I just published this article on Medium. Read it here.

A local church in Albuquerque learned about my ministry with the LGBTQ+ community through my participation in the Pride Parade. They invited me to reflect on the following questions so that they might share my responses in their Church newsletter. I was touched that they asked, and I found the reflection meaningful. 
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1. What's been the general tone of responses you get when you attend pride events and festivals?
   
   
2. Do you think your presence and support makes more of an impact specifically because of your ties to religion? 
   
   
3. Were there any big learning curves when you started your outreach to the queer community? 
   
   
4. Do you have any particular advice for someone who wants to start reaching out more?
   
   
5. Have your experiences and relationships with the queer community changed your experience and relationship with God? 

1.  What's been the general tone of responses you get when you attend pride events and festivals?

I have been ordained as a Roman Catholic priest for a little over a year and have discovered that a critical piece of my ministry with the LGBTQ+ community is reconciliation. One thing that has continued to surprise me is the impact that a simple, authentic apology can have on someone who has been profoundly wounded by the institutional Church. I find it surprising because the persecution of the LGBTQ+ community has been and continues to be so vicious and cruel that it is hard to believe a simple apology from an individual priest would be meaningful. Yet, time and again, it is. I think this willingness to receive the apology at all speaks in general to the human desire to be seen, and speaks in a special way to the inspiring resilience and heart of the LGBTQ+ community. This community is truly graced as one of the most loving, understanding, and accepting communities I have had the pleasure to experience, and they extend this openness and generosity to all.  

2. Do you think your presence and support makes more of an impact specifically because of your ties to religion? 

Yes. When I put on the Roman collar, I am no longer an individual, but a symbol of the entire Roman Catholic Church. In fact, it is the apology paired with the collar that has the real impact. When I visited a university last fall to give a talk, I met a lovely young graduate student who was raised Catholic. When she came out to her family, they did not accept her. This not only deeply wounded her, but it understandably led her away from the faith. After some time together, I looked into her eyes, called her by name, and apologized for all that she had endured. I explained that the Church was wrong on this issue, that God loved her into being exactly as she is, that she is an expression of God. She quietly cried. I was humbled and moved, taken aback by how these simple words offered some healing. Before we parted ways, she said smiling that she intended to attend Mass when home for Christmas. This interaction captures something that the Church does not seem to understand: when it persecutes people for whatever reason, it not only turns those people away from the Church, it can–and often does–turn them away from God. This is the true tragedy, for God’s greatest desire is to have intimate, dynamic, love relationships with each of us. I do all I can as a Roman Catholic priest to help restore this most central relationship. 

3. Were there any big learning curves when you started your outreach to the queer community? 

While some people desire the apology of the Church, others may want to have space to express their anger. Because in the Roman collar I represent the Church, people sometimes need to use me as a target for the pent-up frustration they feel towards the institution. In other words, it may be freeing, even healing, for someone who has been deeply hurt by the institutional Church to verbally attack or personally insult any particular priest. In these instances, I must submit to the experience and allow it to happen without retaliation, for I am no longer an individual but a stand in for the Church. As a priest it is imperative that in such moments I do not contribute to the emotional and spiritual harm the person has already endured. I enter into this work as a spiritual practice, asking God to help me grow in wisdom and charity. 

 4. Do you have any particular advice for someone who wants to start reaching out more? 

The most important thing for any ministry is to pray–to lay ourselves bare before God over and over with the intent of listening to and receiving what God has to say. Pray in preparation for being with people, and once you experience being with them, bring that experience back to prayer. The point of any priestly ministry is to facilitate an encounter with the living God. It is not us but God who heals, who reconciles, who guides, who liberates. As priests we are simply helping to make people present to what God is always and already trying to give them. The only way we can be God’s partner in this work is through an uncompromising commitment to our own prayer life and to our relationship with God. It must come first, always.  


5. Have your experiences and relationships with the queer community changed your experience and relationship with God? 

One thing that the life of Jesus reveals to us is that we have an incarnational God—that is, it is God’s nature to incarnate, and so God expresses God’s self in all of material creation. The LGBTQ+ community is an ongoing expression of the living God. They continue to teach me about God’s resiliency, God’s creativity, God’s goodness, God’s joy. Of all the many gifts the community offers us, I would say its core gift is that it gives to all the world the experience of the unconditional acceptance of our loving God. Above all, though, the LGBTQ+ community reveals over and over the power of the paschal mystery: though they are crucified at the hands of injustice, they continue to rise and claim their rightful place at the altar of creation. This is the resurrection at work–the unstoppable power of God’s Spirit incarnating through the community to bring all of creation into alignment with God’s vision of justice and love. Through their participation in the life of God, they continue to bolster me in my own faith, for I see how profoundly God works through them and I am reminded one again of God’s ceaseless commitment to the good of the world.      

I went to Mass this past Sunday. In fact, I went to Mass the week before for Christmas as well. Since my ordination in October 2021, I have avoided going to Mass in the institutional Church. You might think it is because I am excommunicated, but that is not the reason. It is important to understand that excommunication does not mean I cannot enter Catholic spaces. I can. What I cannot do is participate: I cannot receive sacraments, volunteer, hold a paid position. I am, as my friend Rev. Shanon likes to say, in time-out: banished to the corner so that I can think about what I have done, feel remorse, and recant. For a person who wants only to participate in the Roman Catholic Church, this is not a fun place to be.

Still, the excommunication is not what has prevented me from going to Mass. What kept me away was the conundrum I faced each time I considered attending. If I go in clerics, I become a distraction to those who have gathered to focus on God. If I attend in plain clothes, it is a betrayal of self at the deepest level of my being. *Sigh.* What’s a girl to do? I prayed and prayed for weeks before ordination, and every day since. Each time I brought it to prayer, it was the third way that emerged: stay home. And so, I did.  

Until recently. The last few weeks a new movement is surfacing in my prayer: return to Mass. Why now, I wonder? Perhaps it is because I deeply miss gong to Mass. I was a daily communicant for many years before getting on the path to ordination. Yup, I went to Mass every. single. day. The Eucharist sustained me in all aspects of my being. My relationship with the Eucharist is so deep that even in its absence it remains at the center of my life. I want to be near it, even if I am denied communion.    
Or maybe it’s because I miss being part of a parish. The love and the prayer. The characters and craziness. The formation and the service. The pure fire for God. A parish is a place electric with the joy and challenge of walking with people who come from different backgrounds, political affiliations, positions on doctrine, yet are all deeply Catholic–tied together by a vibrant faith in God that beats at the heart of community life. I miss this. Though I am denied participation in a parish, I can at least witness it in some way, be near it, be reminded that it is an ongoing reality.  

The truth is I do not like being outside the institutional Church. You might think it's because my gifts are largely wasted since I have little opportunity to minister as a priest. Or because I have to spend rivers of time on things male priests do not as I work for reform. Or because I struggle with a lack of resources, like adequate health and dental care. Yes, these things get me down sometimes, but they are to be expected along such a path. 

What has troubled me over the months is that I find myself too often in spaces that are anti-establishment. Where loving critique is traded for bitterness, even hatred. Where ritual and theology have drifted so far from the current teaching, they are no longer Roman Catholic. I truly understand such responses to the monstrosities that the Church has committed, and I acknowledge they have an important prophetic function that the Church must receive. But for a person who wants only to participate in the Roman Catholic Church, even with all its failures, this is not a fun place to be. It can cause me to feel depressed at times.  

This does not mean I am not overflowing with gratitude. What I am denied in belonging, I am gifted in freedom. Like presiding over the Catholic rite of marriage of two lesbians, or officiating the wedding ceremony of two atheists—two experiences that are simply not possible within the institutional Church. And though I am starving for opportunity, I do get to do some priestly ministry. Ministry like anointing a friend, saying Mass, hearing a confession or two, presiding over adoration. I am acutely aware that this has not been possible for generations of women before me, and for many who walk alongside me right now, women who eagerly wait for the Church to right this terrible wrong. I do get to live out my call, however limited, and I do so with every single one of these women—past and present—in my heart. 

A year into full-time ministry, though, I realize that these gifts are not enough to sustain me. I need the presence of the institutional Church in my life: it is who I am. And God has prepared me to re-engage. Last year, I entered multiple Roman Catholic institutions to argue for women’s ordination. I braved a room of Jesuit priests to attend the wake of a friend. I went to Mass once at a local parish in Albuquerque just to see how it felt. These experiences have formed me to better handle the stress that comes with simply attending Mass: with not knowing how I will be treated when I enter the building; with receiving the confusion or discomfort of the priest who offers a blessing instead of communion; with enduring the long walk back to my pew as everyone straight up stares at me. This kind of thing is hard on me. But what these last two weeks have revealed is that while the experience does not get easier exactly, it does become more familiar, and that familiarity better equips me to navigate institutional spaces. 
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And this is good news. Because when it comes to the work of opening people’s hearts and minds to the truth that women are called to priesthood in the Roman Catholic Church, one of the most compelling images that Catholics can see is the female Roman Catholic priest standing before the male priest being denied communion over and over again. This is what the movement in my prayer is really about. While I may receive some sort of nourishment by going to Mass, the call to return is at its heart the desire of the Holy Spirit to teach. 
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So, with great love and respect, I comply.
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ALBUQUERQUE, NM, UNITED STATES, December 1, 2022 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Father Anne, a noted advocate for women’s ordination, calls Pope Francis to meet with women called to priesthood, following the release of the BBC documentary The Women Fighting to be Priests on December 3. While Pope Francis recently reiterated the doctrine of a male-only priesthood in an interview with America Magazine, Father Anne observes that he has not yet held an audience with women called to priesthood. “If Pope Francis is to honor the integrity of the Synod on Synodality that he himself has launched, then he must set the example and be willing to hear and pray with the stories of women called to be priests,” says Father Anne. “This is what it means to be a listening Church that allows the Holy Spirit to teach.”

When asked why women’s ordination matters, Father Anne explains, “The Roman Catholic Church is one of the most powerful institutions in the world. It is the largest nongovernmental provider of education and healthcare, it is one of the largest landowners, and it has permanent status as an observer state in the United Nations. Whether you are Catholic or not, you are affected by the exclusion of women from priesthood. It is in the interest of the entire world that the Roman Catholic Church model equality with women.”

Father Anne challenges Church doctrine by boldly claiming the symbolic power of the traditional male priesthood. She wears the Roman collar, practices celibacy, uses the Roman Missal for her Masses, and has chosen the title Father. The sole difference between Father Anne and any male priest is that she has a female body. “I unmask the untruth that the male form alone is proper to ordination,” she says.

To raise awareness about this issue, Father Anne recently completed a short tour of colleges, including Villanova University, Loyola Marymount University, and College of Wooster. She hopes to tour extensively next year under #FatherAnneInTheVan.

Father Anne believes the pathway for transformation is present. “In addition to millions of lay people, there are thousands of vowed religious and ordained who believe that women should be ordained as priests, yet they remain silent,” explains Father Anne. “If they come forward with public statements during the synodal process, this would undeniably force the world’s bishops to confront with the troubling lack of integrity that underpins a male-only priesthood.”

​KC Mancebo | Clamorhouse
+1 424-334-1312
[email protected]

On Saturday June 11 I had the opportunity to march in the Albuquerque Pride Parade. I was lucky enough--thanks to the pastor of St. Paul Lutheran (where I hold my Masses)—to jump onboard with the St. Timothy’s Lutheran, a welcoming and inclusive community. We gathered on Friday night to share pizza and decorate the float, only to turn right around early the next morning to get in line and wait. 

I knew it was going to be hot. Blazing. Triple digits. On tarmac. In clerics. But I did not let that deter me: this was too important to miss. I put much prayer into my sign. I wanted to harness the symbolic power of my priesthood in hopes of bringing even a touch of healing to this community that has been--and continues to be--much maligned by the Church. The front of the sign said, “I apologize on behalf of the Roman Catholic Church.” The back proclaimed, “God rejoices in you.”  

After hours of hydrating and socializing with the fabulous St. Tim’s community, the parade finally began to move. Suddenly, I was nervous. I realized I didn’t know how people were going to react. Truthfully, I never know how people are going to react to me—a female priest ordained in violation of Church doctrine. This uncertainty is something I am growing used to expecting. But the feeling I was experiencing at this moment was different: I was—as a priest—intentionally owning the wrongdoing of the Catholic Church’s treatment of the LGBTQ community. I was taking responsibility for the institution and the pain it has caused so many individuals, families, children. I was a little scared. I took a deep breath: whatever happened, I would welcome it, for this was a critical ministry.

People of all ages, backgrounds, genders lined the street. The spirit was pure joy: people were delighting in one another, in the parade, in the sunny summer day. As eyes fell upon my sign, I received all kinds of reactions. Many offered lively cheers. Some positively guffawed, while others were tickled with laughter. A few had genuine tears in their eyes. Many, especially girls and women, took photos. One teenage girl sprang from the crowd to give me a bear hug. I whispered in her ear, “It’s not true. It’s not true. God loves you.” An adorable young lesbian couple yelled out, “We want to get married!” I shouted, “Call me!” A few exclaimed, “About time!” In those moments when I knew had the crowd, I would lock eyes with them and turn the sign over to point to the second message, “God rejoices in you.” They shouted in return, “Yes!”, or touched their hearts and smiled, or exclaimed, “God rejoices in everybody! Everybody!” 

Every response moved me. But the response that touched me most deeply—the response that was most common from the start of the parade to its conclusion—was the heartfelt “Thank you!” It was shouted over and over and over again by people of all genders. This community that has been so intensely marginalized and hurt was abundantly gracious, generous, resilient.   

My experience at the Pride Parade reminded me of what I already knew deep in my bones: most people simply want to be accepted and cherished exactly as they are. When they are hurt, they just want that hurt to be acknowledged, and they want a commitment that things will change for the better—for their children, for their communities, for their people. It is quite simple: admit you are wrong, apologize, and learn. 

Now I am just one priest who made one *tiny* gesture of apology. Imagine—imagine!—the torrent of grace that would descend upon the earth if the Roman Catholic Church truly took responsibility for the hurt it has caused the LGBTQ community. The entire world would be uplifted by this reconciliation, and I venture to say it would give all anti-LGBTQ movements, governments, and organizations pause—perhaps enough for them to re-evaluate their current understanding of human sexuality. 
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After all that New Mexico sun I ended up with a ferocious migraine that knocked me out for the next 16 hours. I decided to enter into the experience as penance. In comparison to the insults, harassment, violence, and even death that the LGBTQ community has endured at the hands of Christianity, the very least I could do was suffer a little migraine. And so I did, giving it up to God as prayer for a world where all God’s people are celebrated as the sacred expressions of God’s Spirit that they are.   

On Ash Wednesday I worshipped at the Episcopal Cathedral. Since I am not welcome in my own tradition, I took the opportunity to revisit the place of my ordination. I hadn’t been back since that day in October, and I was wondering how it would feel to return.  

The space was every bit as beautiful as I remembered, and the service was superb. The full choir was vested and sang with reverence. The Dean wore a cope and gave a thought-provoking homily as she radiated with joy. The Bishop, with crozier in hand, presided.

As beautiful as it was, I felt profoundly sad through the service. It was so very similar to the Roman Catholic tradition—the vestments, the order of the service, the music. Yet, it was like being at a best friend’s house when more than anything I just wanted to be at home. I did my best to be present with the people, to give myself over to the prayer, to allow God to minister to me in my sorrow.

When it came time, I filed up to receive my ashes. I happened to end up on the Bishop’s side of the sanctuary. The Cathedral has a communion rail, so I silently took my place on my knees alongside the others. When the Bishop approached, I could tell he recognized me. I was wearing my clerics.

His eyes crinkled from the smile beneath his mask. His expression put me at ease. I hadn’t fully realized until then that I was a bit nervous. In the days leading up to my ordination I received significant media attention to the chagrin of the institutional Roman Catholic Church. I was concerned that the pressure this created had permanently damaged my relationship with the Cathedral community. His smile said otherwise. Walking back to my pew I wondered if we would meet before the night was over.

As the final hymn began, the choir—followed by the clergy—recessed prayerfully down the center aisle, only to travel back up the side aisles and ring the nave of the Church in song. Exquisite. Once the music concluded, a final prayer was offered and the choir, then the assembly, began to disperse.

I stood at the outer edge of my pew for a few final moments of prayer. Then, at the very instant I turned to leave, the Bishop walked up. In one elegant move, he took off his mitre, fell to his knees, bowed his head, and said, “Bless me, Father.”

My jaw fell open. I was stunned into a complete and total silence. I looked down at his head and saw his little red cap. Is this happening? After several moments, I somehow regained a bit of composure. I placed my hand gently on his head, I closed my eyes, and after a very long pause, I prayed a blessing over the Bishop.

And God smiled.  

The intense reaction from many Roman Catholics to my ordination on October 16th was anything but Christian. I was verbally attacked, insulted, cyberbullied, harassed. “Demon.” “Clown.” “Deranged.” “The worst thing to ever happen was to give women rights.” “Snip off those sin buttons, and correction administered via open hand for the lot of you.” It was painfully obvious that I was not to be considered a human being worthy of basic respect. I sincerely ask all who participated in this behavior: Is this conduct becoming of a Christian? Is this what the Holy Spirit looks like? As far as I am concerned, these individuals might as well be gathered in a circle yelling, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” I genuinely wonder if they were amassed in a crowd if they would stone me to death in the name of Christ.

The bottom line is that this reaction reveals the power that doctrine has to maim the Body of Christ and lead people away from God’s vision of justice. When a doctrine is anti-God it leads to oppression, derision, hatred. Whether the Church condones the vitriol is a red herring: it simply cannot be denied that the teaching of an all-male priesthood instills the idea that women are defective and deserve to be subjugated. This exclusion is a moral outrage that not only goes against everything Jesus taught, it also carries enormous costs both within and beyond the Church—costs that can no longer be ignored. I challenge every Bishop and the Pope himself to PRAY WITH the comments on Facebook and Twitter in response to my ordination and, in the light of the Holy Spirit, ask themselves: is this what God really desires? 

The more successful I am in my public work for Church justice, the more dangerous things will become. I will have to continually discern questions around my safety: whether to hire security for my Masses, whether to live alone, whether to screen my email and social media. This is the product of theologizing sexism in the name of God while practicing an arrogance that assumes the Church already has all the answers to what it means to be human.  

Regardless of this appalling response to my ordination, I will not allow anyone to dismiss my vocation. Roman Catholics can continue to flog me, crown me with thorns, and nail me to the cross, but it will not change my path. I am willing to be publicly humiliated and crucified for all the world to see if this helps God create the world that God desires. Our Creator has already shown us through Jesus that no matter how we resist, human beings ultimately cannot stop the power of the resurrection from flowing into the world. This is God’s initiative, not mine—I am simply being obedient.
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The historical, archeological and scriptural evidence demonstrates that God has been calling women to serve as equal partners in the Church since its inception. The time has come for the Roman Catholic Church to right this age-old wrong and bring its teachings into alignment with the gospel. The more the Church resists, the more damage it does to our credibility as an institution and to our ability to carry out the mission of loving the world. People not only leave the Roman Catholic Church because of this teaching, but they are often turned off of God. And THAT—not my ordination—is the true scandal.  

Father Anne

Dear Paul Baumann,

The article that you wrote for Commonweal in response to the New Yorker article on women called to the Roman Catholic priesthood was remarkably sloppy. Rather than waste my time with the exceedingly boring task of deconstructing an argument that simply boils down to good old-fashioned sexism, I want to address your lack of basic journalistic integrity.  

To start, you claim in regards to us women who are called that “there is something jarring about [our] conviction that the Church exists to ‘meet [our] needs’ and will ‘fall into irrelevance’ if it does not.” Here, you are attributing the words of a parishioner in a female priest’s community to the four of us. Yet, none of us offers any such sentiment about the Church existing to meet our needs. Rather--if you actually read our stories carefully—it is plainly obvious that each of us has been deeply shaped by the Church to serve the Church. So much for your claim that we have “little appreciation” for the Church’s role in forming us.

You go on to characterize us as clamoring for “self-determination.” Once again, the four of us do not speak about our vocation to priesthood in this manner. Quite the opposite: our stories point clearly to the reality that it is God who is determining who we are—not us—and we are simply struggling the best we can to honor God’s desires. Nonetheless, you take Natalia Imperatori-Lee’s comment regarding women’s desire in general “to be seen as human beings with the capacity for self-determination” out of context and use it to reduce our vocations to mere “self-expression.” What you call “self-expression," we call honoring the Holy Spirit within us.

Next, you say that we “repeatedly declare a love and attachment” to “Catholicism’s ‘rituals, its liturgy, and its tradition of service to the poor.’” Yet, again, you extract a phrase Talbot uses to describe the type of Catholics who are drawn to worship in one particular congregation, and weaponize it as a way to dismiss our vocations as some kind of “liberal Western sensibility.” And so what if we love ritual and Catholic Social Teaching? We are Roman Catholic, after all. And while you get to sit on your throne with every male privilege and judge us, we have to draw from the very bedrock of a faith that is nourished by liturgy and the social justice teachings in order to have the grit necessary to walk the excruciating path of a call to ordination.

Finally, at the end of the article, you claim that “some of the women” in this article are “sadly” telling Roman Catholics to basically “forget their common past,” which amounts to telling them to “’get lost, die off, and disappear.” However, not one of us says anything remotely resembling this sentiment. In fact, many of us are educated ministers with seminary degrees from reputable institutions who practice a faith and leadership deeply rooted in the Roman Catholic tradition.   

Frankly, I am not sure how it is possible to read the article by Talbot with any care whatsoever and produce the article you did. If I made errors of this magnitude at my job, I would be fired. What I find most appalling about your piece is that it is plainly evident that you do not trust that we as women are mature, thinking, praying adults who are quite capable of discernment. Thank you for modeling so clearly the manner in which some men feel they are entitled to dismiss women as if we are children. This is precisely the problem, is it not?

In closing, let me wrap it up for you: you messed up, dude, and big time. You owe us an apology. I expect to see it in the next issue of Commonweal.
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Father Anne

​Everyone has an opinion about what I am doing. They love it! They hate it! I should do “x!” I should NOT do “y!” People have thoughts on how I present myself, what I say, what I wear, who I am. I'm a heretic. I'm a hero. I'm sick. I'm strong. I'm being led astray (as if I don't have my own thinking mind and praying heart). I'm on the path of the Holy Spirit. Most recently, a friend and kindred spirit told me that a friend of his read the New Yorker article and in the most kind and sincere way said, “I respect what she is doing, but I cannot help but feel her efforts will be a waste.” Ouch.

In one way, all this energy is thrilling. The sheer fact that people respond so strongly in this or that way means that I am up to something very important. And, as excruciating as this path is, I feel alive. Not to mention, people often times share things that are extremely helpful, and I feel God’s touch through them. But, on the other hand, there is so, so much noise. It’s easy to feel hurt or confused or hesitant or dejected. After all, I am not even ordained yet: I am just a fledgling trying to find my way step by step—slowly discovering who I am as a priest. This formation is not something that can be rushed, but it can be delayed if I get knocked off course.

When I catch myself marveling at all the commentary, I recall a conversation that I had some months ago with an Episcopal priest. She was about my age, give or take, and shared that she had been a priest for 23 years. Twenty-three years! I was taken aback, literally knocked backwards. I was amazed. Her gender was a non-issue: she was able to follow her vocation as a young woman, and she has had a long and fruitful career doing what she loves—what God has called her to do. She was able to say “yes” without one word about it.

With all that swirls around me, I am keenly aware that more than ever I must stay rooted in the Spirit. Like the disciples in this Sunday's gospel, I return from my work of the day to eagerly share in my prayer all that has transpired with Jesus. He listens, sympathizes, teases. Then, he takes me by the hand and leads me to a deserted place. There, the quiet blankets all the noise within me and God’s voice swells up through the silence to teach me about the path, about who I am.

It is my goal that someday, when I am old and gray, I will have the distinct pleasure of watching young women enter the Roman Catholic priesthood without one word about it. As long as that prayer glows in my heart, my efforts will never be wasted.