TORONTO (AP) – Despite the threat of excommunication by the Roman Catholic Church, nine Catholic women were unofficially ordained as priests and deacons Monday aboard a tour boat near Ottawa, Canada.

The women – seven Americans, a Canadian and a German living in the United States – were ordained by Christine Mayr-Lumetzberger of Austria and Gisela Forster of Germany, who were unofficially declared bishops in 2003. The ordinations are not valid within the Catholic Church and seven women who tried it in 2002 were excommunicated by the Vatican.

Four of Monday’s nine were ordained as priests and five as deacons in the hymn-filled ceremony. The smiling women filed into a hall on the boat behind a rugged log cross entwined in wire.

Although forbidden to act as a priest within her faith, Michele Birch-Conery, a former nun, said “it is more than just a symbolic action.”

Birch-Conery, 65, said she won’t be giving up her teaching job for now, but was willing to exercise her priesthood in British Columbia with people who feel more comfortable going to her, like gays and lesbians, for example.

Marie David, of Harwich, Mass., said she also hopes to minister to “disaffected Catholics,” including those who are divorced, as well as gays and lesbians.

She plans to celebrate Mass and performing baptisms and weddings at her bed and breakfast, the Harbor Breeze Inn, which she and her husband convert each winter to a retreat and spirituality center.

“What they are doing is stepping outside of the Church, and I believe it’s an automatic excommunication,” said the Archbishop of Kingston, Rev. Anthony Meagher. “It saddens me. Sacrament is so precious and they are trivializing it,” he said, adding he would be willing to see women get more involved in Church, but not “wearing the colors of priesthood.”

David, 48, who is married to a former priest, said she would be sad to be excommunicated, but insists the ordinations are valid because they are being performed by women bishops who were consecrated by legitimate bishops.

“I respect the people who are in power, but I disagree with them because so many people are excluded,” she told The Boston Globe.

John Kearns, a spokesman for George W. Coleman, the bishop of Fall River whose diocese includes Cape Cod, said the ordination was not valid.

“We believe that we need to follow Christ’s commissioning of men as apostles and continue that with a priesthood that is a male priesthood,” Kearns said.

Regina Nicolosi, a German living in Minnesota, was ordained a deacon. Married with children and grandchildren – although Catholic priests are not allowed marry – she didn’t see a problem in being a woman and becoming a priest.

“I believe it’s valid even if it’s against the law of the Church, because it is an unjust law,” she said. Nicolosi is also vice president of the Women’s Ordination Conference, an organization founded in the United States in 1975.

Although aware of the consequences, she said she did “not fear an excommunication, because I don’t feel excommunicated.”

Meagher deplored the action taken by the women, saying it was not a Church event. “Actually, there are two sides to this story,” he said. “It is not a valid ordination because it is not done in a cathedral by a valid bishop. And second, they had to be males.”

He said women cannot be ordained because the Christ decided so. He acknowledged it was not mentioned in the gospels, but said it was part of the tradition, an explanation the women brushed away.

“How long did the Church take before apologizing and saying the world wasn’t flat?” Birch-Conery said.

The first ordination of Catholic women took place in the summer of 2002 in Austria on the Danube River. Seven women were ordained, including Forster and Mayr-Lumetzberger.

All seven were excommunicated by the Vatican, in a statement by the Offices of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, signed by its then prefect Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, who became Pope Benedict XVI last April. It said the ordination was “a grave offense to the divine constitution of the Church” and an “affront to the dignity of women.”