Sir, – There has been recent correspondence in your columns calling on the Catholic Church to ordain women to the priesthood, making extraordinary but unchallenged claims as to why this should happen.
This fixation with having women priests is based on a very narrow and clerical view of the church, it ignores and devalues the many other ways, seen and unseen, formal and informal, in which the faithful serve Jesus and his church.
It is also a failure to embrace and celebrate diversity. Some Christian denominations have women priests, and others do not. Geoff Scargill (Letters, May 6th) tells us that women priests have proven a great success for the Church of Ireland.
Indeed, the Anglican Communion also caters for women bishops and archbishops, it is an ideal home for those wishing to be women priests.
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The arguments for women priests are very much the product of late 20th century western thought and zeitgeist, but ignore the biblical foundations, 1st century origins and 2,000-year history of the church, whose founder made a conscious, deliberate choice not to ordain women as priests.
For Catholics the founder is divine, and his church is a divine institution, it comes as no surprise therefore that the Catholic Church simply does not have the authority to change and innovate what Jesus himself instituted. – Yours, etc,
CIARÁN MAC GUILL,
92110 Clichy,
France.
