Just weeks after Santa Barbara ordained an astonishing 60 deacons, now a splinter group has decided that’s not quite good enough: it’s “ordained” a batch of women as deacons, and one as a priest.

The details are sketchy, which is what makes the whole exercise so bizarre:

Sunday’s ordination, witnessed by more than 100 invited guests, took place at an interfaith center in Santa Barbara that reporters agreed not to name in exchange for an invitation to attend. (Reporters also agreed not to print the names or orders of the nuns in attendance.) The women ordained Sunday join 18 others in North America who belong to an international organization called Roman Catholic Women Priests, which counts among its number approximately 50 female priests and deacons worldwide, including a few whose identities remain undisclosed in an effort to protect their jobs within the church. Also secret are the identities of the male bishops who ordained Bishop Fresen. Film and documentary evidence of that ceremony is being kept by a notary public, not to be released until the deaths of the male bishops.

At least two additional Santa Barbara women are studying to be ordained, perhaps as early as next year. Besides their gender deviating from the Catholic priest norm, neither of the two deacons ordained Sunday?—?who are scheduled for re-ordination as priests on July 28?—?is celibate. Norma Coon, of San Diego, has been married for 40 years. Toni Tortorilla, of Portland, lives with her lesbian partner. Cordero, a newly anointed priest who lives in San Luis Obispo, is a former nun who has been married for 30 years to a former Jesuit priest.

The ceremony, which took place on the feast day of Mary Magdalene, also differed from the standard Catholic ordination in the names the presiding clergy used for God, who is ordinarily referred to as “the Father.” The female priests instead referred to “Mother and Father” and to “God/de.” (The latter is pronounced like “God,” with the silent, extra letters hinting at a goddess that those in the ceremony declined to refer to explicitly.) Jesus Christ retained his masculine identity, however.

Well, that’s a relief.

But really: I can’t help but think this whole thing is not only patently wrong, but patently ridiculous. These poor women have no validity, no credibility, and no clerical authority; on top of all that, they are ministering under a veil of secrecy that would rival the KGB — or, perhaps, the recipe for Big Mac’s secret sauce.

Whatever else may have happened at that secret interfaith center, it wasn’t a Catholic ordination.

Photo: by Paul Wellman, the Santa Barbara Independent