church has treated it's pedophile priests with more compassion than it has treated it's priests who support women's ordination.

The level of fear being demonstrated here borders on the pathological. There's a whole lot more pressing issues facing the Church than this one. There's a whole lot more pressing issues facing the priesthood than this one. I have to wonder if the reason women's ordination is receiving such attention is because it actually does represent a legitimate and logical answer for most of the issues surrounding the priesthood. Unfortunately, when it comes to mythos, logic has no validity.

The arguments against the ordination of women are themselves illogical and unbelievable. In the final analysis the argument boils down to Pope John Paul II said women can't be ordained. JPII has spoken, end of discussion. Maybe that's how JPII's family worked when he was a child. It didn't work that way in my family. It just brought on more debate and discussion, large amounts of eye rolling, and a frustrated and angry insincere compliance. Which is essentially what is being requested of the laity in Cincinnati. An angry and insincere compliance is better than open dissent or questioning. (It maybe better for the Institutional church but it's destructive for individual believers.)

The issue of women priests goes to the heart of the myth vs secular thinking. There are many people for whom Catholicism is primarily a mythos religion. When the external appearance of a sacrament or ritual is changed, it will give them a very unpleasant jolt. They have a view of the priesthood which is similar to how we all have an unexamined understanding of an intact human body. When we are confronted with a body which no longer fits that picture, we experience a jolt to our system which bypasses the higher reasoning centers. We experience this as being fundamentally wrong. It looks wrong, there for it must be wrong. Logic doesn't apply when the mythos is inaccurately presented.

By the way, I am not implying that a Catholicism grounded in the mythos is bad. A lot of my own Catholicism is grounded in aspects of the mythos which I refuse to examine logically. In some of the work I do, belief in that unexamined mythos is what keeps me sane and reconnects me with this reality.

Almost all of the issues which are core to traditional or conservative Catholics are primarily issues which involve the external presentation of some aspect of the Catholic mythos. Since the defense of the mythos frequently does not stand up to modern logical scrutiny, in the end they all boil down to issues of obedience.

John Paul lived his Catholicism in the world of Catholic mythos. Where he could be acutely logical and forward thinking in secular areas, he was not the least bit forward thinking or logical when it came to aspects of the Catholic mythos--especially the priesthood. I suspect this is why he maintained dead silence on the pedophile issue but was so vocal on the women's ordination issue. Both stances protected the mythos of the priesthood and therefor had a sort of internal logic.

The argument about women's ordination is being played out by two distinctly different world views. That could be said about all of the arguments surrounding the priesthood. All the logic and analysis and pointing to historically documented ordained women clergy will have no effect on Catholics whose Catholicism is grounded in the current Catholic mythos. Women can not be 'in persona Christi' because it's fundamentally visually obvious. Women are not men. Jesus was not a woman, end of discussion.

The early historic church did not have the same understanding of the mythos of the priesthood. The early mythos was not based in gender, it was based in service. That's the description of servant leaders which flows all through Paul's letters. Unfortunately we are a long ways removed from the time of Paul. The mythos of the servant leader has been thoroughly replaced by the mythos of the Council of Trent.

I've often wondered if the ordination of women would be better received if it was grounded in it's own mythos. In this fantasy of mine, the Mass would be identical but the Eucharistic Canon would be altered to reflect Mary's participation in the Incarnation and her offering of herself and her son in the mission of Redemption. Without the Incarnation there is no Redemption.

Ultimately Christianity exists because of the choice of Mary to accept her role in bringing forth the human body of Christ. Maybe it's time the Church accepted women are perfectly ordained 'in persona mary' to sacramentally bring forth the Eucharistic human body of Christ. This would also serve to bring some 'complimentary' balance to the entire priesthood, and is probably why my fantasy will stay a fantasy.