PHILADELPHIA (PA)
National Catholic Reporter

Tom Roberts | Oct. 16, 2013

Roy Bourgeois, a former Maryknoll priest, has been disinvited from a Philadelphia-area fundraising event for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) because some members of the organization feared he would use the event to advance the cause of women’s ordination.

“It was a Blaine screw-up,” said Barbara Blaine, SNAP’s Chicago-based president, in a phone interview with NCR. “I invited someone without checking with the local membership.”

Bourgeois, who received a letter in 2008 stating he had incurred his own excommunication for his advocacy of women’s ordination, including participation in a women’s ordination ceremony, was supposed to be part of a panel discussion with Blaine and Dominican Fr. Thomas Doyle, a longtime advocate for victims of clergy sexual abuse.

Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, a retired auxiliary of Detroit who openly supports SNAP and attends its annual gatherings,…