This article in the National Catholic Reporter informs about an “ordination” of a woman as a bishop in what the reporter calls “Roman Catholic Womenpriests”.

What interests me is not that another faux ordination has occurred. We’re getting used to these events now. Mantilla the Hon has something to say about the awful dress sense of these women here…but that’s another matter.

It is interesting that the reporter uses the term “Roman Catholic Womenpriests” to designate a separate organization. It is right that she should do so, because whether they have intended to or not, the women priests are establishing yet another Christian sect.

They have all the marks of a sect: they have established their own hierarchy, their own clergy, they are developing their own distinctive theology which is driven by feminism, they have their own churches and I expect they use their own version of the liturgy which is non-sexist…

Not only are they excommunicated, but by establishing their own sect they are proving that this is so. This is why the church’s affirmation that what they do excommunicates them is simply recognizing what is, in fact, taking place. Like all good Protestants they end up starting their own church.

In case you have nothing else to do, here is an interesting list of all the Anglican breakaway churches–Anglican Churches with their own bishops, clergy, parishes etc. There are also numerous “Catholic” churches that are independent sects. This website is dedicated to listing them. There are dozens!

Like all the Anglican sects (including the Church of England) the adherents of the sect are very zealous to prove their apostolic succession pedigree. They are so desperate to prove their Catholic credentials, while also being determined to cut themselves off, or remain cut off from the Catholic Church.

This is one of the things I have always found so bewildering about the Anglican sects and the increasing number of sects that claim to be Catholic but are also bogus. They all claim to be Catholic while steadfastly refusing to be Catholic.

The insanity of this doesn’t seem to touch them at all.

This is what it is like: Let us suppose that a person wants to join the United States Marine Corps. However, he doesn’t want to go through the selection process. He sure doesn’t want to go to boot camp. Neither does he want to get his head shaved or shine his boots or make his bed so a quarter bounces off it. He rejects the idea of obeying his commanding officer and refuses to conform to the honor code of the USMC.

But he not only wants to be a Marine. He’s convinced that he’s “called” to be a Marine. He whines and plays the victim because he was turned down for the Marines. So he forms his own marine corp and gets some fellow who used to belong to the Marines but who was given a dishonorable discharge to join him. They both tootle down to the tailors and get some dress blues made up. They make some medals out of old bottle caps, cut their hair short and march about a bit saluting everyone. They get some business cards and stationery printed up which says, “Marine Corps of the United States.”

They turn up at Veteran’s Day events and try to join the color guard. They turn up at funerals and ask if they can do the flag folding ceremony. One of them learns to play the bugle. Sometimes on the weekend they wear camouflage outfits and go camping and make s’mores around the campfire.

They’re fake. Everybody knows they’re fake.

Then some journalist treats them seriously and goes on a whine tasting expedition about how they are victimized and excluded and how brave they are to have responded to the “call” to be Marines.

You get it.