Massive fail on my part? January 6, 2012
Posted by Tantumblogo in Admin, Dallas Diocese, disaster, episcopate, foolishness.trackback
I just pulled a post on the new diocesan liturgy director. There may be two Patricia Hughes liturgists who are almost precisely the same age and who were both educated in Chicago. I apologize massively if I have confused them – it appears there may be a woman named Patricia Hughes/Patricia Hughes Baumer who is a major proponent of women’s ordination, but she may be different from the Patricia Hughes who is now the liturgy director in the Diocese. One site had Patricia Hughes Baumer educated at the same locale as the new liturgy director (which I now believe is mistaken), and that, coupled with the similarity in age made me believe that the recently hired liturgy director was the same person. In addition, Patricia Hughes Baumer consistently refers to herself simply as Patricia Hughes. But I finally found a picture of Patricia Hughes Baumer and the photo does not match the photo in the diocesan newspaper. I found some other discrepancies, as well, in the details of educational background.
Mea culpa mea culpa mea maxima culpa, and I will be going to Confession. I pulled the post, for those who receive posts via e-mail, please disregard and accept my sincere apologies.
MORE: I would also like to express my heartfelt relief that I was wrong, because I was really upset. I’d rather make a fool of myself on an issue like this than be right and have to deal with the reality. But the best thing would have been to slow down and make sure . Unfortunately, I can’t fully repair the mistake.
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A Blog for Dallas Area Catholics 
Thank goodness! And thank you for being responsible and pulling it as soon as you found out.
Went to Mass tonight and prayed for this intention.
Home later to see this!
Thank you, amazing God!
You are too kind, and I admire your charity greatly, lilyrose. Many thanks!
One of the *main* reasons I like to visit your blog, Tantam, is how you admit it when you are wrong.
Shows a healthy amount of the virtue of humility on your part, I surmise. 🙂
Well done.
Catechist Kevin
To get an idea of the “real” Patricia Hughes, she used to post a Q&A column on the Louisville Assumption Cathedral Web site:
http://www.cathedraloftheassumption.org/worship/the-doctor-is-in
Most of the historical documents have been deleted, but I was able to extract them from the web archive.
Most of the material is pretty tame compared to the “other” Patricia Hughes, though the page seems to definitely have the perspective of mushy-headed “spirit of vatican 2”-ness.
However there was a fairly troubling entry, which I excerpt here:
Regarding a deaconess, this discussion in Catholicism has two strong scriptural references: I Tim
3:8-13, and Romans 16:1 (in which St. Paul refers to Phoebe as a deacon of the church at Cenchrae).
Theologians have long debated the nature and type of service of the deaconess(es), and the literature
from the patristic era indicates that there was substantial service provided to the church by women in
the role of ministry, diakonos. There are several ways that history describes the role of deaconess:
briefly, the same as that of deacon ( charity, liturgy and proclamation), limited to older women who
served women, girls, and young boys under 12, and also that of a woman who was the wife of a deacon,
and whose life supported the same role that he had undertaken. The restrictions that the Council of
Nicea leveled on the deacon seemed to include both women and men. Today, the ministerial role of
deaconess has been accepted in the Church of Scotland, for example, and also the Anglican Church and
some Methodist denominations. In the Roman Catholic Church, theologians, scripture scholars, and
historians continue to study the question of diaconate for women. The clear and viable ministerial
presence of women in pastoral and liturgical service to the Church is strongly evident, as is the ability of
many women who are able to evangelize through preaching. Ordination of women, though, remains an
unresolved topic for the Roman Catholic Church.
The Church has historically adapted ministry for the time and culture in which it existed. Since
the first Christian woman was ordained, in 1853 (Antoinette Brown for the Congregational Church), it
seems that the classic Scholastic argument (at its core, that only baptized men may receive the
sacrament of Orders) doesn’t seem to hold the attention of many theological, methodological scholars
today. Although consciousness has been significantly raised about the ordination of women, there is no
perfect world of Christian anthropology to open a significant reflection on the symbolism of the
sacraments, chiefly that of Orders.
That last sentence is pretty much indecipherable. However, the statement that the ordination of women (at least to the priesthood) “remains an unresolved topic” is simply incorrect.
Heck, reading that, she sounds like someone who would strongly embrace women being ordained. As you say, she may not be the advocate the “other” Patricia Hughes is, but it seems like she endorses the idea.
And who cares what a congregationalist church or the CoE or whatever does – those heretical churches are in terminal decline, in part because of their jettisoning their Catholic patrimony. And, no, female deacons, to the extent they existed, only served to baptize new female members of the Church, since that baptism was often done in a way that would result in scandal/temptation to men baptizing women (gowns becoming see-thru after full immersion, etc).
Many thanks!
Ugh sorry about the formatting – I was hoping for a “preview” page to check this.
The very last paragraph (starting with “That last sentence”) is mine, not from the Louisville Cathedral web site. I forgot to remove the italics tag (again, was hoping for preview.)