Silence?
The Australian Catholic Students Association has pledged its loyalty to Pope Benedict XVI on women's ordination, despite calls for discussion of the issue by signatories of a recent petition from Australian Catholics.
Students Association President Camillus O'Kane said Catholic students are disappointed that some groups continue to push for the "ordination" of women, despite it being declared a non-issue for the Church.
"Ever since Christ established the Church over 2000 years ago and assigned His Apostles the task of sanctifying, teaching and governing the faithful, the office of the priesthood has been has been reserved for men only," Mr O'Kane said.
A reader sent me a link to the above article from Australia's Cath News. I have never been much impressed with the orthodoxy of Cath News and their headline for this story "Catholic students declare silence on women's ordination " confirms my prejudice. How issuing a statement is declaring silence is beyond me. If you happened to agree with the Church I guess you are being silent on a subject no matter what you say, but if you dissent than you are speaking out.
The petition was organised by former priests Paul Collins a (pictured) and Frank Purcell and promoted on the Catholica Australia website and elsewhere. Its primary intention is to encourage consideration of married clergy in order to preserve Australian Catholics' access to priests and the sacraments. It also requests discussion of women's ordination.
Does anybody else find it highly ironic for a former priest speaking out about the problem of the lack of priests? I believe Diogenes also thought this rather ironic.
At least Cath News ends the article with a great quote.
Meanwhile Hugh Henry of the Melbourne-based John XXIII Fellowship condemned the petition and organised a counter-petition.
Mr Henry, who edits Fidelity magazine, said: "No Catholic can support this. The Church has definitively and repeatedly said that an exclusively male priesthood is not an open question that Catholics can debate about."
He agreed with the petition that the Church is currently experiencing a dearth of priests. But the solution, he said is to "attack the problem at its source by cleaning out all the ageing, locked-in-the-sixties liberal Catholics in institutions that are responsible for this crisis in the first place."
Amen to that.
Known as 
...He agreed with the petition that the Church is currently experiencing a dearth of priests. But the solution, he said is to "attack the problem at its source by cleaning out all the ageing, locked-in-the-sixties liberal Catholics in institutions that are responsible for this crisis in the first place."
DOUBLE AMEN!
The other solution is to have Catholics read the missionary letters of Bishop F. Baraga and others over the last two centuries, letters which always spoke of the dearth of priests. Also, maybe reading the Bible would help - you know, the part about the harvest being plenty but labourers being few!
There will ALWAYS be too few priests, just as there will always be people who have trouble with the Narrow Gate and rich people who have trouble passing through the needle's eye.
I continue to be surprised at what I can only see as the stupidity of priests advocating for a married clergy by linking themselves to dissenting agendas. It tempts me to think that although the issues of:
Gay clergy (oh, sure)
Women's Ordination (for which the Church has no authority)
A Married Priests Exception (which COULD happen if God and the Pope say so)
are objectively unrelated, stubborn association with an undesirable cause and an impossible cause identify the third question as an insincere cause.
There are only 3 things that keep me from putting cause number 3 in the "never happen and why should it" bin:
1) To negate the possibility removes authority that the Pope has, and makes God appear unmerciful.
2) Whenever the topic comes up, the laity reacts with shameful judgments about rights the priesthood shouldn't have, although St Paul says the RIGHT remains; he and others chose to sacrifice it and proclaim that celibacy is a better state in which to serve God and the Church.
This makes me wish that the Lord would marry off a small percentage to humble us all.
3) If there is even one priest out there with a dual vocation, I'd hate to be someone who made a hasty judgment that wasn't mine to make.
What is there to do but pray for God's continued mercy, man's eventual sanity, and the true peace of Jesus Christ? Once again, I stifle the impulse to hit people over the head with my Grandma's lead frying pan...Vengeance is God's.