William R. Callahan (priest)
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William Reed Callahan (September 5, 1931 – July 5, 2010) was an American Catholic priest whose activism to change Vatican policy on women's ordination, gay Catholics and social justice led to his expulsion from the Society of Jesus in 1991.[1] He was thereafter forbidden to act as a priest.
Callahan is also known as one of the co-founders of the Quixote Center.
Together with Dolly Pomerleau, he founded the Quixote Center in 1976. During the 1980s, the center raised $100 million towards humanitarian aid to the Sandanista-led government of Nicaragua. During the visit of Pope John Paul II to the United States in 1979, Callahan implored priests "to refuse to help the pope in celebrating Mass" in the hope that "more lay women would then have to be enlisted to assist at the services."[1] After the pope declared that the church's position opposing the ordination of women was not a human rights issue, Callahan wondered that "perhaps this is not a human rights issue because women are not human or they do not have rights".[1] In a 1980 article in The New York Times title "Equal Rights on the Altar of God", Callahan opined that the church's policy against the ordination of women was driven by the desire among the exclusively male clergy for power, which is "sexually satisfying [with] a certain act of love and passion all its own, and priests cherish it as one game they can play", questioning "why should they share their little playing field" with women?[2]
