“Barring women from ordination to the priesthood,” the National Catholic Reporter editorialized recently, “is an injustice that cannot be allowed to stand.” The proximate cause for NCR’s ill-conceived, if sadly unsurprising, foray into heterodoxy was the recent excommunication, dismissal, and laicization of former Maryknoll priest and long-time advocate of women’s ordination, Roy Bourgeois.
The editors at NCR, like Bourgeois, insist that the ordination of women is simply a matter of justice. Justice means giving one his (or her) due. If a male-only priesthood is an injustice to women, then there must be some good in ordination that is due to women. But the sacrament of holy orders, as NCR forthrightly admits, is a gift. A vocation to the priesthood is either a gratuitous gift or a right. It can’t be both.
I hope you will look over to see what I wrote today. The NCR would not like it
I’ll read it right now. Just getting back from my bi-yearly checkup. I’m going to live. The question is, for how long.
For a good long time is my fervent hope, dear friend
xx
Thank you by good and dear friend – though sometimes longer is not better. I’m hoping more for better than longer.
xx
That’s good too
A very tender point for me – we got the news in the early hours that the Captain’s father passed away. I have to go to arrange the funeral tomorrow.
I’m so very sorry. I will pray for the repose of His soul. Pass on my condolences to the Captain as well and my prayers will be for him as well during this time of grief.
Thank you dear friend. I am writing something about him as a help for my own grief.
I think it is always helpful to ponder the significance of the impact that our loved ones have had on our lives. We think so little of it while they are alive and must do justice to that in our remembrances. May God give you help during your time of grief.
Tahini you, dear friend
[...] The Strange Clericalism of Women’s Ordination (servusfidelis.wordpress.com) [...]