By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS Staff Writer Mary Ann Schoettly, a 66 year old divorcee and mother of three was automatically excommunicated when she was “ordained” a priest in a Jewish synagogue outside Philadelphia on Sunday.  The  “pseudo-ordination” was denounced by Philadelphia’s Cardinal Justin Rigali. According to the Newark Star Ledger, Schoettly  participated in a two-hour ceremony on April 26 in the  a Reconstructionist Jewish synagogue in Philadelphia. Schoettly was “ordained” a  priest while another woman,  Chava Redonnet, of Rochester, N.Y., was made a deacon. Presiding over the event was Bishop Patricia Fresen, another excommunicated woman-priest, who said during her homily that they were "shocking members of the hierarchy who pray for our immortal souls ... That is not our concern. Our concern is for justice." Attendees of the ceremony included  Schoettly's three adult children: Mary Lynn Haug, 40; Patricia Haug, 38; and Daniel Haug, 34.  Her former husband, Andre Haug, from whom she was divorced in 1993, also attended. Schoettly claims she has wanted to become a priest since childhood but because she was prevented from fulfilling her "calling", decided to become a teacher instead. She was active in her parish as a Eucharistic minister and lector and eventually earned a master’s degree in theology from the College of Saint Elizabeth. Although she does not present herself for communion, she regularly attends weekday and Sunday Mass. "Not that I think I've done anything wrong,” she says about refraining from communion, “ but I don't want to put any priest or Eucharistic minister in a position of either having to tell me no or giving me Communion and getting me in trouble," she said. "The one thing I haven't wanted to do throughout this whole process is create trouble for anybody else." Calling Sunday’s “ordination” a “ very fulfilling experience,"  Schoettly became the 47th female priest associated with the international dissident group Roman Catholic Womenpriests. Even though the Vatican considers all women who are “ordained” – and the bishops who “ordain” them  - to be automatically excommunicated, Womenpriests does not recognize the ruling and considers the “ordinations” to be valid.  "They tell us that we excommunicated ourselves. We don't accept that interpretation," Schoettly said. "There's a man-made (church) law, Canon 1024, that says only men can be ordained. And we believe that to be an unjust law. We feel a call to change an unjust law, or, if it won't change, to break it until it is realized that it is an injustice." In a prepared statement, Cardinal Justin Rigali, archbishop of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, said "Such a ceremony  is in violation of the constant teaching of the Church, based on Scripture and Sacred Tradition. Both clearly indicate that Jesus called only men to follow him as Apostles, and the Church has always regarded his choice in this matter as normative for all time." He also noted that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith announced in 2007 that women who present themselves for “ordinations”, and those “who falsely claim” to “ordain” them, are automatically excommunicated. © All Rights Reserved, Living His Life Abundantly/Women of Grace. http://www.womenofgrace.com