Kansas' first woman priest found a different way to be Catholic

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Kansas Reflector Podcast 26 min 1 speaker 6 chapters transcribed 2 days ago

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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?

Anna Kaminsky 0:00

The Catholic Church only allows men to be priests, and that doesn't sit quite right with our podcast guest today, but Tina Thompson, a sixty nine year old Lawrence resident, is a newly ordained member of the Roman Catholic Women Priests. It's an international organization that has tied itself to the Catholic Church, but isn't recognized in return. Tina was ordained in November twenty twenty five and could be the first woman priest in Kansas. You're listening to the Kansas Reflector podcast. My name is Anna Kaminsky, and here is my interview with Tina Thompson. Thank you for being here with me today, Tina. What is the Roman Catholic Women Priests?

Tina Thompson 0:48

Roman Catholic Women Priests is a movement that began in um Two thousand and twenty two It was when seven women were ordained on the Danube River. And um they became known as the Danube Seven. They were they were ordained by men. um who agreed to ordain them and so that's really important in tr in terms of the institutional church because it's called apostolic succession that you're ordained by the proper in the proper order by the proper uh person and so anyway and then after that we had men who ordained women then as bishops so that bishops could move forward and ordain and spread the movement. And so From that initial Danube Seven, it pretty quickly came into the United States and Um, you know, I don't know the exact order of everyone, um, like w you know, which state was first or any of that, but I know now that we have

Tina Thompson 2:00

roughly three hundred women priest internationally across across the whole world And the We have a lot of women priests in the United States, you know, in different communities. We have А вона сейвирс а And, you know, they're just split according to, you know, geography basically. Although I have to chuckle because I always say I'm part of Great Waters and I'm in a landlocked state. But um but anyway w I'm in the Great Waters region and um So there's usually eight to ten states in a region, maybe a few more, a few less. But, you know, it's it's big. Uh there's definitely an emphasis on social justice. Some folks have communities. Uh some folks really are more of um they do other things like People have asked me, Well, what's your ministry going to be?

Tina Thompson 2:57

And I said, You know, the fact that I'm even a Roman Catholic woman priest and I've been ordained is still sort of new to me. And because this whole journey has really evolved almost over four years, I you know, I'm not I'm not going to say, well, this will be my ministry because I'm also uh I love to do art and um so I don't know if art will play a part of of my ministry, but I I want to tell the story. But again, I want to emphasize this really isn't about me. This is about something so much bigger than me. This is about women who want to show the world that we are we are the Roman Catholic Church. We are still the church. But we are different in that we open the tent. We we want everyone to feel like they are welcome to be a part.

Tina Thompson 3:52

And it's not our church, it's the people's church. That's that's who it belongs to. And so if you ever came to a Eucharistic celebration or a liturgy,

What is the Roman Catholic Women Priests movement and how did it begin?

Tina Thompson 4:04

you would see that it's not just the uh we call them the presider, it's not just the priest who does the gospel. It may be a member of the the community that does that. So um it's a very shared experience, which is what it should be, um, and not the sit and get that we're used to as Catholics in the pew, you know.

Anna Kaminsky 4:24

Mm-hmm. How did you first come to this? What was your your personal story of of faith and I guess identity?

Tina Thompson 4:34

Well, you know, it's funny about faith because when you're a cradle Catholic and as you are, Anna, just like me, um It's it sorta gets in your DNA and um You know I just saw how my especially my maternal grandparents lived. And You know, my mother, she she connected us so much to the faith. My dad became a convert to the Catholic Church because he married my mother and he adopted all three of us kids. He had a marriage before and then my mom divorced my biological dad very young.