Priesthood and gender

July 12, 2018
Richard Morasci
San Francisco
 
I have to agree with Laurie Joyce on her stance concerning women priests (Letters, June 21). When the church calls for a special devotion for priesthood vocations, I have to shake my head in disbelief. When the church needs priests, how can it refuse to recognize the one group of Catholics that would make good priests. I have heard all the excuses the church uses to defend the all-male priesthood. There is the reason that Christ appointed only men as apostles as Laurie points out. And yet at Christ’s crucifixion, it was the women who outnumbered the men beneath the cross to witness the death of Christ. Not a great show of valor or strength on the part of the male apostles. Then there is the excuse as St. John Paul II has said that the church doesn’t have the authority to appoint women priests. Since when has the Catholic Church ever admitted it didn’t have the authority to rule on any other topic? Next is the “Christ is the bridegroom and the church is the bride” reasoning. Please. In the Catholic high school I attended, such explanations would have politely been called a “snow job.” I have never heard one single excuse for excluding women priests that makes sense to me or anyone else I know. Many professions were closed off to women for many years, and there were just as many excuses given. If the Catholic Church is truly serious in making sure there are enough priests to administer the sacraments and run parishes, then it shouldn’t ignore the solution that is staring it in the face.
 
Editor’s note: That only men can be validly ordained to the priesthood is a truth that is part of the Catholic faith and will not and cannot change, said Cardinal-designate Luis Ladaria, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Catholic News Service reported. “It gives rise to serious concern to see that in some countries there still are voices that put in doubt the definitive nature of this doctrine,” the cardinal-designate wrote May 29 in the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano. St. John Paul II, confirming the constant teaching and practice of the church, formally declared in 1994 that “the church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the church’s faithful.” Cardinal-designate Ladaria noted that Pope Francis also has reaffirmed the teaching on an all-male priesthood, declared by St. John Paul in the document “Ordinatio Sacerdotalis.” In “The Joy of the Gospel” in 2013 he wrote, “The reservation of the priesthood to males, as a sign of Christ the spouse who gives himself in the Eucharist, is not a question open to discussion.”
 

Letters policy

Email letters.csf@sfarchdiocese.org

Write Letters to the Editor, Catholic San Francisco, One Peter Yorke Way, San Francisco, CA 94109

Name, address and daytime phone number for verification required.

Short letters preferred: 250 words or fewer