With her pearl earrings, spotless house and unfailingly friendly manner, Andrea Johnson doesn't seem - at first glance - to fit the description of a revolutionary. The 61-year-old lives in Annapolis with her husband, a retired Navy captain, and her aging dog. The mother of three grown children, she is retired from a job as a program officer at the Fulbright Program. She's a devout Catholic who doesn't especially relish making waves.
But for decades, Johnson has felt that something was amiss in the Roman Catholic Church - that the exclusion of women from the priesthood was unfair and self-defeating.
Since 1984, she has been involved in the movement to change the church's stance, and last year, she took an even more radical step: She was ordained a Catholic priest in a ceremony that church authorities do not recognize.
Now Johnson, along with Gloria Carpeneto of Catonsville, presides over a monthly Mass for about 40 people in borrowed church space. They have been alternately gathering in Annapolis and Baltimore; in October, they began meeting regularly in Catonsville. In addition, they meet in private homes some weeks, and Carpeneto, who was ordained in July , also holds services at Faith Community of Peace in Baltimore's Waverly neighborhood.
The Vatican decreed in May that women priests such as Johnson and the bishops who ordain them immediately excommunicate themselves, but Johnson determinedly views her ordination - and others organized by the advocacy group Roman Catholic Womenpriests - as valid.
Officially, the women reject the excommunication, arguing that while the ordinations break canon law that prohibits women priests, the group's first members were ordained by bishops in good standing and therefore the subsequent ceremonies have all been legitimate.
"We're saying we're going to break this unjust law and call it into question," Johnson said. "If the church is going to retain its character, we need more ordained people."
The monthly Mass draws a mix of people including Catholics who are divorced and remarried, gays and lesbians and women who feel excluded in some way in traditional parishes.
"I think there are people out there who you might call disaffected or disenfranchised and they're very welcomed," Carpeneto said.
Seeing a woman preside at Eucharist was "a thrilling moment for me," said JoAnn Valaske of Severna Park.
